6 Similar Games Short List
Here are our hand-picked short list of similar games; the perfect thing to play next if you enjoyed Penrose. We don't use automatic matching, instead, we hand-pick games that are good to play if you have enjoyed Penrose.
Release Date: 03/10/2022, updated in 2023
Out Now: Android, Mac and PC
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: Day and Night and Text
Upheaval is a narrative game where you have 30 days in a village before a wizard arrives. In those days, you can stir up chaos, lay low, go adventuring or do countless other activities. With over 5000 possible endings, it stands out for the sheer...
Release Date: 08/03/2023
Out Now: Android, PC, Switch and iOS
Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a horror narrative game about a seemingly unconnected group of people in a suburb of Tokyo caught up in an ancient rite of resurrection. You search for clues and talk to characters all the while trying to...
Release Date: 04/05/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: Android and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Knights of San Francisco is a text adventure with simulated combat. Through a series of textual choices and encounters, you explore what remains of the ancient city of San Francisco. It stands out for a complex evolving world and simulated combat all...
Release Date: 31/07/2023
Out Now: PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Venba is a narrative cooking game where you play an Indian mother who emigrated to Canada in the 1980s. You cook various traditional Indian dishes and restore lost recipes which were damaged in the move to Canada. As you cook, you talk to your family...
Release Date: 19/09/2019, updated in 2021
Out Now: Apple TV, Mac and iOS
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Dear Reader is a word puzzle game. It takes classical literature and (by removing words, rearranging passages and introducing spelling errors) it tasks you with the puzzle of proofreading. Progression through the game unlocks numerous works that are...
Release Date: 22/07/2019
Out Now: Mac and PC
Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon
Elsinore is a mystery-adventure set in Shakespeare's Hamlet. You play Elsinore who repeats the same four days as she tries to find a way to avoid the tragedy that lies before her.
43 Similar Games Long List
Here are our hand-picked long list of similar games; the perfect thing to play next if you enjoyed Penrose. We don't use automatic matching, instead, we hand-pick games that are good to play if you have enjoyed Penrose.
Release Date: 08/04/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: Android, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person and Cartoon
Before Your Eyes is a narrative game about an 11-year-old boy revisiting his life before "crossing over" to the other side. You play by exploring scenes that represent snapshots of his life. Unusually, you make choices and interact with the game by...
Release Date: 23/03/2023
Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Storyteller is a puzzle game about building stories. You use a set of icons to match what is happening in each frame of the story. It's a simple challenge that gets the mind-stretching as you construct some of history’s greatest stories using building...
Release Date: 12/08/2015, updated in 2016
Out Now: Mac, PC and PS4
Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person and Open World
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture lands you in a fictional deserted English village in 1984. As you walk the streets of another era you discover bright human forms who re-enact events like a radio play. Through their eyes, you see a web of fear,...
Release Date: 26/10/2017, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Cartoon and Text
Bury Me My Love is a narrative adventure game where you play the husband of a Syrian woman, Nour, travelling to Europe. Play involves receiving and sending simple messages where Nout tells you how she is getting on and you influence her choices. It...
Release Date: 20/12/2021
Out Now: Web
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Text
Wordle is a daily puzzle game where you (and anyone else playing that day) try and guess the secret word. You get six guesses that must be real words. Each letter is then coloured to provide clues: green for the right letter in the right place, yellow...
Release Date: 13/10/2022, updated in 2023
Out Now: PC, Switch and Web
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels
The Case of the Golden Idol is a point-and-click adventure set in the 18th century, where you attempt to solve 12 gruesome deaths. You play by investigating each scene to gather information in the form of words that you piece together to make statements...
Release Date: 01/03/2020
Out Now: Android and iOS
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Sticky Terms is a puzzle game where you construct words from other languages with portions of letters. You rotate, drag and overlap the different elements to create words, once you do you are rewarded with a drum hit and a definition of the word.
Release Date: 16/04/2015, updated in 2016
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person and Text
Lifeline is a narrative adventure where you interact with an astronaut, Taylor via text messages. You help him return home after crashing his aircraft on a foreign planet.
Release Date: 10/06/2013, updated in 2019
Out Now: Switch, Web and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: Open World and Text
A Dark Room is an adventure where you try and survive in the wild. The world is depicted with just text but leads you into a dense narrative with intriguing visitors and a steadily expanding world. It has a simple start – a single option to stoke a...
