Video Gamers Podcast - Top 5 Puzzle Games

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh are back with another awesome gaming Bonus Round. This week we dive into an often under-appreciated gaming genre and break down our individual Top 5 Puzzle Video Games of all time!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

what's going on fellow gamers welcome to the multiplayer gaming podcast we are three dads who talk casually about games and today we have each prepared our own top five puzzle games of all time lists that we are going to break down. Please make sure to rate our show five stars, leave a written review, follow us on socials at MultiplayerPod, and come sign up to support the show on Patreon. You'll get a shout out on the show, and you'll also get access to the exclusive Squadcast episodes, which release twice every month. You can sign up at MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, I believe that he has witnessed many puzzles on an island arranged around a mountain in the middle. It's Josh. I mean, living on an island sounds great, Paul.

And I like to think that I'm pretty good at puzzles, so that sounds like my kind of island. Wait, is this Survivor? Not quite. Not exactly. But you're close so no million no million dollars at stake no it's only 500 000 okay now i'm out apparently a lot of puzzle games are on islands because joining us i believe he's currently meeting with us virtually from an island called mist tinkering with the mechanisms and secrets to figure out what's going on it's michael yeah i'm really sorry i was late i forgot the passcode that opens my front door and it took me 26 minutes to run around the island collect the clues and finally get inside oh very nice you know i tried to introduce you guys with

a little bit of a guess of some games we might hear about. Nailed it! Maybe we'll see The Witness? Maybe Myst? Nailed it! Did I call both of your number ones? I guess we'll have to wait and see. No, it's not my number one. Okay, fair enough. What, Myst?

Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to be. Alright, well before we start breaking down our list, we do have a new Patreon supporter that we owe a shoutout to. Yes! we start breaking down our list, we do have a new Patreon supporter that we owe a shout out to. They came in as a legendary supporter, and so we want to give a huge shout out to Dave G. Dave! G money. Very nice.

Michael looked like he was going to say something so profound there, and like the long pause really got me. I wasn't sure if it was my cue or not i was like i have to say something i'm like gee i i would like to say for dave g because i i i love dmz dave yes i i've been playing it almost daily and it's phenomenal so just just to set the record straight yes dave is not in our discord but we did chat a little bit by email. He is a huge Warzone fan, and he did want to correct us that instead of comparing it

to a Call of Duty version of Escape from Tarkov, he believes it is more aptly titled The Cousin of Survival Mode in The Division. So I don't remember Survival Mode. No lie. survival mode in the division so i don't remember survival interesting no lie i was playing with uh two friends and the other day not simultaneously but at the different times and they both compared it to the division oddly enough and i was like that's a fair comparison so dave knows what he's talking about and dave you are legendary my friend thank you very much for the support right he just came in hot he's like i'm gonna land this plane one time i'm gonna get it right boom exactly yeah so thank

you so much dave we very much appreciate the support and i had just a couple quick questions for you guys you know before we all share our number five on our list we did talk a little bit about what qualifies as a puzzle game because there are some games that kind of skirt the line a little bit so like what would you guys say actually qualifies as a puzzle game as opposed to a game that maybe has puzzles in it this one was tough because i asked you guys being the the elder statesman of this bunch i I was like, do the old Sierra games count? You know, like King's Quest and Hero's Quest and Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry and all those older games. Because, I mean, let's be honest, the gameplay in those games is solving puzzles.

And then we were like, I don't know that that really counts in the spirit of your top five puzzle games. So I went straight pure puzzle games with one exception in my list. Yeah. And I will argue that until the day I die if you guys are like, oh, it's not really a puzzle game, but I'm ready to fight, but it's on my list. And then just in case I lose that argument,

I have a backup too. So my number one game is god of war my number two puzzle game is god of war 2 called ragnarok i mean there's puzzles in those games so they're a puzzle game okay that's not true at all no i want the same approaches i actually might have got a little bit more yeah right i actually might have got a little bit more straight uh with it than josh i think i think all five of mine can be really considered puzzle games so um i don't know how to explain it though i i took to steam and i looked for games that were tagged puzzle and i'm seeing games like star wars jedi fallen order and i'm like no if anyone drafts that we're saying no that's not a

puzzle game you know we're not counting games like zelda or tomb raider even though of course they have puzzles in them i kind of felt like if someone asks you like if you were to take a poll of people out there hey in one word how would you describe this game i think they should probably say puzzle or solve within like the first two words yeah that's kind of what I thought. That's a really good way to put that. Yeah, I think so. And in that case that I think, yeah, probably two of mine, you would get there within a couple of words, probably. And if not, you're wrong.

I will say this. Four out of my five are absolutely 100% pure artesian mountain spring water puzzle games. Oh, so tasty puzzles. Yeah. The other one you guys may take some exception with, but we'll see. We'll fire it. Fire it right off this list. Get out of here.

And then out of curiosity, before we dive into the list, were your guys' games on your list relatively new or relatively old? Old. There's been no good new puzzle games. I played the Superliminal, the weird perspective one. I played that one. That's a cool one. It was okay.

But then that made me realize, because I actually, when I was looking at these for my list, I pulled the date that they were released. And all of these are old, man. Dude, I'm so glad to hear that. Because I went to Metacritic and I looked for all puzzle games of all time and sorted by Metacritic rating. I went through the first 150 games. Guess how many came out in the last 10 years? Oh, not many. 13. Yeah, I was going to say one. One? One. Oh my goodness. Okay. I was not going to guess just one.

Yeah. There were a lot in 2009, 2010. There were a handful in 2011. Only one game out of the top 150 has come out in the last 10 years. And I know we are going to hear about it from Josh. So we'll just see where that one pops up in the list. Because of course, a certain game that I may have already referenced is only a couple years old. All right, so let's start by talking about our number fives. Who wants to go first? Who wants to share their number five? Now, let's clarify too, for everybody that's listening. These are our personal top five puzzle game lists. So there may be some overlap, but this is not a tournament. This is not a, we're going to nominate one above all others. This is my personal top five,

Michael's personal top five, and Paul's personal top five. So just as we're talking about these games, there may be some overlap. We may have them rated a little bit differently. But these are our personal tastes, basically. Yes. Some tastier than others. Because there are teasing beautiful craft and water puzzle games. Let's start with you, Michael. I'm very curious to hear. What do you have coming in at number five? Oh, man. Many people are going are gonna hate this choice it's so good uh imagine if you are the cruelest uh ruler um over the lands and in this land you take these tiny little feathered animals and you put them in a slingshot and you take that slingshot and you pull it back and you launch it at those pigs

and you break that building down it's a puzzle game it's got different like you gotta figure out how to get around angry birds it is a puzzle game i loved angry birds i played so much angry birds and i think a lot more people out there will probably also like angry birds a lot because i'm looking at all these games and i'm like okay i tried to divide mine up a little bit like i wanted like one vr game one triple a game one nostalgia game one clear puzzle game and one mobile game is kind of how it ended up and i'm like really angry birds was just that's a puzzle game easily because like it's hard after a while you're like i gotta get the right arc on this i gotta use the right kind of bird i only got so many of this kind of bird.

