Puzzlers You're Addicted To

[Deleted]

Puzzle games aren't discussed much on here so I thought it would be a nice idea to create a thread around them. I really enjoy a good puzzler myself, but I find that they're hard to put down. The one more go factor is often strong, especially with simple gameplay concepts. So I ask the question - which puzzle games do you find hard to put down?

For me one series that really grabs me is the Mr Driller series. I'm not even especially good at it, but often just as I'm thinking 'this is my last go' I have a good run and it renews my feeling that I need to outperform myself and that I can do even better. I really enjoy the simplicity of the puzzle where you're pushed to move so fast that causes mistakes. It's all about staying focused and two steps ahead of the game. 



One I played a heck of a lot back when it came out was Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo on PS1. Actually it probably made up around 90% of my playtime on the console whilst it was current. The ability to stack your blocks in order to make a chain attack was so addictive to me. The game was all about preparing your attacks and seeing them play out, or being beaten to the punch and having to adapt strategy. I actually got pretty good at the game back in the day, though I doubt I could play as well now. Oh, also I could listen to the soundtrack for days. That probably helped.

[spanky]

Puzzle Fighter is one of the best. Very accessible to casual players while still having high level strategy. Top tier aesthetics too.

Between me and my wife, Tetris 99 is one of the most played games on our Switch. The Battle Royale formula works shockingly well with Tetris.

I'm not huge on Sokoban type games but I did recently play through all of Fire N Ice on the Switch and had a great time with it.

[vnisanian2001]

The early games in the Eggerland/Lolo series, especially with the labyrinths. If they reboot it, it should be a labyrinth type.

[dsparil]

I guess picross is technically puzzles so that. I'm not sure I even want to check and see how much time I've spent since March of last year… And it all started because I hated Murdered by Numbers so much and needed to see if I suddenly hated picross or if it was the game. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that every picross style game that doesn't have the official capital P Picross in the name is middling at best with the exception of Piczle Cross Adventure.

[Apollo Chungus]

I was half-thinking of saying Picross on your behalf dsparil, simply because you've played damn near every Picross game known to man. I like to think that if you beat all the official Picross games, you'll unlock the secrets of the universe and obtain true enlightenment.

For myself, I like playing puzzle games, but a lot of them tend to be very fast-paced that anything past the first stage or two gets super overwhelming. Mr. Driller, Lumines, Tetris, Bomb Monkey and the like all get a bit too much (and don't even get me started on the ones that give you an opponent like Puyo Pop and Puzzle Fighter - god no!). I prefer the slower ones where you're not constantly hounded by a timer or a rapidly increasing speed limit, or at least offer you the ability to play in a relaxed manner, like Hexic or Bejeweled. I guess Dr. Mario is more frantic, but I've been able to play loads of the Game Boy version with no problem. Yeah, I know that's an odd contradiction if I've ever heard one.

[dr_st]

Zuma and Zuma's Revenge.

Played Bejeweled series too, but liked it less overall.

[ZenithianHero]

Mr. Driller is indeed fun. Including the Druaga themed mode you mentioned, it turns the gameplay on its head with some strategy.

Generally, I play a bunch of those arcade style puzzle games like Puyo Puyo, Dr. Mario, Tetris, Puzzle Bobble, Magical Drop etc. An overlooked one I enjoyed over the years is Cleopatra Fortune. Shame it hasn't been rereleased in a long time.

[Snake]

Puzzle Bobble 2/Bust-A-Move 2 and Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo top out as my usual go-to puzzle games.  Kick-ass soundtracks for both games.


Candy Crush Saga for play-anywhere smart phone game.  I was pretty obsessed with it when it came out, and for a time, always completed all the levels up until their under-construction-to-be-released levels.  Great aesthetic, reasonable challenge for most levels.  Fun combos to be had.  


The Incredible Machine on MS-DOS was one that I always liked.  Making your own Rube-Goldberg machine out of random items and tools was a very cool concept.