Release Date: 22/07/2021
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Components: 3D First-Person and Cartoon
Last Stop is an adventure set in London. You play three interconnected characters, making choices that shape their conversations, and determine where their stories lead.
Release Date: 24/06/2015
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds
Components: Filmed
Her Story is a narrative puzzle game where you attempt to solve the 1994 mystery of a murdered man by searching an old police computer archive of interview videos of his wife. The game presents a retro computer interface but the interviews themselves...
Release Date: 06/09/2013, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Samsara Room is an abstract point-and-click puzzle-horror game. By solving the puzzles hidden throughout the room, you uncover an uneasy story about judgement and atonement told through the things you find.
Release Date: 31/07/2019, updated in 2020
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Components: Filmed
Telling Lies is from the same developer as Her Story. It's named as an investigative thriller game with non-linear storytelling by the developer.
Release Date: 05/03/2021
Out Now: Mac and PC
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Closed Hands is a text adventure game set in the lead-up and aftermath of a terror attack in a fictional UK city. You follow five core characters brought together by the same event. It's a branching story that you discover and influence as you read and...
Release Date: 19/04/2019, updated in 2023
Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Day and Night and Pixels
Talk to Strangers is a narrative adventure where you play a struggling door-to-door salesperson selling mysterious wares to the neighbourhood. You talk to the residents in an effort to convince them to buy your goods while simultaneously using your...
Release Date: 19/03/2021
Out Now: Android, PC and iOS
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Fate of Kai is a narrative puzzle game where you control the story rather than the characters. You discover Kai's story by walking through the panels of a comic book. It's a tale about a boy who wakes in a strange land handcuffed to a mysterious chest...
Release Date: 13/07/2021
Out Now: PS4
Components: 3D Third-Person
Where the Heart Leads is an adventure game where you make life-choices and then see their impact. You play Whit Anderson, as he revisits and alters his past, present, and future. It's a game that creates a surreal dream-like narrative, but one that is...
Release Date: 07/11/2018
Out Now: Android and iOS
Components: 2D Side-On
Frequency Missing is a point-and-click adventure. You play young radio reporter Patricia who has just started her first job at a radio station. However, strange things are happening. Richard, her friend who got her the job has vanished and someone is...
Release Date: 05/06/2019, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Ord is an unusual text adventure, rather than one grand story, you embark on a series of distinct quests. Whether it's defeating an evil warlock or creating your own world as a god, Ord tells stories through simple series of words and word associations...
Release Date: 25/06/2012
Out Now: iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Spelltower+ is a word-spotting game a little like Boggle mixed with Tetris. As you play, more tiles rise from the bottom of the screen so you need to pick good words to clear down the letters and avoid any letters make it to the top row.
Release Date: 12/11/2019
Out Now: PC
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Kind Words is unusual because of the main interaction. You write letters to real people and receive back encouraging letters in return. Set in a cosy room with soft furnishings and relaxing music, it creates a space in which to find support and...
Release Date: 15/12/2021
Out Now: PC
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Text
Babble Royale is a puzzle word game played against 16 other players online. You simultaneously race to make words as in Scrabble. Here though, you do this to inch across the board and stay out of the encroaching storm.
Release Date: 30/09/2022
Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels
Monorail Stories is a narrative adventure where two people's lives are entwined by the journeys they take on the same monorail. You make choices for each character that can impact not only people on your commute but those on the other journey. It's...
Release Date: 18/07/2023
Out Now: PC
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
My Friendly Neighborhood is an adventure horror game where you investigate the strange set of a kid's TV show. Play involves traversing each of the different areas, solving puzzles and shooting the puppets that attack you. Unlike Rainbow Friends, this...
Release Date: 09/04/2021
Out Now: PC, Switch and iOS
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Say No More is an adventure game where you learn to say "no". You play as an intern at a new job putting up with colleagues being unpleasant. The twist is that in this world it's illegal to say "no". Eventually pushed to your limit, you discover the...
Release Date: 07/01/2013, updated in 2023
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Components: 2D Overhead
Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist adventure game in five acts. This means that you explore a deep and rich world backed by haunting electronic music and hymns to unfold a story of unpayable debts, abandoned futures, and the human drive to find...
Release Date: 19/11/2015, updated in 2017
Out Now: Android, PC, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Xbox One and iOS
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Typoman is a running, jumping puzzle game where you use letters and words to solve puzzles and progress. You play as a character made of letters in a hostile land with evil creatures. As this unusual character, you make your way through the world...
