Nectarine

What's your favorite puzzle game?

There's a difference between the games I want to play (or re-play -- because some of them are kind of "done" once you've solved them), and the ones I think are the technically best or most interesting. So I'll just list a few, in random order:

* Tetris (classic, timeless, much more interesting than non-shape drop games like Columns)
* Tetris II (by Fuxoft, on the Speccy): it's Tetris with special rules (like "destroy all the bricks") and you can play with two players at the same time, which is pretty cool for a Speccy.
* Lemmings (probably the coolest, cleverest game design I've seen in my life, although I admit I haven't gone back to it very often; and the two-player mode on the Sega Megadrive is just dire)
* Scribblenauts Unlimited (the original is good too, but the controls are flaky): very FUNNY and interesting game. A lot of the puzzles are easy, but again it was a totally original idea, and is very enjoyable, and has a sense of humour.
* Pipe Mania.
* Chip's Challenge.
* On the Ball (SNES): barely a puzzle game, and more of an action game, because it's mostly about rotating the screen so that the ball falls in the correct direction, but it feels a bit puzzley.

What are your favourites, franz?

I'm also a sucker for the "Professor Layton" series, although seriously you end up doing somebody's maths homework with simultaneous equations. It doesn't use the interactive computer format very well. Most of the puzzles could work equally well on paper. But I do like the idea of little puzzles tied together by a mystery story.

Oh, also the Flash game "Continuity", where you simply have to lead the man from the start to the exit, but you can zoom out, and shift the rooms around, within the map, like building a jigsaw. Very clever design, and cool music too.

Puzzle games I don't like much:

* Lost Vikings: fine, good idea, but I just didn't get into it.
* Any arena-drop game without proper shapes like Tetris: i.e. Columns, Dr Mario, etc.
* Mr Driller: I tried to enjoy this, but it's just painful, the main enemy is the time limit, not a good puzzle.
* Most games that just translate a paper puzzle onto a screen... shit like sudoku.

Yes I've got more. I won't fucking stop until they ban me from the forum.

* Flash game I can't remember the name of: it was sort of Goth, Addams Family, ghost spooky vibe, and you had a lot of different characters, including a dog. Each character had a different skill. This game really RULED and it was Flash, and I'm sure it's gone forever, and I can't even remember the name.
* Kye.
* Ballance (pretty 3D game, moving a ball over rails high up in the sky, lots of puzzles).
* Mushroom Man (cough)... nice game I made in school days, with 100+ levels. Now It's old enough that the Windows version doesn't work and the Flash version also doesn't work. But it's good.
* My ex-wife really liked "Deadly Rooms of Death" so check that out too.

Kurushi for Playstation 1. Fun memories from the multiplayer with my drunken friend.

Lemmings, Super Twintris, Bombuzal, Klax, Brain stage from Purple Saturn Day

Klax is a great game! Very fast paced, interesting design, and a good sense of humour including the silly music. I played the NES version a ton.

I forgot about "Boulder Dash" and 10,000 clones of it. Amazing. It's difficult to combine brain puzzles and action. (And is "Lode Runner" a puzzler?)

Tetris (this version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMGdVtnjOSU , because of the stats (and because of nostalgia))
Boulder Dash
Minesweeper
Lemming is really good too
Nonogram

I am pretty sure there are others, but can't remember at the moment.

I didn't count Boulder Dash as a puzzle game but if it counts, then Amiga's BD clone Emerald Mine (Kingsoft) is of course there. It had some nice features like green alien enemies which gather around a wheel item that player can spin. And enemies which are orange heads constantly saying "däy".

I had that Mirrorsoft's Tetris as well. Yes, the ingame screen is charming in a certain way (and ingame music suits well (I've uploaded Amiga music to CVGM)), controls are crappy though.

Classics:
* NES Tetris - I like the limitations in this version. Not as freeform as Master or Axis.
* Paneru de Pon - fast paced chaining, competitive 2 player mode is fun.
* Tengen Tetris - got that coop mode.
* Tengen KLAX - likely the best version.
* ZZT - some player made puzzle maps are impressive.

Recent:
* Baba is You - manipulate game attributes with onscreen descriptors? Hard to explain in short. You is Hackerbunny.
* SpaceChem - arrange an automated system to synthesize molecules.
* Portal - first person, platformer, escape room, but you cheat with portals.
* iO - light puzzle platformer, roll around exchanging radius/mass/momentum/speed.
* TIS-100 - codegolf with single register CPUs.

Food for thought: many popular puzzle games tend to be somewhat mindless or subconscious and rarely puzzling. Maybe a slight misnomer. Maybe the only reason Tetris is considered a puzzle game is because a game mechanic resembles that of a jigsaw puzzle (don't leave holes), and other game devs saw the grid and said "hey, I can make a puzzle game." The intuitive design is far from puzzling; and any difficulty comes from speed and simplified physics. So I propose:

Tetris is a trypophobic, physics-based, arena-drop grid-game; and it's my favourite puzzle game.

edit: fix formatting

I'm laughing at franz's description of the Emerald Mine yams as "enemies which are orange heads constantly saying däy." franz, those are yamyams. They say "YAM YAM YAM YAM YAM YAM" and they are very relaxed, happy orange heads. They just want to sail around in the black empty space, having fun, and eating tasty emeralds. So don't stand in their way.

Years ago, when I was married, I spent a lot of time messing around with "Rocks'n'Diamonds" (it's a game that emulates Emerald Mine, Boulder Dash, and other similar games) and my wife and her friend made a beautiful yam-yam cake. There isn't a way to post a picture here, but you can imagine that delicious, orange cake. So, finally, it was possible to eat the yamyam, instead of being eaten.

I also like a lot Atomino and Atomix (Atari ST/Amiga games).

Baba is You is a gem. But it can become really really hard :D.