Monument Valley 2
Developer: Ustwo games
Available on: iOS + Android
Like the original, Monument Valley warps reality and assaults your eyes with otherworldly landscapes. Rarely has a runaway mainstream hit felt so daringly experimental. The visually stunning gameplay comes together perfectly with the story, which is as good as you might expect it to be, if not better!
Gorogoa
Developer: Jason Roberts
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Available on: iOS + Android + Steam + Nintendo Switch
A rare masterpiece, Gorogoa combines a clever picture-shifting mechanic with a beautiful storybook art style. The hand-drawn illustrations will almost make you forget that it’s an actual puzzler (and a pretty complex one at that). It’s quite wonderful.
Prune
Available on: iOS + Android
Titles in this niche used to be functional looking and targeted at the logic centres rather than seeking any kind of emotional response. Prune turns all that on its head with its achingly beautiful grown-’em-up gameplay. Prune’s graphics beautifully twist and turn the realm of outstanding puzzle games for Android, elevating what could once be called a “simple” game to a whole new level.
Projekt
Available on: iOS
Did you ever picture yourself playing an AR game? Projekt is one such title that will leave you in awe – it might even be one of the most excellent puzzle games for Android phones that we’ve played lately! Projekt features clever mind-bending problems that require the player to look at things from a different perspective. Literally.
The Room: Old Sins
Publisher: Fireproof Games
Available on: iOS + Android
Even four entries in, the intricate locked-box puzzles within the perplexities of The Room series continue to enthral. When it’s as perfectly executed as The Room: Old Sins, we could happily take several more. It’s certainly one of our favourite puzzle games for Android.
Ticket to Earth
Available on: iOS
It’s not often that you find a puzzler with a rollicking story, but that’s precisely what Ticket to Earth provides. At heart, it’s a block-matching title, but one that adds compelling RPG elements and glorious comic book visuals.
Linelight
Available on: iOS + Android
An extremely challenging abstract puzzler that keeps drawing you back in. Mixing and matching beautiful minimalistic lines is a mind-bending delight. Each level feels like a beautiful piece of art, and once you’ve started, it will be difficult to stop.
Teleportal
Available on: Android
Portal is a famous game on PC, made by Valve, and Teleportal is heavily inspired by it, obviously. It feels like you’re playing a mobile version of Portal really. But that’s not a bad thing, far from it.
Layton’s Mystery Journey
Publisher: Level-5
Available on: iOS + Nintendo 3DS
The first in the prestigious Layton series to be made for mobile, as well as handheld, Layton’s Mystery Journey is packed full of classic brain teasers and beautifully animated story snippets.
Candy Crush Saga
Publisher: King
Available on: iOS + Android + Windows Phone
Candy Crush Saga is a match-3 game, but essentially they are all in the category of puzzle games. You need to find the best way to clear one of thousands of levels in the game. Instead of the regular colours, you’ll have to match much sweeter candies, we have to say.
The Gardens Between
Publisher: The Voxel Agents
Available on: iOS + Nintendo Switch
The Gardens Between is a side-scrolling puzzler that plays with time in various clever but accessible ways and marries its temporal manipulation to an utterly dreamy art style.
Empires & Puzzles
Developer: Small Giant Games
Available on: iOS + Android
A solid combination of PVP and match-3 game reminds us of the one released on the original PlayStation – Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. In both titles, you need to match colours and make combos quicker than your opponent in order to gain leverage, or plainly, win the round.
Golf Peaks
Developer: Afterburn
Publisher: Afterburn
Available on: iOS + Android
It might look like dull isometric golf, but Golf Peaks is actually an ingenious card-based puzzler that has you laying down golf shots in the right sequence.
Two Dots
Available on: iOS + Android
This beautiful and addictive puzzler enchants us not with one, two, a hundred, two hundred levels… but with over 3000! That’s more than many of us have played in our utmost dedication to a title in this niche.
Pink
Available on: iOS + Android
Bart Bonte is renowned for his colour-coded abstract puzzlers, and Pink is the brightest yet. Each brain teaser is a clever, meta delight. This one, however, is especially good – mainly because it’s pink.
Puzzles & Survival
Developer: 37Games
Publisher: 37Games
Available on: iOS + iPod + Android
For horror lovers, here we have an interesting title where you have to survive in a zombie apocalypse world. To kill zombies, you have to solve puzzles. And make sure to do it as fast as possible because you are always in danger.
OXXO
Developer: Hamster On Coke Games
Available on: iOS + Android
Another bright, minimalistic contestant from the developer of Zenge and Scalak. OXXO is essentially a 3D sliding problem-solver, with plenty of clever flourishes.
Causality
Publisher: Loju
Available on: iOS + Android + Steam
Causality’s genius is in making brain-melting time loop manipulation feel like a casual mechanic. Your mind may get blown and you won’t even know it.
Empty.
Publisher: Dustyroom
Available on: iOS + Android
A stylish casual puzzler that asks you to rotate a series of boldly decorated rooms through 360 degrees, matching up colour-coded items of furniture. Your goal is not exactly to decorate, but rather to un-decorate.
Tiny Bubbles
Developer: Pine Street Codeworks
Available on: iOS + Android + Steam
There are super-punishing puzzlers that make you work for your satisfaction, and then there’s Tiny Bubbles – an impossibly welcoming, intuitive bubble popper that practically begs you to play around with its tactile mechanics.
Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery
Available on: iOS + Android
Tiny Room Stories is a beautiful mystery with a lot more than meets the eye. This murder mystery is everything that you didn’t know you needed, really.
Baba is You
Publisher: Game Insight
Available on: iOS + Android + Steam + Nintendo Switch
An outstanding and quite unique concept for a puzzle game comes in the form of Baba is You. This funny-named wonder will blast your head into a thousand pieces and have you collect them one by one, figuratively.
Not Not – A Brain-Buster
Developer: Alt Shift
Available on: iOS + Android
This brain-buster, as the title cleverly suggests, is an Android puzzle game that seems fairly simple at first glance. It gives you challenges that you have to execute accordingly, but they come with a twist – they’re not as straightforward as you might think. Or are they?
Toon Blast
Publisher: Peak Games
Available on: iOS + Android
Toon Blast made a hilarious spin to hook the players! If you’re unaware of what we are talking about, take a look at the trailer.
Mini Metro
Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club
Available on: iOS + Android
Puzzle games for Android don’t come any more stylish than Mini Metro, which essentially turns the timeless London Tube map into an artfully animated management.
