76 indie games in this list, released 2011–2025, from developers such as Future Cat LLC, TECOPARK, Four Quarters. Pick one to read our editorial note and jump to its store page.
These are editorial pages. The developers and publishers are not affiliated with The Gaming Nest unless explicitly stated.
OneShot is a puzzle adventure that deliberately breaks the fourth wall: the player is treated as someone separate from Niko, who is trying to bring light back to a sunless world by carrying a giant lightbulb, the world's sun, up to a tower's summit. Many puzzles reach outside the game into the computer's own operating system. American indie studio Future Cat built it in RPG Maker XP, KOMODO published it in December 2016, and it earned a Golden Joystick nomination for PC Game of the Year.
Pico Park is a cooperative action-puzzle game with three modes: World, where progress comes from solving puzzles together, Endless, which is about chasing a high score, and Battle, which turns teammates into rivals. Japanese developer TECOPARK first released it on Windows in 2016 with local play and added online multiplayer in 2021. It won the Best Presentation award at Sense of Wonder Night 2014.
Please, Don't Touch Anything is a puzzle game with many different solutions to uncover through experimentation. It comes from the Russian indie studio Four Quarters and first launched on Steam in March 2015 for Windows, Mac and Linux. The game was later rebuilt as a 3D remake with virtual reality support, and an enhanced Nintendo Switch port added updated graphics along with even more solutions.
Poly Bridge tasks players with designing bridges sturdy enough for vehicles to drive across. Structures are assembled from steel, wood, rope and cable, hydraulic parts can make sections move, and each material has its own cost, which turns every level into a budget puzzle. It was made by Dry Cactus, an indie studio from New Zealand, with a score by composer Adrian Talens, and came out on Windows in 2016, later reaching iOS.
Poly Bridge 2 is the follow-up to Poly Bridge and keeps its focus on engineering bridges that must hold up under physics-driven traffic. Players plan structures across a new run of levels, balancing materials and design choices so vehicles reach the other side. New Zealand studio Dry Cactus developed and published it, with Adrian Talens again writing the music, and it launched in 2020 on Windows, Mac and Linux as well as mobile.
Q.U.B.E. is a first-person puzzle game in which the player wears gloves that manipulate specially coloured blocks, using them to open a route to the exit of each level. Its stark, white environments make the interactive blocks stand out, and it has drawn comparisons with Portal. Toxic Games in the United Kingdom grew it from a student project with backing from Indie Fund, and this Director's Cut runs on Unreal Engine 3.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a first-person mystery puzzle game set in 1807, when a merchant vessel lost for five years drifts back to the English coast with no known survivors. Sent by the East India Company, the player uses a pocket watch that recreates each death to work out the fate of all sixty people aboard. Created by Japan-based developer Lucas Pope, it won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and uses a 1-bit monochrome art style.
Rubek is a casual puzzle game built around rolling and matching colours, with levels meant to bend your thinking as you plan each move. Beyond that core idea, its store information describes it only in broad casual and indie terms, so expect a compact, focused logic challenge rather than a story-driven experience. It was developed and published by Xigma Games, an Indian studio, and released in October 2016 for Windows and Mac.
Save Room - Organization Puzzle turns survival horror inventory management, in the style of Resident Evil 4, into a series of puzzles about fitting items into a briefcase. Space can be freed by combining items, healing with them or reloading weapons. Brazilian developer Fractal Projects released it on Windows in April 2022, and critics liked how cheap and carefully detailed it was while noting it was simple and brief.
Strange Antiquities puts players in charge of a shop selling occult curios, where each visitor arrives with a need that must be worked out through puzzles. Identifying the right item for a customer is the heart of the game, blending adventure with a relaxed simulation of shopkeeping. It was developed by Bad Viking in the United Kingdom, published by Iceberg Interactive in 2025, and follows the studio's earlier title, Strange Horticulture.
The Almost Gone is a puzzle game built around turning and inspecting miniature three-dimensional rooms to piece together the story of Emily, a recently deceased girl, and to expose her family's secrets. Reviewers highlighted its look and its willingness to tackle serious themes, though opinions on the storytelling and some mechanics were split. Belgian independent studio Happy Volcano released it in 2020, and it took Game of the Year at the Flanders DC Belgian Game Awards in 2021.
The Case of the Golden Idol is a deduction puzzle game in which players gather clues and assemble ideas, people and evidence to make sense of what happened. Its cases trace a story that stretches across four decades of the 18th century. It was made in Latvia by brothers Ernests and Andrejs Klavins of Color Gray Games, built in Godot and released in 2022 through Playstack, and it was recognized with awards among the year's best games.
