There was always something peculiar about the Cooking Mama games. They had very little content, the premise was just to cook virtual food, but once you picked it up, there was no way you would put it down. Basically, it was a game chockfull of different tasks that had to be done in rapid succession, and the success of the game was primarily due to the speed. If you slowed the game down even a little, it became boring, and you saw through the ruse. Of course, there’s no reason to skip out on playing these games, so here are the top 10 games like Cooking Mama.
10. Lemmings
If there’s one title that really illustrates how Lemmings used to play, it would be the indie title World of Goo. Lemmings, while massively outdated, lived exactly up to the title, as you control a ton of lemmings. Your job was to save these little critters by setting up the right path through an obstacle course because if you do something wrong, it can result in their deaths. Just to make it a little more interesting though, there was a time limit before the lemmings started marching, making most of your first attempts at making a path shoddy and unbalanced.
9. Tetris
There are literally hundreds of iterations of this game, so it inevitably deserves a spot here on this list. If by some off chance, you’ve never played this game because you were trapped in a cage or something, then try it out. Basically, it plays like one of those “fit the pieces” puzzles but with varying speed, and the pieces shooting down from an unknown Omni-present Lego God.
8. PuzzleQuest: Challenge of Warlords
RPGs are a bit of an acquired taste nowadays, and puzzle games are even more so. However, if your tastes somehow fall into both types of games, then PuzzleQuest should be a title you pick up. Battles are fought through a Bejeweled style grid where you have to solve patterns in order to initiate attacks. It all makes for quite a bit of fun when you get the rhythm of the game, and you will undoubtedly pick this game up again and again.
7. Z-Rox
Guessing pictures have always been sort of a staple when it comes to puzzle titles. From the shattered images of the cardboard puzzle, to Pictionary, this premise has been used time and time again to great effect in fact. Z-Rox has the same idea as these games do, as you are tasked with guessing just what picture you are looking at. Of course, it wouldn’t be any fun if the challenge was just to guess a whole picture, no, instead, you have a fast moving line of clarity to guess through.
6. Loops of Zen
There isn’t much to say about this game, however, it makes a high spot on this list because of that feature. Put simply, Loops of Zen has you straightening out edges of a huge shape, and the end results are often beautiful. That’s basically what the game is about, but it can get quite addicting after a while of playing it.
5. World of Goo
World of Goo is adorable, and it also has a weird political undertone if you think about it too much. As was mentioned above, this game takes a lot cues from lemmings in that you have to lead a batch of goo from pipelines to their freedom. It’s really hard not to think about these little blotches as oil, it really is, mainly because they flow from titanic pipelines and most of the world’s aesthetics look like a desert. Other than that, the game is pretty well designed because most of the escapes routes are designed by the player anyway.
4. PicrossQuest
If you like your puzzles with a little more difficulty attached to it, then PicrossQuest will probably defy your definition of “challenge”. Much like those little slide puzzles where you have to move a batch of pieces to make out an overall image, PicrossQuest has you figuring out a picture. However, the twist to this game is that it plays more like Sudoku, so your brain is going to be wracked.
3. The Cave
Tim Schafer is one of the most influential game creators of all time, which is saying a lot because the genre he mostly dwells in is puzzlers. In his latest creation, The Cave, you’re tasked with helping 3 different characters on their way to figuring out their purpose in the Cave. On top of that, the Cave itself is semi-sentient and kind of deviant as well. The game is filled with the trademark Schafer humor, which is a welcome change from all the straight forward puzzlers you find on the internet.
2. Catherine
Catherine is another off-beat puzzler, but surprisingly, it does not come from the weird mind of Schafer. Starring a 20-something office worker named Vincent who just came from a one night stand with the titular character Catherine, his task is to figure out this moral quandary. The thing is, you don’t do this with an overly moralistic game system; you instead have to do it through his dreams. The game feels like a 3D version of Q-bert, but at the same time it’s filled with a ton of symbolism.
1. Auditorium
The study of light is a hard thing to grasp as it encompasses energy and a lot more. However, if you put the concept of reflections into game about light, then you get one of the prettiest games you’ll have ever seen on a browser. The puzzles can be difficult, but at the same time, the beauty of the game is worth every grueling hour you put into this game.
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