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For the fans of games that require more than just relying on the stats and abilities of your heroes, puzzle RPGs give you a chance to test your wit and luck at the same time.
An interesting but very fitting combination of puzzles and RPG mechanics.
Now let's see what they’ve got to offer!
Puzzle RPGs are games that employ puzzle/tile-matching as a main game mechanic. While they’re not your typical RPGs with an immersive storyline with important choices that affect the narrative, they do use RPG mechanics to further enhance the game.
Recruiting new heroes/units, gaining new skills and abilities, completing tasks/quests to gain resources and gear.
In short, entertainment value. You’re expected to be challenged by learning and mastering the puzzle mechanics but it has to be enjoyable over long periods of time.
Most puzzle RPGs sacrifice the story and narrative aspects and focus mostly on the mechanics like levelling up/gear improvement for that reason, which can work quite well as long as the game loop is satisfying.
Puzzle RPGs rely heavily on how satisfying it is for the players to complete each level and that is not an easy feat.
Puzzles are a good mix of entertainment and challenge but it can become rather stale quickly. Mixing it up with RPG mechanics is a great way of increasing their longevity.
While more complex mechanics could take a while to master, they’re often very enjoyable to learn with increased difficulty of each new encounter.
To keep the game fresh, there’s a constant need for some sort of variation or a challenge.
Grinding new equipment or levels itself can have its charm but switching things up, adding something to spice the gameplay up is a necessity for most players.
Repeating the same thing over and over necessitates something to make it a worthwhile endeavour for the player.
While the genre isn’t yet as big as other RPGs, there are already quite a few very fun titles out there, here’s a few that we believe deserve attention!
A very different type of game in the Might and Magic universe.
It takes place 40 years before the events of the Heroes of Might and Magic V and is focused on a group of young heroes who must stop the demonic army from decimating the world of Ashan.
The game uses a 3-match turn based system in combat, where you must match units according to their colour to have them perform an attack after a set number of turns.
You can perform action only up to 3 times per turn (with some bonus moves awarded to certain actions), after performing an attack the units leave the battlefield, to which they can be recalled back by spending one of your available moves. You cannot choose which units are called back, adding a layer of randomness into the gameplay.
Victories award experience for units, to increase their health and stats, and the heroes to give them more abilities to affect the combat.
Overall it’s a very beautiful looking game with relatively easy to learn mechanics but quite challenging as you unlock more story parts.
A good choice for both casual and more veteran players!
Ticket to Earth is an episodic indie game developed and published by Robot Circus. The story takes place in a space colony far into the future. The main protagonist, Rose, is thrown into a maelstrom of life ending crysises and must fight to survive.
The combat takes place on a isometric grid based level with each character able to perform 2 actions per turn.
The movement is only possible by walking on same coloured tiles, which also empowers attack if enough tiles were moved on. To counter that, that bonus is lost after being hit by the opponent.
There are many different interactables and drops from defeated enemies to further increase tactical planning for each battle.
The story is told in the form of a comic strip, giving it a quite unique feel.
While story beats can be quite predictable, they’re still written well enough to keep you engaged in the overarching plot.
A good combination of decent story and fun gameplay to complement it!
An interesting take on the older strategy RPG series called “Warlords”. The game takes place in the same universe Etheria where the forces of “good” and “evil” compete against each other.
The main story is focused on saving the realms from the Lord of Death called Bane. You do so by following the quests and encountering enemies on the main map.
The encounters themselves take place in a turn-based match-3 grid. The player must match at least 3 various tiles by switching position of a single tile with another to receive boosts, gold, complete an objective, attack etc. This can cause a continuous chain that stops once no 3 tiles match.
For the RPG part, there’s plenty of character improvement throughout the game. Either via upgrades at the citadel, equipment, companions etc.
It’s a good mix of puzzle, RPG and strategy. It can be quite challenging at times due to AI having a surprising amount of success on their turns.
A hearty recommendation for both puzzle RPG and strategy enjoyers.
A visually charming 2d beat ‘em up puzzle RPG in which you control 4 heroes to stop the god of evil from bringing the end times. The story is pretty simple but that’s not its main draw of course.
The heroes use the titular “emblems” to challenge the forces of evil which allow them to use their abilities in combat.
The group travels on a map with each location being connected via road, visiting location triggers story events which usually end up in a fight. Clear location can unlock a merchant or some other options for the party.
The fights are split between the combat and emblem grid, with the latter being on the lower part of the screen. Each enemy has their own counter and once it reaches 0 they attack the party.
The party has health points (HP) and defensive points (DP) that reduce incoming damage. Depletion of DP causes increased damage to the party.
By matching 3 or more emblems you can recover hp/dp or attack with the heroes and their abilities. Certain combinations of emblems lead to multiple attacks or empowered skills from the heroes which can rack up some nice damage in a single move.
Fun game with a casual feel to it.
A very successful and popular puzzle RPG with plenty of spinoffs and collaborations with various popular IPs.
The game starts up quite simple but as you unlock new monsters to fight in your team, their synergies, bonuses and other variables really add up and become quite necessary to tackle tougher dungeons to unlock more powerful monsters.
The battles themselves are fought on a 6x5 grid with various element orbs present. Each monster has their element and matching it on the grid allows them to perform devastating attacks.
This is done by selecting one of the orbs and then moving it around to displace and match other orbs on the grid. If 3 or more are matched, they’re removed from the grid and new orbs fall from the top, giving a chance to further activate something.
There’s plenty of content to unlock with both pretty and cool character designs for monsters and avatars.
There’s also a gacha system with in-game currency to speed up and simplify some parts of the game. While not necessary to progress, it does make it a lot easier and manageable.
But you can grind the currency in-game as well, so it’s not pure p2w.
Overall a very addicting game, once you get into it,it’s hard to stop.
You must build a boat is a pixel art puzzle rpg with a very fun and surprisingly intense match-3 gameplay. You MUST build a boat, that’s all the story you’ll need here.
To accomplish this feat, you participate in performing “runs” and recruiting new NPCs to expand your boat until it’s able to “make the journey”.
Each run can be enhanced with quests that can get you items, companions etc, while making it more challenging to complete.
Once the run starts, you’re put into a screen where the centre is occupied by a large grid filled with various tiles to match together, with the left side of the screen showing your resources and just below it your current quests. On top of the screen you see your protagonist's progression and obstacles like monsters/treasures/traps that you have to deal with.
And to deal with them you’ll have to employ these tiles by matching at least 3 of them together:
You “win” (lose) each run once the monsters eventually push your character out of bounds on the left side of the screen but since this is an incremental game where you keep getting stronger with each attempt, there's no “losing” involved here!
The upgrades become available once you find NPCs during each individual run through specific (randomised) quests. You can recruit monsters to help out during each attempt, buff your damage/defences, sell loot etc. making every run more manageable than before.
It’s very fun and there’s a constant feel of progression and objective, only drawback is that once completed there’s little replayability value.
It’s easy to dismiss the genre since a lot of them are marketed towards a more casual crowd but there’s a lot of challenge to be found in many puzzle RPGs out there.
This is especially true in the titles that offer a PVP option, giving players ability to test themselves to the fullest, letting metagame strategies to form among the community.
So whether you’re looking for casual fun or a way to test yourself, puzzle RPGs should allow you to do both!
In traditional RPGs, they’re a good way for the players to test themselves rather than the characters they’re playing. In puzzle RPGs, they’re a good way of adding interesting mechanics to spice up gameplay.
Traditional RPGs are mostly narrative/story focused, while puzzle RPGs are usually more focused on gameplay and strategy crafting.
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