Puzzle-platformer

Puzzle-platformer is a hybrid genre which combines aspects from both the puzzle and platformer genres, and could therefore be viewed as a sub-genre of either main genres. Cinematic platformers are often related to puzzle-platformers, and some 3D puzzle games, like Portal, are also 3D puzzle-platformers.
Contents
Personal
The first puzzle-platformer I ever played was either Prince of Persia or A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia. While they both impressed me for their creativity, I didn't find either of them as enjoyable as action-oriented platformers. I didn't start to really appreciate puzzle-platformers until the late 2000s when the hardware improved so much the games could not only have a lot of unique and interesting puzzles, but also tell a provocative story in the process. Games like Portal and Limbo have become some of my favorites.
History
While the puzzle genre predates video games by a few thousand years, the platformer didn't really come along until around 1980, and, even then, it took designers some time to combine the two in such a way that the puzzles were complicated enough to call a game a hybrid of the two genres. Pioneers of the genre include platformers games with strategic elements like Q*Bert (1982), Door Door (1983), and Lode Runner (1983), however, their fast pace meant they were more akin to Pac-Man and Lock 'n' Chase. The flip-side is games which are essentially puzzle games that just happen to take place on platforms like Popeye no Eigo Asobi (1983), Dragon Slayer (1984), and Pitman (1985), but they lack features common to platformers like jumping or avoiding hazards.
Some of the earliest video games to incorporate fairly equal parts of puzzle and platforming include games like Doki Doki Penguin Land (1985) and Solomon's Key (1986). Do to the weak hardware at the time, the puzzles in these early games are pretty much the same throughout the entire game and just run through a series of maps. As the hardware began affording more space for games, puzzle-platformers began to introduce more than one puzzle as seen in titles like Prince of Persia (1989) and A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia (1990), then through the 1990s, really began to lean into more complex with titles like The Lost Vikings (1993) and Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993). Independent publishing allowed the genre to thrive and later popular puzzle-platformers include Braid (2008), Limbo (2010), Fez (2012), and Thomas Was Alone (2012).
Games
For all puzzle-platformer games, see the category page.
Here are some puzzle-platformer games that are important to me:
Title | Released | Developer |
---|---|---|
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia | 1990-01-?? | Imagineering |
Donkey Kong (Game Boy series) | 1994-06-14 | Nintendo, Pax Softnica |
Limbo | 2010-07-21 | Playdead |
Portal | 2007-10-10 | Valve |
Portal 2 | 2011-04-19 | Valve |
Prince of Persia | 1989-10-03 | Brøderbund |
Thomas Was Alone | 2012-06-30 | Mike Bithell Games Limited |
Type:Rider | 2013-10-09 | Cosmografik Studio |