I played more games this year, particularly puzzle games. I also just bought a Switch 2, which seems good so far (nice screen).

Puzzle games

Blue Prince

Me – and every streamer in my recommended – played this at the same time this year. You randomly draft the floorplan of a mansion with blueprints (geddit?), which resets each day, while managing limited resources. You’ll need a pad of paper. It’s definitely a puzzle game, there are puzzles, it’s also definitely a rogue-like, it resets and you do runs from scratch. Do they work together?

For the first aim of reaching the hidden “Room 46” yes they did. The puzzles were doable and there were plenty of different things to do, so each run you could do something new and make something of the randomness. It is exciting getting a new room, or realising there was something in there all along you hadn’t seen before.

Once you have completed the first aim, it’s then revealed you have only scratched the surface. I enjoyed these extra challenges for a bit, but then got quite bored and frustrated waiting for the room/circumstances I wanted to show up, having to repeat the samey first part of the house day after day. The resources become more annoying when you’re doing the more difficult puzzles, and also some of the puzzles become incredibly involved. I really got annoyed with the Gallery.

This felt like a 5/5 for the first few hours I played it, but then I left with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Fun: 2.5/5 Memorableness: 4.5/5 Overall 3/5. The concept and parts of the execution are flawed, stopping me from getting too far into the later game. But getting to Room 46 was really exciting, and the idea felt very original. Definitely play it if you’re interested, but no shame in stopping when you’re bored.

Good review of the good and bad: https://www.patreon.com/posts/blue-prince-with-131515203.

Good youtube videos if you want to see the later solutions and lore: https://www.youtube.com/@FuryForged.

Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker

Remember those short Captain Toad levels from Super Mario Odyssey? Fun weren’t they. Well here’s about a hundred of them.

I felt like I was a bit… older… than the target audience perhaps, but I did enjoy whizzing through the levels in some moments of down time. Mostly pretty easy to solve once you get the idea.

Fun: 3/5 Memorableness: 2/5 Overall 3/5. Nothing high-concept here but I enjoyed playing through the whole thing.

Creaks

By the same creator as Machinarium, a much more developed puzzle game.

On each screen you have to find the right sequence of actions/movements to take to avoid enemies which instantly kill you if touched. The enemies might detect you from a distance, mirror your movements, or move in a certain pattern. So there’s often some timing involved too.

The world is creepy (think The Ocean at the End of the Lane) and the graphics minimal. But the puzzles are really satisfying, and have a good difficulty curve. Despite being the same overall idea, they didn’t get too samey for me (think The Witness).

Fun: 4.5/5 Memorableness: 3/5 Overall 4/5. Addictive, well-balanced difficulty, and good fun.

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow

This is a great game:

Short, witty, good plot, set in the North of England. Ostensibly a horror game you won’t get many jump scares here, there is a strong atmospheric setting. The pixel art generally looks nice, and some great individual stills throughout.

The point-and-click part can get a little frustrating when you can’t find what you’re meant to do, but it’s one of the less punishing games in this genre. It becomes more puzzley in the final third of the game, which I enjoyed the most.

I keep accidentally referring to real towns as Bewlay now.

Fun: 4/5 Memorableness: 4/5 Overall 4/5. If you like point-and-click games definitely play this. If you’ve not played one before, this would be a good first one to try.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Probably my favorite puzzle game I played this year. I found the difficulty pretty much spot on – I wasn’t tempted to look anything up until the final mega-puzzle.

You’ll definitely need a pad of paper for this one. It’s incredibly dense in terms of numbers and types of puzzles, which come in all flavours. You don’t get too blocked when you can’t solve something and can typically go and try something else. The ‘photographic memory’ of everything you’ve looked at works really well, so that if you find something new but can’t solve it yet you still feel like it was worthwhile.

I was totally addicted to this game until I finished it, and would strongly recommend it to any puzzle game fans.

The only real negative was that the final puzzle was a bit too hard. All the pieces come together in a satisfying way, but you need to have solved about twenty sub-puzzles correctly (some of which are really hard!), and you get no feedback, just ‘yes’ or ’no’ as to whether you’ve cracked the whole thing. A bit of a shame and I think could have been easily tweaked.

Fun: 4.5/5 Memorableness: 4.5/5 Overall 4.5/5. Aside from a slightly frustrating end, this was a perfect puzzle game for me.

Machinarium

A pared back point-and-click: you have to work out the sequence of things to click to get through each screen, there’s no dialog, limited animation.

Felt like a flash game from the mid-2000s, and yet strangely addictive. Going back for the screenshot I found myself starting to play and enjoy it again, more than any of the other games here.

Fun: 3.5/5 Memorableness: 2.5/5 Overall 3/5. Short, sweet, fun.

Railbound

Join the track together to get the trains coupled in the correct order, with increasing difficult and complex elements as you go.

