TL;DR: Puzzle games create experiences that are different from any other type of game. Examples include Portal, Antimatter, and The Talos Principle. Each of these reflect different parts of the puzzle game experience.

The world of video games is enlightening. These pieces of software encompass an unimaginable amount of subjects and create worlds of their own. Puzzle games are different than the rest in this discipline. There is no overwhelming violence, little blood and gore, and no other humans to be afraid of. The only thing that is to be feared is the lack of knowledge that you have. A puzzle game is an immersive experience that creates an environment with only you and puzzles, builds critical thinking skills, and allows for compelling storytelling.

Survival: this word is typically used to describe a man who gets shipwrecked on an island with nothing but him and his soccer ball. Even though this is used correctly, the most important aspect is not used in that prior statement. It is that there are limited resources and no help is coming. One must understand that they are alone. Puzzle games give this feeling. The player is trapped in a room or a corridor and the path may seem simple yet in reality, it is complex. One game that comes to mind is Portal. Yes, you have GLaDOS to keep you company but she doesn’t help you; she just monitors your progress. It is you and the test chambers. Each room is a box with a wall or two. It may contain a button or a laser but there are only a few different things to swap out. Nonetheless, these puzzles become extremely difficult and the only way to move forward is to complete the puzzle. The only problem is that you need to be able to use critical thinking skills.

Thinking critically is skill that must be honed the most to be good at puzzle games. This allows you to know what will happen if you change something. One could simply move around with without thinking and solve the puzzles, but that would consume more time than someone would be willing to spend. Within the game Antichamber, one cannot think like the average human being; for example, One of the puzzles was a fork. You either go up a set of stairs or down a set of stairs. The choice you make is irrelevant. You are simply met with the choice again. This continues forever. Some people would just mindlessly keep going expecting to escape, but only a few will turn around and see an area that is different from where they started. Puzzles such as this come up within life. No one wants to stop and look behind them. People just want to keep moving forward. This means that people miss the answer to the puzzle and are not realizing that what they have been trying for hours is not working. This is critical thinking.

The world of puzzle games isn’t limited to stages that are completed one after the other with no rhyme or reason. Many of these games have deeper stories to them than those that belong to the adventure genre. An example of this is The Talos Principle. It takes place inside a simulation. The reality of the outside world is shared through the documents of the creators and the audio logs that they made. These pieces of information is encountered in terminals that were placed throughout the world. It turns out that the entire human race was going to wiped out so as a last ditch effort to preserve human qualities, they created this simulation. The only problem is that no other animatron has been able to get out. It is the player’s job to make sure that all of the work done by humans was not wasted. This compelling story seems like a game that contains action but instead, it is test with simple mechanics. Through completion of these puzzles, everything falls into place and the truth is discovered. It is the puzzles that progress the story and allow for everything to unfold.

Puzzles games span many different genres but all accomplish the same goal. They force the user to exhaust all possible resources, think outside of the box, and be engulfed in the incredible background of the story. People think differently to complete these games and even to make them. There is always a creator behind each puzzle so no puzzle is without an answer. It just takes self-dedication and perseverance to make it though. Everyone needs to learn these skills, so why not learn them while enjoying a few puzzles?

The Talos Principle flickr photo by - François - shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license