I got to hit this and that. And I just was like, you know what? I had, man, I used to, I won't say, well, I've already said where I work. So I won't say that I played this game at work for a long time when we were slow. But I played this game at work a lot. And it helped me get through a lot of boring days. It was colorful. And the best thing about it was right when you thought you were done with Angry Birds,

they came out with like 74 more Angry Birds games. And a movie. I didn't watch the movie because I did not care. But I was like, you know what? Number five is going to Angry Birds. That game was fun. The sound effects were hilarious. The pigs with their little walk it going.

Oh, man, come on. Give me all the Angry Birds. I thought about actually downloading it and playing it again. All right. I'm pretty sure neither Josh nor I have have it on our list i don't but it's it it made me chuckle because i would consider that a puzzle game like you are trying to get through the levels like what how would you classify it action it's not an action game you it's a level progression game but that would be by definition you having to solve a puzzle to get

to the next level. Well, you only have certain things. Like, certain birds do certain things, and you have to use them to get past certain parts. It's like, where's my water? Cut the rope. Those, like, you have to think about how you solve that level. Yeah, it's strategic. I would have never considered it a puzzle game. But you guys both say it is so that's cool wait is it a strategy it's not a strategy game is it I wouldn't I think it's a puzzle game I would when he said that my brain went oh yeah I can give you my old number five but it's not very exciting no no no we can count Angry Birds I loved Angry Birds when it came out I think anybody who had an iPhone like 99.9% of iPhones had Angry Birds on it at some point.

One of the few mobile games I've played. Yeah. All right. So Michael's got Angry Birds at number five. I feel like that pick does come a little bit out of right field, but that's okay, Michael. Josh, you know what though? It's my top five. It is your top five. Is it your top five?

I'm waiting for Cut the Rope and Where's My Water to be like four and three. They're coming. And considering Michael was joking but immediately floated God of War as a puzzle game, and I was like, no, not a puzzle game. Right. So what you do is you start way too extreme. So when you see something slightly less extreme, Paul's just like, I'll give it to you. We did let Angry Birds slide now. So well done's just like, I'll give it to you. We did let slide now. So well done,

Michael. Thank you. I did it for you. All right, Josh, what do you have coming in? Number five. So mine is,

this is a absolutely pure puzzle game and it's probably one that a lot of people have never heard of. If you've been a fan of the show for a long time, you have heard me mention this game, but it's a game called anti chamber. It is on steam. If you've been a fan of the show for a long time, you have heard me mention this game. But it's a game called Anti-Chamber. It is on Steam. I don't know if it's on console or not.

And I'm actually going to read the very brief description of this game because I think it kind of captures what it is very quickly here. So Anti-Chamber is a mind-bending psychological exploration game where nothing can be taken for granted. Discover an Escher like world where hallways wrap around upon each other. Spaces reconfigure themselves and accomplishing the impossible may just be the only way forward. Here's the cool thing about anti-chamber. I've not ever played a puzzle game like it. It is pure puzzle. Like, I mean, everything in here is just mind bending, you know, the way that you do things. But the cool gist of Antechamber is nothing is ever as it seems in this game.

So you actually have to untrain your brain to play this game. Like, this is a minor spoiler because it's right early in the game. But like one of these aha moments for me was you're in this dark hallway and the hallway turns black and you're walking through it. And it's obviously that it's like an L-shaped hallway. But later on in the game, you're going through a level and it spits you out of that hallway because you realize that that black wall was not a wall. It was a tunnel. That if you had just tried to walk into it,

you would have realized you can walk through this wall because it wasn't just a black wall. It was actually like a void that you could walk into. And so that's kind of what this game does is it teaches you don't take anything for granted. Like that's the real angle of anti-chamber, which I thought was really, really cool. And it's just neat. There's a lot of very primary colors and just blacks and whites that it does. So it does feel like you're almost living in an odd painting or something like that. Came out in 2013. So we talk about these older games, right? 2013 is when it released. And if you don't believe me or my take on it,

this game has a 95% rating on Steam, overwhelmingly positive with over 11,000 reviews. So if you like puzzle games, you really owe it to yourself to give Anti-Chamber a try. So I'm browsing the Steam reviews here while you were reading that description and sharing that. It does say here if games are art this one was made by picasso yeah which i think kind of speaks to like the

art style that you're talking about and another person wrote have a psychedelic trip without becoming a junkie 10 out of 10 it really is it does a lot of it it really does a lot of trippy things it does use some perspective like there's one. It's been a long time since I've played it, but there's one room where it's like you're going down a stairway. But when you turn around, you'd think you would go up a stairway. But when you turn around, then you go down another stairway. It just does a lot of weird stuff like that. And that's how you kind of have to approach that game,

is let me unlearn everything that reality has taught me and let me learn to think outside the box a little bit to solve these puzzles. And one of the best parts is some of these puzzles seem insanely hard. And then it's the stupidest, most simple solution in the world to where you wind up drastically overthinking it. And if you had just done the simplest, most common sense thing, you would have beaten this puzzle. And that's what I love about anti-chamber dude. It really just plays on a lot of that kind of stuff.

I love when puzzle games almost force you to think differently and to think outside the box. And a lot of the puzzles will seem impossible. And then as soon as it clicks, you just think, Oh, I'm so stupid. Why didn't i just

do that in the beginning and i love when puzzle games have that like aha moment and you can't believe you didn't see it before i feel like that's always really rewarding all right well i have never played antechamber but it sounds really interesting that's one that i'll have to keep an eye on and at some point if i'm bored maybe i'll pick up something like that it's a strong recommendation from me and like i said 95 steam rating apparently people love this game yeah looks like that one goes for 20 bucks can i just say too that josh kind of hit on a point too is that i realized i have not played enough puzzle games because you know looking at this i'm like some of these games puzzle games or not and i'll look up like hey

you know top puzzle games have i played many of these of which i have not played many and i'm like are some of these games puzzle games or not and i'll look up like hey you know top puzzle games have i played many of these of which i have not played many and i'm like man i need to play a lot more puzzle games and so now i'm like and the chamber and add it to the list because like i like them and it's funny because i had a couple of games that did not make the list because apparently i used to play puzzle games a lot like i've got a game and nobody picked this one it was called siberia we talked about it a long time ago it starts with a c one of my favorite games of all time but like it's unplayable now you cannot play it so i need new puzzle games so i'm playing as a chamber that's what i'm gonna do this christmas break michael already bought the deluxe edition on steve oh let me see if i own it he owns the soundtrack he's got the digital artwork let me let me see if i already own the guide they send

you the hard copy of the guide in the mail. Strategy guide. Yep. Oh, very nice. All right. Coming in for me at my number five. This is actually a game that I did not beat, but it really left an impression on me. And I think it's very clever in how it operates. I have The Return of the Obra Dinn.

