The Best Puzzle Game of 2022: Nominees

Puzzles are universal. Even from our youngest days, we love solving problems and even the most simplest of puzzles. This love grows as we do, and game developers have harnessed that into some truly special games.

2022 had a great range of puzzle games, and a lot of them came packaged with a great story like Immortality, Return to Monkey Island, and The Case of the Golden Idol. There were also some wonderful puzzle games that have you solving levels in the most efficient and fun way possible like Teardown and Escape Academy.

These are our nominees for the Best Movies of 2022... Be sure to check back next week for our winner!

Escape Academy

Escape Academy blends the excitement and intrigue of escape rooms with the wacky and wonderful world of video games, presenting players with twelve unique puzzle rooms to, well, escape from. The player will feel like a master escape artist as they work through each room, uncovering hidden doors in libraries, slipping through lasers, defusing bombs with secret codes, and so on. Escape Academy feels inspired by the best spy thrillers and heist films of all time, and it makes the player feel like the hero at the centre of each one.

Immortality

Immortality is a puzzle made up of motion picture pieces but, unlike every other jigsaw you’ve ever started, this one is far too compelling to be left half-completed on your coffee table. Its simple video editing interface means you can easily scrub forwards and backwards through a scattered archive of movie clips while leaving one hand free to untangle the knots that its complex, non-linear narrative ties your brain in. Solving Immortality’s central mystery is a puzzle that evolves as it unfolds – first you must figure out how to reveal new fragments, then why they’re all connected, and finally who the main players in the story really are. Above all, Immortality is a puzzle that endures well beyond its runtime – it only took a matter of hours to uncover and arrange all of its pieces on screen, but we continued to turn them over in our minds in the days and weeks that followed in an effort to properly decipher their meaning.

Return to Monkey Island

It took over three decades to happen, but Monkey Island co-creators Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman finally returned to their old grog-drenched shores this year for a long-awaited sequel. Return to Monkey Island is both a retro-styled throwback and a thoroughly modern puzzle game; all the graphic adventure stylings and witty dialogue of the 1990s, but this time packed with puzzles that demand real-world logic rather than whatever voodoo thinking was used for the duo’s original games. A fantastic hint book helps gently nudge you in the right direction for any conundrums you may be stuck on, but it’s rarely needed; these puzzles are so well designed that their solutions often naturally manifest in your mind. But, for long-term fans, it’s the structure that really cements it as a wonderful send-off for the series. This is a story that celebrates almost every idea Monkey Island has ever had, from assembling a (terrible) crew, to completing three trials, to solving challenges across multiple islands. Plus, of course, the greatest puzzle of them all: finally discovering the secret of Monkey Island.

Teardown

Rules, much like walls, are meant to be broken – crushed, destroyed, and eliminated in the quickest way possible. Teardown pits players against tasks ranging from destroying buildings, stealing cars, and flipping switches within a given timeframe. The methodical pacing of planning the perfect getaway easily becomes a mad dash to the finish line. Every swing of the sledgehammer represents a new path or the destruction of a walkway necessary for your quick getaway. Tearaway requires balance between brute forcing your way to a solution with explosives and keeping a crumbling structure intact long enough to hit a switch. It's a puzzle game that often asks you to perform delicate surgery with dynamite.

The Case of the Golden Idol

Though perhaps simple at first glance thanks to its pixel art aesthetic, The Case of the Golden Idol is a wonderfully complicated game. Players must solve murders by looking deep into each scene, analysing what they find, and stitching together clues bit by bit. This gameplay loop is a refreshing take on the murder mystery genre, and slowly but surely solving each case, both individually and as part of a larger mystery, is incredibly satisfying.

All IGN Best of Games 2022 Categories



source https://www.ign.com/articles/best-puzzle-game-2022

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