Best Puzzle Games 2023

Puzzle games allow us to fun while stimulating our brains and improving our cognitive abilities in areas such as logic, memory, and even creativity.

The best part about the puzzle genre is how seamlessly it meshes with others, resulting in a wide range of unique experiences that qualify as puzzle games.

To illustrate just how versatile this genre can be, we’re highlighting the best puzzle games to play in 2023 along with the best puzzle games on Steam.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your favorite puzzlers!

To get started, What Lies in the Multiverse is a story-driven puzzle platformer that takes players along for a reality-bending adventure.

In it, you’re tasked with harnessing the power of the multiverse to switch worlds in mid-air and turn pitfall traps into bridges, walls into tunnels, and foes into friends.

The game features an extensive cast of quirky characters who will help you along the way as you explore temples, towns, harbors, forests, and more.

If you enjoy puzzle games that tell a light-hearted story to keep you engaged, then you’re sure to like What Lies in the Multiverse.

One of the more zen puzzle games on this list, Unpacking simulates the familiar experience of organizing your personal possessions after moving into a new home.

Over the course of eight house moves, players are given a chance to experience the emotional weight that comes with reflecting on life throughout the years.

Gameplay is a mix of block-fitting puzzles and home decoration, as players are encouraged to create satisfying and aesthetically pleasing living spaces.

It’s a meditative experience free from any timers, meters, or scores, and includes a relaxing soundtrack by BAFTA award-winning composer/audio director Jeff van Dyck.

If you enjoy solving 3D puzzles in diverse and colorful environments, The Last Cube is definitely worth checking out.

Taking on the role of the titular Last Cube, you’ll have to prove your worth and save your desolatie cube world from destruction.

This is done by navigating carefully-crafted puzzles that revolve around a unique sticker system that grants your cube new abilities.

Levels are packed with tons of little details, secrets, challenges, and rewards that encourage you to experiment as you roll, dash, hop, and clone your way to victory.

Cat Museum is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle-adventure game with a bizarre art style and surreal setting.

In it, you play as a museum manager tasked with repairing a mysterious museum overrun with cats.

Making your way around the museum, you’ll search for hidden clues, solve puzzles, and get to know the freaky felines that call it home.

The deeper you go, the closer you’ll get to unraveling the frightening truth behind the museum and its inhabitants.

The follow-up to Supra Games’ hit Portal-meets-Zelda metroidvania is great for some logic-based puzzle fun.

In Supraland Six Inches Under, you reprise your role as a blue hero tasked with gathering weapons and abilities to reveal new parts of a mysterious backyard world.

Gameplay consists of open-world exploration, puzzle-solving, and some light combat sections that will take you upwards of 20 hours to complete.

The best part is you don’t have to have played the original Supraland in order to understand and enjoy Six Inches Under.

One of 2021’s most surprising indie hits, Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a 2D adventure puzzle game about a janitor dog named Pizza who discovers a magical paintbrush.

This artistic tool lets Pizza use brushstrokes and splashes of color to bring their cartoon world to life as they explore new areas, solve puzzles, and battle bosses.

The game tells a surprisingly emotional story that’s sure to tug on players’ heartstrings and offers a fresh perspective on what it means to be an artist.

Chicory is a great addition to any puzzle fan’s library that will brighten up your day with its earnest storytelling and vibrant visuals.

The Pedestrian is a 2.5D indie puzzle platformer with a unique premise.

In it, you play as the pedestrian figure from traffic signs after being magically brought to life.

Each level is comprised of several signs that you can travel between by rearranging and linking various switches and triggers.

As you progress through each level, the 3D backgrounds where signs are located will change based on your actions, introducing new obstacles and secrets to uncover.

Regarded as one of the most beloved and prolific escape room series, The Room spans several installments.

Each one sees you using unique contraptions and clues to solve increasingly complex puzzles.

There’s less of a focus on combining objects throughout the entirety of a room and more on tinkering with mechanical items such as clocks, music boxes, and projectors.

As the series has progressed, environments have also become more atmospheric and creepy to the point of feeling like you’re trapped in a vintage horror movie.

We recommend puzzle fans check out Escape Simulator, a first-person puzzle game that can be played either solo or cooperatively with friends.

Drawing inspiration from real-life escape rooms, it gives players the freedom to hold onto objects from room to room, inspect items, and even break them to reveal a hidden object inside.

The base game includes 20 remixed room filled with puzzles designed by real-life escape room operators.

Players can go beyond these maps using Escape Simulator’s custom level maker to create their own or explore a wide selection of community-made ones.

Gorogoa was initially conceived as an interactive graphic novel, but its scope was eventually broadened to allow for a full-fledged puzzle game.  

Gameplay revolves around arranging up to four images on a 2×2 grid, with the goal being to place them in a specific order by zooming in or out to trigger a sequence of events.

The game features a beautiful, hand-drawn art style and uses its puzzles to tell a story about a boy’s fascination with a divine creature.

Whereas most puzzle games throw challenge after challenge at you, Gorogoa never overstays its welcome, clocking in around 2 hours to complete.

Next up is Battle Chef Brigade, a game which combines side-scrolling action with tile-matching cooking puzzles to create satisfying gameplay loop.

Players take on the role of an aspiring chef named Mina as she enters a cooking competition to prove her worth and wow judges with delicious meals.

Gameplay is split between exploring 2D platforming levels where you hunt for rare ingredients to incorporate into dishes and tile-matching mini-games that determine the end result.

