Brain-teaser games: puzzles, deduction and clever rules

Four kinds of puzzle game, and how to tell which you like

"Puzzle game" covers very different experiences. It helps to know which of these you enjoy most:

• Rule puzzles (The Witness, Baba Is You): you learn a system and apply it in ever cleverer ways.
• Physics and spatial puzzles (Portal 2, Monument Valley): you manipulate a space to make a route.
• Deduction (Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds): you gather clues and reason your way to the truth.
• Systems and strategy (Balatro, Slay the Spire, Dorfromantik): each turn is a small optimisation problem, with some luck.

If you love crosswords and logic grids, deduction games are a natural step. If you prefer Rubik's cubes and mazes, start with spatial puzzles. Card and board-game fans tend to enjoy deck builders.

Getting unstuck without spoiling the puzzle

Being stuck is part of a good puzzle game, but being stuck for days is not fun. A few tactics help before you reach for a walkthrough:

1. Walk away. Many players report solving puzzles away from the screen, after a break.
2. Explain the puzzle out loud, to someone else or to yourself. Saying what you know often reveals what you have missed.
3. Try a different puzzle. Most of these games let you skip around, and later puzzles often teach a trick that unlocks earlier ones.
4. If you do look something up, search for a hint rather than a full solution, and stop reading as soon as you have the idea.

Games with a single right answer, such as Baba Is You and The Witness, are the ones where spoilers do the most harm.

Puzzles on the go: phones, handhelds and short breaks

Puzzle games are some of the best fits for phones and handhelds, because they work in short bursts and rarely need fast reactions. Baba Is You, Monument Valley, Balatro and Slay the Spire are all available as paid apps on phones. On Switch, nearly every game here is available.

Deduction games such as Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds are better on a bigger screen and in longer sittings, because you build up a picture in your head over time. A notebook helps with both.

For more ideas that fit around a busy day, see our short-session picks.

Puzzle games for families and younger players

Several of these are good family puzzles. Monument Valley and Dorfromantik are PEGI 3 with gentle pacing. The Witness and Baba Is You are also PEGI 3, though they are hard enough to challenge adults. Pikmin 4, from our play-with-kids list, mixes light puzzles into an adventure.

Some brain teasers carry higher ratings for reasons other than difficulty. Return of the Obra Dinn is PEGI 16 for its depictions of death, and Balatro is PEGI 12 with a gambling descriptor because of its poker-based design. PEGI's consumer advice explains each rating.

Solving a puzzle together, with one person on the controller and the others suggesting moves, can be as sociable as a board game.

From puzzles to bigger adventures

If you enjoy the thinking in these games, some larger adventures build puzzles into exploration. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom asks you to build contraptions and solve shrine puzzles across a huge world, and Outer Wilds bridges both moods.

Use the finder to combine "brain teasers" with "big adventures" or "short sessions", or let the Pathfinder on the home page suggest a mix.

Why a notebook is a puzzle player's best tool

The deeper puzzle games on this list reward keeping notes, and some are almost designed around it. Return of the Obra Dinn gives you a logbook to record names and fates, and it confirms your deductions only in groups of three correct answers, so random guessing does not get you far. Outer Wilds keeps a ship's log of the clues you have found, but players often find their own notes useful for joining the dots.

For rule-based games such as The Witness and Baba Is You, a quick sketch of a puzzle can help you think without staring at the screen. Taking a photo of a puzzle panel on your phone lets you think about it away from the console.

Notes also help across sessions. If you play in short bursts, a line or two on what you were trying when you stopped saves you from working it all out again. Puzzle games are one of the few genres where pen and paper still earns a place next to the controller.