If You Solved These Puzzles Without Help, You’re A Genius: The Hardest Brain Teasers In Video Games – The Witness
Players have been faced with challenging puzzles and challenges over the years in adventures of all kinds.
The puzzles have become classic video game mechanics. Practically since its inception, some of the most important games in history have based their gameplay entirely on them, and classics like Tetris or others inspired by it, such as columnsthey built an entire game philosophy based on puzzle concept.
Video games went deeper into this and more complex puzzles arrived, becoming essential pillars of some genres or small tests integrated into video games that did not base their gameplay on them. Some franchises converted these complex puzzles in hallmark of the franchise, as in the case of The Legend of Zelda saga, where its dungeons are elaborate puzzles that have different phases and combine a multitude of mechanics. Some of them have been challenges worthy of being included in this list, such is the case of the Water Temple, famous for its difficulty, but we have already dedicated an exclusive special to our hero of time for his dungeons.
Throughout the history of video games, we have seen many ingenious puzzles, and some of them, while not overly complex, were based on a fourth-wall-breaking spin. The best example is given to us by Metal Gear Solid and its combat against Psycho Mantisin which we had to deduce that the correct way to avoid the anticipation of the villain was using the port of the second player. He also played with this concept the classic game of SEGA Mega Drive X-Men, where at a point in the adventure we had to press the Reset button on the console to get a restart that had to be carried out within the history of the game. The effect of folding the screen on the Nintendo DS with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, or previously with Another Code: Two Memories and Hotel Dusk: Room 215, are other puzzles that played with this idea.
Some puzzles are difficult due to poor design
We wanted to compile some of the most famous puzzles due to their difficulty, those for which there is always a guide or a new explanation, those puzzles that went down in history for being especially heavy, complex or surprising; but we have discarded the hated puzzles for being ambiguous or because their difficulty stems from poor design. We know that some puzzles have made you desperate and, when you have solved them, more than satisfaction, what you have felt is greater anger and frustration. Some examples of them are the monkey and the wrench in The Secret of Monkey Island 2, in which a forced pun on “Monkey wrench” kept any non-English-speaking country out of the joke and drove us really crazy until we found the solution. EITHER Broken Sword’s goatwhere poor execution and fast-moving mechanics never seen before in the game, left players completely lost.
On this occasion, in our list we wanted to have some puzzles that left us stuck for months, with which we had to resort to guides or close friends, some that we also ended up solving based on trial and error, and with which only a few managed to solve after much observation and deduction. These are our favorites, but surely you remember some that gave you as much headache or more than those present here. What are the puzzles with which you have been most stuck?
Super Mario Bros – World Maze 7 – 4
We start with one of the most classic, level 7-4 of the original NES Super Mario Bros. A level that when we faced, like the rest of the phases of the game, was repeated over and over again until time ran out. The whole level was one big puzzle that required a very specific sequence between their platforms to get to the end.
Portal – Test Chamber 18
In this case, the entire game is a succession of logical puzzles that mix skill and gravity mechanics that keep getting complicated with new variables, so it has been especially difficult to choose one of them, but we are left with Test Chamber 18 , the necessary skill, the turrets and the areas where we cannot put portals make it infuriating.
Resident Evil Zero – Animal Flames
The fifth installment of the famous Capcom saga left us with a great prequel and one of the most complex puzzles in the entire saga. It is a room with torches and statues of animals that we must turn on in a very specific order that we deduce from the description of the statues, in which different qualities of the animals are presented to us.
Silent Hill – Piano Puzzle
One of the most famous puzzles and at the same time most hated for its extreme difficulty, takes place in the music room in the first Silent Hill and we must play a tune on a piano with blood stained keys. The answer to the riddle is found in a poem written on the classroom blackboard entitled “A Tale of Voiceless Birds.”
Grim Fandango – The Felinodrome Ticket
LucasArts’ great graphic adventures are remembered for their complex puzzles, and in Grim Fandango they are especially hard. The puzzle of the ticket for the felinodrome race is especially complex due to the distance between its tracks and the number of steps we must cover until the solution. A long puzzle in which it is very easy to get lost.
Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire – The Sealed Chamber
Route 134 between Pueblo Oromar and Ciudad Portual gave us one of those puzzles that one does not expect. To free the three regis and thus be able to get them, we need to solve a puzzle that was especially surprising due to the language of the instructions. Was written in braille and we need to decrypt it in order to perform the actions that will allow us to solve it.
The Adventures of Alundra – Mansion of Ice
This great work of the first PlayStation left us one of the longest and most complex puzzles in the genre. A classic puzzle of movement of pieces, in this case some ice pillars, which follows a second phase in which we find a riddle of lifting doors and after it, another puzzle of movement of pieces. Three phases complete this complex puzzle.
The Witness – The Challenge
The creator of Braid has us used to racking our brains, but with The Witness he went a step further. Jonathan Blow’s puzzle title usually involves drawing paths on grids in very specific puzzles, but the optional challenge known as The Challenge breaks those rules. A timer starts and you have to complete 14 puzzles, all spawning randomly and without being able to pause the game to think, since it restarts.
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare – The Library
The fourth installment in the franchise delighted fans with a classic survival horror adventure filled with mystery, clues, and puzzles. One of the most impressive has to do with the room that takes center stage in the mansion, its great library. the whole room is a great puzzle that combines books, geometric figures and a convoluted order to figure it out.
PT
The canceled Silent Hills was presented with an impressive demo that, in addition to being terrifying, hid a complex puzzle that allowed us to get out of a house in which we were trapped through eternal loops through corridors. The methods were based on series through steps, hours on the clock and endless codes that we should discover.
In 3D Games | There’s a Reason PT Is a Hallway: Silent Hills and the Feng-Shui Precepts of Evil
In 3D Games | Navigation in video games: how do some titles guide us through their maps without using markers?
