Whether you like to visit space, indulge in an RPGs or a grand adventure, get spooked by horror or get uber techy with hacking, the chances are that there's also a puzzle game for you - hence our list of the best puzzle games on PC. The queen genre straddles many others, so our list of the 25 best puzzle games has all that we just mentioned and more. Take a look to find a new favourite puzzle game today.
]]>I guarantee you’ve never played a more elegant puzzle game than Gorogoa. This tile-based adventure is gorgeous with a capital G. Its story, puzzle mechanics, and visuals: Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.
The game is structured into four square panels in a two-by-two grid. Players can move around each of the squares to solve puzzles or click inside each square to interact with the scene. This is where it gets cool: Any object you see that has some sort of frame around it - doorways, paintings, windows, photographs - you can actually move through them and discover new areas to explore.
]]>Nerves have been sufficiently jangled as of late, not least thanks to the slew of action packed games that have landed in recent months. I crave an altogether more sedate beginning to next year, and so my mind turns to games in which violence, reflex or any other kind of unblinking attentiveness takes a back seat.
]]>Drawing a comic book is like playing Tetris with narrative beats. You have to somehow put on a page everything the script requires you to draw, give the right amount of space to important moments, make sure the reader’s gaze flows naturally from panel to panel, and all your panels must look nice and clear but also in harmony with each other.
So you, the artist, sketch little layouts first. You shuffle and rearrange the panels, trying to find the right combination before drawing the page. It’s a difficult process, but it can give you the same satisfaction of playing a puzzle game -- so it’s no surprise to see developers turning this process into a literal game.
]]>The awards ceremony at this year’s GDC was fun. At least, that’s what John told me from his seat in the crowd, where he saw the winners mount a stage some would consider too colourful for this planet. The Independent Games Festival Awards and subsequent Game Developer’s Choice Awards saw a range of trophy-grabbers, from indie students to adventure game veterans. Unfortunately for them, I was hiding backstage, skulking behind a black curtain and holding a voice recorder like a cudgel. I had one question to ask them all: If they had to give their award away, who would get it?
It’s like re-gifting, except you worked really hard for the gift and now you have to hand it over three minutes after your acceptance speech. Life is pain.
]]>This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they underwent to make the best bits of their games. This time, Gorogoa [official site].
Gorogoa is a game about fitting things together. Fitting a detail in one image with a detail in another and see how it produces something new. And in making it, developer Jason Roberts found that making things fit was one of the greatest challenges he faced, whether those things were puzzles into the game's tiles, sequences into its story, or details into players’ heads.
Gorogoa is also a game about linking things together. You draw relationships between images and find them leading into and influencing wider themes. And in making it, Roberts found that each decision he made had profound effects on others, the biggest being limiting the game to its two-by-two grid.
]]>Welcome back, gentle human bean, to another year of PC gaming thrills, spills and ambient anxiety about the correct deployment of the term 'roguelite' here on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. As our beleaguered forms struggle to cope with the sudden shift away from Chocolate Oranges for breakfast, now is the time for our time-lost minds to reflect upon how we occupied ourselves over the past ten days.
To wit: what videogames did we play, when time, relatives, bloating and demanding pets allowed?
]]>We've told you about the most overlooked games and what has us excited for next year, but we haven't had a good grump yet on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. So this week the team discuss the worst games they played in 2017. John thinks the misogyny of House Party puts it firmly in the bin, and Brendan is still wiping the red dust from his eyes after woeful survival game Rokh. But Matt can't bring himself to call any game terrible, not even Star Wars Battlefront 2.
It's not all negative vibes, however. We've also been smiling at pretty and poignant Gorogoa, climbing a mountain in Getting Over It, and shooting our way through Destiny 2's Curse of Osiris expansion. We're only a bit scroogey.
]]>We've been following the development of mind-bending, reality-warping, picture-based puzzler Gorogoa for five years, since it was first revealed in 2012. It then went on to win an IGF Award in 2014, despite being unfinished. And now, finally, it's here. And as our review says, it's magnificent. We spoke to lone developer Jason Roberts about the long development, the process of what to leave out, and how unknowability was woven into the fabric of the game.
]]>Gorogoa feels like a sort of magic that might fall apart in the understanding. It's a beautiful story in which you solve puzzles more by instinct than deduction, and their solutions feel as magical as the process. Its impossibly overlapping world weaves a delicate fiction that stretches beyond the boundaries of its central conceit.
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
When was the last time you moved beautifully drawn tiles around to unfurl a charming interactive story world? Be honest with me. I won't judge you.
Oh who am I kidding? I'm judging you incredibly harshly. To stop this from happening/worsening I'm going to prescribe Jason Roberts' illustration puzzler, Gorogoa. The full game is still a work in progress but there's a delightful demo on the website which you can and should play.
]]>In today's stop-and-search inspection of the IGF Award finalists, we grab Jason Roberts - creator of Gorogoa - out of the line, fling him against the wall, and pat him down for answers. Gorogoa is the spellbinding story in which four windows can be rearranged to create new pathways, which is essentially magic.
]]>Stop. Look. Listen. Think. Gorogoa is a puzzle game which is part room escape, part jigsaw, part comic book, and in which your every action re-contextualises its imagery and expands your perception. It is serene, mind-expanding and best of all exciting.
Let me explain more. This makes no sense until I've explained it more.
]]>I recently attended a San Francisco indie event called Good Game Club, and it was, er, good. There were games as far as the eye could see... well, except for where the walls were dotted, spotted, and blotted with art. It took place in an art gallery, though, so that - arguably *a little* more so than rows of clickity clacking PC game terminals - kinda goes with the territory. While there, I came across a few especially tantalizing standouts, so I decided to snap some quick (and, let's face it, not particularly pretty) videos of each. Soon I will transform RPS' videos into truly unique, attractive snowflakes (read: they'll probably all just be hosted by cats), but until then enjoy some raw, gritty-as-a-mouthful-of-cat-litter Guerrilla Video. The games on display include the Binding-of-Isaac-ish (but with a dual-world twist) Wizard's Lizard, gorgeous-looking story puzzler Gorogoa, local multiplayer retro cyberclash Gunsport, and minimal wonder Videoball.
]]>If Terry Gilliam was a bit more of a softie and made videogames, they probably wouldn't sell very well and would be increasingly disappointing as he got older. They might also look a bit like Jason Roberts' Gorogoa, a rather pretty, painterly take on the middleground between room escape games and point and click adventures.
]]>