I almost put that game on my list. Did you? It was very, very close to being on my list because it's such a unique game. I just fizzled out on it, like all of a sudden, too. Everyone fizzles out on that game. The first couple hours are so exhilarating and exciting because you're solving puzzles and figuring things out. And you kind of hit a wall where it's so hard to find new information that the game kind of starts grinding to a halt. But for anyone out there who's never

heard of it, this game came out, I don't know, probably about five years ago, maybe a little bit less. And it was kind of all the rage for a little bit. Very unique art style. It has one bit graphics inspired by old Macintosh computers. This game is one color. It is green. And basically, you are an insurance inspector who has been called out to check out this ship called the Obra Dinn that actually went out in 1802. It had 60 passengers, and it disappeared. Five years later, the ship pops up out of nowhere. There are corpses on board. Everyone is either dead or missing. And you come in trying to figure out what happened to every single person in the crew. Are they alive and where are they? Or are they dead and how did

they die and at the hands of what? And so the thing that kind of is like the mechanism for how that works in this game is that you have a magical pocket watch. And if you point it at a corpse and you activate it, it will let you see what happened when that person died. So it's almost like it gives you a screenshot of how they died and you hear audio and you read it on the screen. And so, for example, to kind of explain how this works, maybe you see a corpse, you activate the watch, and it shows you a guy getting stabbed with a sword. And you hear the audio and someone screams, Paul, watch out! So now you know that the guy who got stabbed is Paul.

So you pull up the ship manifest. How many Pauls were on board? Oh, just one? Great. Now I can mark that guy. Paul died from a sword wound from an unknown attacker. And then later, as you start to piece who is who, you get to fill in all those gaps. And then the game finally ends.

So it actually turns out to be a pretty elaborate story. I don't want to share any major spoilers, but let's just say that there's some fantastical elements going on. The ship is going to be attacked by things that you don't necessarily see coming, and there's different factions on board, and it's a pretty elaborate story. And I think this one left a really strong impression on people because it's such a unique game. It is very unique. The mechanics on it are really cool. The art style is very interesting because it's all just black and white. And it's pixely black and white, which really throws people off at first, but it really works for the game.

The only exception I had with Return to Obra Dinn was it got really weird to me because you'll find a dead guy, you pull out your pocket watch you go into their memories and in their memories there's another dead person so then you can pull out your pocket watch and go into that dead person's memories so then you're just you've got inception going on yes a memory of a memory but yeah and then i get so lost and then i'm like wait a minute whose memory was i in like what was looking for? And it just got a little convoluted for me at that point. I did, I agree with you 100%. I think it's absolutely phenomenal for the first few hours.

It just got a little overly complicated for me at some point. And then, like I said, I just fizzled out on it. But I'm pretty sure that game's pretty cheap at this point. And it is a vastly different experience than just about any other video game out there. So even though I didn't finish it, I would highly recommend it to people. So is it like the dead person that you see in their memory and they have a memory? Is it because they were doing what you were doing when they died and looking at people's memories?

No. No? It's just the magic of the pocket watch. Yeah. Oh, okay. Don't think about it too hard. So less Inception, more just like Russian nesting doll. It's just the magic of the pocket watch yeah oh okay don't think about it too hard yeah just so less inception more just like russian nesting doll it's just kind of yeah okay yeah yeah so this game has a 96 rating on steam and i absolutely say if you play it as soon as it

starts grinding to a halt just quit and then just read spoilers online you'll have a better experience you'll love it for probably five to six hours, maybe at the very most. Maybe even more like two to three. But you're really going to love those opening hours. And I really hope that more people make games like this. I love solving mysteries. And I love when you get to solve what happened just by showing up and playing detective. I think that's always a blast.

Yeah. All right. Coming back around to you, Michael, what you got coming in at number four? I'm afraid to say it. I think you guys are going to make fun of me. Angry Birds 2. Angry Birds 2.

Plants versus zombies. No, I'm just kidding. I can't have two of them. I actually thought about that game, Michael. It was this was that was one of those that I almost picked. It was like that and Angry Birds, and I'm like, man, they were both really good. I just feel like Plants vs. Zombies kind of wore out faster. All right.

I'm going to play this game real fast. I like this game because it can be played in virtual reality or outside of virtual reality. It's great with family and friends. It was unique and frustrating um not in like the um overcooked too frustrating i know that paul soured on this pretty fast because he said the puzzle gets kind of similar after a while but i really like to keep talking and nobody explodes that was my that was my honorable mention i actually had it directly under antechamber um yeah yeah so it's it's actually on my my long list not my short list but i agree

with you man i have it on my list it is number four number four and michael you do not remember my my thoughts about this game accurately because i played probably 50 hours of keep talking and nobody explodes it was one of the best experiences i ever had with friends it's just that once you've all memorized the manual you can't play it anymore yeah that was the only reason we stopped that's i paraphrase you poorly because i remember what you said was like hey at one point like you were like i wish they had more different puzzles yeah like maybe even more downloadable content like i would say because i buy the downloadable content and stuff like give us more puzzles now we can buy later on i'll buy more puzzle packs in a game for sure if i've played the game for 50 hours love it

i i loved the game it was so much fun because you truly had to cooperate but it wasn't like cooperating frustratedly like yeah it could get heightened at times but it's not like overcooked where you're just like you're mad at your family members you're like no oh we almost got it it was so good let's try it again you're like yeah let's try it again so uh some of the names for some of those those symbols on the symbol puzzle oh yeah cracked me up every time every time some of the names i had for those but the the beauty of keep talking and nobody explodes too is it's just wildly accessible to people like i set it up i played with with my parents who were both in their 70s. And I set it up on a laptop that they had

that could not... Because they're like, well, we don't have a computer. I'm like, you have this laptop, don't you? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, oh, I don't run on that. Just fine. Because it'll run on a potato, which is great. And I set it up on the laptop. And they loved it, man. And I mean, within I don't know, 5-10 minutes of me just

explaining how this game is going to work, we were all playing Keep Talking and nobody explodes. And then mean, within, I don't know, five, 10 minutes of me just explaining how this game is going to work, we were all playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. And then the beauty is you can play it remotely as well. You don't have to be in person. So if you've got somebody across the country that you want to hang out with, you just hop in Discord and then the game plays and you guys can all sit there and play real time together yeah and that's one of the things i like my my experience with my parents was a little different because you explained for a couple of minutes i had to explain it every single time because i couldn't see what my parents were seeing because i only owned it for playstation virtual reality so psvr and so it's like my

