The best puzzle games to play right now

polygon.com:

It’s no understatement to say puzzles form the backbone of video games as a medium of entertainment.

For me, it started with games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, in which dungeons contained numerous mysteries that pushed me to consider, and then reconsider, how I used Link’s vast arsenal of tools to accomplish a task like, say, opening a secret door to a room. And while several adventure games make problem-solving a key aspect of exploring, just plain old puzzles also have played a large role in the history of video games.

It could be the picture book-esque stylings of point-and-click games like Goragoa or the mind-bending worlds of Cocoon, developers continue to shower fans of games with all kinds of brainteasers. Even in the past two years, I’ve seen word games — still puzzles! — take on a new level of widespread popularity through the breakout success of games like the New York Times’ Wordle and now Connections.

There are truly too many puzzle games to choose from. If we really wanted to get philosophical, we could extend this designation to the vast majority of games. So we here at Polygon decided to start by writing up some of our personal favorite puzzle games. From classic match games like Puyo Puyo to the deviously clever visual puns of Baba Is You, here are Polygon’s favorite puzzle games. —Ana Diaz

Where to play: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Windows PC

Baba Is You is a word game and an environmental puzzle game, but not in the way that either of those genre terms typically get used.

In this game, the words you select change the environment around you and the entire conditions of the game itself — almost like you’re the level designer. The top-down, 2D game starts simply enough, giving you rules in the form of text on the screen like “Baba is you” (you control a little sprite named Baba), “rock is push” (if you run up against a rock, it’ll move), and “flag is win” (touch the flag to complete the level). But each of those pieces of text