Personally I quite quickly found the puzzles too hard, and didn’t have good intuition of how I could solve them, nor the patience. Cute graphics though! I wish I’d liked it more.

Fun: 2/5 Memorableness: 2/5 Overall 2/5. My brain simply wasn’t big enough for this one.

Riven

A good recommendation from some friends who played this growing up, I very much enjoyed the remake of Riven. The world looks amazing and you are immediately driven into wanting to know what is going on and why.

Not at all frustrating and a good level of difficulty. It’s a little difficult to crack into at first, but ultimately I felt it wasn’t too frustrating and there was a good level of difficulty. There are two mega-puzzles to solve, which require a lot of back and forth across the world while remembering (and writing down) what you know.

Fun: 4/5 Memorableness: 4.5/5 Overall 4/5. Very unique game concept and good fun to solve. Would have blown my mind in 1997, doesn’t hit quite so hard in 2025.

Riven (1997)

After the remake, I went back and played the original. The two main puzzles are slightly different, perhaps superior. It’s hard going back to the forced perspective after the open world of the remake, but it does make some discoveries a little more natural.

Worth playing both if you liked one.

Other genres

Ball x Pit (rogue-like)

This one is like Vampire Survivors. Screen fills with every more ridiculous numbers of enemies shooting at you as you slowly become more powerful at shooting back.

The main game is a bit like breakout. It doesn’t require much skill in shooting or movement, it’s mostly in the upgrades you pick. There is also a base-building part which I found very satisfying, and if you do it well you’ll make the main game a lot easier.

Addictive rewards, which are given more reliably than similar games made this hard to put down until I finished it. Filling out all the possible ball evolutions was also very fun.

Fun: 4/5 Memorableness: 2/5 Overall 4/5. It’s very mindless (especially the character that plays the game for you…), which made me feel like I was wasting free-time each time I played this. But when you’re in the mood for that, airports, public transport etc, it’s a great distraction.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (platformer)

Twenty-two years after Crash Bandicoot 3 for the PS1, and also about ten unnumbered sequels, comes Crash 4. It’s difficult!

The gameplay is in pretty much identical style to the first three games, but with updated graphics (similar to the NSane triology re-release). The main campaign is pretty hard and I died hundreds and hundreds of times, but it just about avoided getting frustrating. All of the extra missions (the clear gems, the nostalgia levels) are way too hard, much harder than the originals. The first boss was very fun and quite different, but after that they fall a bit flat, especially the final boss.

Probably the best addition is the ability to play some levels as other characters (including Dingodile and Cortex).

Fun: 3/5 Memorableness: 2/5 Overall 3/5. It’s a good successor to the PS1/2 games of yore. The difficulty felt a bit unbalanced, and some more modern updates would have been appreciated. I still enjoy Crash a lot, and would definitely play a Crash 5 if they make one.

Crush House (sims-like)

Only played a bit of this one so far, but it’s funny.

You’re running a reality show and film four guests with distinct personality, and auto-generated interactions.

It’s a bit Love Island and a bit Big Brother, and a definitely very cynical take on reality TV.

Donkey Kong Bananza (platformer)

Also not quite finished with this one, but loving it so far.

A platformer in the spirit of Super Mario Odyssey, which encourages exploration and has a bit of an open-world feel (but collecting bananas rather than stars/moons). Most of the terrain is destructible, which works surprisingly well. As many games now, there’s an RPG element where you collect skill points and spend them to upgrade your Kong’s abilities. I think this did actually add to the game and made the desire to explore and collect stronger.

Relatively easy (especially bosses) compared to Mario, more of the joy is in the exploration and discovery.

Fun: 4/5 Memorableness: 3.5/5 Overall 4/5. A fun new take on platformers due to the destructibility of the terrain. Each level feels very distinctive.

Mario Kart World (racing)

Came with the Switch. I used to like Mario Kart on the DS, and enjoyed the one on the Wii, but am not a big racing game person overall.

Playing the levels through I had fun. The appearance of Rainbow Road at the end is very extra, and I enjoyed it a lot on the first run through.

I wasn’t totally sold on the more open world part of the game. The races which are a mix of laps and longer straight sections like a Rally are different and fun, but I felt a bit less technical and more item/luck based how you do vs the CPUs.

The battle mode is less good than it used to be as it’s timed and there are too many CPUs.

Fun: 3/5 Memorableness: 2/5 Overall 3/5. Solid entry, not my favourite genre. Probably more fun against others.

Prey (FPS/horror)

This is from 2017, and the same studio as Deathloop.

Very good opening sequence, and good overall idea. Very Bioshock. Just about not too scary for me, despite the jumpscare waiting for you in pretty much every room.

Gameplay is decent, and of course there’s a levelling up aspect, and collecting stuff aspect. I’ve played more memorable FPS games but it’s definitely good fun.

Fun: 3.5/5 Memorableness: 3/5 Overall 3.5/5. Very solid FPS, but nothing too outstanding about it. Worth it if you like their other games.