parents first time ever in a vr headset ever and they're trying to figure out where the controller is and i'm like no dad that's the controller is. And I'm like, no, dad, that's the X right there. And I'm like, I'm like touching and moving my dad's thumb, which is an awkward experience for a grown man to do to like grab his dad's thumb and be like, right here, dad. It's okay. It's almost like what he was doing when he was 20. And I was like, too. He's like, son, here's how you tie your shoes. Let me help you by holding your hands. Now I'm doing this to my 62 year old father so it was it was different that's kind of a tough first vr experience right defusing bombs so if anyone out there doesn't know about this game i remember when it released the first week the front page of

reddit just kept getting pummeled of videos of like eight people that were meeting and screaming about some bomb and there was a countdown and there'd be two seconds left and they would diffuse it and everyone would start screaming and go wild. And I was like, I don't know what this game is, but I'm buying it right now. And so, yeah, what makes it so cool is that you have one person who's diffusing the bomb, but they are not allowed to look at any of the instructions. They have a bomb that's essentially covered in puzzles. And then the everyone else who's playing, which can be as many people as you want, you have to describe what you see on the bomb. They are looking in the bomb manual and explaining

to you how you're going to beat those individual puzzles. And it is an exhilarating experience when you are multitasking and you're shouting instructions to four different people to work on four different puzzles. And people are shouting things to you like, cut the red wire. Someone else is shouting, click on the Xbox symbol with the horse or, you know, whatever the crazy symbols were. And yeah, like we ended up having our own shorthand language where we just knew A, B, B, A, B, A. And that just meant whether you were going to cut the wire on the left or the right or whatever it was at the time. And that's the only reason that we quit is that it just got too easy at the end. But yeah, what a fantastic game.

That's also a testament to the game, though, that you guys played it that much, that you got that good at it as well. Oh, yeah. This game is an absolute blast. You can play it at a party. As long as one person has a laptop, then the other people just have the manuals in front of them. You can play it remotely. It's very simple to pick up and premise. It's literally just tell me what you see.

Okay, I see symbols. Well, then somebody flips to the symbol section in the bomb manual and away you go um but there is a lot more strategy involved as you get comfortable with the game as well and then of course you're always playing against the timer on the bomb and you can't make mistakes because then you blow up the bomb so it's really just an all-around great game we actually did a deep dive on this so if anybody is hearing this and goes i want to know more go listen to our deep dive on that because we actually covered this game in full about um released in 2015 paul so that's about when reddit probably went crazy 97 rating on steam so insanely popular and well regarded as well and i'm pretty sure you can pick this game up for like five bucks

now all the time and only one person needs to actually purchase the game which is really nice so because all you need is the one person to be able to describe the bomb which is what the game part of it is and print the manual right so if you're looking for just a fun all-around cheap really exhilarating game to play you cannot go wrong with keep talking and nobody explodes well you don't even have to print the manual if we do it in VR because the TV is just the manual, but I would say print the manual. Also, I completely forgot. My kids don't listen to the show, but it came out last month on the Switch. So we bought copies on the Switch, so my kids can play on the Switch now. Oh, nice.

On separate Switches together. So that's also pretty cool. And it was dirt cheap. I think on Black Friday, it was like it was like 750 because it was half off oh nice yeah it's like one of those really stress inducing games but in a good way where you're just trying to beat the clock as a team you're not going against anybody it's all of you working against the bomb and i feel like those kind of co-op games can be so much fun yeah well not to keep going because the pace it'd be great if i could get my words out right this wouldn't take forever we need like a bell or uh we need some kind of sound for whatever michael just stumbles the once per episode we just go like the words are hard segment words are hard yeah this is we got uh funds with metaphor fun with metaphors with paul and words are hard with michael um i don't even drink um that's the funny part no here's the thing too is that um the one thing i like about it is the pacing is perfect

when it starts out it's easy enough to where you can figure out the puzzles are and then it gets harder as you go and it's highly customizable so you set it as hard or as easy as you want. So short that sentence actually was supposed to be. Yeah, very nice. So that's the number four for both me and Michael. So that was a two for one. All right, Josh, what do you have for your number four? All right.

Number four for me is a game that I believe I have mentioned on this before. Maybe I did a quick take on it. I don't know. I do know that I've mentioned it on the show. And it is a game called the Talos Principle. If you are a fan of puzzle games, you have probably heard of this one because it is one of the more well-known and well-regarded puzzle games. This is a pure puzzle game. You are literally just trying to solve a puzzle that's in a room or something like that. The cool thing about the Talos Principle is you play like an AI almost. You are a robot.

You are in this beautiful kind of technology. There's technology around, but then you're in old ruins all the time. So it's this really neat mesh between the two. And where this game really gets going is great puzzles. The puzzles are varied and you encounter new ones as you go. You start manipulating time and stuff like that. But the really, really neat thing about the Talos Principle is the questions and the philosophical aspect of this game. Because you have a voice. There is Elohim. He is your creator. And you hear his voice. You see snippets and things like that. He's talking to you. He tells you about this

paradise that you're in. And he just says, hey, you just need to solve these puzzles and be content where you're at. But you find out while you're playing this game that this is just a created world and is not the real world and he tells you whatever you do don't go to the tower and off in the distance there's this gigantic tower that stretches into the sky so what does everybody do well i want to know what's in the tower right so it's really it's this really neat philosophical thing because the game is different depending on the path that you go. If you just listen to Elohim and you're content to do the puzzles that he gives you, that's like almost one game. And if you start to rebel and you say, well, I want to know more about myself in this real world, and you start to go to the tower, the game kind of changes and it takes a different path.

It's just a really, really neat experience. And the puzzles are phenomenal, but it's this really in-depth philosophical question that you're literally playing out as you play this game that really makes the Talos Principle stand out to me. Paul, have you played this one? I have. I own it.

And I can't believe that this game is already eight years old because i remember when it came out it does not feel like it's been that long but yeah this one is very highly regarded 95 rating on steam it is a really good puzzle game highly recommended to other people it's not on my list but i really like if you if like i said if you really if it's a phenomenal puzzle game by itself, but the, the philosophical nature and the discovery aspect, because you don't just get the answers.

Like there's these weird terminals where you, you actually have to type in like a query and stuff like that sometimes. And then like, there's this weird unknown entity that will answer you sometimes. And it'll just give you these, like, not everything is as it seems don't trust Elohim. You know, maybe you should think about visiting the tower and it kind of like it just kind of poses

these questions you know and i love it man that game's so good yeah one of the things because this came up a lot um because i don't know why but almost every good puzzle game is also a vr port now and so almost all the puzzle games that I play are VR ports. And so I actually have this one as well. I haven't started it yet. The funniest thing, since I haven't played it, that I found is that in researching for this episode, the Talos Principle is simultaneously listed on both of the top 25 lists that I looked at and the bottom five worst puzzle games ever made for VR. The reason being on why they said it was bad is because it's not casual enough. It's hard and it has philosophical ideas and it's just not a casual puzzle game that people look for in a puzzle game. So apparently it's just

like this is not one of those you sit in for five minutes. It's like you are dedicating some time to playing this game and it's only puzzles and they're hard. Yeah, it's definitely a heavy thinker game too. Not as casual as you normally think with VR. But as we get more stuff like Half-Life Alyx and things like that, I think we're starting to see more, you know, more hard edge stuff on VR. Oh, can I pick that as my puzzle game? No. All right. Well, we're going to take a short break and then stick around.

