A good puzzle or word game can be so addictive that can even invade your dreams. They keep you entertained for hours as you try to win the game. You may get frustrated if you constantly fail, but the game will keep you coming back for more. The simple gratification we get from solving the problem is what makes us love those puzzle games so much.
If you are looking for such head-scratching puzzles, but can’t find the best ones, you’re in luck. Here we have collected some best puzzle games that you will want to try next on your iPhone or iPad. There are many awesome on iPhone and iPad puzzle games but we have whittled our list down to just a few of the best ones that are worth your attention today.
1. Prune ($3.99)
If you are in search of an experience that can balance tranquility with progressive difficulty, here is a solution. Prune is the cool and calm puzzler that draws heavily from the Japanese art of bonsai and will help you find your bliss.
Prune is a game about helping tree branches grow to find their way to sunlight so that they can flower. But to do so, you will need to neatly nip off new branches growing in the wrong direction, steering your tree around different obstacles so that it can finally see the sun.
Each game begins with a sapling stuck in the ground, and it rapidly begins growing upwards. Your job is to just help guide it towards the light, all while avoiding the dangers of the world around that disrupt your progress — by snipping unnecessary branches, obstructing wind and bright red spots, etc.
2. Threes! ($2.99)
A simple, beautifully designed game that’s accessible to all skill levels, Threes! was so good that it inspired countless impersonators only weeks after release. It’s one of the most delightfully challenging puzzlers that you can revisit time and again for a new experience
This clever number-puzzle game is all about addition: You start with adding dissimilar number tiles ‘1’ and ‘2’ together to make a 3, but from there, you can only combine two identical number tiles to create the sum of those two numbers: 3 + 3 make 6, 6 + 6 makes 12, 12 +12 makes 24 and so on. This is done until you run out of possible moves and tally an incredible score.
Matters are complicated by a new tile being added on the edge you swiped from during every move. With space in increasingly short supply, you will need to make calculated decisions to keep your game alive. The aim is to keep going until you run out of space, planning ahead to create upgrade chains that put off the inevitable deadlock.
Threes may be a game comprised of numbers, but you need no real mathematical skill to excel at this game — just an open mind and a penchant for thinking ahead. Best of all, you can always find new paths to pursue, new tricks to test, and new methods for matching; the game is always different, though the numbers remain the same.
3.The Room Three ($3.99)
The Room Three builds on the success of its previous installments, providing gamers with a series of challenging tactile puzzles. The entire Room series is worth a download, but The Room Three is the biggest and best of the bunch.
The Room Three offers complex box-related puzzles along with an atmospheric adventure and unsettling clues. Players must unravel a series of increasingly complex 3D puzzle boxes and unlock other contraptions, by looking all around, finding clues, and fiddling with the devices.
The visuals are outstanding, puzzles are complex and engrossing, the soundtrack is spooky, and manipulating the objects on a touch device feels really intuitive and tactile. And finally, playing The Room 3 is a full experience.
4. Monument Valley ($3.99)
If you like your puzzle games dripping with style, substance, eerie visuals, and a sense of discovery, Monument Valley has everything you are looking for.
Monument Valley is truly a thing of beauty, telling a compelling narrative tale of Ida, a princess in a world of impossible geometry. You explore and discover Ida’s world as she does, guiding Ida through stairwells and doorways as you poke, prod, and move the environment to help her progress.
The game offers a variety of 3D maps to conquer, all while transporting you into a strange world of crows, block creatures, and breathtaking Escher-style landscapes. This dreamy brain-pleaser is inventive, compact, looks spectacular, and it’s perfect for touch.
Monument Valley has been praised by critics and players alike, earning accolades such as Apple’s Game of the Year 2014, Apple Design Award 2014, BAFTA Award for Mobile & Handheld Games and the IMGA Grand Prix prize. Plus, the game has over 20,000 ratings and holds a 4.5 rating overall.
If you enjoyed the original Monument Valley, you can also grab its sequel ‘Monument Valley 2’ ($4.99) that comes with a touch of color and light as you navigate through a kingdom that resembles an M.C. Esher print. Monument Valley 2 adds welcome new features like the ability to control the second character — the heroine Ro is joined by her child on this journey — while maintaining the minimalist look and immersive music that made the first game such a joy to play.
5. World of Goo ($4.99)
One of the App Store’s earlier puzzle hits is still one of its best. World of Goo perfected the bridge-building style of physics-based games when it launched on the Wii and desktops in 2008, but it never felt more at home than when it came to the iPad in 2010 (and the iPhone shortly thereafter).
