jbluestein
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I have been approached by a friend who is looking to buy a computer game for her father.

He's cerebral and likes puzzle-type games. Things like Tetris/Minesweeper etc. Roleplaying stuff does not interest him.

I did mention DROD, but I don't know whether it will fit the bill or not. So I was wondering if people out there could recommend some good abstract-type puzzle games.

I don't at this time know whether he's a Mac or PC user, so if you recommend something that isn't available on both platforms, please mention which platform it's for.

Thanks!
Josh

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Maurog
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Zuma is my current recommendation as a game-for-parents. It has much in common with Tetris in terms of simplicity and addictiveness.

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Syntax
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As long as the puzzle element doesn't have to be turn-based, I would seriously recommend Pathstorm which zex20913 brought up recently.

It's got great gameplay, has an excellent learning curve, lots of puzzles and a difficulty level to suit all players.

Oneiromancer
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For cerebral logic games, I love most of the options at http://www.kaser.com/ and http://krispixton.com/PrismaPix/ . Kaser software lets you buy all 21 games for $90, which is a pretty good deal since most of them are $20 individually. (There's a new one coming out which I think is very good, having beta tested it, but I don't know if it will be out before Christmas.) If he really likes Minesweeper he should like many games off both sites, I'd especially suggest Knarly Works and Dinner with Moriarty as intro games from the Kaser site, and PrismaPix from Kris Pixton's site.

In terms of more action-oriented games like Tetris, I enjoyed and bought Peggle from Popcap Games--although there's not that much puzzling involved, it's fun. And then I found out it's monstrously popular and I lost some indie cred, but that's okay, it's still very fun.

Edit: all of the above are for PC only, as far as I know. Kaser says that most of them should run in Windows emulation on a Mac just fine, since they aren't really resource hogs, but that necessitates being able to work that out.

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 11-19-2007 07:41 PM]

Tim
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Does free ones also count?

One of the puzzle games set I'm still playing (besides DROD) is Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. It also includes a Minesweeper, Blackbox, and Sudoku.

It's available in OSX, Windows, and Unix(GTK).


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PS. Have you read Other good puzzle games already?

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[Last edited by Tim at 11-19-2007 07:59 PM]

mrimer
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Luxor (and its expansion) are a good sequel for people who like Zuma.

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Alneyan
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I'll cast a vote for Sokoban myself; you shouldn't have trouble finding a program for your particular platform.

eb0ny
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Then there's Enigma.

It is a puzzle game (similar to Sokoban and has elements from many other puzzlers), which requires hand dexterity while operating the mouse (because the "player object" is controlled with a mouse). It has 1000+ levels, about 500 elements, is free and available to all platforms.

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Snacko
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I'll have to second Oneiromancer's idea to check out the Kaser site, I spent pretty much all of last night on those demos.

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[Last edited by Snacko at 11-29-2007 05:55 PM]

Radiant
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I could always recommend SubTerra, which is free...

Blatant plugs aside, if you don't mind retro games, then Logical is a good bet. If you do mind retro games, Marble Drop is very nice. And of course there's Portal, which is kind of puzzle-ish.


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BeefontheBone
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Narbacular Drop is a good place to start if you're not sure you'll like Prtal - it was the student game which got its team the Portal job at Valve, and is lots of fun. It's very short and doesn't have the wonderful humour of Portal, but it's free. The Orange Box is an incredible bargain if you've any interest in FPSs though - Episode 2 and Portal are worth the price even without all the rest.

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Mattcrampy
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Portal is probably going to end up game of the year. The biggest problem is that those journalists are wondering if they could really give game of the year to a game that's only a few hours long.

I'd probably second the recommendation for Zuma.

(Maybe it's just me, but the complete lack of attention paid to graphics in many of the Kaser games turns me off them. Yes, yes, I know the point is the puzzle, but it feels like the author simply didn't care about whether the game looks presentable.)

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Oneiromancer
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Mattcrampy wrote:
(Maybe it's just me, but the complete lack of attention paid to graphics in many of the Kaser games turns me off them. Yes, yes, I know the point is the puzzle, but it feels like the author simply didn't care about whether the game looks presentable.)

It's a valid point. However I really enjoy buying a puzzle magazine and working on it in pencil on a plane, and these puzzles are almost all in the same vein. I doubt many video game versions of Sudoku have fancy graphics, so it doesn't turn me off.