You can hear our top three games of the puzzle genre of all time. We'll be right back. Okay, guys, coming back around to me, I guess I get to kick off the number threes on our lists here. My number three is a game that is rated 98% on Steam. Very much an overwhelmingly positive game. I think it's one of the most clever puzzle games ever. I don't know if either of you have played it, though. This is a little game that

came out a couple years ago called Baba Is You. I've played Baba Is You, and I hate that game. It's so good. It is so clever. I will say it's very clever. I just... I don't know. Maybe I hit a puzzle I just couldn't figure out, and I wasn't willing to cheat on it or something.

But if you look, I have Baba Is You, and I feel like I've played probably a good four or five hours. I get why people love it. It just wasn't for me at a certain point. I think I loved it right up until that point, and then I went, this is stupid. I'm not playing this game anymore. How do you even spell it oh it literally is baba is you like baba is like like sheep or like how baby says bottle yes and that's you yes that is you it's like a sheep in the game so what sets this puzzle game apart from every single other puzzle game, this game is an absolute unicorn, one of one. There is no other game like it.

You get a very low resolution screen where you are a little sheep called Baba, and there are words on the screen that basically lay out the rules of your current puzzle. So there will literally be words that you can push and move around the screen to change the rules of the game in order for you to reach the end point or to create some kind of situation where you win. So for example, when you start out the game, it's pretty simple where you just see words like Baba is you, wall is stop, key is open, and flag is win. And so what you do is you can walk around the screen. If you try to walk into the door, the door is closed, so it stops you. And you go and you push the key into the door and it unlocks it. You touch the flag and you win.

It starts off very simple. All of a sudden, the game starts throwing at you words like and, and is, and also, and more. And you have to start rearranging these words where all of a sudden, you're no longer Baba because maybe you pushed it to say flag is you, and now you're moving the flag and you can change things to where they'll collide and then they'll disappear. So maybe you have rock is melt. And then if you push that into ice, then it disappears. And it just gets crazier and crazier where you just are essentially like almost cheating. It's like you're changing the programming of the game by pushing these words around. And it's the funniest thing in the world,

even to just watch other people play. And I was watching a streamer who's an engineer play this game, and I was just laughing the whole time because he's trying to analyze it. And you can't even really analyze the game. You kind of just have to start playing around with the word combinations. And this is kind of the epitome of where you're just stuck for forever. And all of a sudden, you just realize that one word phrase that you were missing. And as soon as you figure that out, everything locks into place and you beat the level and you're just kind of left thinking, oh my goodness, this is the most clever puzzle game I've ever run across. And it's not for everybody, but man, if you like this game,

you will absolutely love it. I'm interested. Yeah. It's really neat because you're changing the rules of the game. Most puzzle games give you rules and say, okay, you have to solve this puzzle within these rules. Baba Is You basically throws that out the window and says the only way to solve this puzzle is to create the rules for the puzzle, and then you can solve it. And it's weird. I do appreciate what Baba Is You is. Like I said, I just got to a point where I think I got stuck. And I had to move some words, and I just could not solve that one. And I just threw my hands up and then never went back to it. But that's when you just kind of threw my hands up and then never went back to it but that's when you just google it yeah i mean probably i probably should have but i do agree with paul it is one

of the most unique puzzle games that i think is ever i don't know that there's another game like baba is you out there there's not no i don't feel like i'm smart enough to play this game you'd be surprised sometimes you just tinker and like you'll screw stuff up all the time and the game always lets you hold the z button and it'll just undo all of your moves so it tracks all of it press and hold it as long as you want and it'll you know let you reverse time and redo whatever you need to so it's not frustrating when you do something wrong you just immediately undo and try something different and so like you will do weird things in this game where all of a sudden you're controlling like all of the rocks but there's 30 on the screen and

they're all moving together or you'll be controlling multiple things at once because maybe you'll do rock and flag is you but they're like moving in different directions uh got to check this game out. It's 15 bucks. It's only 110 megabytes, so it holds no space on your hard drive and 98% rating on Steam. Can't go wrong. All right. Coming around to you, Michael, what you got clocking in at number three? I feel like I'm a clock in at number three and get my hand slapped for probably this not being a puzzle game, but we're going to try it anyways all right we're gonna play jeopardy you guys ready to play jeopardy sure can i say that by the way can i say that yeah why not this game created by alexei pagetnov in 1985 allows players to rotate falling blocks strategically

to clear levels uh what is tetris michael yeah there you go yeah that's a puzzle game next up course puttables for 800 now let me ask you something michael because i agree tetris is 1000 a puzzle game it's probably the game that launched puzzle games into mainstream to be honest could be this is number three on your list what number are we up to for you three this is my nostalgia pick do you love tetris that much i think i think the thing is is i loved it so much but i have loved it again with um what's it called there's the new tetris you can play in vr as well tetris effect is beautiful yeah beautiful vr game i'm kind of putting them all as the same thing because it's still tetris it's just tetris

evolved and so i think so like it's still fun it's still exciting it's still challenging i just think if you look at how many hours i've probably played that game like okay so like 894 hours in elite dangerous i might have more total hours in tetris you know see like i appreciate that and this is i am not trying to slander your pick by any means, because I appreciate what Tetris is and what it has done. I mean, up until Minecraft came around, it was the best-selling game of all time. And so Tetris, its simplicity, its competitiveness, what it does, it does phenomenally well. I just hate the game.

I hate... I suck at Tetris. My brain does not work that way you know what i'm like yeah i'm a smart dude like i like puzzle games and i can i can critically think and all that stuff and i freaking hate tetris man because i'm just not good at it so you gotta remember one thing about my list josh this may surprise you okay i've only played five puzzle games so and i played this one a lot so this one the one so when i say earlier in the show like i got my vr pick up my nostalgia pick it's just because i got lucky and i happen to play one of each of those now

have you played tetris 99 on the switch michael oh it's awesome dude tetris shines best in my opinion when it's competitive like my wife is really good at tetris and loves it and i loved how you could play split screen you could go against one another this is how like you zap each other right like you clear each other's bars or add to each other's there's 99 players and you're outlasting all of them it's a tetris battle royale. So as people start losing, they get eliminated. And it's great. Go play it. It's free.

If you have a Switch, as long as you pay for the online subscription, you can play it for free and it's really fun. I waste my money every month on that because I never pick up the Switch. Nice. All right. Well, that's a really good number three pick, Michael.