The Forest Quartet is a 2022 puzzle adventure by Mads Vadsholt, an independent Danish developer working as Mads and Friends, published by Bedtime Digital Games. Players control a spirit trying to bring her old band back together, drifting through three stages and interacting with objects to solve puzzles that light up the dark forest and extinguish fires. Its sound work earned the Excellence in Audio prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2023.
The House of Da Vinci is a 3D puzzle adventure from Blue Brain Games, an independent studio in Slovakia, first released in 2017. Players work through intricate mechanical contraptions, hunt for hidden objects and escape locked rooms while searching for their missing master. The fictional story takes place during the Renaissance, and the game went on to receive three follow-ups from the same studio, including a VR entry.
The House of Da Vinci 2 is a 3D puzzle adventure from Blue Brain Games, a studio in Slovakia, released in 2020. Players take the role of an apprentice to Leonardo da Vinci, solving handcrafted mechanical puzzles and uncovering hidden secrets across Italian Renaissance settings. Time travel is also part of the design, letting the player affect the environment around them as they work through each location.
The House of Da Vinci 3 concludes the puzzle adventure trilogy from Blue Brain Games, a studio based in Slovakia, and was released in December 2022. As in earlier entries, progress comes from solving a large number of fresh puzzles and brain teasers. Players also explore new, strikingly detailed locations with mysteries to uncover, continuing the series' puzzle-first approach on Windows and Mac.
The Last Campfire is a puzzle game from Hello Games, a studio based in the United Kingdom, which also published it. It first launched in August 2020 on iOS, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows and macOS, with the Steam version dated October 2021. Store tags place it in the adventure genre alongside its puzzle focus, and it holds a Metacritic score of 80.
The Rise of the Golden Idol is a detective puzzle game and the follow-up to The Case of the Golden Idol from 2022. Like its predecessor it centers on reasoning through mysteries by examining evidence and drawing conclusions. It comes from Latvian studio Color Gray Games, runs on the Godot engine and was published by Playstack in 2024. Reviews were generally positive, and four downloadable expansions arrived during 2025 to extend the story.
The Talos Principle is a puzzle game released in 2014 by Croatian studio Croteam, published by Devolver Digital and built on Serious Engine 4. Its puzzles sit inside a philosophical story whose title refers to an argument by a fictional Greek philosopher that a conscious machine implies humans are machines too. It later gained the Road to Gehenna expansion, a 2023 sequel and a 2025 remaster called Reawakened.
The Tiny Bang Story is a point-and-click adventure built around puzzle solving, with hidden object play among its listed genres. It was developed and self-published by the Russian studio Colibri Games and first appeared on Steam for Windows and macOS in 2011. In the following years it was ported to a wide range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Linux, Apple TV and Nintendo Switch.
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is a puzzle adventure from Draw Me A Pixel, a company based in France. It is played in point-and-click style, with casual puzzle solving at its core. The game grew out of creator Pascal Cammisotto's 2015 game jam winner There Is No Game, and is often treated as a sequel or expansion of it. It launched on Windows and macOS in August 2020, reaching mobile and Switch later.
TIS-100 is a programming puzzle game in which players write mock assembly language so that a corrupted, fictional 1970s computer can carry out set tasks. Every challenge is solved by writing and refining code, turning low-level programming into the core of play. American developer Zachtronics released it for Windows, OS X and Linux in July 2015, and a version for iPadOS followed in January 2016.
By Alexey Davydov, Sergey Dvoynikov, Timofey Shargorodskiy, Flazm · Lithuania
Train Valley is a puzzle-strategy train simulator where you lay railway lines and direct traffic, trying to keep every train moving without collisions. Its story mode spans eras from the 1849 Gold Rush to the first crewed spaceflight across Europe, America, Japan, and the USSR, and a random mode follows. Lithuanian studio Flazm released it in September 2015, and it went on to spawn several sequels.
By Alexey Davydov, Sergey Dvoynikov, Timofey Shargorodskiy, Flazm · Lithuania
Train Valley 2 continues Flazm's puzzle-strategy train series with larger and more intricate railway networks to build. Players respond to requests from local industries, which grow steadily harder and more complex, while keeping their lines running smoothly. The Lithuanian studio first put the sequel into Early Access in March 2018 before its full release in April 2019, with Windows, Mac, and Linux versions on Steam.