The puzzler genre is always overlooked and seen as geeky or boring. Puzzle games have proven to be some of the most memorable such as Portal and Professor Layton. Puzzle games can bring out the more intellectual side of us and can almost be therapeutic and relaxing.
I could get a lot of backlash for this but Monument Valley was one of the most enchanting puzzle games I have ever played. Yes it was extremely short, but it’s a short and sweet memory that I will never forget. It feels like Journey meets Echochrome in this gorgeous game that overloads the senses and puts a smile on your face. There are very few games out there like that (in fact the last one was Journey).
The Mobile market is seeing a lot more PC ports and higher quality AAA games being released that aren’t freemium. We all know the less the freemium the better…well not quite. A few games have been released that did pretty well with the freemium model, but nonetheless, the mobile market really shined this year.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
What makes Hearthstone so great? Not only is it full of more Warcraft; it’s a CCG done right. With rich visuals and addictive gameplay, there’s not much more you could ask for. The rich content and hours of battling are what keeps you glued to your iPad and not many games can keep you there for even 5 minutes.
Mobile gaming hits are usually casual-friendly, like Angry Birds, Farmville, Flappy Bird, and many others. Most of those games are fairly mindless and don’t require much thought. Along comes Threes, a game that requires strategy and thinking beyond just a simple tile-sliding game.
Threes is simple, minimalistic, and quite charming. The board is made up of 16 tiles. You get six random tiles made up of numbers 1, 2, or 3. You must slide these tiles into each other to add them up. If you slide to the left, everything on the board will slide to the left. This single gameplay element is what distinguishes it from regular slider puzzles. With this in mind, you have to be careful to slide all the tiles in the right direction. Once you get 3, you can slide 3 and 3 together to make 6. Two of those make 12, and so on. However, the higher the number you have, the harder it is to get another number like it together to join those two. It’s a brilliant gameplay design that gets extremely addictive.
It takes a lot of practice, and sliding randomly won’t get you anywhere. You can easily gridlock yourself without even realizing it if you aren’t careful. Thankfully, Threes is pleasant to look at and listen to. Each number tile has its own voice and caricature, and the simple, washed-out white design is easy on the eyes. Even the music is charming and great to listen to. This is the kind of zen game that Angry Birds or Clash of Clans can’t get to.
Even if you aren’t a fan of numbers or math, you are missing out on one of the best mobile games ever made that doesn’t require microtransactions. Even that alone is worth the purchase.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.