But I understand where you're coming from, because it's really hard for me to play older RPGs with all of the graphical improvements of recent years, and is one of my turnoffs for roguelikes. I guess I just have different criteria for pure logic games. I don't think the difference in the graphics between, say, Descartes Enigma and Picross DS really that important. Or between Greek Squares and any of the hundreds of Sudoku games out there. But when I compare Eschalon Book 1 and Birth of Shadows, the former intrigues me while the latter turns me off. The Avernum games are kind of in-between...but the fact that I've only bought the first one and never finished it might answer what camp I put them in.

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zonhin
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Graphics don't have to be advanced by any means. What really matters is how aesthetically pleasing it is. I'm weird in that I find ASCII aesthetically pleasing.

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Oneiromancer
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Right. I used to find ASCII aesthetically pleasing...or at least I didn't mind it so much...but I don't any more.

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eb0ny
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Presentation matters. Graphics don't.

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zonhin
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eb0ny wrote:
Presentation matters. Graphics don't.

And often, the presentation comes through in the graphics. Good graphics are just another way of presenting it for you.

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calamarain
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zonhin wrote:

eb0ny wrote:
Presentation matters. Graphics don't.

And often, the presentation comes through in the graphics. Good graphics are just another way of presenting it for you.

I really wish I could remember the name of the game. I'm googling, but not having much luck. It was an entirely sound-based game, no visuals. Originally intended for the blind. It used cues from the left/right speakers or headphones to tell you about the environment, and you had to kill the monsters that were stalking you.

Just a different example of cool presentation.

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Oneiromancer wrote:
dit: all of the above are for PC only, as far as I know. Kaser says that most of them should run in Windows emulation on a Mac just fine, since they aren't really resource hogs, but that necessitates being able to work that out.

FYI, Everett Kaser's games are now available on the Mac - http://www.kaser.com/macosx.html

ObPimp: I did the programming on these for him.

eb0ny
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zonhin wrote:
And often, the presentation comes through in the graphics. Good graphics are just another way of presenting it for you.

But when the only thing a game has to offer is graphics, then it is bad. To me all graphics are good as long as I can tell things apart, it doesn't hurt looking at and it is not interrupting with gameplay.

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zonhin
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eb0ny wrote:

zonhin wrote:
And often, the presentation comes through in the graphics. Good graphics are just another way of presenting it for you.

But when the only thing a game has to offer is graphics, then it is bad. To me all graphics are good as long as I can tell things apart, it doesn't hurt looking at and it is not interrupting with gameplay.

Ah, our definitions differ, though they are similar. I judge graphics based on how aesthetically pleasing they are. That doesn't mean pixel shaders and bloom, that means something like Knytt.

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Watcher
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calamarain wrote:
I really wish I could remember the name of the game. I'm googling, but not having much luck. It was an entirely sound-based game, no visuals. Originally intended for the blind. It used cues from the left/right speakers or headphones to tell you about the environment, and you had to kill the monsters that were stalking you.

You are probably thinking of Demor or perhaps Aura.

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Mattcrampy
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And yet I can't stop playing Latin Squares. Damn you Kaser, you magnificent bastard.

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malkav11
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I don't agree that Narbacular Drop is helpful in determining whether you'll like Portal - it's just so, so much less polished and charming. I was turned off by it almost immediately, whereas Portal is one of my favorite games of the past year.

goldenferret
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I agree - difficulty curve is awful, and it doesn't seem as puzzle-oriented as portal... that is, if you don't consider "trying to aim precisely within a few pixels, hitting the wrong button and falling into lava all within the same eight seconds due to the complete anal-retentiveness of whoever made the game's physics engine" a puzzle.

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Hikari
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calamarain wrote:

zonhin wrote:

eb0ny wrote:
Presentation matters. Graphics don't.

And often, the presentation comes through in the graphics. Good graphics are just another way of presenting it for you.

I really wish I could remember the name of the game. I'm googling, but not having much luck. It was an entirely sound-based game, no visuals. Originally intended for the blind. It used cues from the left/right speakers or headphones to tell you about the environment, and you had to kill the monsters that were stalking you.

Just a different example of cool presentation.

There's a game like that on GBA... never came out outside of Japan, unfortunately, but... I think it's called SoundVoyager.

