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ABOUT Puzzle Lovers

Welcome to Puzzle Lovers! - Play Hard. Think Harder.

Puzzle Lovers is for people who enjoy working through games that rely less on reflexes, and more on using your cerebral cortex. It's a place to share game recommendations and offer different, creative solutions. From 1st-person puzzlers to point & click adventures, nonograms to sokoban, word games to number games, etc. It's all welcome here.

Thanks for dropping by, look around and join if you like what you see. Here are some of the things we can offer.

Contact: puzzleloversgroup@gmail.com

Friendly discussions on the forum
- New to the group? Introduce yourself!
- Tell us what you've been playing, puzzler or otherwise.
- Open a thread for your favorite puzzle game.
- Ask for help if you get stuck.
- Post your puzzle-related creations in the Community Corner.

Brainrack, our weekly newsletter
- Posted every Monday as an announcement
- New and upcoming releases on Steam, and other game news
- Giveaways, deals and bundles
- Spotlight on lesser-known or forgotten games
- Community Corner pick
- Check out the newsletter archives

Giveaways
We have giveaways every week and for occasional special events. Details and links are in the current issue of the newsletter.

Our curator page
Follow us for recommendations on hundreds of titles, usually with detailed reviews, and browse our 60+ lists for various themes.

We're advocates for both puzzle gamers and puzzle game devs. In our reviews, we try to provide an objective assessment (to the extent possible) about the current state of a game. At the same time, we also try to make games better by offering feedback. Sometimes our curators are even credited in the game credits. However, we never receive compensation for our reviews or feedback.

For developers and publishers
We, the curators, are a team of experienced players, developers and QA specialists, who have enjoyed games for many decades. We want to help both developers have a more successful launch, and players have better games to enjoy, so we're offering, for free, to playtest and provide feedback.

If you just want to promote your game to our group members, feel free to open a thread on the forum to facilitate discussion and gather feedback, and improve your games with our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide.

Thanks for your attention, enjoy your stay!
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Brainrack, Issue #315 (May 14, 2025)
May 14 - sdumitriu | 0 Comments

Welcome once again to our weekly newsletter with puzzle game news, new and upcoming releases, giveaways, deals and bundles, spotlight on a lesser-known or forgotten game and other stuff, posted on Tuesdays.

Greetings to those who’ve joined since last week! If you found us through a link to the newsletter, read the group overview to see what else we can offer, visit the forum for puzzle discussion, follow our curator for reviews and recommendations, check out our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide on how to improve your games, and tell your friends if you like what you see. Thanks!

Recently there have been a bunch of articles about a massive Steam breach, with tens of millions of accounts for sale. Do not worry, that is a complete misrepresentation of what happened, it’s just “modern journalism” in which so called news sites quote random tweets without taking the time to properly understand them, check the facts, follow the leads, talk with any of the people or companies involved. The “independent journalist” cited by these news is a member of the Sentinels of the Store group, which I mentioned in another newsletter, and tried to put the record straight that he is not the author of the claim, the leak is not confirmed, is not a breach, and is not even a major cause of concern. Steam itself put out an announcement disclaiming the news.

In other news, the Fest of the week is the Creature Collector Fest, which doesn't really have many puzzle games, but feel free to take a look.

New on the Curator
Ideally, every group member would follow our curator and vice versa, but until then here's the changelog. And don't forget our many lists based on themes and subgenres.

New curatees with full reviews:


New curatees with mini-reviews:


Please let us know in the Curator Info thread if you'd like to write mini-reviews (max. 200 characters, positive or negative) for puzzlers that aren't curated by us yet. Examples and inspiration can be found on the Group Member Recommendations list.

Giveaway: Miner Vidis and Snakeloop
The giveaways are on SteamGifts, but no need to create an account, just visit the site and log in through Steam. Good luck!

Miner Vidis[www.steamgifts.com] is available for everybody, and Snakeloop[www.steamgifts.com] only for group members, courtesy of the developers.

Puzzle Game News
Got your own puzzler, adventure, demo or some new content coming out on mobile or PC? Let us know in the forum or by adding sdumitriu on Steam Chat.

Free Game Highlights:


Paid Games - Now Free:


New demos:

The demo of the week is Seeking The Guardian.

