BothPortalgames are two of the most influential video games ever, forever changing the standards for puzzle games with their genius design and witty narratives, and they both leave you wanting more.
While Steam contains a bevy of somewhat official Portal mods and fangames, like Portal Stories: Mel, or Portal: Reloaded, and most of those are great, sometimes you want a slightly fresher experience.
DualShockers Definitives: Best Puzzle Games of 2024
2024 has had quite a few unique, small puzzle games, and here are 10 great ones.
Thankfully, in the decade since Portal 2 was released,we’ve gotten a ton of games that take inspiration or try to live up to the same standards that Aperture had set, and some of them achieve that excellence.
I think these ten games will heavily appeal to you if you’re a fan of Portal, whether it be for innovative puzzle design, the futuristic realism aesthetic, or simply because they give off Portal vibes.
10Splitgate
Shot In Two
WhileSplitgateis not a puzzle game in the slightest, it’s a first-person shooter with portals that function identically to the ones you’re familiar with, using them for a competitive multiplayer environment instead.
It takes a metric ton of inspiration from Portal, with its realistic futuristic aesthetic and portals you may use to get unique angles and shoot at opponents from behind a wall that they can’t see,with some rather unique weaponry.
It’s one of the coolest arena shooters out there, and the portals are the big, central gameplay mechanic, soif you want to be thrown into a big area and zip around with wormholes, this one’s for you.
That said, Splitgate 2 is on the horizon, with open alphas that sweaty individuals are already meta-gaming the hell out of so no one else can have fun, so you may want to practice for that full release.
9The Witness
Brain Breaker
The Witness
If all you want is to be shoved into a pretty place with a few hundred mind-bending, sometimes seemingly impossible puzzles, thenThe Witnessis definitely a great option, despite the lack of similarity.
It doesn’t have extremely similar vibes to Portal, butthe puzzle design has a similar level of exploration and thought required, and it’s a great way to get your fix on puzzles that need some spatial awareness.
10 Puzzle Games That Need a Sequel
Old and new puzzle games like Grim Fandango and Baba is You would make great sequel material, giving us new puzzles to solve and worlds to explore.
The Witness focuses on line puzzles where you connect dots in ways that get exponentially more difficult as things go on, and while it provides absolutely no guidance toward the solutions, that just makes things more rewarding.
It’s beautifully stylized, has an incredibly subtle story, and will keep you busy forever if you never fold to the frustration and look up a guide for some of the puzzles. Don’t worry, no one will know if you do.
8Outer Wilds
You WILL Love It
Outer Wilds
I don’t know why, but everyone I know that loves Portal 2 also adoresOuter Wilds, if they’ve played it.
Outer Wilds is a puzzle game taking place in a big, open world, and grants you freedom unlike any other game, letting you go anywhere no matter what point in the game you’re at, as long as you know how to get there.
The entire solar system is a puzzle, requiring you to learn new things, and obtain knowledge from reading through long-neglected pieces of information from an ancient society, exposing you to the incredible story in the process.
Does it have a futuristic aesthetic, sassy narrators, or portals? Not really. But if you’re a fan of semi-realistic science fiction-focused puzzle games, you’ll probably fall in love with Outer Wilds.
7Manifold Garden
Spin Me Right Around
Manifold Garden
One of the trippiest, strangest gaming experiences ever,Manifold Garden puts you in an unbelievable, geometric, and indescribable world, throwing physics and navigation-based puzzles at you.
Manifold Garden is a unique experience that’s unlike anything I’ve ever played. It’s genuinely difficult to describe, with cube puzzles that are extremely reminiscent of Portal happening right after falling into a lattice-like geometric hellscape.
The environments are simplistic outlined shapes that never fail to sell a sense of scale like no other, every room feels so abstract even if the puzzles within them are pretty manageable, and it’s very fun to figure out.
If you like Portal’s puzzle design but want something that’ll throw your brain for a loop with its aesthetic, Manifold Garden absolutely delivers on that idea, especially with its cube puzzles and exploration.
Not Super Buggy
Another title with space-bending mechanics that can boggle the mind,Cocoon is an excellent titlehas you placing orbs to go inside an orb and grab an orb within the orb to put it in another orb.
There’s a handful of complete, distinct worlds in Cocoon, all of which take place entirely in a spherethat you can jump inside or carry around as an object in a different world, and this concept gets stretched as far as possible.