Columns, arcade and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.  I always found the soundtrack soothing.  Sometimes I'd be saved just by the way some pieces just break down and fall into place, in a similar way to Puzzle Fighter 2.  

[ReyVGM]

Tetris Attack / Puzzle League is pretty much the best puzzle ever, so I'm addicted to that.

And picross, I play every single one.

[Deleted]

The only problem I have with Puzzle League is that, at least for the ones I have, the single player content is really light.

[ReyVGM]

Dec 5, 2021 8:55:43 GMT -5 excelsior said:

The only problem I have with Puzzle League is that, at least for the ones I have, the single player content is really light.

You mean light in story or in modes?

Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League N64 have like 5 or 6 single player modes that can be somewhat different from each other, that's more than what most puzzle games offer. As for the story, well, it's a puzzle game so you can't expect much.

However, if you're talking about those Puzzle League games that Nintendo released during the DS era, then yeah, those are really generic.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

The only one I get 'addicted' to (in the sense that I always want to go for another round), is good old Tetris. Just playing that casually is rewarding to my brain.

Tetris Attack is a close second. I can really get in the zone when playing that, truly getting lost in the moment. Even though I'm not even good enough to figure out how to execute combos all that well (outside of when the game halts briefly when blocks dissappear), so I'm usually just playing as fast as I can. The SNES original has quite a couple of single player modes actually. And while later games feature identical gameplay, they just don't "feel" right.

Puyo Puyo and Bust-A-Move are also great, and Hexcells is a great one not yet mentioned here.

[Deleted]

Dec 6, 2021 11:11:00 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

Dec 5, 2021 8:55:43 GMT -5 excelsior said:

The only problem I have with Puzzle League is that, at least for the ones I have, the single player content is really light.

You mean light in story or in modes?

Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League N64 have like 5 or 6 single player modes that can be somewhat different from each other, that's more than what most puzzle games offer. As for the story, well, it's a puzzle game so you can't expect much.

However, if you're talking about those Puzzle League games that Nintendo released during the DS era, then yeah, those are really generic.

There's definitely some nice modes in Tetris Attack, but none of them last me very long so it's a matter of replaying the same content a great deal. It's fair to say that's something that can be said about a number of puzzlers where the story mode is mostly treated as an arcade mode so I don't mean to single out the Puzzle League series for this. Since I get little chance to play in multiplayer I look for the single player to act as a replacement for that so I like to have plenty of challenging vs battles. I don't get much of that in Tetris Attack, so I would like to have one out of a meaty 'story mode' (doesn't genuinely have to have a story), a challenge mode, some to unlockables to seek out basically to give me incentive to play the base game for a longer period. What is there in Tetris Attack is lovely, and certainly a nice package for the time of release, but if the story mode were longer that would keep me invested.

And yeah, the other one I have besides Tetris Attack is the DS one. I was more disappointed with that one, since not attaching any property to it for some reason meant it had to be devoid of personality. It's still a fine game - it's Puzzle League after all, but I would never go back and replay that one, where as I enjoy revisiting Tetris Attack here and there.

[Woody Alien]

I'm not much a puzzle game player, but recently I'm playing and replaying a lot of Loop Hero and Mini Metro. They still count as puzzle games, right? The latter is really minimalistic and relaxing so I just play it to spend some time since I probably didn't really get the hang of it, more like to make all those colorful pretty lines on the map.

I never really cared for block puzzlers to be honest. However over the summer I liked a loto a different kind of block puzzler, this one which is sort of like Sokoban:

[jorpho]

It's surprising Nintendo hasn't done anything more with Wario's Woods in the last 20 years. It is captivating.

And it's a shame Doctor Mario World is gone forever. It only resembles the original Doctor Mario superficially. It was very deliberately designed to separate you from your money and there was perhaps just a little too much randomness involved, but it was compelling, trying to find the optimal strategy for each level.