Top 6 Best Puzzle Games for Windows

Cooperative action puzzler for PC

PICO PARK is a puzzle game developed by TECOPARK for PCs. This co-op action puzzler has players solve various puzzle challenges with friends of up to 8 participants. It offers local gameplay and online multiplayer modes and even lets smartphones become gamepads via the TecoGamePad feature.

Similar to the likes of A Way Out or It Takes Two, cooperation and teamwork are the name of the game in PICO PARK. Each puzzle level was designed to encourage players to work together to solve problems. Communication is also key for them to clear problems quickly and efficiently.

How is PICO PARK played?

If PICO PARK sounds familiar to you, that's because it's a refreshed version of the 2016 game that is now known as PICO PARK: Classic Edition. It features the same fun and frantic gameplay featured in the original release, but comes with welcome improvements and added features. Of note is that it now has an online multiplayer mode. Also, there's the new TecoGamePad feature, which allows you to turn your smartphone into a gamepad.

There are a total of 48 levels in the game. Each one has its own unique problem that you need to solve together with your friends. Levels have a key that you need to collect to be able to open a door to proceed to the next stage. Once you complete co-op mode, you get to unlock Battle Mode wherein you can compete with another group of friends.

Lastly, there's Endless Mode that lets you play through all the levels again to aim for the highest scores you can. Before you test the bonds of your friendships, make sure you have a fast and stable internet connection in place. Otherwise, you will encounter connectivity issues during gameplay or as you set up a gameplay session.

A game everyone can enjoy

Overall, PICO PARK is a great game that you can play with friends and family, and have a fun time with it. It encourages everyone to communicate and work together to quickly solve level puzzles. There are also various game modes to choose from, which further enforces its replayability. Highly recommended.

Fun devilish puzzler

Helltaker is a puzzle game created by the game developer, vanripper. It is a short yet comedic game about a guy ventures into Hell with a mission to collect a harem of demon girls. As with the most indie game, it is relatively short. However, the puzzles are very challenging, so it can be longer if you are bad at puzzle games. The art is also snazzy that players want to see it to the end. The game is free to download and play, so your only investment is your time. 

Solve the puzzle, find true love

Helltaker is a series of short, intricate movement puzzles, where the hero has to make way from one side of the screen to the other. The game kicked off with him dreaming of amassing a harem of demonic girlfriends. Upon waking up, however, he conveniently finds a portal leading down into the nether realm. He then descended into the hellscape with hopes to reach his potential bride. 

However, finding true love will prove to be difficult. Blocking his way are skeleton warriors, traps, locked rooms, and boulders. Each obstacle will increase in complexity as the game progresses. To help you, the game will smoothly introduce the mechanics. The early levels will focus solely on block-pushing or jumping over traps while the later puzzles will require the players to juggle multiple hazards at a time. Adding to the challenge is the limited move. Wasting too much time can end to the protagonist’s demise. 

The difficulty in the game will abruptly spike in the final level, however. In this time, the game will slow down, requiring players to analyze the screen and contemplate how to solve the puzzles. The final level will also have a violent shift in the genre, making the player face a hell-like showdown with the final boss. This shift is a bit of a slap in the face since there will be no mini-boss to prepare you for the final challenge. 

A solid puzzler with strong aesthetics

Helltaker is a great game to play if you are into solving challenging puzzles. From beginning to end, it showcases a simply gorgeous art style. The story is beautifully hand-drawn, with each character having a distinct personality. And although the story is thoroughly silly, it provides a nice link to the levels.

It’s a match!

Sugar Burst Mania - Match 3: Candy Blasting Adventure is a fun puzzle game where players need to create matches of 3 or more candies in order to win! It has very simple game mechanics, colorful graphics, and many exciting levels to play. Sugar Burst Mania looks easy at first but as your progress, expect a ton of difficult puzzles that will surely keep you busy for hours.

Indulge your sweet tooth

The game will immediately remind you of Candy Crush, another matching game that also has sugary sweet themes. Sugar Burst Mania will tour you around a land full of candies and other sweets. You are able to explore and cover more areas in the game with every level and stage you accomplish. Now, this is easier said than done because, despite its cutesy design, Sugar Burst Mania actually offers very challenging puzzles.

