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Puzzle games are mainly focused on logical and intellectual difficulties. However, they may include time-pressure or other active components on occasion.
Although many action and adventure games have riddles, such as getting inaccessible things, a real puzzle game emphasizes problem-solving as the core gameplay activity.
These games frequently contain shapes, colors, or symbols that players must manipulate directly or indirectly into a specified pattern. Instead of giving a random array of problems to complete, puzzle games usually provide a sequence of connected riddles that are variations on a single topic.
The theme might be pattern identification, reasoning, or process comprehension. These titles often feature a basic set of rules in which users maneuver game pieces on a grid, platform, or other interactive areas.
They must solve puzzles to meet some win conditions, allowing them to go into the subsequent phase.
Completing each riddle generally leads to an increasingly tougher task, while some games avoid gamers getting weary by delivering easy stages among the more challenging ones. Puzzle games have given rise to titles that appear and perform entirely differently from one another while yet falling squarely within the puzzle genre. This occurred swiftly.
Puzzle gamers distorted time and space, created remarkable machines, and journeyed to fantastical locations throughout the next few years as puzzle titles grew significantly.
Most enjoyable puzzle games of 2000s
1) Pokemon Puzzle League (2000)
- Platform(s): Nintendo 64
- Release date: September 25, 2000
Developed by Nintendo Software Technology and released by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64, Pokemon Puzzle League is a puzzle game in the Puzzle League series. The gameplay focuses on puzzle-based tactics in the grid-based style of the title.
To progress to new levels, players must battle the game's trainers and gym leaders, identical to those in Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow. It's one of the numerous games based on the Pokemon anime, and it stars Ash Ketchum, his Pikachu, Brock, Misty, the Kanto Gym Leaders, and other characters from the show.
2) Bejeweled (2001)
- Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Flash, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry 10, Java ME, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Xbox, Facebook
- Release date: May 30, 2001
PopCap Games' Bejeweled (also known as Bejeweled Deluxe in some editions) is a tile-matching puzzle game released for browsers in 2001. The developer's debut title under its present name, Bejeweled, requires lining up three or more multi-colored gems to clear them off the playing board, with chain reactions potentially following.
Bejeweled began as a Java online browser game called Diamond Mine before being transformed into a retail version and published for PCs on May 30, 2001, under the name Bejeweled Deluxe.
The puzzle game has sold over 10 million copies and has been downloaded over 150 million times. It was followed by several sequels and spin-offs, including a direct sequel in 2004.
3) Worms Blast (2002)
- Platform(s): Windows, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Mac OS X
- Release date: October 24, 2002
Worms Blast is a puzzle game similar to Puzzle Bobble, but with a few key differences and gameplay elements borrowed from Worms games. Players must color blocks on a hexagonal grid instead of releasing and matching bubbles.
Unlike other Bust-A-Move versions, the character may move right and left while sailing in a boat. Weapons such as bazookas, grenades, and dynamites can be used to shoot at the blocks, coloring them on impact.
Holding down the fire button, like in the primary, artillery-based Worms games, increases the weapon's strength, impacting the distance it travels.
4) Puzzle Pirates (2003)
- Platform(s): Any with Java, incl. Windows, Mac, Linux,
- Release date: December 8, 2003
Three Rings Design created Puzzle Pirates (also known as Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates) is a massively multiplayer online game (later owned by Grey Havens LLC). Users assume the role of a pirate, sailing the high seas and stealing money ("pieces of eight") from rival ships (human or computer-controlled).
Puzzles serve as the engine for Puzzle Pirates' gameplay. To efficiently sail a ship, gamers play puzzle games depicting labor at the sails for speed, pumping bilge water from the ship, and carpentry to repair any damage the ship may sustain.
Hundreds of fellow Pirates flood these Isles and Sea-lanes.
Puzzle Pirates is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, for pirates who enjoy acronyms. Pirates can roam the country and cruise the thirty-seven seas with their gangs.
The relevant puzzle game starts whenever a player's pirate sails, battles, or navigates. Good puzzle solving results in triumphs and large winnings for them and their fellow pirates.
