Top 10 best puzzle games of 2024

Here are our 10 favorite puzzle games from 2024.

Animal Well / Bigmode

If you’re a fan of shooters or action-adventure games in 2024, then I’m sure you don’t have to look hard to find something worth playing. Puzzle games tend to receive less hype online, and can often go undiscovered. However, if you want to flex your brains rather than your reflexes, here are our 10 favorite puzzle games from 2024.

10. Stitch

Stitch. / Lykke Studios

The basis of Stitch is simple, but that doesn’t mean the puzzles are easy to solve. You’ll be creating cross stitches with pre-planned patterns that aren’t the most intuitive to figure out. Much like Picross puzzles, you can see the picture you’re building as you fill in the pattern. A game that makes you feel as creative as it does clever.

9. Arranger: A Role-puzzling Adventure

Arranger / Furniture & Mattress

When you move, the world moves with you. That’s not a metaphor but the whole premise of Arranger, where the floor grid moves in at the same pace as you do. It takes some time to wrap your head around how to get somewhere without having it run away from you endlessly, but you feel like a genius when you teleport across levels. We wish Arranger had pushed things further, as new elements are introduced and then dropped instead of combined, but it’s a unique concept that will have you scratching your head.

8. Monument Valley 3

Monument Valley 3 / Ustwo / Netflix

Mobile puzzle games have a bad reputation for being mindless money grabs, but Monument Valley 3 is anything but. Each frame is a painting in this beautiful puzzle game with no microtransactions or in-game purchases. Each level uses the perspective to mix 2D and 3D planes in impossible ways as you move things around to find the twisting path forward. It won’t scratch the itch of more hardcore puzzle fans, but it will be the most beautiful puzzle game you can play this year.

7. Lok Digital

Lok Digital / Draknek and Friends

Lok launched in December, and if we’d had more time with the word-based puzzler, it might have ended up higher on our list. Lok asks players to complete crosswords with a twist: you must use the made-up Lok language, which you learn as you play. You can also help the adorable Lok creatures with your puzzle-solving skills, making it cute as well as complex.

6. Dungeons of Dreadrock 2

Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 / Prof. Dr. Christoph Minnameier

Mixing puzzle-solving and dungeon-crawling, you’ll need both your brain and fingers in top shape to take on Dungeons of Dreadrock 2. Each of the 100 levels of Dreadrock Mountain is a puzzle to solve alongside the different enemies and bosses you’ll meet. One for fans of 2D Zelda games with a more puzzling twist.

5. UFO 50

UFO 50 / Mossmouth

As the name suggests, UFO 50 consists of at least 50 games and more than a handful of them are puzzle games. Camouflage, Block Koala, Rail Heist, and Devilition are just a few of the puzzle games that I remember playing, and I’m sure there’s more. Camouflage, in particular, has a very unique mechanic where you pick up shades from the environment in order to disguise yourself from predators. If that sounds interesting to you, pick it up with 49 other games.

Read more: UFO 50 review: 50 games with alien concepts

4. Inkulinati

Inkulinati / Daedalic Entertainment

Inkulinati is technically a procedurally-generated strategy game, where who you face on each quest is different each time. However, it also contains a number of pre-set levels with only a few solutions to each problem. You have the pieces, the enemy, and just three turns to take them down. Blend these clever puzzles with a gorgeous art style, and the strategy part feels like an added bonus.

3. The Rise of the Golden Idol

The Rise of the Golden Idol / Playstack

The Golden Idol is back and proving it’s as cursed as ever in The Rise of the Golden Idol. Each scene introduces you to new characters and objects as you gather clues and figure out who committed the crimes in each case. If you can’t picture it in your head you can break it down and solve smaller puzzles to make up the whole, where you mad-lib your way to a solution.

2. Animal Well

Animal Well / Bigmode

At first glance Animal Well is a metroidvania, but after a few turns around its caves, you’ll see it’s more puzzling than anything else. The joy is in the surprises, so we won’t give too much away, but the more you play, the deeper it goes. When you think you’re done exploring, only then do you find out just how much is still undiscovered.

Read more: Animal Well review: deeper than it looks

1. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes / Simogo / Annapurna Interactive

You might have played Simogo’s other big hit Sayonara Wild Hearts, but the psychedelic rhythm game doesn’t prepare you for Lorelei. Here you are exploring a mansion, that only becomes more curious – and creepy – the more that you uncover. With a unique visual style, and mind-bending puzzle work, this is our favorite puzzle game of the year.