While you are off to a good and easy start, the levels will eventually get harder and harder. The arrangement of the candies will become more complex and forming matches will require more than just a few steps. There will also be new objectives and goals in the game, like being able to bring down and shoot a key in a keyhole located at the very bottom of the grid. The gameplay may be repetitive, but Sugar Burst Mania makes sure that you will never get bored by adding new and exciting twists. 

Create powerful combinations

To help you breeze past challenging stages, the game allows boosters and powerful match combinations. You can create more than three matches and expect your candies to transform into explosive boosters that could swipe entire rows and columns of candies. There are also some combinations that could eliminate specific kinds of candies, helping you clear tiles and reshuffle the whole board. With that said, you should always think carefully and consider the best possible combinations that can be created before making a move. 

A burst of sweetness

Sugar Burst Mania - Match 3: Candy Blasting Adventure is a game that can be played by people of all ages. The mechanics are simple because players will simply have to swipe on their screen to move the candies. Still, despite its simple gameplay, the puzzles are challengingly fun and solving one feels really rewarding.

Resident Evil-inspired survival horror game

Tormented Souls is a horror adventure game that is heavily inspired by Capcom's Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark series. You will take on the character of Caroline Walker, an elementary school teacher who investigates the mysterious disappearance of twin girls in an abandoned mansion that turned into a hospital.

Co-developed by Dual Effect and Abstract Digital, it offers a free demo version that will allow you to experience the game firsthand before the release of its full version. The thrill, panic, and terror that Tormented Souls exhibits is hard to miss.

A modern take on the classic horror games

As stated, the developing team's inspiration in creating a modern epic survival horror experience is the classic games Resident Evil,  Silent Hill, and Alone in the Dark series. Tormented Souls retained the thrill adventure and gameplay that many loved from the said iconic games but, built it in a much more modern take. For instance, it gives an advanced control scheme as well as a more dynamic camera.      

As Caroline, you will uncover the truth behind the sudden disappearance of the twin girls in Winterlake. You'll look through the mansion's halls, collect essential resources and tools, analyze clues from old journals, and combine it all to solve puzzles that can eventually unravel the mystery as well. Apart from figuring out the real story, you will also fight for your survival here.

Winterlake is filled with various dark forces that can go the extra just to stop from knowing the truth. You can grab anything that you see which will help you have an advantage and defeat the vile evils. When playing this game, it is important to consider that this frightening venture contains scenes of explicit violence and gore that others will find hard to take.

Thrill ride survival horror experience

If you are a huge enjoyer of thrillers and scary games, Tormented Souls should be part of your bucket list. Everything that you loved about the classic survival horror games before can be experienced here in a more enhanced environment. Although, you have to make sure that you can take all the violent and gore scenes before deciding to play this.

Fun action-puzzle game

Untitled Goose Game is an action-puzzle game developed by House House and published by Panic. It features sandbox-style gameplay where you play as a honking goose who loves causing mischief. Your mission: waddle around a placid British village and ruin everyone’s day. It is an utterly inane game, devoid of even the slightest trace of story. However, it is very addicting and fun.

Who let the goose out?

The canvas of gaming is very broad. You have the big-budgeted triple-A franchises and the more intimate titles from indie directors. And then, somewhere far from the spectrum, there are games like the Untitled Goose Game. It is a story-less game with a ridiculous concept that caters to gamers who are needing a brief respite from reality and are looking for a bit of brainless fun. 

However, that does not say that the game is completely brain-dead. In fact, the developers created a game that is both mindless and difficult. At its core, Untitled Goose Game is a puzzle game. You will play the villain—the goose— and must control it to burst chaotically into the humdrum life of the villagers.

The game starts with you pestering an innocent gardener as he tends to his plants. Your missions will be to steal his vegetables, throw his tools into the pond, trick the poor man into hammering his thumb, and other hilarious hijinks. From there, you will be given new lists of mischief that you need to do as you gradually unlock areas in the village. You only need to hit pause to keep track of the missions.