The game offers a lot of flexibility to experiment with different flavor profiles, though your main focus is creating a meal that meshes with each judge’s unique flavor palette.

Although Tetris hasn’t really changed much in the 30+ years it’s been around, developers constantly find new ways to iterate on the iconic puzzler.

The two that come to mind more recently are the Nintendo-exclusive Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect VR, the latter of which was adapted for PC and console as Tetris Effect: Connected.

The game utilizes different visual and auditory cues that correspond to your tetrominoes’ movement and placement in relation to music tracks that play in the background.

As you progress through challenges, so does the background music, evolving in tempo and rhythm as you reach tense moments where blocks rapidly descend onto your screen.

Lumines: Remastered is a well-executed update of the classic rhythm puzzle game from the early 2000s.

It’s best described as a music-based Tetris where the goal is to align different colored blocks and form clusters that get cleared once a “timeline” passes.

When rows are taken away, additional instruments are added to the playing song, making it more intricate and providing the player with a richer sound.

Since the timeline’s behavior is affected by the song currently being played, the level of difficulty can vary greatly.

Baba Is You is a minimalist puzzle game that uses interactable objects to represent its mechanics in real-time, allowing you to manipulate the game’s logic.

For example, you encounter a solid wall that needs to be passed in order to collect a flag, with the words ‘Wall Is Stop” located nearby, so you remove the word ‘Stop’ from the chain to pass through.

It’s an interesting mechanic that encourages experimentation and can lead to some surprising results.

While the game quickly ramps up in difficulty, the simple visuals and level layouts free up your screen’s real estate so you can focus on solving each puzzle.

Next up is Glass Masquerade, an artistic puzzle game inspired inspired by Art Deco and stained glass artisans of the 20th century.

In it, you’re tasked with combining hidden glass pieces to reveal clocks and themes from different cultures at an ‘International Times Exhibition.’

Considering how few great jigsaw puzzle games there are, its definitely worth checking out if you enjoy relaxing puzzlers and gorgeous art.

The base game will take you about 3-4 hours to complete and there are several DLC puzzle packs to expand your collection.

Papers, Please is an indie puzzle game that tasks you with checking citizens’ passport documents as they cross the border into the communist state of Arstotzka.

The goal is to sleuth out anyone, particularly rebels, using forged documents to sneak into the country and disrupt the regime.

However, you’re given the option to let it slide or even accept a bribe for entry into the country, in turn putting you and your nation at risk.

The game includes over 20 different scripted endings and does an excellent job at presenting players with tough choices with morally-gray consequences.

Inside is another excellent short and spooky puzzle platformer from developer Playdead, the same studio behind the hit Xbox Live Arcade title Limbo.

Like Playdead’s previous titles, the game places a big emphasis on atmosphere, specifically creepy environments and characters.

In it, you play as a mysterious unnamed boy tasked with exploring a strange facility with multiple floors and areas that can only be reached by solving a series of platforming puzzles.

Each obstacle introduces a new mechanic that will force you to rethink your approach, sometimes on the fly, as there are a handful of chase sequences.

This list wouldn’t be complete without the critically-acclaimed first-person puzzle platformer Portal, created by Valve.

Portal 2, in particular, does a great job at showcasing gaming behemoth’s creative chops with witty dialogue, atmospheric environments, and challenging puzzles.

The game can be tackled solo or with a friend in co-op, with the two of you combining your portals to reach new areas and trigger mechanisms.

If you’ve never gotten a chance to play it and happen to own a Nintendo Switch, we recommend picking up the Portal: Companion Collection, which bundles together both games.

A personal favorite, Return of the Obra Dinn is an old-school-inspired detective puzzle game with a bold, 1-bit monochromatic art style that tells a captivating story.

In it, you take on the role of an insurance adjusted tasked with determining how the crew of a mysterious ship met their demise.

To aid you in your quest, you’re given ‘Memento Mortem,’ a magical pocket-watch that allows you to replay the final moments before a character’s death to pick out clues and gather evidence.

The game functions as a sort of giant puzzle piece that encourages you to experiment, make guesses, and use context clues to figure out what transpired on the Obra Dinn.

The Witness is a first-person puzzle game inspired by classics like Myst and other adventure games from the 1990s.

It takes place on a beautiful island containing logic-based puzzles that require you to connect dots as a silent protagonist.

Every time you complete one, a new door, power source, or tool is revealed, allowing you to explore new areas as you make your way towards the island’s peak.

The game starts out easy enough but quickly ramps up in difficulty as later puzzles combine rules from previous ones, requiring lateral thinking to solve.

The Turing Test is another first-person puzzle game that draws heavily from Portal and Portal 2 while telling an original story about a space engineer stationed on Europa.

After discovering her crew are in danger and can only be saved by completing a series of tests using a special tool, she sets out to do just that.

There’s a great deal of puzzle variety, with Ava’s tool being useful for opening doors, powering machines, hacking security cameras, and commanding drones. 

Across visuals, gameplay, and story, The Turing Test feels very reminiscent of the Portal series, and some of its plot twists are sure to surprise you.

Consistency is a core component of great puzzle game design, especially when it comes to upholding the set of rules conveyed to the player.

Antichamber is a puzzle game that takes this to heart by using its solid foundation as a jumping-off point for mind-stimulating logic and physics-based puzzles.

Players are given a strange, colored gun that allows them to pick up different blocks and use them to manipulate the environment. 

Most challenges require a fair bit of trial and error until everything suddenly clicks together and you feel like a genius.