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Recommendations for Steam’s big puzzle game sale10 games to tease your brain
10 games to tease your brain
TheCerebral Puzzle Showcaseis underway on Steam, offering demos and discounts onpuzzle gamesuntil Monday. It is quite a lot of puzzle games. If your head feels itchy and your brain distinctly unteased, here, I have a few recommendations to get you started.
Dissembler -£1.99/€2.24/$1.99 (50% off)
AsI’ve written before, it takes tile-flipping ideas of match-3 games but has you finding the correct order to make matches and carefully remove every tile until nothing remains. I dig it!
Return Of The Obra Dinn -£10.84/€11.75/$13.99 (30% off)
Image credit:3909
See ourReturn Of The Obra Dinn reviewfor more, and we declared itour favourite game of 2018too. If you’ve already got it, hey, maybe you’ll enjoyThe Mechanic’s chat with creator Lucas Pope about that vital ledger.
Hexcells Complete Pack -£1.79/€2.69/$2.69 (70% off)
That’s a hell of a lot ofMinesweeper-ish logic puzzling for two quid. John Walker was a huge fan of the series, reviewing all three games in this bundle across the years:Hexcells,Hexcells Plus, andHexcells Infinite. In the last of those three reviews, he said the series “offers that ideal position of apparent simplicity, but a depth of complexity.” I have to mention these games, or he’d get me.
Outer Wilds -£11.69/€12.59/$14.99 (40% off)
What a joy to be trapped within a time loop in a solar system about to explode! The open-world investigation game gives us a wee spaceship to freely explore so many mysteries, to figure out what’s going on and what happened before. A whole little solar system running like clockwork, inviting us to learn every gear of the mechanism.Our favourite game of 2019.
“It’s Groundhog Day in an astronaut’s suit,” Brendy said in ourOuter Wilds review. “But it is also a learning game, generous of spirit, playful and encouraging. It taps into all those Carl Saganisms that make us look at the night sky and nod enthusiastically at the Big Dipper. Overflowing with a toyish love of astronomy and physics, it jettisons stuffy formulae for adventures on dangerous planets full of sand, and one-way trips to icy comets hurtling around the sun.”
It is currentlyin Epic’s sale, where it does qualify for a bonus 25% discount coupon. But I’m including it here for serious Steamers.
6 Reasons Outer Wilds Is One Of The Best Adventure Games Ever Made | Outer Wilds ReviewWatch on YouTube
6 Reasons Outer Wilds Is One Of The Best Adventure Games Ever Made | Outer Wilds Review
Into The Breach -£5.69/€7.49/$7.49 (50% off)
Image credit:Subset Games
“There are those games whose technology or setpieces or storytelling I thrill to,” Alec Meer said in ourInto The Breach review. “Then there are the games where I marvel, most of all, at the elegance of the design, the remarkable precision at which so many interlocking gears are arranged, particularly in something as breezily-executed as Into The Breach. The Spelunkies, the Slay The Spires and, of course, the FTLs. Into The Breach effortlessly joins those ranks, instantly feeling ageless and ingenious, a collecting of long-known designs honed to a glorious sheen.”
It is cheaperin Epic’s current sale(and has been free there before too) but I know some folks prefer Steam.
Gorogoa -£3.41/€4.49/$4.49 (70% off)
Gunpoint -£1.20/€1.40/$1.99 (80% off)
A real-time stealth-action-puzzle game which includes one of the most joyous puzzling tools in puzzling history: shoving men out windows. It’s a few years old now but Johnrevisited itnot so long ago and would still push you to have a go. Push, eh?
Stephen’s Sausage Roll -£9.51/€9.99/$11.99 (60% off)
A fiendishly clever and careful Sokoban-y game about cooking sausages to perfection.
“Weirdly for a game about sausages the size of hay bales, I’d say this is all meat and no fat or filler,” Pip said in ourStephen’s Sausage Roll review. “It’s a blessing for people like me who will tussle with it over a series of lovely evenings or keep it running in the background to fiddle with throughout the day. For others it will be a royal pain in the arse, an utterly inaccessible gem taunting them with its low poly style and seemingly-simple gameplay.”
Manifold Garden -£8.79/€8.79/$10.99 (45% off)
“I cannot help but imagine myself, trapped in an endless kaleidoscope. Running through corridor after identical corridor. Walking out of a room and finding myself on a pyramid of steps without end. Just running around the same strange building, and only seeing more of that building. Forever. I cannot imagine a worse horror. Argh,” Alice Bee said in ourManifold Garden review. “Good puzzles, though.”
Baba Is You -£7.97/€8.74/$10.49 (30% off)
A delightful puzzle game about rearranging phrases to redefine how objects in the world work, including yourself. Won the Best Design prize at the2020 IGF awards.
Which other chinscratchers and brainteasers would you recommend, reader dear?
Disclosure:Gunpointdev Tom Francishas written for RPS.
