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24 reviews · 5 essays
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Counterpoint on Thomas Was Alone — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi rated Thomas Was Alone 7.2/10. I test five claims drawn from its Steam negative reviews — repetitive busywork, rough controls, an overbearing narrator, technical neglect like broken achievements, and a length-versus-price mismatch — against her review, and say where I agree and where I don't.
Inside Mark Brown's Philosophy — He Saw Every Criticism Coming, and Shipped Anyway
A critic who had spent a decade analysing other people's game design finally made a puzzle game of his own. When the complaints arrived, he said he had seen all of them coming. Reading six of his own devlogs for his philosophy, obsessions, failures, dilemmas and influences.
Xu & Verbrugge: Turning gravity and time into coordinates of the level generator — Fukai Reads
A peer-reviewed FDG 2026 paper by Kaijie Xu and Clark Verbrugge of McGill University. Level generators have long built geometry first and checked mechanics such as gravity inversion or moving platforms afterwards. This paper promotes the mechanic itself to a coordinate axis, searching a larger graph in which (x, y) is joined by a layer index or a timestamp. Switch-spacing error falls to 0.000-0.002 and alternative-route robustness reaches roughly nine to ten times that of an unguided baseline.
Soundtrack: Etherborn — gravity changes direction, but the music never falls over
Walk onto a curved surface and only your own gravity flips — Etherborn's puzzles are quiet and never rush you. As a voiceless, translucent being you gather orbs of light and climb Escher-like abstract architecture. Inside that inorganic geometry, the one thing that sounds with body heat is Gabriel Garrido García's music: a string quartet, clarinet, bassoon, and soprano recorded live in Barcelona. Exactly seven years after its release today, I, Doremi, take apart the sound of this small gem over a black coffee.
This is the Only Level (2009) — A Mischievous Loop on a Single Screen, from the Flash Era
On 8 August 2009, John Cooney (jmtb02) released This is the Only Level on Armor Games: a meta puzzle-platformer that replays the same single screen across 30 stages, rewriting only its rules each time. This article traces its rare path of preservation, surviving Flash's technical extinction to return, by the creator's own hand, as part of The Elephant Collection on Steam in 2023.
Related reviews
La-Mulana 2
A 2D exploration-puzzle action game in which Lumisa Kosugi descends into the ancient ruins of Eg-Lana with a whip and a notebook. You copy down the inscriptions on the walls and match them to contraptions several rooms away. NIGORO's sequel to La-Mulana.
puzzleexplorationmetroidvaniaToki Tori
A 2D thinking puzzle in which a chick collects every trapped egg using only the tools a level hands him — build a step, lay a bridge, freeze a creature. What you are given, and how many, is itself the shape of the answer. From the Dutch studio Two Tribes, rebuilt from their 2001 Game Boy Color original.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerlogicThomas Was Alone
A 2D puzzle-platformer in which you switch between coloured rectangles, each given exactly one ability, and combine them into stepping stones across 120 levels. A narrator reads out what the shapes are thinking as you go. Released in 2012 by Mike Bithell's Bithell Games.
puzzlepuzzle-platformernarrativeEscape Goat 2
A 2D puzzle platformer about escaping a trap-filled stronghold with a goat and its mouse companion. Each room is a single screen, solved with jumps, an immortal mouse that crawls walls and stands on switches, and a magic hat that swaps the goat's position with the mouse's. Over a hundred rooms across ten zones, from MagicalTimeBean in 2014.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerplatformerTrine 2: Complete Story
A side-scrolling physics puzzle-platformer in which you switch between a knight, a thief and a wizard, conjuring boxes and planks to get past each obstacle. Made by Finland's Frozenbyte, the Complete Story edition bundles the main campaign with the Goblin Menace expansion and an extra level.
puzzle-platformerphysicsco-opBrothers - A Tale of Two Sons
Two brothers set out to find the Water of Life for their dying father. The left stick moves the older brother and the right the younger, both at once, and you cross ravines, waterways and the bones of giants by pairing what each of them can do. Every line is spoken in an invented language. Directed by Josef Fares at Starbreeze Studios, released in 2013.
puzzleadventurepuzzle-platformerHuman Fall Flat
A physics puzzle platformer about Bob, a wobbly figure you steer by grabbing, climbing and dragging your way through buildings that float in a dreamscape. Each arm is controlled separately, and no puzzle has a single fixed solution. Made by Lithuania's No Brakes Games, with online co-op for up to eight players.
puzzle-platformerphysicsco-opÖoo
A wordless exploration puzzle platformer in which a caterpillar sheds a segment of its own body as a bomb and detonates it from a distance - one verb that opens an entire underground, where the keys are things you know rather than things you carry. From NamaTakahashi, who made ElecHead.
