If you prefer a gunman style Monument Valley, Hitman Go is right up your alley. It has the atmosphere, the knockout looks and the ingenious brain teasers, and it also provides that Monument Valley gameplay – relaxed, yet intense. As usual, collecting artifacts and escaping nasty beasts is there, and it’s surprisingly dynamic for a turn-based puzzler. You never feel like the developer makes you look stupid in your own eyes, and each solution is elegant when you find it.
But most importantly, its puzzles are hard, yet accessible, which makes it even more addicting. It looks as if it can’t look any better with its soft pastel colors, detailed characters, spectacular animations and the atmospheric sound score. It’s also a turn-based tactical RPG, with minor character customization in the form of the outfits you can unlock or buy via the IAPs. Of course, Lara Croft Go is more than just a block-sliding puzzle. Square Enix did something truly impressive with this game, and managed to convert a Lara Croft premise into a block-sliding puzzle-adventure. It’s also visually spectacular, and probably one of the best looking mobile games this year. The puzzles are on the difficult side of the spectrum it’s definitely more challenging than the Monument Valley. The puzzles are block sliding maps that require you to walk from one element to another, activating the portals, rotating totems, switching on the energy to the spheres and planets and suns, and do all sorts of tricky impossible geometry and optical illusion kind of manipulations. Any changes you make in one dimension affect the other dimension. To do so, he is given a magic scepter that helps him jump from one dimension to another. It has a fantasy story, and a mysterious faceless protagonist on his or her way to save a mysterious lady. This game resembles Monument Valley more than most of the games on the list. The game currently offers 34 levels, and it Act One only. One tricky part is the location of the movable elements is generated randomly with each retry, which adds a mind-boggling twist to the gameplay. Each ten or so levels get unlocked when you earn enough holes. At the end of each level, the game evaluates your wits and rates you 1 to 3 flute holes. The faster you solve a puzzle, the higher is your score. Your aim is to get one, two or three main characters from the entrance to the exit.
Set in a cube, the puzzle consists of a series of blocks and tiles that can be moved around, but are limited by the confines of their trajectories and the non-movable blocks and tiles.
However, its major draw is the block sliding puzzles that will make you tear your hair out. It also has a wonderful story with the characters to empathize with, and they’re nothing abstract. It’s beautiful in its low-poly visuals and unsurpassed in the sound, which is the original score of the classical opera. An artsy masterpiece, this game is based on Mozart’s opera Magic Flute as seen by the Japanese artist Amon Miyamoto.