Are You Looking For A Challenge?
Puzzle games don't always come easy. These brain teasers will tax your mind until you crack them. Some may even require you to think like a genius just to beat. So love your brain teasers, logic puzzles, or spatial problems? Check out these 20 ridiculously challenging puzzles.
1. The Witness
With The Witness, you’re stranded on an island filled with mysterious line puzzles ranging from easy to absolutely bonkers. You have to pay close attention to your surroundings in order to figure out each puzzle’s solution, meaning your observational skills will be tested along with your logical reasoning. Prepare to spend minutes staring at puzzle panels and questioning your life choices.
2. Baba Is You
Everything in Baba Is You is an object, including the rules. By moving words around you can change how an entire level functions. Solutions will have you thinking in ways you didn’t think were possible. Play this game if you like messing around with logic puzzles in a giant playground.
3. Portal 2
Portal 2 is a series of physics-based puzzle rooms filled with steamy narrative bits and lots of laughter. With Portal 2, you learn to manipulate portals, momentum, and objects in your environment to solve each puzzle while thinking several steps ahead. Come up with plans in your head and get ready for an intense brain workout solving these genius puzzles.
4. The Talos Principle
As you solve mind-bending puzzles that involve clever lines of sight and machinery, The Talos Principle has you asking big questions about your own existence. There are typically several things going on at once as you solve these puzzles. This makes you use every ounce of your brain to finish each level.
5. Fez
Fez challenges your perception of the world by having you rotate a 2D world around a 3D axis. You’ll learn to look at every angle of each puzzle and rotate your mental perspective in order to solve each world. Pulling apart and viewing your environment from every direction is key to your success in Fez.
6. Return of the Obra Dinn
Return of the Obra Dinn is an investigative puzzle where you must use logic, common sense, and sharp attention to detail in order to solve one large mystery. Use your brain to discover what happened to each crew member by piecing together the clues sprinkled throughout each room. It’s like a gigantic game of connect-the-dot with human lives at stake.
7. SpaceChem
Spacechem is essentially building complex circuits in order to turn chemicals into new products. At first, you won’t think it’s too bad, but soon enough you will be looking at every solution as efficiently as possible in order to progress further. Let those inner-area engineers free and flex on these crazy puzzles.
8. Myst
Myst is simply nostalgic. If you played this game as a kid you might be surprised at how much your brain has to work to solve some of the puzzles. Explore a beautiful, yet cryptic island by solving puzzles that will have you using all your skills: observation, deductive reasoning, and even some good old trial and error.
9. The Room Series
The Room series presents you with physical puzzles that you solve on a beautifully crafted micro-scale. There are hidden compartments, puzzles within puzzles, and cryptic codes that you have to decipher. The room series truly lets you experience what it’s like to feel like a hacker.
10. Stephen’s Sausage Roll
Stephen’s sausage roll is easily one of the hardest puzzle games of all time. You slide sausages onto a grill one-by-one in specific sequences. If you place a sausage down in the wrong spot, you’re forced to start over. Think you have what it takes to flex those puzzle muscles? Play some Stephen’s sausage roll.
Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash
11. Zachtronics’ Opus Magnum
Opus Magnum is Zachtronics’ latest puzzle game that has you creating alchemy machines to solve puzzles. Each puzzle can be solved in an almost infinite number of ways, but there is one optimal solution for each you have to find. The beauty of the puzzles in Opus Magnum is you’ll spend hours fine-tuning your solution just to brag about how smart you are.
12. Hexcells
Think of Hexcells as like playing Sudoku on steroids. Hexcells gives you logic puzzles that require you to use not only deductive reasoning, but pattern recognition to solve each puzzle. There are only a couple of simple hints given to you at the start of each puzzle, but can easily lead to wrong solutions if you aren’t careful.
13. Tetris Effect: Connected
This version of Tetris will make you feel like a genius. Tetris Effect: Connected forces you to make lightning decisions and think steps ahead while the game gets progressively faster. Playing this game is like studying for your SATs but way more fun.
14. Antichamber
Antichamber isn’t like any other puzzle game you’ve played before. Each puzzle will challenge the way you view geometry and space. Get ready to run through what seem like normal hallways that open up to portals that question your understanding of reality. Antichamber will make you do mental gymnastics without you even realizing it.
15. Sokoban
There aren’t too many thinking skills needed to win at Sokoban. Your brain will just need to be able to plan out each level several moves ahead. Push boxes. Get it? These puzzles are pretty simple, but that is what makes sokoban one of the most difficult puzzle games of all time.
16. Papers, Please
If you’ve never played Papers, Please I urge you to get off your computer right now and try it out. While it may not be a “typical” puzzle game, you’ll be using your logical-mind to solve each passport in the fastest time possible. See how good you are at multi-tasking while telling lies to illegal immigrants.
17. Gorogoa
Gorogoa is a puzzle game that will have you slapping your hand against your forehead in amazement. You’ll be presented with hand-drawn panels that you can move around your screen to connect different objects and story bits. The genius of each solution is something you have to see to believe.
18. Braid
Braid takes the platforming puzzle genre and allows you to manipulate time to solve some really great puzzles. Not only will you need to think outside the box, but sometimes backwards in order to progress. Figuring out some of the puzzles is a huge brain exercise in itself.
19. EXAPUNKS
EXAPUNKS is a game where you hack virtual societies by writing lines of code. There are typically several solutions to each problem you’ll encounter. Not only will this puzzle game flex your logical thinking, but it will have you thinking about efficient sequencing.
20. Infinifactory
Infinifactory challenges you to build factories from the ground up in order to complete precise manufacturing goals. You’ll be figuring out how to optimize your factory’s flow, structure, and timing all at once. If you’ve ever wanted to solve a mega brain-teasing puzzle that actually exists, give this game a try.
