The puzzle games I never deleted

My phone is a graveyard of puzzle games I played twice and forgot. But a handful stuck around, and figuring out why has become a bit of a hobby for me.

The common thread is that each level feels like a tidy little problem with one clean solution. Skybound Tactics does this well — it dresses its puzzles up as airship battles, but underneath it's pure logic, and every solved level gives you that satisfying click of understanding.

The games that fail usually do one of two things: they pad themselves out with near-identical levels, or they bolt on mechanics that break the touch controls. A great puzzle game keeps introducing new ideas right up to the end, and never makes you fight the interface.

If you're hunting for one to keep, pay attention to how the first ten levels feel. Good puzzle games teach you their language fast and trust you to run with it. The ones that are still hand-holding by level ten rarely get better.