The best puzzle games of the decade

Update 01/29/20: In honor of National Puzzle Day, we've rebumped out list of the finest puzzle games released in the last ten years. If you're looking to celebrate the games that work our brains like no others, make sure you've played every title on our list of the best puzzle games of the decade!

Humans are weird. We complain endlessly about challenges at school, university and in our jobs, yet when a video offers to the chance to test our wits against a developer’s challenged, suddenly we light up with glee. Whatever the reason, our species loves puzzle games and they’ve been a staple genre pretty much since the medium was created. The last decade has been a particularly exciting one for puzzle game fans, as developers meld philosophy with play, or experiment in new mediums. Come celebrate our favorite mind-muddling genre then, as we look back at the best puzzle games of the decade.

Best puzzle games of the decade

Talos Principle (2014)

We all knew Croteam for their work on the Serious Sam series. Mowing down hordes of monsters in their over-the-top, quip-tossing shooters was certainly a blast, but we never really considered there was much thought behind an eternally screaming, headless man with bombs for hands. Then 2014 arrived, and Croteam dropped one of the best first-person puzzlers we’ve ever played. More than that, one of the smartest.

The Talos Principles mixes puzzles with history, religion and philosophy of the human mind, placing you in the virtual boots of an AI simulation that needs to prove its intelligence and humanity. At the behest of a godly voice, this means solving increasingly complex puzzles featuring crates, lasers, barriers and more, all while asking yourself why you're even here. The Talos Principle is smart, thoughtful and packed with easter eggs to discover, comfortably earning a place on our list of the best puzzle games of the decade.

The Witness (2016)

Where Talos tasked us with thinking in a 3D space, The Witness managed the impossible feat of taking 2D to new dimensions. Set on a colorful island, every single puzzle in The Witness takes the form of a 2D maze-like grid. The rules? It’s up to you to figure them out. Designer Jonathan Blow uses the simple act of drawing lines from start to finish on a grid to tap into an unfathomably deep well of challenges, and leaves the player to piece together the laws underpinning them all. 

Each new feature on the grid presents a near-exasperating test, but the eureka moment when you clock a solution is worth every second of head-scratching agony. Solving puzzles opens up new avenues on the island, offering a concoction of wonder and trepidation as you explore the mesmerizing but lonely world. The Witness isn't a game you'll forget in a hurry.

Tetris Effect (2018)

Tetris is the mighty sovereign of puzzle video games, and this decade showed us that it is far from finished with its reign. With Tetris Effect, Tetsuya Mizuguchi and his team breathed new life into the game’s classic formula, bringing music and visuals to the fore in a zen-like experience that any puzzle fan would do wrong to miss. Tetris Effect is a great game in its own right, but the entire experience reaches fruition when played in VR. The symphony of electronic visuals and notes bursting into life around you as you place blocks and clear lines is nothing short of beautiful. Read our review, here.  

Portal 2 (2011)

Portal 2 might just be the greatest co-op game ever made. The return to Aperture Science under Glados and introduction of Stephen Merchant’s Wheatley made for a fantastic solo adventure, but it was the teamwork of P-Body and Atlus that really made Valve’s second outing in the puzzle genre. 

The co-op portion got right to the point with inventive puzzles that tested both players’ heads while adding plenty of comical chances to kill each other over and over. It had all the smart challenges and humorous writing that made Portal so brilliant, and let you bring a pal along for the ride. Any chance of a few more levels, Valve?   

Infinifactory (2015)

Zachtronics has made a name for itself in the world of puzzles thanks to the likes of SpaceChem, Infinifactory and Opus Magnum. Built around the satisfaction of planning, creating and improving upon a mechanical design, each could arguably score a place on this list, but it’s the 3D planning of 2015 Infinifactory that really stole our hearts. 

Organizing an efficient factory of conveyor belts and components for dictatorial alien overlords has never been so much fun, especially when you compare your efforts to your friends and discover just how different their approach was. If you enjoy this, be sure to check out Zachtronics's other titles for more sandbox task refinement.

Tetris 99 (2019)

What, you thought the shape-dropping juggernaut would let us get away with just a single title on the list?