In this unique, charming, quirky and challenging game, you will build quick structures to overcome large gaps or build to a skyward exit, and you will do so using little, sticky balls that connect to one another. Over time, the challenges become tougher and the goo balls pick up some curious new abilities, plus the game loads in unexpectedly unsettling atmosphere despite the cartoonish look. It’s an older pick, but thankfully, it’s been updated with 64-bit support.
6. Mini Metro ($4.99)
Do you ever look at your city’s public transportation and think you could design it better? Well, Mini Metro will let you try to create your own subway system.
With ultra-minimal visual design and complex mind-boggling puzzles, Mini Metro provides hours of fun. Of course, sometimes, it makes you scratch your head with its continuous challenges.
You start out with a couple of stations, limited number of lines and a single train, and must connect stations together to efficiently move passengers. Keep them waiting for too long, and it’s game over. And as the weeks carry on and your network grows, you will have to add more lines, extra trains and cars, improved stations, and bridge-tunnels to avoid overcrowding. How you meet that goal is really up to you, as you use your limited resources to build the most efficient system possible. The game comes with a variety of maps recreating real-life major cities, with more maps unlocked as you progress. With overall 18 maps, you will find plenty to keep you playing.
Mini Metro is tough but addictive.
7. Euclidean Lands ($3.99)
Mash together Monument Valley’s minimalist isometric views, Hitman Go’s turn-based puzzles, and a Rubik’s Cube’s twisty-turny nature, you’ll get something fairly close to Euclidean Lands, a mind-bending geometry puzzle game.
In this stunning turn-based puzzler, your aim is to figure out how to reach and brutally stab enemies who can be lurking on any surface across 40 tiny geometric worlds hanging in space. Early levels offer small cubes and static foes who guard only a single square. But Euclidean Lands quickly ramps up the challenge, with increasingly complex 3D architecture designed to trap and deceive, and enemies that move of their own accord and even take over moving the cubes. You will need clever maneuvering to knock out monsters, and if a particular obstacle has you stuck, the solution probably involves taking the hazard out of the way with a clever twist of the map.
8. A Good Snowman is Hard to Build ($3.99)
Do you want to build a snowman? Turn to ‘A Good Snowman is Hard to Build’ and get to rolling. This puzzle makes you push snowballs around to create your own snowman.
As the title suggests, building a proper snowman is indeed challenging. In each area, you’ll find three prepared snowballs, and your little monster man will need to roll them to get the finished product. However, rolling a snowball upon fresh snow only makes it larger, and you need three balls—in order from large to small—to complete the task. How can you properly roll the snowballs to make a good snowman? That’s your brainy task to solve.
9. Mushroom 11 ($4.99)
A winner of Apple’s 2017 Design Award, Mushroom 11 is a stylish puzzle-platformer that finds you guiding a strange, malleable, blob-like organism through some kind of destroyed, post-apocalyptic wasteland, and you’ll need to guide it through the wreckage. Tapping on the blob deletes its cells, which regrow on the opposite side, propelling the blob onward.
Mushroom 11 will have you squeeze through tunnels and machinery, climb fences, evade lava pools, split into multiple blobs to solve puzzles, and even balancing a rocket in mid-flight.
10. Deus Ex Go ($0.99)
From Square Enix popular GO series, comes the mobile addition to the Deus Ex franchise that has everything you could want in a puzzle game. Deus Ex GO never gets boring, as the game layers in complex systems to solve each puzzle. You need to defeat enemies, hack computers, and sneak your way around the map to be successful.
11. Slayaway Camp ($2.99)
Slayaway Camp is a morbidly funny take on the puzzle genre that tasks you with going on a killing spree, and no one you meet is safe!
You will need to slide around each scene and murder your victims in a particular order to reach the portal to advance to the next area. With plenty of obstacles such as fire pits, open water, and cops, you will need to be smart during your rampage.
Taking its inspiration from classic 80s horror films, the violence in this game is over-the-top, extremely fake, and incredibly funny.
12. I’m a Puzzle
If you’re looking for an online jigsaw puzzle website that’s mobile-friendly, then Im-a-puzzle.com might be the perfect fit. With thousands of puzzles to choose from, this site organizes everything by category so you can find the perfect picture to complete. In addition, customize the options like the number of pieces (level of difficulty), style of the pieces, and whether you’d like to see a shadow of the finished picture as a guide. In addition, you can even create your own puzzles by uploading an image, setting the options, and sharing the link with friends or family members.
Give your brain an enjoyable workout with these varied, brilliant puzzle picks.