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mrimer
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calamarain wrote:
I really wish I could remember the name of the game. I'm googling, but not having much luck. It was an entirely sound-based game, no visuals. Originally intended for the blind. It used cues from the left/right speakers or headphones to tell you about the environment, and you had to kill the monsters that were stalking you.

I understand there are many audio-based titles at

audiogames.net

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[Last edited by mrimer at 01-04-2008 01:11 AM]

Pooka
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This looks like a good topic for this, so here I go:

I've been searching for quite a while now, but didn't really succeeded in finding a good game, so I decided to ask for some advice. What I'm looking for is a good (and most preferably fantasy) adventure game. My very favourites 'til now were Legend of Kyrandia (strictly part 1!), the King's Quest series (the remakes of part 1-2-3, and part 5 and 6) and A tale of two kingdoms, so I'd like to find something alike these - a longer and challenging fantasy adventure with nice graphics. The platform would be PC, the system is Windows XP, and it would be nice to have something that is freeware and easy to download (meaning here that it's not some complicated torrent downloading or suchlike).
What I've already tried: Lure of the temptress, Principles of Evil, these were okay, but just not exactly the thing. Legend of Kyrandia 2 and 3 are right out, and somehow I'm not really interested (don't know why, maybe because of the graphics) in LucasArts stuff (Monkey Island series and Maniac Mansion). So apart from these, and with the parameters listed above, has anyone any good tips, what to look for and/or where?
Thanks for any ideas!

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Snacko
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It's not fantasy, but Circle of Blood (Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars) is a long, challenging classic that is still as gripping and beautiful today as it was when it came out. It's also for the PS1 and, surprisingly, has a superb port out for the Gameboy Advance (sans voice acting and cutscenes).

The CHZO Mythos games (which I reviewed a while back) are more fantasy based, though I would classify them more in the horror category. It doesn't really get under your skin until the third in the series (Trilby's Notes, considered on of the best AGS game ever made), but as a whole, the series offers great visuals, sharp writing (the creator is a well-known Australian columnist and game-reviewer), memorable characters and a gripping plot. It's also scary as hell, but that's just a bonus.

Out of Order is also free, and tells the story of Hurford, a boy who leaves his room to find, instead of his house, a large, faceless, zoo-like, alien community. Very reminiscent of Adam's most famous serires, and a lot of fun.

But really, I think the absolute best choice for you (and easily one of the finest games ever made) is The Longest Journey. You can likely find it for cheap. It's plot, despite its enormous length, is tightly paced and fast-moving and the production values are fairly high with fantastic art and great voice acting. I'm not going to spoil anything, but know that this game is simply a must-play.

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Oneiromancer
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If you can find them, I enjoyed the Death Gate and Shannara adventure games based on the fantasy novels. Death Gate is much more of a traditional adventure game (although its magic system makes it unique), as Shannara has random encounters in-between the adventure puzzle areas. I don't know where to find a copy of them these days though.

Grim Fandango is one of my favorite adventure games ever...it's a LucasArts game, but the graphics are only like the final Monkey Island, not the earlier ones.

As a fan of both science fiction and fantasy, I also really like the Space Quest games. All of them except 2 and 3, I believe, are mouse-controlled.

Oh, I almost forgot...there's also the Quest For Glory series by Sierra (originally called Hero's Quest). About 1/3 RPG and 2/3 adventure game. The first one was remade, so only the second one has a text parser (and I never did beat that one).

If you find an old copy and have trouble running it on a modern computer, the SCUMMVM project (just Google it) lets you most of these old games pretty well, not just the LucasArts ones it is named after. Looking through the list, I'm reminded of the fiendishly difficult Goblins games (Gobliiins, Gobliins 2, and Goblins 3--yes, they're spelled correctly, the number of i's is the number of goblins you control), Elvira 1 and 2(horror and fantasy), and Simon the Sorcerer.

And then I saw one of my favorite adventure games of all time: Loom. Although a LucasArts game, I still heartily recommend it. It is pure fantasy, has an amazing story, and has unique puzzle-solving mechanics in your staff that plays music. You cast spells by playing songs that you hear in the world. In fact, on the highest difficulty, you aren't given any notes--you have to have a good musical ear to learn the songs! Fortunately the easier difficulties show you notes or colors so you can transcribe the songs. The only bad thing about the game is that the ending clearly suggests there will be a sequel but they never made one.

I guess that's all I can think of.

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