All the goose’s missions are geared towards ruining the villagers’ day. But that’s not to say that you will spend all your playing time waddling around the town and honking on innocent people. Your progress relies on outsmarting those humans. Most missions have multiple solutions. And though no mission will stump you for hours, there is a depth to the game and a sense of satisfaction in working out what to do.

You can also opt to put a time limit to your missions to bring more challenges. By doing so, the game will require you to do the planning and, sometimes, changing tactics. The game that is typically relaxed will become a manic speed of test and improvisation.

Simplicity is the name of the game

Perhaps one of the reasons behind Untitled Goose Game’s continuous success is its simplicity. Its controls are nice and simple, and it never gets in the way of your missions. You only have to hold one button to run, one button to lean down, another one to flap your wings, and one to grab or drop things. As mentioned, you only need to hit the pause menu to see your missions.

There is no handbook for the game and no tutorial mode you can do anytime. But that’s okay, as the mission menu contains the controls menu. There are really no complicated game mechanics that you need to worry about, either. You are not trying to gain abilities or unlock combos. When you lose, no one dies. At its purest, Untitled Goose Game only forces you to just go as wild as a goose.

Play for fun

All in all, Untitled Goose Game is the perfect game to play if you are looking for a simple yet fun game. Though story-less, it maintains the level of entertainment throughout the playtime. Sure, the small village gets repetitive for a while, and it is completely a singularly small map, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, it lives up to its promise of providing gamers with mindless fun and you can keep challenging yourself with self-made missions using the numerous in-game objects you can steal.

Mini-games for children

Purble Place is a collection of single-player puzzle games created by Oberon Games. The game package comes with three casual games designed for pre-teen players. Each game aims to develop the players' deduction, coordination, and memory skills, while ensuring that they have fun as they play. While it is initially a kids' game, older audiences can still enjoy it since the difficulty level becomes more challenging as you progress.

Three-in-one gaming platform

Purble Place is a set of casual games from 2007 that came included with Windows Vista. However, Windows XP and up supports the program, so you can still download it.  As noted, it is a package of three mini-games, each one independent from the other. You can access each game from the menu option. The titles are Purble Pairs, Comfy Cakes, and Purble Shop, which all feature their take on the classic games.

Purble Pair is a pattern recognition game and the software's take on the classic match-two games. The goal is to clear a field of cards by revealing two cards of the same image on the same turn. It comes with grids that you need to clean, beginning with 5x5 grids, then 6x6, and 8x8. The grids increase in number to make it more challenging. Also, the more you progress, the more the images are displayed. The game offers a Sneak Peak option, which helps reveal all the remaining cards.

Comfy Cakes, meanwhile, is a hand-eye coordination game. Here, you will manage a bakery, where you must assemble a cake to match an order. The cakes come in various shapes, flavors, icing, and other decorations. Depending on the order, you can make a plain one-tier cake or a multilayered one. You can also decorate it lavishly, as long as it matches the order. Failure to meet the exact order will result in a penalty. Once you send an incorrect order three consecutive times, the game is over.

Finally, the Purble Shop is a mathematics test concealed as a code-breaker game. It will display five features—a hat, a nose, a set of eyes, and clothing items. The game hides these items from the players. Choose from an assortment of colors, and deduce the correct color of the feature in the least number of moves possible. In the beginning, there will be three features with three possible colors. The number of possible combinations will then increase as you move to the intermediate and advanced levels.

Basic gameplay and graphics

Purble Place is a cost-effective alternative to interactive toys. The games are simple enough for children to grasp the basics in the shortest time possible but challenging enough to give their brains a good exercise. However, the program is extremely basic with no plot. The graphics aren't that impressive, too. Nevertheless, it is charming thanks to its wacky cartoon-ish style of characters and buildings. Players must note, however, that there is no multiplayer mode to the games.

Challenging for all ages

Purble Place is a straightforward yet challenging game you can play or encourage young ones to play. The games offered make the experience more dynamic as each game differs from one another in terms of game mechanics. The graphics could use a modern lift, and the addition of a multiplayer mode is welcome. However, the games are enjoyable and educational.