One of the core reasons to pick up Nintendo Switch Online, Tetris 99 brought a novel approach to the battle royale genre. If you’ve ever wanted to put your shape-slotting skills to the test, Tetris 99 is the perfect place to prove your worth as you strive to be the sole survivor out of almost a hundred challengers. 

We’ve always believed the battle royale genre has plenty more to offer than shooters, and Nintendo has proven just how well the format works when plastered on other genres. Tie-ins with Splatoon, Luigi’s Mansion and Fire Emblem have kept us coming back for more, and it doesn’t look like Nintendo plans to stop any time soon. Keep practising and one day you might even manage to rival Morgan Shaver, the AG team’s own renowned Tetris expert.

Gorogoa (2017)

Is a picture worth a thousand words? Honestly, it’s not our place to judge, but what we can tell you is that Gorogoa finds many meanings within its simple frames. By separating, connecting or zooming in and out of each frame, Gorogoa brings wonderfully hand-drawn images to life as you piece together a puzzle without direction. 

Lining up a tree branch could cause a crow to take flight, dislodging an apple such that it falls from one frame to the next. That same apple can then be collected by a figure in another frame, provided you connect them properly. Appropriately challenging to describe via words, Gorogoa is as much a piece of art as it is a puzzle, and deserves to be experienced by more.

The Swapper (2013)

What makes you, you? Your memories? Your history? The atoms that constitute your body? It’s a challenging discussion that isn’t faced often in gaming or indeed life, but 2D puzzle-platformer The Swapper dives into it wholeheartedly. While investigating an abandoned space station, you’re able to make sure of a tool to swap your consciousness between various cloned bodies. 

It’s a fancy videogame trick that allows for all manner of interesting puzzles, but also a fair few philosophical quandaries as well. Is it really “you” that makes the jump between bodies, or are you simply recreating your exact mindstate in another? The Swapper doesn’t try to provide firm answers to an arguably unsolvable problem, but it will certainly get you thinking while also providing plenty of challenges along the way.

Baba Is You (2019)

Created by lone Finish developer Arvi “Hempuli” Teikari for a game jam, Baba Is You has since gone on to draw serious acclaim, and has even found itself nominated for Best Independent Game at The Game Awards 2019. Try it out, and you’ll understand why immediately. Baba Is You gives you control of its own rules by placing them in the world. By shifting blocks on the 2D levels, you can alter the defining rules, changing the win conditions, physical barriers and even what you, the player, control. 

Baba Is You is more than just the title, it’s a core rule that lets you hop around as a small, hippopotamus-like creature. Replace the Baba block with on reading Wall and you’ll suddenly find yourself in control of every piece of stone barrier on the map. There’s an enormous degree of creativity and challenge enabled by the foundations of Baba Is You, and more than any other game on this list it’ll have you walking away from the screen to ponder its tougher challenges over a cup of tea of coffee. If you’re after a challenge, don’t miss Baba Is You. Click here for our review.

Stephen’s Sausage Roll (2016)

Stephen’s Sausage Roll is an ugly game. Stephen’s Sausage Roll is a strangely named game. But sometimes, you just need to roll a sausage around. Stephen’s Sausage Roll is all about rolling sausages onto grills on a small grid. Sausages roll when pushed, and you need to make sure each side of the sausage is cooked. That’s the entire premise, yet Stephen’s Sausage Rolls stretches it out into nearly 100 puzzles, each unique and inventive.

If you’ve played Sokoban puzzle games, you’ll know what’s in store here. However, if you’ve not tried a game of this kind before, then the bizarre controls, muddy graphics and odd name may have put you off from picking it up. Despite these setbacks, Stephen’s Sausage Roll has earned a reputation as a brilliant and deliciously tough puzzle game that genre stalwarts will relish.

Those are our picks for the best puzzle games of the decade. It’s been an absolutely stellar ten years for fans of virtual brain teasers so we’ve no doubt that plenty of other cracking puzzle games have slipped through our mental net. Let us know your favorites and any that we’ve forgotten down in the comments below.