  • :steamthumbsup: Broken Relic (point&click, adventure): Fantasy adventure about an apprentice accidentally releasing a powerful demon. Nice setting, decent but easy inventory puzzles, though too much 4th wall breaking and nonsensical humor.
  • :steamsad: Castle Crumble (physics): Knock down castles using projectiles. A fully 3D version of the classic tower destroying game, without the more complex finger slingshot mechanics of Angry Birds, just choose a place to hit and tap to hit it. Not much more to say, it’s quite basic, with easy levels.
  • :steamsad: Cube Mind (test chambers, laser redirecting): Yet another Portal-like, with test chambers under the supervision of an AI, grabbing boxes and putting them on platforms. The extra gimmick is that boxes redirect lasers. The bad part is that controlling the boxes is very finicky, so bad that I didn't have the patience to do more than two laser levels.
  • :steamthumbsup: The Mystery of Doomsday Valley (point&click, adventure): Point & click adventure mystery game, talk to characters, look at things, pick up objects. Nice graphics, decent writing, though either there is some prior content missing from the demo, or they messed up the order of the dialog since it assumes I already discussed with one of the characters.
  • :steamthumbsdown: Mystery Island: Missing Amy (hidden object, mobile minigames, mystery): A cheap mobile port, with either terrible voice acting, or AI-generated voices. Tap to solve minigames, bad hidden object search, uninspired puzzles.
  • :steamthumbsdown: Network Nodes (logic): Connect nodes with lines, making sure that each node has as many connections as the number in the node. Terrible QoL, boring levels, no level select, buggy control.
  • :steamsad: Offscreen (logic, platformer): A game that tries to copy The Pedestrian, but fails abysmally. Control a robot that can switch between 2D and 3D. The 2D part is a platformer that takes place inside TV screens. The 3D part allows you to rearrange the TVs, changing the layout of the 2D screens. The 3D world is hard to control, with the camera moving wildly, things are hard to grab and control, sometimes you can't pick up things because the camera thinks you're looking somewhere else. The 2D platforming requires some precision, and the camera also fails to follow you in here. Plus, half the text is not translated from Russian. I was looking forward to a new Pedestrian-like game, but this is too disappointing.
  • :steamthumbsup: Seeking The Guardian (cryptic puzzles): A collection of rooms in which you have to figure out what needs to be done. Each room has a different puzzle, and one or more doors that you need to open. Inspecting each door gives a clue about what the goal is, but it’s usually not an obvious clue.

New and Upcoming Releases on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3333880/Golden_Idol_Investigations_The_Lemurian_Phoenix/

A fresh new DLC for Golden Idol, more of the same, this time with music more similar to the original Case game. 5 new cases, including one that involves deciphering an unknown language.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3668990/Legacy__Reawakening/

A 3D escape room game, decent enough, taking place in a huge cave with many rooms. You have to keep moving back and forth between rooms, since actions taken in one room may have effect in another one, or items discovered in a new room may be useful in a previous one. Good hints, a map with fast travel, highlighting which room you have things to do, runs really well even without a proper GPU.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2660630/MistyPuzzle/

A kind of Tangram game, place shapes on top of each other to copy a target image. Relaxing.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3316640/Neon_Hearts_City/

A point and click adventure/detective game. Futuristic mystery story, play as a detective looking for a missing girl. Standard exploration, weird inventory tricks, pretty linear. Decent graphics and music, accessibility settings.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3601120/Toffee_Cats/

Numberlink with cats. Basic numberlink, but instead of connecting abstract dots of color, you connect heads and butts of cats.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3661930/Vaccine_Case/

Logic puzzle game, figure out the correct order in which you must open doors between areas to get the correct color “vaccine” to kill the germs. Color mixing, move optimization, looks quite interesting.

And the rest:

  • Minesweeper Together (type): Minesweeper, but for two. Unlike the many recent massively multiplayer minesweeper games, this one is just co-op, which I for one think it’s better. Still, the game itself doesn't seem that good, just basic minesweeper.
  • Radley Ravencroft's Spy Web Mystery (FMV, detective, escape room, early access release)

Game of the week: Double Trip
Highlighting the best release of last week, at least according to the curator’s opinion.