From grabbing one world and taking it across invisible platforms in another, to using a sphere as a redirector for a projectile to hit a different target, every puzzle in this game expands this simple mechanic further and further.
It’s one of the only games that’s felt as revelatory to me as Portal 2 did back when I first played it. It has that same single-targeted focus on a simple but genius mechanic, and it feels just as good to find every use for it.
5Q.U.B.E. 2
Sealed Away
Q.U.B.E. 2
The Q.U.B.E. series has always lived in the shadow of Valve’s better-known puzzle series, but it’s stillseriously impressive with its realistic futurism aesthetic, and block mechanics that feel similarly engaging.
Q.U.B.E. 2 in particularsteps everything up from its predecessor, featuring voice acting that persists the entire game, an expansive facility, as well as a massive leap in quality with visuals and puzzle design.
It essentially gives you the ability to adjust parts of the chambers to your liking, whether it be lighting jump panels to launch across rooms, or figuring out the right order to extend out blocks and make the room function.
This gets rather complex once you’re adjusting several differently colored panels, deciding which to turn on or off, and essentially building half the puzzle from scratch, and it’s really great at easing you into it, just like Portal.
4The Talos Principle
I Wanna Go Home
The Talos Principle
Finally, we’re getting into games that feature sassy narrators yapping on about things while you solve puzzles, andThe Talos Principleis the prime example, having a man constantly waxing poetic to you.
It featuresa large variety of puzzles that usually consist of placing down refractors and connecting them to lasersthat power something, making you cleverly bend beams around corners and dodge security orbs.
It’s quite relaxing, and the dialogue is genuinely great, as you get little excerpts from people on what it means to live, or about carrying on the torch from ancient civilizations, which helps a lot when I can’t figure outhow the hell some puzzles work.
It’s incredibly tricky at times, more than you’d think given the rather simple idea of redirecting beams. It constantly pushes you to think outside the box, and to find an alternate solution to every situation.
3Death Squared
Co-op Confusion
Death Squared
One of the only multiplayer games on this list,Death Squaredis a game that looks remarkably different from Portal on the surface, but wins in the vibes category, especially given the narration present in the game.
If you’re familiar with Portal 2’s co-op mode, then Death Squared’s puzzle design will feel very familiar to you, often feeling kinda turn-based, with one player standing on a switch to open the way for the other.
This leads to one of thebest co-operative puzzling experiences, especially since it goes up to four players, and each one has a role to fulfill, and a place to be, making it feel like a coordinated effort to complete any room.
It’s somewhat tactical, and it’s very fun to brainstorm ideas with your buddies as you all attempt to figure out how to block a laser or move a platform that you’re connected to without killing the other person.
2Superliminal
Mind-Bending, Mind-Frustrating
Superliminal
It feels likeSuperliminalis always actively trying to appeal to Portal enjoyers, and it usually works out, with the incredible mechanic of perspective-based visual trickery, and narration that I only hate a little bit.
The writing is a bit overly self-aware and snarky, but the puzzle design is so innovative and the set pieces are so cool that I don’t really care. Grabbing something small, looking up, and dropping it as a massive object is always cool.
10 Best Cozy Puzzle Games
Puzzles can be a real mental workout, but not all puzzle games need to be stressful!
Objects stay the same size while you’re holding them, then adjust to whatever real-world sizethey would be if that perspective were real, and thissimple concept gets stretchedinto puzzles that genuinely hurt my head.
It’s intentionally messing with you, and I love it. Nothing makes sense, yet at the same time, every solution is completely logical given the rules of the game, and all the puzzles feel incredibly rewarding for figuring it all out.
1The Entropy Centre
If Portal-like Were a Genre
If Braid and Portal had a baby, they’d make The Entropy Centre. This game follows almost every principle and design aspect Valve set forward to a tee, while introducing a similarly ingenious time-rewinding aspect.
The aesthetic is essentially what the Portal series would look like if they were made for modern hardware, and the time-winding gun complements physics-based objects so well, giving a surprisingly massive amount of depth to the puzzles.
You get a robotic voice lore dumping to you every so often, a cool first-person perspective that makes exploring the chambers feel more real, and everything is so intricately designed to appeal to Portal fans.
Despite all that inspiration and similarity, it doesn’t even feel derivative, usually making entirely new designs with its unique rewind mechanic that keeps the whole thing feeling lovingly familiar, yet intriguingly unique.
