Portal took us by surprise when it was included as part of the Orange Box game release from Valve. What felt like a prototype puzzle game turned into an incredibly unique and unusual adventure through a weird facility with an out of control computer. While the original was not groundbreaking, it was most definitely an unexpected surprise from this collection of games.
Part of Portals charm had to be the humor and the weird story that it had, but the concept of puzzle games in this format cant be new (even though it is the first game of this type I have played). Does anyone have any recommendations for puzzle games like Portal?
The Talos Principle
The story in The Talos Principle is really good. There is a good balance between puzzles and story so that you arent bored reading loads of text and you are not rushing through the puzzles to get to the next part of the story. There are LOTs of puzzles in this game with some cool mechanics used. I found them more challenging than those in Portal. I'd consider this one of the best games like Portal.
The Stanley Parable
An exploration game with a heavy focus around the story and decision making. Good game to get you thinking. The puzzle format is a little different rather than it being a strict, puzzle room like you have in Portal.
Quantum Conundrum
This is a fairly cheap downloadable game on most platforms. Very quirky humor with some great puzzles. The production values are not as high as those in Portal, but a great game regardless that is very like Portal in many ways.
The Turing Test
This is another smaller downloadable game that has a lot in common with portal. You arrive at a base on one some moon to find the AI there has gone a bit crazy and the people have setup a series of puzzles that only a human could solve. You need to get through the puzzles to make your way to the team for rescue. The story was actually really good. Quite dark with strong moral aspects to it. The puzzles were quite good too, a lot of content for a cheap downloadable game.
The Witness
There isn't much of a story to this game, they sort of let you run around this open world area where you solve loads of really fun puzzles. There are audio logs aroud that sort of give a bit of story, but it is not worth playing this game for its story. If you want some fun puzzles to solve like Portal then this one is worth playing. Really nice looking game.
