The most popular abandonware puzzle games

If you’ve ever looked at Tetris and thought, “This needs to be in 3D and way harder,” then BlockOut 2 (2000) is your kind of punishment. This brain-melter takes falling blocks to the next dimension—literally—forcing you to rotate, flip, and somehow fit bizarrely shaped pieces into a deep pit like you're organizing IKEA...

Paganitzu is a classic puzzle-adventure game released in 1991 by Apogee Software. Set in an ancient pyramid, the game follows the exploits of its protagonist, Alabama Smith, who must navigate through a series of increasingly complex rooms filled with traps, puzzles, and enemies. The game is divided into three episodes, each one unraveling more of t...

This game is either a delightful brain teaser or a slow descent into madness, depending on how patient you are. 15x15 Picture Puzzle gives you a scrambled mess of tiny square tiles and challenges you to rearrange them into a beautiful image that you’ll spend hours trying to recognize. It’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle with gloves on and a...

Archipelagos is like a fever dream after watching too much Myst. You’re dropped onto strange, floating islands inhabited by stone monoliths and evil terrain-infecting sludge. Your job? Purify the land by destroying said monoliths - because obviously. The visuals are surreal, the soundscape unnervingly tranquil, and the gameplay strangely hypn...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find yourself in a 2D arena set against a starry, space-like background. You control a colorful ball, which, despite being a 2D sprite, appears somewhat three-dimensional due t...

Boulder Dash Construction Kit is both a full game and a level editor, built around the gameplay mechanics of the original Boulder Dash (1984). You still play as Rockford, the pixelated, googly-eyed spelunker, digging through caves, dodging falling boulders, and collecting diamonds before time runs out. But the real star here is the Construction Kit...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy disk. It’s like playing Jeopardy! with a host who only accepts answers in blocky text and doesn’t tolerate typos. Educational, frustrating, and a fantastic way t...