I'm all about it. I love Tetris. Solid. Thank you. You're a good man. I did mention this mention this but tetris effect i got that game in vr it is one of the more beautiful vr experiences oh yeah it's like some of the levels are just like so zen like to where i almost wanted to try to slow down the pieces because i wanted just to see more of the effects and the levels like stuff going on that's a that's a neat game you're gonna use a mod to slow it down so like a cheap mod you can just like you know the piece is gonna drop so you push down and it like auto drops yeah i would just

sit there and let it drop because i wanted to see the cool like pixel whales floating to the space whales floating across the screen and stuff yeah you know before we move on from tetris i gotta bring up one thing i think we've talked about on the show before but have you guys seen human tetris like on the japanese game shows oh yeah yeah where they have like conveyor belts that have tetris shapes and the person oh has to like do yoga in that move and the conveyor belt just comes and sometimes it just full out just nails the person and knocks them over oh it's so funny i love those videos those shapes are impossible to get into like i've seen i'm like there's no no way nope you got to make

sure everyone gets hit at some point you can't let them just go forever all right josh what do you have for your number three okay number three for three for me, this is the one I'm going to skirt the boundaries a little bit on this. It's Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds involves a lot of puzzles. Now, I get that it is an exploration game, and some people might categorize it as exploration. But you are basically solving the puzzle of what happened. And throughout this game, you have to explore so that you understand more of that puzzle so that you can figure things out. And there is a lot of smaller puzzles to solve within that. The beauty of Outer Wilds is you're only solving these puzzles

so that you gain information. If you started this game brand spanking new, you can beat this game in about 15 minutes from start to finish because the answer is right in front of you the entire time. Like you are not gated in any way other than your lack of knowledge. So as you play Outer Wilds, you go, you explore these planets, you solve these puzzles, you get information, you take that information, you progress through that until ultimately you know how to get through the entire game. But the beauty is you could have done that from second one, which I think is a phenomenal way to approach something. And yes, is this a puzzle game purely like the Talos Principle and Anti-Chamber and stuff like that? No. But I'm going to skirt the rules a little bit on this one because I do feel like Outer Wilds by nature is a puzzle based game. It just also includes a lot of exploration,

which I love those two together. You're literally piecing together bits of information to put together the puzzle of what happened to these people. Right. I think it's absolutely a puzzle. Okay. Well, some people are like,

well, it's exploration and, and you know, or, you know, action because you're flying around and you're landing on planets and stuff like that, too. So I won't beat this one into the ground because everybody has heard me talk about Outer Wilds and my love for this game. This is actually the newest puzzle game on my list, game out in 2020. It's a 95% overall Steam rating out of 38 000 reviews outer wilds is beloved by most people not named paul yeah i'm in the five percent that yeah you are you know

and so but you know anytime somebody's like recommend me a game outer wilds is one of those because it is an incredible experience and i'll just leave it at that because people have heard me talk this game into the ground. So sadly enough, when you said you were going to skirt the rules a little bit, I was really excited that I was going to add a sixth game to the list of puzzle games that I have played, but I still haven't played outer wild.

So I'm still at five puzzle games, guys, my top five, knowing what I know about you, I think you would genuinely love outer wilds like i can understand why paul doesn't like it you know what i mean but i feel like you would really enjoy it too i'm sure i would you know last thing i'll say on this if you go to the every now and then on reddit i see people like what's one of the most memorable games you've ever played and outer

wilds almost always makes that list because I can't spoil anything but just because. Yeah. All right. So moving on here, we're now up to our top two. There's a certain game I haven't heard yet that I think all three of us are going to have. So I think we'll have a little bit of overlap coming up soon. But my number two is a game that actually just came out a few months ago. A little game called Immortality.

Now, I have brought this up a few times on the show recently, but I don't know if I ever really actually explained what the game is. You did. You mentioned you have to go into these clips and watch clips and stuff like that, but I'll be honest, I want you to explain this to me because I still have no idea what this game is. So you can kind of tell as I have games like Baba Is You I'll be honest, I want you to explain this to me because I still have no idea what this game is.

So you can kind of tell as I have games like Baba Is You and Obra Dinn, these are games that are very unique and revolutionary for puzzle games. None of these are traditional puzzle games per se, but Immortality is basically where there's a fictional actress who made three movies. I think they're in 1968, 1970, and 1999. And none of the movies were released. Something happened, but you don't know what. And the movies never came out. That actress has now gone missing. And you are basically handed the archival footage of all shot video of this actress.

And there are... So basically, they film all of this as if they were happening in real life. So they have fake talk show interviews. There are scenes from all three movies. There are scenes of her at parties that got recorded. And basically, the way the game works is that you're going through scrubbing video footage. You can hit play, you get to watch the clip, and if you click anything inside it, it will bring up another video that has that item or something that looks similar to it. So if I see like a certain actor and I click them, it's going to give me another scene that has that same actor. Or if I click on a glass, now it's going to show me another glass in another scene. And what same actor. Or if I click on a glass, now it's going to show me

another glass in another scene. And what's really interesting about this is you can play the clips forward, but you can also rewind them in case you want to rewatch something. Well, this is getting little spoiler territory. The game takes a little bit of a supernatural twist where you start reversing and all of a sudden like people's faces change and you you'll see a new figure pop up out of nowhere and the game kind of hits you with like jump scare music and that's when i was like oh this actually really just got interesting now because i am i seeing a ghost on the screen like why all of a sudden did this person get swapped out for a different actor in in this so it's really weird and very odd but at the same time similar to outer wilds you're getting little

snippets of information everywhere and then eventually just by exploring enough of the game you put together the full narrative and figure out what happened so very clever game you can actually play it for free if you have game. You can actually play it for free if you have Game Pass, and you can get it for free if you have Netflix. I did read in the reviews that the mobile port is not very good, so I recommend playing it on Xbox or on PC. But very, very clever puzzle game, and I can't wait to see more games come out like it. Is there a payoff? Is there just a solution? Don't spoil it. games come out like it is there like a payoff is there like a just like a solution yeah i mean

obviously don't spoil it but i'm saying like you you go through all of this and then there's like the reveal or the payoff or something like that okay yes there there are a couple of things in particular it's not just like one thing but you'll discover a couple things along the way where you're like oh that happened well who's this and and how is that possible and then you start to put it all together it's almost like watching the movie memento oh except if it's not all in just imagine it's not in reverse it's literally just all the scenes are jumbled and then all of a sudden you figure it out i'm gonna have to play this one yeah i literally this is officially officially it's only because you didn't tell me

it was free yet until just now uh the first ever game on my steam wish list every other game i wanted to buy you just bought it the reason i didn't do that is because i didn't want to try to figure out how to change over the payment method from using the podcast to my own money uh while we're recording i was was going to do it later. The last thing I'll say about it, I have a short quote here from The Guardian when they wrote their review of it. And here's what they had to say. Every now and then you play a video game that you just cannot stop thinking about. Candy Crush might leave colorful imprints on the back of your eyelids. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild may creep into your dreams, and then, very occasionally, a game comes along that is so entirely unlike anything you've ever played that it becomes an obsession. Immortality, the latest from lauded game maker Sam Barlow and

