Ignoring the complete insanity that this is from the Serious Sam developers: Talos Principle (1 in particular) is one of those rare puzzle games where things "make sense". Mechanics are introduced and the vast majority (I want to say all, but it has been a minute) of interactions and "tools" come from that. Rather than "oh, but you see, if you had noticed the way this one picture on the wall looks you would have found the secret tool you needed" wanking.

And the story is interesting enough to motivate progress but not so vital that you feel bad about taking a day or two off before going back to the puzzle.

Baba Is You has some of the "ha, its a secret trick" nonsense but, by and large, is a similar vibe and approach to puzzle solving.

[–] theohgee 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Any others you recommend? I enjoyed this and the witness, and love a story driven mystery game like obra dinn too but I really suck at physically using a controller so I can't really do games where you have to have actual video game skills

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The Witness is the other one that I'd compare then too. Other than this series and that game, nothing else of the same level comes to mind. There's a DLC for TTP1 if you haven't tried it. There's also obviously the Portal series too.

Antichamber fits with these I think, and maybe Baba is You, though I only have like 15m in that so I can't comment in how good it is. I think that's pretty much it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree, except for some of the bonus puzzles (particularly in 1) requires some out-of-the-box thinking, sometimes literally by breaking out of the puzzle you're in taking puzzle pieces with you. All the basic puzzles I agree are straightforward, but some of the bonus tings require you to look for extra details that may not be part of the puzzle exactly. I think this is done particularly well in 1, as the story is about thinking for yourself so you have to start thinking about the puzzles in a different way. In 2 most of the bonus things are done exactly the same each level and you just need to figure out how to connect them to other things in the map. Usually they don't require "breaking" the puzzles to complete, even though this is still possible and allows for other options to solve some puzzles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Even those are generally "obvious" as level design makes it obvious there are interactables not inside a puzzle or that use tools that aren't part of that specific puzzle. The narrative is what pushes you to think "... what if I take this out of the puzzle room?" but many puzzles outright teach you those skills with the kill fields.

As opposed to "You should have looked to the left while walking between these areas and realized that if you lined up the level geometry it would make an arrow"