So, Yohoho! provides users with puzzling pleasure in a socio-piratical scenario, where each puzzle game contributes to the larger tale of their pirate, their Crew, and the ocean world.
5) Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2004)
- Platform(s): Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS/ DSi/ 3DS, WiiU
- Release date: May 24, 2004
Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a 2004 puzzle-platform game developed by Nintendo Software Technology and released for the Game Boy Advance. It is a spiritual successor to Donkey Kong that was launched on the Game Boy in 1994.
The title's first sequel, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, was published on September 25, 2006, for the Nintendo DS. It was later published on the 3DS Virtual Console on December 16, 2011, and on the Wii U on February 9, 2017.
The game idea relies on a mix of platform and puzzle elements, forcing Mario to discover keys, open a locked door, and save mini-Marios.
6) Chuzzle (2005)
- Platform(s): Windows, Macintosh, Java ME, iOS, Android
- Release date: May 12, 2005
Chuzzle is a tile-matching puzzle game created by Rapisoft Games and released by PopCap Games. It entails connecting three or more Chuzzles.
Players are given 66-board multi-colored fuzzballs nicknamed "Chuzzles," which come in eight hues. Rows and columns are moved by dragging them.
When moved outside the grid, the rows and columns "wrap." Chuzzles on the left reappear on the right, top reappear on the bottom, and vice versa.
The title's primary goal is to link three or more Chuzzles of the same hue. When three or more Chuzzles are connected, they pop and fly off the board, while additional Chuzzles descend from the top, potentially causing cascades.
7) Bookworm Adventures Deluxe (2006)
- Platform(s): PC
- Release date: November 28, 2006
Bookworm Adventures is a word-forming puzzle game that is the sequel to PopCap Games' Bookworm. Released in November 2006, it combines the "build words from sets of letters" part of Bookworm with many aspects of a role-playing puzzle game.
Bookworm Adventures was named "Downloadable Game of the Year" at the 2007 Interactive Achievement Awards. The title also received three Zeeby awards: Best Word & Trivia Game of 2006, Best Game Design of 2006, and Best Story/Narrative of 2006.
8) Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (2007)
- Platform(s): Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Windows, Xbox 360, Mac OS X, PlayStation 2, Wii, PlayStation 3, iOS, Mobile, Nintendo Switch
- Release date: March 16, 2007
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a puzzle game created by Infinite Interactive and released by D3 Publisher. The game incorporates aspects of role-playing and tile-matching.
In a conventional role-playing puzzle title, users control their character about the game's realm, encountering monsters and other opponents to battle, gain experience and obtain wealth.
Combats take place on a board similar to Bejeweled, and by matching colored gems, fighters can cause damage to their opponents, cast spells, or execute other activities that impact the flow of the game.
9) World of GOO (2008)
- Platform(s): Wii, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, Nintendo Switch
- Release date: October 13, 2008
World of Goo is a puzzle game created and distributed by indie game developer 2D Boy. On October 13, 2008, it was launched on the Microsoft Windows and Wii platforms, with additional releases on Nintendo Switch, Mac OS X, Linux, and numerous mobile devices.
World of Goo is a physics-based puzzle game where gamers use little balls of goo to build bridges and similar structures over chasms and barriers to aid other goo balls in reaching a target point, with the objective of using as few goo balls as possible to build this building.
10) Crayon Physics Deluxe (2009)
- Platform(s): Windows
- Release date: January 7, 2009
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a puzzle game created by Petri Purho and published on January 7, 2009. It even took up the main award at the Independent Games Festival.
It strongly focuses on two-dimensional physics models such as gravity, mass, kinetic energy, and momentum transfer.
The goal of each level in Crayon Physics Deluxe is to guide the ball from a predefined starting position such that it contacts all of the stars at that level. Gravity affects the ball and practically everything else on the screen.
Players cannot control the ball directly but must affect its movement by painting tangible things on the screen. Depending on how the item is drawn, it becomes a hard surface, a pivot point, a wheel, or a rope.
It may then interact with the ball by hitting it, giving it a surface to roll on, pulling, carrying, or throwing the ball, and so on.
Note: This article is subjective and reflects the author's opinion.
