History Main / BizarrePuzzleGame

** ''MarbleMadness'' can be said to a relative of this game, since the only gameplay difference is that you're moving the ball rather than the playing field.

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* ''TodayIDie'' is one of these, and a beautiful one at that. Basically, it's playing a [[BetterThanItSounds metaphor for returning from the brink of suicide]].

* ''{{Lemmings}}''. Perhaps the TropeMaker of the EscortMission-based puzzle game, but hardly the only example. Brilliantly summed up by a message scrawled by the developers on one of the levels: MAD DAM DMA [Design].
** Others include: ''ChuChuRocket'', ''{{Pac-Man}} 2: The New Adventures'', ''Sheep'', ''Troddlers'', ''Pingus''.

* ''GodOfWar'' is largely considered the benchmark for what a hack-and-slash game is supposed to be, but the game's larger focus seems to be puzzles rather than combat. Often times said puzzles will be even ''[[PlatformHell more]]'' [[PlatformHell dangerous]] [[PressXToNotDie than any fight]]. I'm looking at you, [[ThatOneLevel Tartarus escape level]]...
* ''PunchOut'' is considered by many fans and this wiki to be a PuzzleGame akin to Simon Says, but looks ''nothing'' like that.

* The object of ''WorldOfGoo'' is to build bridges across levels by stringing together balls of goo.

This doesn't include games which are just weird because the developers decided that Tetris should have an ExcusePlot that involves evacuating a planet via Tetris powered portals to other planets. Framing a paddle and ball game in a trapped spaceship plot, like in ''{{Arkanoid}}'', is either an example of an unholy amount of abstraction or SeriousBusiness. Running round on giant dice trying to match numbers in order to blow them up on the other hand can best be described as "the hell?"

* ''[[{{ptitlenl9xep8l}} Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming]]'' is similarly impossible to classify, but a much simpler and more entertaining game.

* ''{{Punch-Out}}'' is considered by many fans and this wiki to be a PuzzleGame akin to Simon Says, but looks ''nothing'' like that.

Some puzzle games, instead of simply being MatchThreeGame variants or ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' [[FallingBlocks clones]], are insanely weird, mind-defying things, where classifying a game into a genre can be as much a puzzle as the game itself. This seems to apply to Capcom puzzle games more than those by any other company.

* The ''KatamariDamacy'' games also belong to this genre.
** Wait, Katamari is a puzzle game? I thought it was an...um...no, it's not a platformer...yeah, let's just go with "puzzle game."

* ''{{Portal}}'' probably counts, since it's technically a puzzle game using a FirstPersonShooter perspective and you have to solve the puzzles by creating holes in walls with a portal gun.

Some puzzle games, instead of simply being MatchThreeGame variants or ''{{Tetris}}'' [[FallingBlocks clones]], are insanely weird, mind-defying things, where classifying a game into a genre can be as much a puzzle as the game itself. This seems to apply to Capcom puzzle games more than those by any other company.

[[index]]
* ''Gregory Horror Show'' has you creeping round a hotel spying on guests, such as anthropomorphic roulette wheels and giant pink lizard nurses with blood taking fetishes, in order to steal their souls while trying not to go insane and get trapped there forever yourself.
* ''Bombastic'' has you align dice in just the right way to make them explode.
** And ''Devil Dice'', to which ''Bombastic'' is the sequel.

** ''Marble Madness'' can be said to a relative of this game, since the only gameplay difference is that you're moving the ball rather than the playing field.

* ''Talismania'' may qualify, as the player has to connect two identical coins by the longest route possible.

* While ''Spin Jam'' has a match-three element, that ain't how you win levels. The three matched balls provide a force (of sorts) in a straight line that runs through the center spindle, which will cause affected balls to be shot away from the center and (hopefully) into matching-colored flower petals. Filling those petals is the ultimate goal.

** Others include: ''Chu Chu Rocket'', ''{{Pac-Man}} 2: The New Adventures'', ''Sheep'', ''Troddlers'', ''Pingus''.

[[/index]]

* TodayIDie is one of these, and a beautiful one at that. Basically, it's playing a [[BetterThanItSounds metaphor for returning from the brink of suicide]].

* ''{{Saw}}'', full stop. While there are a couple of actual video games that fit this trope (think [[XMeetsY Professor Layton meets Hostel]]), the "games" played in the movie series will occasionally fit this bill as well.

* ''GodOfWar'' is largely considered the benchmark for what a hack-and-slash game is supposed to be, but the game's larger focus seems to be puzzles rather than combat. Often times said puzzles will be even [[PlatformHell ''more'']] [[PlatformHell dangerous]] [[PressXToNotDie than any fight]]. I'm looking at you, [[ThatOneLevel Tartarus escape level]]...

* ''{{Saw}}'', full stop. While there are a couple of actual video games that fit this trope (think [[XMeetsY Professor Layton meets Hostel}}), the "games" played in the movie series will occasionally fit this bill as well.

** Others include: ''Chu Chu Rocket'', ''{{Pac-Man}} 2: The New Adventures'', ''Sheep'', ''Troddlers'', ''Pingus''.

* ''{{Lemmings}}''. Perhaps the TropeMaker of the EscortMission-based puzzle game, but hardly the only example; others include:
** ''Chu Chu Rocket''
** ''{{Pac-Man}} 2: The New Adventures''
** ''Sheep''
** ''Troddlers''
** ''{{Lemmings}}'' is brilliantly summed up by a message scrawled by the developers on one of the levels: MAD DAM DMA [Design].

* ''[=~Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming~=]'' is similarly impossible to classify, but a much simpler and more entertaining game.

* ''[=~HarvestMoon: Frantic Farming~=]'' is similarly impossible to classify, but a much simpler and more entertaining game.

* ''HarvestMoon: Frantic Farming'' is similarly impossible to classify, but a much simpler and more entertaining game.

* ''Puzzle de HarvestMoon'' is nearly impossible to classify, being a truly bizarre game that's closer to Reversi than anything. Unfortunately, the complex and arcane rules that go with this make it too complex to be engaging as a Puzzle Game. ''HarvestMoon: Frantic Farming'' is similarly impossible to classify, but a much simpler and more entertaining game.