A Sokoban for two, well done, with not too many levels, but each one feels unique. It also looks great, and the many skins you can unlock reference other very good puzzle games.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3414480/Double_Trip/

Short game of the week: Raddle[raddle.quest]
Highlighting a short and free puzzle game every week!

A word game with daily levels (and an archive going back a few months). Each puzzle consists of two words and a collection of clues, and you must find all the intermediary words, each one corresponding to one of the clues, that transform the source word into the target one. But you don’t know which clue applies to the current word, so you don't know if you're supposed to say that the opposite of “noon” is “midnight” or that the period right after “noon” is “evening”, but you can definitely rule out that any anagram of “noon” is a number. I had fun the past week trying to get 100% scores on all the levels, can you give it a try? Works in a browser, even on a phone.

RADDLE • May 14
100%
SUNSET ╠════════════╣ BOULEVARD

Not-quite-short game of the week: Shackle[steven-miller.itch.io]
Highlighting another free puzzle game every week!

A challenging pathfinding game in which you are shackled to a ball using a short chain. Learn to use it to your advantage to reach the exit in all of the rooms, and maybe you will escape this prison and even free yourself from the shackle. Works in a browser, but not on a phone.

Screenshot of the Week: The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show
Puzzler screenshots are mostly for providing hints or solutions, but they can still be beautiful, funny, or some other adjectives, so post yours in the Screenshots thread on the forum, include a caption if you want, and we might put it in one of the next issues. No spoilers, please!

A free game from Rusty Lake celebrating 10 years. Most of the game is just short minigames in which you have to help the titular Mr. Rabbit perform some kind of trick, but there is also a room in which you have to prepare the party. It’s fun, with just a little bit of macabre.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3478128763

Deal of the Week: Lost in Play
You can always check our curator for curated titles on sale. Specials on the front page is incomplete, click the Discounts tab for more.

A fun adventure good for the whole family, cute and easy.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1328840/Lost_in_Play/

Spotlight: LYNE
Not to be confused with our Deal of the Week, which is just an especially good deal from the weeklies. Every week we'll pick a puzzler we really like and try to push it down everyone's throats. But with love because it's so good. Or highlight a lesser-known title that's unlikely to get curated. Comment below if you'd like to write about an undeservedly forgotten game for next time!

A simplistic but hard "draw lines through all squares" (Numberlink-like) puzzle game requiring multiple passes through nodes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/266010/LYNE/

Community Corner
Show the world how good (or bad) you are at puzzle games by submitting your Workshop levels, guides, walkthroughs, mods, artwork inspired by a puzzler, or whatever, even if it's not a game curated by us, in this forum thread or below in the comments, to be featured here next time.

Nana’s image guide for Electric Road.

Want to Help?
Here are a few quick & easy ways you can help us out. A little can go a long way, otherwise we'll never achieve world domination.
  • Feedback is important, so let us know what you like or don't like.
  • Follow our curator and get notified about new additions and reviews.
  • Tell your puzzle- and/or adventure-loving friends and your favorite developers about us and our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide.

Thanks for reading, spread the word!

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Brainrack, Issue #314 (May 7, 2025)
May 7 - sdumitriu | 0 Comments

Welcome once again to our weekly newsletter with puzzle game news, new and upcoming releases, giveaways, deals and bundles, spotlight on a lesser-known or forgotten game and other stuff, posted on Tuesdays.

Greetings to those who’ve joined since last week! If you found us through a link to the newsletter, read the group overview to see what else we can offer, visit the forum for puzzle discussion, follow our curator for reviews and recommendations, check out our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide on how to improve your games, and tell your friends if you like what you see. Thanks!

It’s been a year since I started doing this, and I’m still enjoying it. During this time we’ve added more than 1000 group members (welcome!), 1000 curator followers, 8 co-curators, and 400 reviews. Here’s to many more!

New on the Curator
Ideally, every group member would follow our curator and vice versa, but until then here's the changelog. And don't forget our many lists based on themes and subgenres.

New curatees with full reviews:


New curatees with mini-reviews:


Please let us know in the Curator Info thread if you'd like to write mini-reviews (max. 200 characters, positive or negative) for puzzlers that aren't curated by us yet. Examples and inspiration can be found on the Group Member Recommendations list.

Giveaway: Lots of Things - Collector's Edition and Planetiles
The giveaways are on SteamGifts, but no need to create an account, just visit the site and log in through Steam. Good luck!

