The best puzzle games on Xbox and Nintendo Switch
Think, combine, marvel: games where the moment it clicks is the real reward.
How to find games that really suit you: Select up to 5 games you have played and enjoyed. Playalike compares 36 traits such as combat, story and atmosphere and suggests games that hit exactly the same spot, even across genres.
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1 Portal 2
- Lots of humour
- Sci-fi setting
- Strong, story-driven narrative
A brilliant first-person physics puzzler where you bend space with the portal gun through the decaying test chambers of Aperture Science, driven by the razor-sharp wit of GLaDOS and Wheatley. A separate co-op campaign adds clever two-player puzzles.
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2 Portal
- Lots of humour
- Sci-fi setting
A tight first-person puzzler where you bend space with a portal gun through physics-based test chambers, all while the passive-aggressive AI GLaDOS taunts you with pitch-black humor. Brilliant mechanics, perfect pacing and an iconic twist make it a classic.
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3 Braid
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Jumping and platforming
- Challenging difficulty
A landmark puzzle-platformer where every world bends time in a new, mind-twisting way, from rewinding to parallel realities. Beneath its painterly look lies a melancholic, ambiguous tale of regret and obsession.
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4 The Witness
- Lots to discover
- Open world
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A vibrant, deserted island packed with line-maze puzzles whose rules you must figure out entirely without instructions. The real reward is the epiphany of grasping each hidden principle, even in the landscape itself.
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5 Return of the Obra Dinn
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Lots to discover
As an insurance investigator, you use a magical pocket watch to relive the final moments of a ghost ship's crew and deduce the identity and fate of every sailor. Its striking 1-bit visuals and brilliant deduction design make it a one-of-a-kind detective game.
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6 The Talos Principle
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Sci-fi setting
- Lots to discover
A meditative first-person puzzler where you play an android solving laser and block puzzles across ancient-looking ruins while grappling with questions of consciousness, humanity and free will. Brilliantly designed puzzles meet philosophical terminal conversations and a haunting atmosphere.
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7 Fez
- Lots to discover
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Cosy, great for unwinding
A serene pixel-art platformer where rotating a flat-looking world reveals hidden paths through a third dimension. Beneath its calm surface lie cryptic ciphers and deep secrets that reward obsessive puzzle-solving.
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8 Machinarium
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Lavish presentation
- Cosy, great for unwinding
A wordless point-and-click adventure following a tiny robot through a gorgeously hand-drawn, rusty machine city, packed with clever puzzles and charming pictogram storytelling. Floex's atmospheric soundtrack makes it a calm, whimsical work of art.
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9 World of Goo
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Lots of humour
A physics-based construction puzzler where you build wobbly towers and bridges out of living goo balls to guide them to an exit pipe. Its quirky, darkly funny Burton-esque style, satirical tale about consumerism and technology, and wonderful soundtrack make it a modern indie classic.
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10 Superliminal
- Puzzles and brain teasers
A first-person puzzle game set in a dream where perspective is reality: objects grow or shrink depending on how you look at them. Short and mind-bending, with dry humor and a surprisingly reflective message.
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11 The Room
- Lavish presentation
A tactile puzzle game where you twist, slide and inspect an ornate safe full of hidden compartments and clever mechanisms. Its moody, occult-tinged atmosphere makes every discovery feel eerie and satisfying.
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12 Baba Is You
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Challenging difficulty
Baba Is You turns the game's rules into pushable word blocks, so rearranging them changes what wins, what kills and even what you control. The result is a clever, inventive puzzler full of aha moments.
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13 Catherine
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Challenging difficulty
Vincent is torn between his girlfriend and a seductive affair, and by night must climb deadly block towers in nightmares. By day he drinks at the bar and makes choices that steer the story, mixing relationship drama with brutally tough block-pushing puzzles.
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14 The Swapper
- Sci-fi setting
- Dark, serious atmosphere
- Distinctive, stylised art style
An atmospheric puzzle platformer where you create clones of yourself and swap between them to solve puzzles on an abandoned space station. Its handcrafted, claustrophobic look and philosophical story about consciousness and identity set it apart.