his studio Half Mermaid, is one of those. It is something that has never existed before, a video game that is also three feature length films wrapped around a mystery so compelling that i could not concentrate on anything else for days it is so delicate and complex that it's difficult to figure out how it even works what i michael is giggling to himself over here i know i missed whatever this is i just hold on i'm gonna take a deep breath get through it the the studio is called half mermaid yes hold on half mermaid which half which half do you get because vertical you get the left side you're either person or you're fish like no hold on no vertically okay i was like you're either person or fish there is no half mermaid and my head as i was trying to work

through it i just couldn't stop laughing until i saw josh's face looking at his confusion and why i was laughing which made me laugh harder um also what did you find out what happened to marissa marcel you sure do yeah you get your answers it's not like lost or something where you feel strung along like you're gonna get you're gonna get real answers hold on i have a question just because other other folks that listen to the show might have the same question as me. You said Netflix.

You can play this if you have Netflix. Do you play it on Netflix or do you play it with a code that you get from Netflix on your PC? So great question. Too bad Netflix is not a sponsor. If you have the Netflix app... That is true. They're not.

I'm just curious because I'd like to play it on my TV. Yeah. If you go on the Netflix app, there is a tab at the bottom for games and if you click it you'll see all the games you can get for free and it'll give you a separate link that'll open inside google play or like the ios store and it lets you download it through the store but because you have netflix it lets you download it for free okay cool i was just curious because i'm just i i'm trying to find a way to play on my my tv because how many hours is this game paul it's not on playstation it's on xbox

and it's on pc but not playstation yeah it's like an anti-exclusive uh to answer your question josh it's kind of like outer wilds in that if you looked up the quickest way to get your answers you could probably do it in like an hour you could also potentially flounder and keep re-watching clips and you don't know what to do next and you could play it for 100 hours and get really frustrated um this is kind of similar to oberdin i say play it until it feels like a grind and then just read spoilers okay it is a very mature game this is not one you can put on like on the tv in front of kids the the adult content is sporadic but there's enough there that i'd say don't play this in front of the kids right gotcha yeah good call all right so moving on uh we need the number two for michael right are we up to you

yes okay so when i chose my number two versus my number one, it's so hard because you look at both these games and like, which one's a better puzzle game and which one is a game that I like more, right? And so how do you rank that? I'm going to rank it in the order of one of these games made my top 10 list of all time. One of these games. I do not believe did. It might have, but I don't think it did. And I'm going to put the one that I like more at number two. Why am I doing this? No, heck no. Heck no. I'm just trying not to upset people here.

All right. Number two is Portal. All right. Portal's my number one. And Portal 2. What do you have, Josh? Do you have it in your list? Portal 2 is my number one game. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Portal's my number one. And Portal 2. What do you have, Josh? Do you have it in your list? Portal 2 is my number one game.

Yeah. Yeah. For puzzles. Yeah. I mean, I like Portal 2 better than Portal 1 just because of the co-op nature of Portal 2. I mean, honestly, they're not that different. So, I mean, are we just saying the Portal franchise? I put Portal 1 and Portal 2 because I don't know which one I like more.

Initially, I had Portal 2 number one and Portal number two. And then Michael mentioned, if it's a series, I'm going to put them together. And I was like, okay, then I'll just put Portal number one. Yeah, Portal 2 for... I mean, we'll just call it Portal. That's my number one. It's probably one of the most beloved games of all time. It's one of the most accessible games of all time. It's one of the most accessible games of all time.

I mentioned that before. But I think if you have a five-year-old, you can tell them, like, hey, play this game. You got a blue portal, yellow portal. My daughter was playing it the other day with her friend. And it was like they were playing together. And I walked in. I'm like, oh, you guys are playing Portal. And she's like, yeah, this is it's just it's just a masterpiece man

there's not really anything to not like about portal it's funny it's compelling it's challenging it's the best of all worlds yeah it's it's not um an fps with puzzles in it's a puzzle game that masquerades as an fps yeah that was a quote that I saw when I was looking at it. I was like, that's absolutely true, I think. Yeah, absolutely. There's nothing more fun than using the portal gun. There's a reason why they add it in games like Splitgate. It's that good that we have seen portals

added into other games that you think would never have something like that. That's how much it's permeated gaming culture. And I don't know what it is like on metacritic it might be number one on metacritic of like all-time games or whatever i think it's way up there yeah i do know i did look on steam 98 rating over a quarter of a million reviews um that's pretty much unheard of because you're always gonna get the trolls that are like i'm gonna rate this as zero or everybody else likes it you know yeah yeah i mean if a 98 rating out of a quarter of a million reviews doesn't tell you something then we can

tell you that if you haven't played portal or portal 2 you were you were missing out on a slice of video game history basically yeah when when josh used his first adjective to explain it one of the most beloved games of all time might be the most beloved game of all time the games both of them are incredible and and also they have the best villain and i won a draft with it too so yep josh if we pay you a hundred bucks can you play portal in vr with us recording it? I'd do that for $100. For $100? That's my, yep.

You're going to be vomiting the entire time. That's fine. I'll vomit for $100. That's my price point. Now, wait a minute. You guys aren't going to do the thing where I just have to loop one portal over and over again. We're actually trying to beat the levels, right? You two just make it like an endless

loop like all right michael let's see i give him i give him a minute before he's throwing up right i'm just thinking about all those times that you launch out of a portal and the whole room has to swing around to reorient you oh it'd be so great didn't we ask that question on one of the um squad casts like how long could you fall through a portal for something like that yeah we did we brought that up yeah and josh was already nauseated just thinking yeah so all three of us have portal that knocks out my number one josh's number one and michael's number two huh i know michael's number one is now yeah i do too yeah yeah all right so that leaves uh josh you're you're number two okay my number two you mentioned it at the very beginning of

the show. It's called The Witness. I don't know where I first heard about The Witness. I think I just saw some gameplay and the colors of the game and the beauty of the game caught my eye. And I went, I haven't played a puzzle game in a while. Let me check this out. And I was absolutely just amazed at how good The Witness was. The cool thing about The Witness is it teaches you the basics of the puzzles before it ramps up the difficulty. So you never go into something not knowing what your purpose of this puzzle is. It starts off very, very simple, and then it just ramps things up to a difficulty level where you feel like a super genius by the time you're solving these things later on. The other really cool thing about The Witness is it is an open world, so to speak. You are on an

island, and if you get stuck, just go wander around. Find a different puzzle to do. I absolutely love The Witness. I've covered this on a quick take uh that i believe has been released to people as well so if you want to hear my full thoughts on that you can check that out um it's just one of the best puzzle pure puzzle games that i think i've ever played to be honest um the puzzles vary there's audio puzzles there's visual puzzles there's spatial puzzles there's like i mean there's just all kinds of different puzzles, geometric puzzles. Like it's just crazy. The number, like the variation of the puzzles in the witness. And I think that's the other thing that really makes it stand apart. Like I mentioned the Talos principle. Those puzzles are great, but there's probably only like four or five different kinds that you come across. And there are different difficulty levels. The witness probably has like 20 different kinds of puzzles with multiple variations of difficulty for each of those puzzle types too, which is really cool.

