This weekend, we’re celebrating National Puzzle Day! If you’ve not heard of the annual holiday before, it’s a day of doing what we love: solving puzzles.

Why celebrate National Puzzle Day?

Well, who doesn’t love a puzzle! Scientists have discovered that when we work on puzzles – jigsaws, crosswords, or anything that needs a little logic – we utilise both sizes of our brain. By doing this, we improve our memory, cognitive function and problem-solving skills all in one!

Better yet, puzzles encourage decision-making, assist with concentration, and can relieve stress whilst sharpening our reasoning skills. So now we’ve got even more of an excuse to boot up our consoles and get cracking on some puzzle games.

Speaking of which, here’s four of our favourite puzzle games to celebrate National Puzzle Day with this weekend.

4) Myst

No list of puzzle games could ever be complete without mentioning Myst. It’s legacy looms over almost any other puzzle game –it was the best-selling video game on PC for nearly a decade, its spawned so many spin-offs and genres we’ve lost count, and it’s featured in the Museum of Modern Art.

But forget all it’s accolades. Because at the end of the day, Myst is one of the most bewildering and beautiful puzzle games to play, even to this day.

You stumble across a book, which whisks you away to a mysterious island. It’s yours to explore, with a mystery to unravel and so many puzzles to solve you might as well cancel your plans for the day. There’re choices to be made, and several endings to unlock, so have fun solving this classic.

3) Portal + Portal II

The Portal series’ existence is as much a puzzle as the games themselves. Born out of a student project from the DigiPen Institute ofTechnology, Valve were so impressed they gave all the students involved jobs to bring it to life.

Set in the same universe as the legendary Half-Life series,Portal sees you play as Chell. Forced to undergo a series of tests at theAperture Science Enrichment Center, controlled by a malicious AI known as GLaDOS, you use your ‘portal gun’ to create human-sized holes that connect two flat surfaces to move between.

We don’t like spoilers, so we’re not saying anymore. But if you like puzzles that not only get you thinking, but make your mind-bend, then this is the series for you. Oh, and it’s cast includes Stephen Merchant, J.K. Simmons, and Ellen McLain – so what more do you want?

2) Chicory: A Colorful Tale

If you’ve not cottoned on yet, we love all things cute. So, when we got our hands on Chicory: A Colorful Tale last year, we were absolutely smitten and we think you will be too!

You play as Pizza the Dog, a janitor in the world of Picnic. One day you’re minding your own business, cleaning your tower, when suddenly all the colour in the world disappears. You soon discover a magical brush and set off on an adventure across Luncheon to colour in your black-and-white world.

This creative puzzler is adorable and plenty of fun. The puzzles are about exploring art as much as they are employing logic. You’ll need to experiment with colour in different environments to solve different puzzles. And better yet, even once your world is coloured in, there’s plenty more to do and see.

1) The Talos Principle

If you like philosophy, you’ll love The Talos Principle. It’s a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle. So even when the game is over, you’ll still be trying to solve its mysteries.

Inspired by Greek mythology, you take the role of a robot with a human consciousness. With over 120 puzzles across acres of greenery, desert, and stone ruins, you’ll collect sigils. Now, it’s story is complicated – there’s a lot about Greek gods, artificial intelligence, and fallen planets, so we’ll leave it to you to decipher.

But we do think it’s important you understand just how much of a puzzle The Talos Principle is. In almost every part of the game, it asks question after question but refrains from ever providing an answer. The greatest puzzle The Talos Principle offers is that it asks you to make up your own conclusions, with you own perspective.

And that’s a wrap. If you need a reason to put the jigsaw boxes back where they belong in the attic, feel free to try out any of these games. And if you do, make sure you’ve got all the accessories you need with our bundles here. 

Keep all these puzzle games and accessories neat and tidy with our Universal Storage Tower. Store up to 10 games, 4 controllers and 2 headsets, plus any cables and gadgets you might have.

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