Thinky Essentials: your favorites

ace attorney trilogy and golden idol are the all-timers here for me. voted the latter because it's more thinky. most of this list is great though. toki tori 2 is a wise deep cut, someone there knows their stuff

feel like Phoenix Wright doesn't really belong here but it's definitely an all-timer for me and i vote with my heart

I've played both Portals (only finished the original, though), Her Story, a short bit of The Witness, Obra Dinn, Phoenix Wright OG trilogy, Baba Is You (I was weirdly bad at this one), OG Myst but not the remake, The Case of the Golden Idol, the Storyteller demo, and Chants of Sennaar. I do intend to get Lorelei at some point.

I find I don't really love the Myst-like games, they just don't provide enough story and I lose the patience for the puzzles without a strong narrative to pull me along.

My heart is split between Phoenix Wright and Obra Dinn, with the Portals and Chants of Sennaar coming up behind. Tempted to vote Phoenix Wright for nostalgia reasons, but as pointed out it's not actually all that 'thinky' as a game.

I also don't love the Golden Idol games, tbh - the gameplay is absolutely great but I find something about their caricature-ish art style pretty gross and off-putting. It was there a little bit with the first one but dismissable, but I just couldn't shake it off with the second one.

Emily, the second Golden Idol game (occasionally) has better art! I'm finding it VERY taxing, though.

Baba is HARD, devilishly so in the later stages.

This is going to be down to Sennaar or Lorelei for me, and probably depends on where I land on docking points for game-breaking meta (Sennaar) or if my exhaustion at the game's end (Lorelei).

Talos and Witness were not for me. I tried picking up Breach twice, but just kind of ran out of steam and didn't get all that far.

I'm more into the logical side of things when it comes to puzzle games so I loved the witness and the talos principle, voting for the former as it was more varied and more creative. I want to play lorelei and I'm not above a thinky platformer so maybe fez too. portal is all time ofc.

the second Golden Idol game (occasionally) has better art!

It has more accomplished art - but that brings the grotesque elements to the fore, whereas the more pixelly art hid it somewhat. There's something about the caricaturish character design that just reminds me of racist newspaper ones: obviously not all caricature art is racist, but it still feels gross to me. This is totally a personal thing.

the grotesqueness of the Golden Idol art style is the primary reason I haven't played those games. They sound like my kind of thing. For me it's a tossup between Obra Dinn, ITB, and Chants of Sennaar. I also want to shout out Gorogoa, which is not on this list but IMO it should be.

gorogoa is great but not very thinky imo

Ehh I think it's debatable. I definitely remember getting stumped a few times because I was just not making the connections the game expected me to. I think parts of it require the same kind of lateral thinking as solving a riddle.

write-in vote for the original mac version of "The Fool's Errand".

that's a notable omission! also a very early meta-puzzle in gaming. the earliest I can think of is Impossible Mission.

love the fools errand. the guy made a sequel many years later called the fool and his money which was similarly good. i used to be on his mailing list but the messages stopped coming, i was worried he might have passed but didn't look into it at the time

Played Gorogoa in one sitting with my wife during a snowstorm the other day, yeah it might be more of an art game than a real puzzle game, but there are some clever bits and we got a little stuck at a couple points. The evolving mechanics that you discover on your own reminded me of Cocoon a lot. Perfect game for the afternoon.

voted obra dinn

a lot of the ones i've played are games i respect but don't particularly enjoy - mostly obra dinn, golden idol, and baba is you. they are cool and unique but don't hit my fun zones.
lorelei and the laser eyes and chants of senaar are the two newer ones i really loved, especially the latter. but it's going to be hard to not vote for one of the portals, they are such classic games. the second one is obviously the better game but the twist in the first one genuinely blew my mind in a way i didn't know video games could do.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Taking notes, for suggestions for my next puzzle game - thanks! (Maybe "Lorelei..."? There's also "Little Nightmares 3" that came out.) From that list, I've only played (and finished and loved) the two Portal games, and just played a tiny bit of "Tunic."

I'm kind of particular about what I like in this department - I think that "Limbo," "Inside," and "Cocoon" are all perfect to me, with puzzles that are incredibly well-designed and hit a sweet spot (not too frustrating, not too easy) that's rewarding.

I played "Viewfinder" recently and enjoyed it and its novel gameplay: being able to take a photo of something, then the photo becomes a 3-D space you can walk into or duplicate objects with. But the puzzles generally weren't too difficult, once you understood the possibilities. But there was a novel one involving a watermelon, and when I figured it out, I was like "Ooooh nice, that's clever."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Voted for Chants but immediately regretted not going for Lorelei. It occasionally can fall on the harder side compared to Obra Dinn or Portal, if that’s your thing, but very chewy puzzles and I really enjoyed the majority of it.

A recent one I started playing is Darkest Files, where you play as a prosecutor in 1950s Germany investigating former nazis. I failed the first case and now feel pretty dumb.

I voted Lorelei

I loved the concept of Obra Dinn but like most other first person games I couldn't play it without feeling nauseous

Baba is You was really good but I don't think I finished it

Dicey Dungeons was fun but not on the level of some of the others

I generally liked Golden Idol's puzzles but some of them involve exhausting amounts of guesswork and the art is not my favourite

Didn't like Tunic, Fez was fine

I liked the unusual format of Her Story

Viewfinder is free on EGS right now, pretty fun spatial puzzle game (thoug you have to put up with some bad dialogue).

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/viewfinder-61691c

Emily, if you liked how Golden Idol plays but want a less garish art style, Roottrees Are Dead is, IMO, even better.