Puzzle games are a wonderful genre in the video gaming industry, as they generally can fit into any sort of game. Everything from classic games on the oldest consoles to the newest blockbuster games like Tears of the Kingdom includes puzzles as significant aspects of the gameplay to entertain players.

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While it can be hard to innovate in puzzle games after so many decades of releases, one of the great modern ways to incorporate puzzles into games is for darker games, especially in the horror genre. Some modern puzzle games come with shockingly dark worlds that are made to intrigue players with mysteries that need solving in addition to the many puzzles that must be solved throughout.

7 Portal 2

Metacritic Score: 95

Sometimes puzzle games come with a world that seems terrifying, and other times the real horror of the world is revealed more as the game progresses. The Portal series didn’t try to hide the somewhat comedic but dark world of Aperture Science and the various experiments they perform which become brutally hard puzzles.

But Portal 2 goes beyond where the first game went, having two campaigns that are played by a single player and two players respectively. The single-player campaign follows Chell from the first game trying once more to escape the facility, showing that the world has passed by over the course of a millennium or more, while the cooperative campaign features a pair of robots working together to solve puzzles throughout the game, only for them to find GLaDOS a huge vault filled with human test subjects, ending in her murdering the robots. Both campaigns are filled with the reality of control that those on top have in business.

6 The Talos Principle

Metacritic Score: 85

Another puzzle game where players take control of an android while solving a variety of challenges is The Talos Principle. While exploring the virtual world of the game, the player can find logs detailing the final days of humanity before they were all destroyed because of global warming.

This darkness is combined with the sadness of the fact that only one of the possible endings allows the android to escape the virtual world and return to the real one, devoid of humans. All the endings have a level of sadness or darkness to them, and the moral and philosophical questions asked will leave players thinking for a long time.

5 Limbo

Metacritic Score: 90

Limbo is one of the earliest forms of the dark 2.5D side-scrolling puzzle platformers which have become popularized over the last decade for introducing a child into a nightmare-like world and sending them on a journey, featuring many enemies seeking to stop them.

Released in 2010, Limbo featured an unnamed boy in a black-and-white world where he is searching for his sister at the edge of hell. Fighting against a large spider-like creature as well as other children who try to kill him, the boy sees many horrors in what appears to be a truly unfriendly and lonely world before reaching his goal.

4 Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Metacritic Score: 85

The Amnesia series of games are known as some of the best survival horror games focusing on puzzles. Amnesia: The Dark Descent features a man called Daniel who awakens in Bennenburg Castle in Russia in 1839 and must solve a series of puzzles while avoiding the dark creatures that seem to be stalking him.

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The physical object interaction used to solve puzzles, as well as the need for constantly finding enough light to retain Daniel’s sanity and the stress added by being hunted all help make Amnesia a fantastic game, but one where darkness is a literal enemy and fills the game.

3 Layers Of Fear (2023)

Metacritic Score: 75

Another horror game that is filled with puzzles and mysteries, Layers of Fear was released as a remaster and sequel to the two previous Layers of Fear games, tying them together. One features a painter in his home and the other an actor aboard a ship, both trying to unravel the secrets of the past.

Layers of Fear is tied together by themes of regret, and the sadness that fills many of the memories explored makes for a pair of dark worlds. The horror aspects, as well as the dilapidated settings and the morally gray characters, make this a world of darkness and pain inspired by other fantastic horror games.

2 Inside

Metacritic Score: 93

Inside is another game by the team behind Limbo, which improved in many smaller ways on the format that they had introduced in that game. For instance, the gameplay mechanics were expanded upon and the world of Inside was much more fascinating and dystopian, featuring a child attempting to reach the center of a laboratory, stealthily escaping many enemies.

The many enemies that must be faced this time around aren’t as fantastical in nature as the creatures of Limbo, but Inside is a brilliant game listed by many as one of the greatest games of all time, mastering the puzzle platformer style while focusing beautifully on a particularly dark, dystopian style.

1 Little Nightmares 2

Metacritic Score: 82

A game that managed to go even further with the puzzle-platforming style of games like Limbo and Inside, the world of Little Nightmares is certainly fantastical and one of the darkest ever seen in a video game. Filled with monstrous creatures and themes like child abuse, the two games released thus far in the Little Nightmares franchise have made players think about a great deal of horror.

While the games themselves feature many puzzles and heart-pounding chase sequences, closer inspection of the world and the characters within showcase some of the worst challenges that children can face. The world these games are based in involves true nightmares, and there is little joy to be found within despite the adorable nature.

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