Lots of Things - Collector's Edition[www.steamgifts.com] is available for everybody, and Planetiles[www.steamgifts.com] only for group members, courtesy of the developers.

Puzzle Game News
Got your own puzzler, adventure, demo or some new content coming out on mobile or PC? Let us know in the forum or by adding sdumitriu on Steam Chat.

Free Game Highlights:


Paid Games - Now Free:


New content:

Quantum Odyssey added 30 more levels and improved many other aspects of the game. Rubicon Cubindom has a redesigned interactive tutorial.

New demos:

The demo of the week is The Séance of Blake Manor, but the demo will be removed very soon so hurry up and download it before it’s gone.

  • :steamsad: Mod Mage Mike (programming, physics, action): program guns and turrets using connected modules: tune the speed of projectiles, add delays, then split, then change angle, loop back to repeat, all to make projectiles follow a certain path. This part of the game is nice, although a bit too trial-and error carefully turning knobs until you hit the perfect angle and perfect delay. But then there’s real time bullet hell once you switch from programming turret puzzles to fighting evil robots.
  • :steamthumbsup: The Séance of Blake Manor (detective): 3D First person detective game with Golden Idol inspired mechanics, time management, escape room aspects, nice looking comic-book graphics, a spooky setting, and a lot of other nice things. Investigate a disappearance somewhere in Ireland at the end of the 19th century. Last chance to try the demo, and if the download button is missing, try opening this link: steam://install/3547180
  • :steamthumbsdown: WaterMeasure (logic): The classic riddle of “how can you measure X liters of water when you have just 2 buckets of M and N liters”, repeated over and over with trivial values of X, M and N. I hope that the full version will have harder levels and more buckets, but the trivial and repetitive levels, the and the lack of quality make this hard to recommend at the moment.

New and Upcoming Releases on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2551300/BROKEN_LIFE/

A point&click adventure game about life in war-torn Ukraine. This is early access, just a third of the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3414480/Double_Trip/

A lovely Sokoban game, you control two characters that must coordinate to solve box-pushing puzzles and reach the exit. Positions that would be impossible in a regular sokoban suddenly become feasible when you carefully pass the box from one player to the other. And it looks good, sounds good, and has challenging puzzles!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2525310/Drop_Duchy/

A nice roguelite strategy game based on the Tetris game, but expanded. The goal is to build an army and defeat the enemy, progressing through stages of resource gathering, fighting enemies, getting new cards, fighting bosses. Each stage plays on a Tetris board, with pieces dropping from the top, but very slowly so you have time to strategize. The pieces have different types: forest, plain or field, or a resource gathering/converting building, or an army strengthening building, and you have to place them strategically, since the size of the army depends on how many forest pieces are connected to it, or how many field spots are around it. Making lines doesn’t remove them from the field, like in regular Tetris, but instead gathers resources from the types of terrain in that line. Once you fill the board or use all the pieces, you can attack by making a path between yours and the enemy’s armies. Very nice concept, and the game is decently done.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3472550/The_Mr_Rabbit_Magic_Show/

A surprise free release from Rusty Lake, makers of good but weird point&click puzzle games, in celebration of their tenth anniversary. If you’re not familiar with the Rusty Lake Hotel or Cube Escape series, you can try this one for free to see if you enjoy the genre.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778840/Spirit_of_the_North_2/

Beautiful exploration/adventure game in which you roam northern environments as a fox.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2966550/SpreadCheat/

Math game with a very retro look, in which you must “massage” data in spreadsheets to cheat on financial reports and tax audits. Not too long and not too hard, but the humor isn’t for me.

And the rest:


Game of the week: Box #341
Highlighting the best release of last week, at least according to the curator’s opinion.

There weren’t many good games last week, post sokoban-fest, but this one was good nevertheless. A good puzzle game pretending to be a platformer, with good mechanics, good levels, and a decent story.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3445150/Box_341/

Short game of the week: Islay Quest[nnnaaammm.itch.io]
Highlighting a short and free puzzle game every week!

