Puzzles in games come in all shapes and sizes. Some are simple games with only a few levels that you can click your way through in less than an hour which you can play before bed, others are wrapped within entire RPGs with only some levels dedicated to puzzle solving. But even among games dedicated to the puzzle genre, there's a lot of variety.
But no matter what kind of puzzle game you play, some will always be trickier than others. And often it's the ones that appear the simplest that are the hardest to beat. So if you're a fan of a challenge, these deceptively difficult puzzle games might be the next thing for you to try.
10 Hook
Hook has a simple concept - reel in every hook on the screen. Sounds easy enough right? And to start with it is. Finding the right sequence to use when reeling the lines in so they don't touch one another is simple when there's only the occasional bump in each line.
But the moment you start feeling comfortable a new type of line will appear, challenging you to plan your moves even more carefully and trace each line before you move it so you don't slip up. Plus, Hook will reset the level completely every time you make a mistake, so try not to slip up.
9 Poly Bridge
Poly Bridge may look cute and fun, but underneath that colorful low-poly aesthetic is a challenging game that fans of physics and engineering puzzles will love. With various vehicles needing to cross under and over valleys, it's up to you to build the bridges that will let them do that.
But with limited materials and a finite budget, finding the solution that won't collapse from the weight of the vehicles offers a true challenge. So if you've got a friend who's an engineer, don't be afraid to ask for their help because you might just need it.
8 Cross Set
Cross Set offers players a simple task: Arrange the numbers so that there are no duplicates in any row or column in the grid. Sounds simple and likely familiar if you've ever played Sudoku. And with the grid already filled in with a limited number of possibilities, you might think it would be easier.
But it isn't. The prefilled grid may seem like a bonus but it serves to make every level that bit more overwhelming by presenting every single option to you at all times. But if you can remain methodical then you should be able to conquer this game with enough time.
7 Klocki
On the surface, Klocki is just another tile puzzle game where you swap the pieces until the pattern is complete. That holds true for the first few levels or so until you start arranging tiles to connect across the faces of cubes with some tiles that can only be alongside certain other types of tiles.
As you can imagine, Klocki's difficulty increases rapidly until you are working with multiple game mechanics per level and struggling to find a solution that satisfies every tile's demands. It's great fun if you want a challenge but be prepared to resort to trial and error on some levels.
6 Hexcells Plus
If you enjoyed playing Minesweeper back when it used to ship with Microsoft Windows then Hexcells is a game for you. It's an evolution of the Minesweeper concept with a much less 90's aesthetic and much more complex challenges. As you progress you'll find that it isn't just the tiles that you need to tell you where is safe to click next, but also numbers at the top of columns and the side of rows.
It's a unique and surprisingly addictive challenge with a bright blue and orange color scheme that makes the final result of each puzzle into a pleasing pattern that often turns out to be near symmetrical, but with just enough variation to prevent things from getting easy.
5 Q.U.B.E.
Released all the way back in 2012, the first Q.U.B.E. is a first-person puzzle game where you interact with a construct in outer space that is seemingly entirely made of cubes. The goal is to dismantle whatever the structure is in order to prevent it from crashing into Earth, but to do that you must solve a series of increasingly complex puzzles.
By interacting with colored cubes that have various different behaviors, you must find your way through difficult-to-traverse areas and save the planet from destruction. And if you like the experience, there's always Q.U.B.E. 2 to enjoy.
4 Trios
Trios is built around simple arithmetic. Each level gives you a target number and a set of numbers and operations with which to achieve it. It starts with simple problems that only require addition and subtraction, but quickly escalates to involving multiplication and division.
It might not sound that difficult, but if you misstep then you'll find yourself undoing all your previous work when you don't get the answer you expected. And if you work your way all the way to the end of the premade challenges, then you can hop over into infinite mode and play until your brain stops working.
3 Mini Metro
If you're a fan of optimization rather than straightforward puzzle-solving then Mini Metro is a game worth checking - out especially if you're looking for a puzzle game you can get on the Switch. Given free reign to connect the stations of a city's underground metro network, it's up to you to create the most optimal paths to carry as many passengers to their stations as possible before the network is overwhelmed.
It's not a game that gives you much in the way of a tutorial, but the mechanics are intuitive enough. The real challenge is building a solution that won't limit your metro network later down the line.
2 Sidewords
Sidewords might look like the easiest game on this list, but it's far from it. Making words from the letters you are given is easy, but finding the ones that will fill out the entire grid is much more difficult. It's easy to find a word early on that later blocks off the correct solution. Fortunately, you can remove a word with just a click and replace it with a new one in a few more.
The small grids you are faced with early in the game are easy enough to solve, with the words being limited by the number of letters available to you. But once you enter the realm of 5x5 and 6x6 grids you will soon realize just how difficult these puzzles can get.
1 The Witness
Released in 2016 by the creator of the time-based puzzle game Braid, The Witness is another first-person puzzle game. It's a visually stunning game that offers up colorful landscapes which contain a variety of puzzles that go from simple games of following the correct route out of a maze, all the way to using the shapes of the landscape to figure out how to unlock a door.
The Witness is a game beloved by fans of the puzzle genre and it's easy to see why when you play it. But the colorful aesthetic also lures players into a false sense of security in thinking that the puzzles will be as simple as the style, when in reality they are as complex and abstract as they are varied.