Release Date: 18/02/2021
Out Now: PC
Skill Rating: 15+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels
Buddy Simulator 1984 is an adventure horror game. What starts as a retro-themed set of mini-games soon evolves into a tale of anxiety, friendship and depression as your buddy makes new games for you to play each with creepy anomalies and glitches. It's...
Release Date: 12/09/2022
Out Now: Mac and PC
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Pixels and Text
Roadwarden is a narrative text-adventure where you work as a sheriff trying to keep the peace (and trade) on the central roads of their community. What you do is similar to other adventure games (explore a dark fantasy world, interact with locals) but...
Release Date: 14/12/2015, updated in 2016
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Rusty Lake Hotel is a surreal point-and-click adventure with a tangential horror narrative. While set in the same universe as the other games in the Rusty Lake series, it tells its own standalone story that only shares loose connections with the other...
Release Date: 04/06/2020
Out Now: Android and iOS
Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Words For A Bird is a short adventure you play by completing sentences. You follow the story of a purple bird. Each sentence is completed with letters from the tree in which the bird sits, along with a clue tile in the middle of the screen.
Release Date: 26/05/2021
Out Now: iOS
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Letter Rooms is a simple anagram puzzle game. You get a hint and a set of letters and rearrange them to create the answer. This starts simply but adds more complexity like turning letters on and off or flipping letters.
Release Date: 26/11/2015
Out Now: iOS
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead and Text
One Button Travel is a stylish text adventure where you communicate across time to try and cancel your permanent holiday in a dystopian future. You try and save your accomplice, who's already stuck in the future, by making choices and solving puzzles...
Release Date: 21/06/2016, updated in 2019
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS4 and Switch
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead and Pixels
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action, to use its full name, is a narrative game about a futuristic bar "VA-11's Hall-A", known locally as Valhalla. You serve drinks and talk to customers, to learn their stories and piece together the daily struggle...
Release Date: 09/02/2022
Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Letters: A Written Adventure is a running and jumping literary puzzle where you write letters to your pen pal throughout the stages of your life. What's unique is that you physically explore each letter, using the lines as platforms and changing words...
Release Date: 22/01/2018, updated in 2019
Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch
Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels
The Red Strings Club is a futuristic narrative game where you prescribe implants and drinks to people who visit your bar. You talk to patrons, prepare them drinks and coax information out of them to advance the espionage story. It's a unique game that...
Release Date: 28/08/2022
Out Now: PC
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Writer's Block is a word puzzle game where you create words to fight. You take on quests and spell words to beat or evade the strange opponents. It's an unusual combination of combat and vocabulary where you battle mental monsters standing in the way of...
Release Date: 19/12/2014
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Components: 2D Side-On and Text
Choice of Robots is a text adventure game where you make choices to affect the story. Unlike other choose-your-own-adventure games here you are designing robots. How you put them together and treat them will change the world. Will you show them the true...
Release Date: 23/09/2019, updated in 2021
Out Now: PC and Stadia
Components: 2D Overhead and Open World
Nanotale - Typing Chronicles is an adventure game where you type to progress through a magical planet on the brink of extinction. You play as Rosalind, a novice Archivist, on a journey to study and catalogue the mysteries of the dying planet. Your goal...
Release Date: Coming soon
Coming Soon: PC
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Baladins is a narrative role-play game where you play a troupe of entertainers wandering through the countryside. You visit towns, talk to the locals and complete quests over your a short span of weeks, then start again and have a new adventure. It...
Release Date: 06/08/2015, updated in 2017
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Letter Quest Remastered is an adventure game where you use words to defeat monsters, ghosts, and evil bunnies. You play by spelling words to trigger attacks and cast spells. It's a novel combination of Scrabble and a classic adventure game.
Release Date: 13/10/2021
Out Now: Mac and PC
Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Grid and Text
Midnight Protocol is a strategy game about hacking that is controlled entirely with the keyboard. You type commands and interactions to hack into different systems and drain them of resources while trying to keep yourself hidden and safe. It's this...
Release Date: 23/10/2011
Out Now: Amazon Fire, Web and iOS
Components: 2D Overhead and Grid
These Robotic Hearts of Mine is a narrative puzzle game where you uncover a metaphorical story by completing levels. Unusually, the levels don't tell the story directly. They are difficult rotation-based Rubik's cube-inspired puzzles. But they are also...
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