A short sokoban-like puzzle game in which you don’t push boxes, but barrels of whiskey in famous Scottish distilleries. The extra trick is that the barrels must end up hole-up so that the whiskey doesn’t spill. Along the way, learn about the various brands, and about landmarks and important events about the islands of Islay. Other than one harder level, the others are easy, so anyone can give this a try. Works in a browser, even on a phone.

Not-quite-short game of the week: Dust Bunny[adamatomic.itch.io]
Highlighting another free puzzle game every week!

You’re a fluffy bunny who has to clean the dust. Move over the ground, sticking yourself to various helper blobs. Although it starts with a few very easy levels, it gets interesting quickly, adding a new mechanic every 5 levels or so. Works in a browser, even on a phone.

Deal of the Week: Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

The fourth entry in the Trine series gets back on track, with improvements all over the place: better levels, better story, better controls, better graphics, and new features that make sense. If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s a puzzle platformer in which you control 3 characters trapped in one body, freely switching between the thief, the wizard and the knight, each with their special powers. It’s up to you to find which one of them is best suited for the job at hand, be it killing skeletons or reaching new places.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/690640/Trine_4_The_Nightmare_Prince/

You can always check our curator for curated titles on sale. Specials on the front page is incomplete, click the Discounts tab for more.

Spotlight: Sqroma
Not to be confused with our Deal of the Week, which is just an especially good deal from the weeklies. Every week we'll pick a puzzler we really like and try to push it down everyone's throats. But with love because it's so good. Or highlight a lesser-known title that's unlikely to get curated. Comment below if you'd like to write about an undeservedly forgotten game for next time!

A mixture of maze, precision, and logic. You play as a chromatic square trying to reach the exit on every level. Standing in your way are different kinds of colored obstacles, some static, some moving, some actively shooting at you. If you hit an obstacle or projectile, you die, but that is not always a bad thing. Colliding with a projectile destroys not just you, but also the projectile, and while you respawn back at the last save point, the rest of the level continues, and having destroyed that projectile can help you progress closer to the exit.

There is a very great variety of puzzles: simple mazes, bullet hell, logic, precision movement, and combinations with different proportions of each genre. The levels are grouped in different worlds, each with its own theme, and a final boss level with some tough puzzles. Other than just finishing all the levels, you can try to beat the clock on each level, and go for a speedrun through most of the levels and the boss.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1730000/Sqroma/

Want to Help?
Here are a few quick & easy ways you can help us out. A little can go a long way, otherwise we'll never achieve world domination.
  • Feedback is important, so let us know what you like or don't like.
  • Follow our curator and get notified about new additions and reviews.
  • Tell your puzzle- and/or adventure-loving friends and your favorite developers about us and our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide.

Thanks for reading, spread the word!

Read More
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STEAM CURATOR
Puzzle Lovers reviews
"Puzzle and adventure games. Minimalist, nonogram, escape room, Sokoban, indie, jigsaw, logic, deduction, matching, hidden object, platformer, word and card/board games, etc. Check the lists for genres."
Here are a few recent reviews by Puzzle Lovers
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89 Comments
SPIN Protocol Feb 12 @ 11:38am 
Hello! A few days ago my brother and I launched our first game: SPIN Protocol. It's a conceptually simple but increasingly difficult puzzle game about rotating nodes to redirect colored signals- If anyone wants to give it a try, we'd appreciate any feedback
Ixhorb Jan 25 @ 4:34am 
:summersun:
Tanner Dec 5, 2024 @ 6:31am 
@MrL0G1C: I will be reviewing KiNoKoe: Tree's Voice soon.
MrL0G1C Dec 1, 2024 @ 1:27pm 
Could you review https://store.steampowered.com/app/1846710/KiNoKoe__Trees_Voice/ it's an awesome game although a bit rough around the edges, a chill puzzle game with retro Japanese aesthetic and a lot of attention to detail. It deserves more exposure.
Tanner Nov 17, 2024 @ 3:19pm 
@archcorenth:
Steam allows the use of AI in games as long as it does not infringe on the US Copyright Law. Last year the rulings on copyright and human authorship was extended to AI generated images and text. Many of the games we review and recommend use AI, and it doesn't minimize the developer's work. In fact, Archipel Logic Infinite which was completely done by AI, and was given a very positive review by both sdumitriu and myself.
sdumitriu Nov 17, 2024 @ 1:46pm 
Which game are you talking about @archcorenth?
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