While gaming usually sees us turn to vengeance-riddled first-person shooters and nerve-wrecking races to the finishing lines, we often end up getting addicted to incredibly simple yet unbelievably difficult puzzle games. To make things even better, most of them are lenient on hardware resources, meaning that you can possibly play them smoothly even on devices that are not the most powerful. We give you 15 such puzzle games for mobile that have had us hooked on to our cellphone screens for abysmally long hours, just to find one last strategy to unlock a door or sum up a line. Here is our list of 15 puzzle games for Android devices, some of which are even worth paying for.
One for the Chemistry heads, the trick is to get the right combination of atoms and electrons to build your chemical treasure chest. You begin the game with a Hydrogen molecule, and keep adding until you end up with those rare compounds and elements. Simple? Give it a shot.
Closely resembling the stunning Monument Valley, Skyward is a free game on Google Play Store that attempts to give you a bit of Monument Valley, and even some of its own. You control a blue-and-red circle and escalate upwards through floating bricks that disappear if you aren’t spontaneous with your actions.
Your goal here is to keep the tiny ball on track through the viciously narrow zig-zagging alley that takes more turns than it rightfully should. Incredibly simple and fun to play, rigorously tricky and frustrating if you fail, ZigZag is yet another free gem in the Android ecosystem.
A mobile version of the massively popular desktop short, the list would have been incomplete without Limbo being mentioned here. Most of you have possibly played it already, guiding the little one through a nightmarish moor of hazy obstacles that look like the root of a bizarre nightmare.
The objective is childishly simple - connect dots of the same colour to clear up the screen and progress through levels. Once you start playing, you will realise that there is no end to the number of obstacles you may face, and the number of levels (which, we hear, are above 500!)
This little gem here has candies dangling tantalisingly above prickly green monsters, and all you need to do is cut the candies loose in precise positioning to feed ‘em. It is arguably a little less tasking on the brain, but not less addictive in any way.
Weave threads of varying colours to achieve a guide tile with exact colours. Each thread is accompanied by a unique piano note, giving this game a quiet, meditative quality. Strata is absolutely worth paying for, although if you do not wish to, you can download the official free version and see for yourself!
A game that will have you mastermind Hitman’s assassinations across tricky situations, Hitman Go brings a classic, board game structure to the assassin saga. A must-play for all Hitman fans!
Requiring immaculate puzzle-solving skills coupled with a reasonably good mathematical mind, Drop7 will see you having to drop the perfect number to clear up rows and columns, while dealing with blank dots that obstruct the flow of the game. It may not have as appealing an interface as Strata or Skyward, but the game itself is compelling.
We decided to step off the gas, for a bit, and ended up with this. Drop is an old-time favourite of ours that is more about reflex and less about thinking and planning. Drop the ball through gaps in the obstacles and go as far as you can, as the game keeps speeding up. You’ll realise soon that we slightly tricked you, and it isn’t as easy as you thought.
While Ice calls itself under strategy rather than puzzles, we could not help but include it here. The trick of the puzzle is to ensure that you invade the right opponents by choosing the right timing and scaling the opposing army of ant-like coloured dots. Warning: It took a while to get our first win. Good luck!
You have to guide a triangle through a rapid, swerving maze, with an excellent soundtrack adding to the tempo. Be swift on reflexes, and Super Hexagon may become one of the best pick-and-play games you’ve played in a while.
Featuring a refreshing, vibrant interface, Alphabear combines the best of word games with adorable, fluffy bears. With each word you build, the bears on the screen keep growing. However, you will need to use your chips fast, or else they turn into stone and block progress. Each bear has a unique superpower, too, so choose wisely.
Possibly one of the best franchise of puzzle games ever built, explore rooms spread widely, collect riddles and cues from various areas, and combine them together to solve puzzles. The Room franchise makes for an ever-present in lists of best puzzle games, even if they do not come for free.
We could not end our list without paying homage to Monument Valley. The work of pure genius, Monument Valley is the best example possible of silent storytelling coupled with intriguing physics and queer colours. Each game on this list is incredibly gripping and stands out for their worth. Monument Valley, to top it all off, stands head and shoulders above all of them.
P.S. Download the game’s soundtrack separately. It’s mesmerising.