Generally speaking, the difficulty of video games has been on a downward curve since the days of arcade machines. Coin-operated arcade games were designed to ensure that most players would only last one or two minutes before getting a game over, ensuring that they would have to spend more money to play. This level of difficulty continued into the days of the Atari 2600 and early PC titles. Not only because it’s what gamers were used to, but because many people only owned a couple of games and wanted them to last as long as possible. Moreover, console and PC limitations at the time meant that developers simply couldn’t make long games, so the difficulty was a way of increasing runtime.
Today, constant Steam deals and Microsoft’s Game Pass service mean that most people own far more games than before and are therefore willing to chop and change games if they get stuck. Furthermore, the dawn of internet forums has bought with it online guides. These guides provide a problem for puzzle game developers, as they can spend months creating a fantastically designed puzzle game with intellectual puzzles, only for someone to beat it in an hour with a walkthrough open on another screen.
Unfortunately, this has caused the puzzle genre to somewhat die-out, and new puzzle games are hard to come by. Thankfully, many of the games released in the 80s and 90s, when the genre was booming, have been re-released on places like Steam and GOG.
If someone is sick of hand-holding in modern games and wants to challenge themselves, there aren’t many tougher challenges in gaming than beating these ten games without a guide.
10 Kings Quest III: To Heir Is Human
The Kings Quest series is one of the most recognizable names in the puzzle genre. The series was developed by Sierra Entertainment, known as Sierra On-line at the time of Kings Quest 3‘s release. Sierra’s Kings Quest series, along with its other puzzle series’ like Leisure Suit Larry, were notorious for their difficulty.
The games were so difficult, in fact, that Sierra sold hint books alongside their games. These hint books were sold separately, implying that Sierra intentionally made their games too difficult to encourage players to buy one. Any of the classic Kings Quest or Leisure Suit Larry games could have made it to this list, but Kings Quest III narrowly edges them as the toughest of the lot.
9 The Witness
The Witness is one of the only games on this list that wasn’t released when mullets were still cool. Thekla, Inc.’s 2016 game was heavily inspired by the genre-defining Myst, with its large, beautiful island that players are free to roam around and explore.
The island doesn’t just have pretty trees and ponds though, it’s filled to the brim with some of the most well-crafted and mind-boggling puzzles in not just modern gaming, but the history of the puzzle gaming genre.
8 Myst
The aforementioned Myst appearing on this list will come as no surprise to anyone that has even a casual interest in the puzzle genre. The game had very little hype behind it before release but smashed sales records left, right, and center. Cyan’s 1993 title was the highest-selling PC game ever until The Sims and is impressively still the third-highest today.
Myst is the first game in the Myst series that featured many other tricky puzzles games like Riven, Myst III: Exile, and Uru: Ages Beyond Myst.
7 Riven
Speaking of Riven, this list wouldn’t be complete without it. When unknown developer Cyan, Inc. burst into the forefront of the gaming industry with Myst, a sequel was at the top of most gamer’s wish lists.
Thankfully, the near four-year wait for Riven was worth it. Cyan didn’t try to re-invent the wheel, and stuck to the same point and click, free-roam puzzle-solving as in Myst. Along with, of course, the devilishly difficult puzzles.
Although the game is every bit as good as Myst to play retrospectively today, it didn’t score quite as well critically at the time of release. It’s understandable why, as the gaming industry went through a significant change between Myst and Riven. Both the Nintendo 64 and PS1 were released, and games like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time made the point and click adventure feel outdated.
6 Discworld
Discworld is based on a book series of the same name and was developed by Perfect 10 Productions & Teeny Weeny Games. It was released, like most games on this list, on Windows and Mac. Uniquely though, it was also released on the PS1, where players could use the oft-forgotten PlayStation Mouse.
Game reviewers are usually wary of criticizing a game for being too difficult, as many fans often either dismiss it as a moot point or say that the reviewer is simply bad at the game. This didn’t stop reviewers is 1995 though, as many deducted points from the game for its excessive difficulty. One such review was from Adventure Gamers, who placed the difficulty in their ‘The Bad’ section and said that the game “stops short of being a classic simply due to its sheer difficulty”.
5 SpaceChem
SpaceChem differentiated itself from other entries on this list, in the sense that it isn’t a graphic adventure. Instead, the game offers a series of increasingly complicated chemical bonding and automation puzzles.
Quintin Smith from Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote an extremely complimentary short review of the game in 2011, stating “I’ll be brief: this game is incredible. I think we might have just received one of the year’s best indie games in the first week of 2011”.
4 Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
LucasArts managed to catch lightning in a bottle for a second time when they followed the iconic The Secret of Monkey Island with Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. Similarly to Sierra, LucasArt’s puzzle games were some of the most difficult of the era, likely to sell hints, as LucasArts had a hotline that confused gamers could call for a fee.
The game was infamous outside of America for its ‘Monkey Wrench’ puzzle. The puzzle is solved by hypnotizing a monkey and literally using it as a wrench. The issue is, that the term monkey wrench is unheard of in most countries, causing hours upon hours of hopeless confusion for many players.
3 Indiana Jones In The Lost Kingdom
Indiana Jones In The Lost Kingdom is infamous for providing players with no information, or general rules of how to solve its puzzles. This was a conscious design choice supported by the game’s tagline “Nobody told Indiana Jones the rules. And no one will tell you.”
Although there were no in-game hints, a hotline was available with pre-recorded messages. Furthermore, the game came with glasses that could read hieroglyphic clues on the instruction manual.
2 Dark Seed
Dark Seed is a unique entry on this list as it is a psychological horror, meaning that the game’s puzzles aren’t the only thing giving players nightmares.
The game is notorious for forcing players to complete events within certain time-scales, or in a certain order, without giving them any real hint that they’re on the right track.
1 Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars has one of the most infamous puzzles in all of gaming. The monkey wrench puzzle in Monkey Island 2 comes close, especially for gamers outside of the US, but it still doesn’t match up to Broken Sword‘s goat puzzle.
An old goat may not seem like the most threatening enemy, but it probably caused more game overs than any intimidating Resident Evil boss. For those wanting to know about the puzzle, fear not, as an entire Wikipedia page is dedicated to it.
The game itself is the first in the Broken Sword series. It was critically acclaimed upon release, with praise being directed to its voice-acting and impressive visuals, especially in cutscenes.
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