puzzlepuzzle-platformermetroidvaniaLa-Mulana
A 2D exploration-puzzle action game in which an archaeologist descends into the vast ruins of La-Mulana with a whip and a laptop, decoding tablet inscriptions while surviving traps and monsters. NIGORO's remake of their own MSX-inspired maze game, ported to PC.
puzzleexplorationmetroidvaniaLinelight
A minimalist puzzle game in which you steer a small bar of light along thin lines, working past switches, doors, keys and lethal red lines. No jump button and no shoot button — over 250 levels across six worlds, from My Dog Zorro.
puzzleminimalistpuzzle-platformerClosure
A 2D puzzle-platformer in which only lit ground exists — step into the dark and you fall straight through it. You carry glowing orbs, swivel wall lamps to aim their light, and bring the platforms you need into being on the way to the door. Drawn entirely in black and white across a factory, a forest and a circus. Eyebrow Interactive, 2012.
puzzlepuzzle-platformeratmosphericMosa Lina
A 2D physics puzzle-platformer where you collect the fruit on a stage and return to the exit. You can only walk and jump; everything else comes from three tools dealt at random each attempt. Stuffed Wombat calls it a hostile interpretation of the immersive sim.
puzzlepuzzle-platformersandboxCreaks
A hand-drawn 2D puzzle-platformer in which you descend a dim mansion, shine light to turn mechanical monsters into furniture, and use that furniture as footing. No dialogue, no combat, no inventory — solved through a single rule called light, from Amanita Design, makers of Machinarium.
puzzlepuzzle-platformeradventureMagnetic: Cage Closed
A first-person puzzle game in which a death-row prisoner uses a magnet gun — attract on one pole, repel on the other — to move boxes and escape a trap-filled facility, with end-of-chapter choices branching toward nine endings. From Sweden's Guru Games.
puzzlefirst-personpuzzle-platformerVessel
A 2D physics puzzle-platformer where a single liquid-spraying backpack lets you move water, lava and glowing protoplasm, and grow living liquid creatures called Fluros to repair a machine-run world. Set across a foundry, orchard and mines, Strange Loop Games builds its grammar out of fluid simulation rather than a grid.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerphysicsHue
A 2D puzzle-platformer where one button swaps the world's background between eight colours, making anything of that colour vanish. Walls, boxes and lasers are all handled through colour as you restore hue to a grey world and search for a missing mother. From Fiddlesticks Games.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerplatformerSemblance
A 2D puzzle-platformer where you dent and raise the very ground to build your own footholds, threading past spikes and lasers to return each essence to the world-trees. Nyamakop's debut from South Africa, built on a single verb — deform — in a world with no 'hardness'.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerplatformerMind Over Magnet
A 2D puzzle-platformer where a monitor-headed robot and a cast of magnet companions climb a factory one single-screen puzzle at a time, using pressure plates and magnetic fields. Place a magnet, throw it, flip its polarity — a small verb set solves 50-plus single-screen conundrums. Made by Mark Brown of the YouTube channel Game Maker's Toolkit.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerlogicNaissanceE
A first-person exploration game about descending into the depths of a vast artificial structure drawn only in black and white. With a handful of actions — run, jump, and stir light and shadow — you travel an inhuman-scale world that recalls Piranesi's etchings and the manga BLAME!. Released in 2014 and now distributed free by Limasse Five.
explorationpuzzle-platformerfirst-personEtherborn
A third-person puzzle where walking a curved surface flips your own gravity — wall becomes floor, then ceiling. As a voiceless, translucent being you gather light-orbs to grow paths through Escher-like architecture toward a calling voice. Altered Matter's small, elegant study in one verb: walking.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerThe Bridge
A 2D puzzle game where you rotate the entire stage to change which way gravity pulls, threading M.C. Escher-style impossible architecture to reach the exit key. From a single verb — turn the world — grow vortexes, a rolling boulder and full inversion, all in hand-inked black-and-white lithograph. A 2013 game by Ty Taylor and Mario Castañeda.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerphysicsQuantum Conundrum
A first-person physics puzzler in which a boy searches a deranged mansion for his missing inventor uncle, armed with the Interdimensional Shift Device. Swap between four dimensions — Fluffy makes heavy things weightless, Reverse Gravity flips the pull, Slow slows time — and bend boxes and physics to clear each room. Built by Portal's lead designer Kim Swift (as reported) and published by Square Enix.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerfirst-personThe Swapper
A 2D puzzle-platformer where a gun lets you spawn up to four clones and swap your consciousness between them as you descend the derelict space station Theseus. Red and blue lights bar cloning and swapping in a tight grammar while a lonely clay-modeled world quietly asks what the self is — from Facepalm Games.
puzzlepuzzle-platformersci-fiFEZ
An exploration platformer where you rotate a 2D world in 90-degree turns, shifting how the plane reads to connect platforms. Collect cube fragments while wandering a crumbling world — Polytron Corporation's signature take on rotation.
puzzle-platformerexplorationobservation