Really sets it apart for me. It's also still $40. Yeah. I was going to say, that's the only like criticism. A lot of people give that it's a, it's still a pricey game. It is worth every penny, in my opinion, on that.

It was released in 2016. It's got an 86% positive Steam rating. So it's actually one of the lower-rated puzzle games on my list. I think it's because of the difficulty nature. The Witness has some really hard puzzles. I don't think a game has stumped me quite as much as The Witness has. But the beauty, again, is it teaches you. It's my fault that I can't figure this puzzle out because I'm not thinking enough to say, what's the next evolution? What did it try to teach me before? How do I use that to solve this?

But it's my number two for a reason because I go back to it every now and then just because of the variation in the puzzles. Yeah. The first time I ever heard about it was on the show when you were talking about it. I did the same thing I just did. I pulled it up on Steam, looked at it, and said, I have to play this game. Well, you guys already know all five that are on the list for me and Josh. so michael you get the honors to go in last we just got to hear about your number one now that was not intentional at all wink wink yeah no i'm just hijacking the uh the high moment right hijacking the number one from the number one oh look what i did um no i i don't know why i did this ultimately like you know you look at these games and it's like is portal a better game than mist probably yeah right but well most definitely but at the same point like i was

thinking of a pure puzzle game like the my favorite puzzle game ever made is missed and it's like yes portal is a puzzle game but mist is like a puzzle game portal can be other genres that it kind of dips into and i know that i just said it you know as a puzzle game masquerades as an fps but at the same point mist is brilliant and it stands the test of time because it keeps getting remade and re modernized and it just did last year in 2021 it is just as good the music is the same the nostalgia is there but it's playable because let's be honest miss 1993 is not playable anymore uh josh didn't correct when he said tetris was the top selling game until minecraft it was actually missed when it came out in 1993 it sold six million copies blew away the world held the

record for almost a decade and it was only beaten by minecraft um now that being said there are several different iterations of tetris so you could possibly say that all of them combined. Outsold, missed, but as far as a pure game, this game literally launched essentially CD-ROM for gaming. You didn't really use that as much. People would go out and buy, like you did have CD-ROM games. People would go out and install CD-ROMs in their computers which back then were really expensive just to play this game it changed the world and just the way they did it as well with having a 3d environment that you would click through and still photos so you would think you're looking at a 3d game it just

i i can keep going for a long time on this i actually did a quick take on it i don't know if ever if we circle i don't think we've cycled through enough to get there yet or no it's on the docket it's towards the end but the whole thing is is the game you know after shoot how many years is that is that 29 years or 19 years 29 years 29 years gentlemen after the math is hard when you go over that millennia you know after 29 years the fact that it's still a very popular game it's in vr um and they just redid it for unreal engine 4 and it's absolutely just as great as it always has been just it's it's one of my favorite games of all time i think it was my number three of all time which admittedly was a nostalgia pick but uh and and so is this and i'm

not i'm not even slightly ashamed yeah if you're like 37 or older and knew someone who had a computer they probably owned mist that's if you younger than that, you'll probably have no idea what we're even talking about. Yeah, it is. I mean, I will say, Michael, you gifted it to us in VR, and I actually dove into it for a little while on that. And it holds up to this day, to be honest. The puzzles in Myst are great. The atmosphere is great.

I think one of the things that really catapulted it to the forefront was back in the day when you talk about the CD-ROM drive, it was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen on a computer. Honestly, I remember the days of seeing Myst when it first came out and going like, how is that possible? On a computer? These are not pixelated graphics. And I just remember thinking like, this is really

neat. I didn't get into it when it released initially. I don't know why, but I kind of missed the missed craze. But I'm glad that you purchased it, that you gifted it to us. Like I said, I played it in VR and it does hold up. So if the younger people out there are listening and going, hey, I want to see what this is about. It, it still translates well, in my opinion. That's one of the coolest things about puzzle games. They tend to hold up far better than other genres because the focus is on solving a simple mechanic puzzle as opposed to the graphics or whatever. So I think that's one of the reasons we don't see a ton of puzzle games because you can still go back and play all the old ones. They still great um i i'm sure you guys have a couple of games that

didn't make your list that maybe you just want to give a quick shout out to on my list i've got a lot of games that are on mobile i think puzzle games in particular really shine on mobile i've got mini metro the room monument valley and the House of Da Vinci are all absolutely fantastic on mobile. I bet most of our listeners have probably played at least one or two of those. Do you guys have any other shoutouts to give? Yeah, Wordle. Oh, Wordle. I was going to ask a Wordle puzzle.

Wordle almost made number five, and Angry Birds took it. I was going to jokingly sayly say like i could put sudoku number one but that's really boring to talk about so right so i did that's why i didn't because i'm like but but it's wordle um wordle i think i've got a 100 game streak going on so nice got that going um for me there's some really good vr puzzle games to be honest um you know the paul you mentioned the room there is a v a phenomenal vr game called the room dark matter that's a really neat kind of creepy atmospheric puzzle game uh i expect you to die one and two are an absolute blast to play uh i highly recommend those to anybody with a quest you pick those up because they're well

worth the money and you do feel kind of like a spy solving these problems and stuff like that as well and then i just kind of had a category which were the old adventure puzzle games i kind of mentioned those early the old sierra games one called shadow gate i don't know if you guys remember that one but you're trying to make your way through a castle and you were just solving puzzles and stuff like that um i there is that combination uh you know return to monkey island i the monkey island games they were adventure games but a lot of what you did was solving puzzles at the same time um and i really enjoy that kind of genre it's it's kind of been dead for a little while but i i like it a lot as well the The, the adventure puzzle. Right. Yeah. Mm.

Makes me sad that there's a dead genre. Yeah. Those. Well, I mean, return to monkey Island just released and it's, you know, it got really good reviews.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, so it's not completely dead, but I think it's got to work him out just this year. Oh my goodness. All right. Get out of here, Paul. Well,

with that, with that being said, yeah, I think that wraps up everything for this episode uh last game last thought go me there you go we do want to say thank you to everyone for listening as a reminder you can follow us on socials everywhere at multiplayer pod you can also support our show and get those bonus episodes on patreon at multiplayer squad.com and we hope that you guys will come back and listen to our episode on thursday where we break down this week in gaming and until next time happy gaming everyone we'll see you later i love you all so much thanks for dealing with us and cheers all right see you everybody