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15 Gorogoa
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Lavish presentation
Gorogoa is a short, hand-drawn puzzle game where you stack, zoom and shift illustrated panels to uncover hidden connections. Its wordless tale of longing and a life's journey unfolds entirely through this inventive mechanic.
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16 Blue Prince
- Lots to discover
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Runs that play out differently every time
You explore a mysterious mansion whose layout you rebuild each day by drafting rooms, slowly unraveling layered puzzles on the hunt for Room 46. Roguelike planning meets deep discovery and secrets.
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17 Cocoon
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Lavish presentation
- Sci-fi setting
Cocoon is a wordless puzzle adventure where you play a small insectoid creature carrying worlds inside orbs and nesting them within each other to solve puzzles. The worlds-within-worlds mechanic delivers clever aha moments and a mysterious atmosphere.
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18 We Were Here
- Co-op or multiplayer
- Playing together in co-op
Two players are separated in an abandoned castle in a frozen wasteland and must solve puzzles using only a walkie-talkie, describing what they see to each other. Communication and teamwork are the core of the experience.
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19 Order of the Sinking Star
- Fantasy setting
- Challenging difficulty
A puzzle adventure from Jonathan Blow featuring over a thousand hand-crafted, interlinked puzzles in a magical realm. Different heroes introduce new mechanics as you uncover a larger mystery.
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20 The Room Two
- Lavish presentation
An atmospheric puzzle game where you examine and manipulate intricately crafted mechanical puzzle boxes with tactile controls. Every drawer and mechanism hides another secret in an eerie, mysterious world.
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21 Thimbleweed Park
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Lots of humour
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A loving throwback to classic LucasArts point-and-click adventures, where you swap between five characters to solve a strange murder in an odd small town. Dark humor, meta jokes and interlocking puzzles are its main appeal.
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22 Outer Wilds
- Lots to discover
- Open world
- Sci-fi setting
Explore a solar system caught in a 22-minute time loop and unravel a cosmic mystery.
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23 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Open world
- Lots to discover
- Fantasy setting
A huge open world in which building and physics abilities let you find your own solutions.
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24 Day of the Tentacle Remastered
- Lots of humour
- Distinctive, stylised art style
- Strong, story-driven narrative
A cult point-and-click classic where three friends use time travel across three eras to solve wacky puzzles and stop an evil tentacle. The remaster adds hand-drawn HD art and refreshed audio while keeping the zany cartoon humor intact.
What matters with Puzzle games
Puzzle games are about one thing: the moment a problem that looked impossible suddenly makes sense. The best ones teach you their rules quietly and then twist them, so every solved room feels earned. The range here is wide, from tightly scripted test chambers to open islands and ghost ships where the puzzle is figuring out what the puzzle even is.
When choosing, think about how much guidance you want. Portal is the gentlest entry point, short and perfectly paced, with GLaDOS keeping things funny. The Witness gives you no instructions at all, which is thrilling if you enjoy working out hidden rules and frustrating if you don't. Return of the Obra Dinn suits players who like deduction and note-taking, asking you to identify every sailor's fate. If you prefer a slower, reflective mood, The Talos Principle pairs laser and block puzzles with philosophical questions. For something lighter, Bejeweled 3 offers a relaxing Zen mode, and Scribblenauts Unlimited rewards creativity rather than precise logic.
Also consider whether you want to play alone. Portal 2 has a separate co-op campaign built around two-player puzzles, and Trine 2 supports up to three players solving physics puzzles together. Art style matters too: Braid's painterly look and Fez's pixel art hide surprisingly deep, mind-bending ideas.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good puzzle game for beginners?
Portal is a great start because it introduces its portal mechanic gradually and stays short and well paced. Bejeweled 3 and Scribblenauts Unlimited are also approachable and low pressure.
What are the best co-op puzzle games?
Portal 2 has a dedicated co-op campaign with puzzles designed for two players. Trine 2 lets up to three players combine a wizard, thief and knight to solve physics puzzles.
Which puzzle games are the hardest?
The Witness is known for teaching its rules without any instructions, which can be demanding. Return of the Obra Dinn and the cryptic ciphers hidden in Fez also challenge even experienced puzzle fans.
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