Favorite Puzzles

Category: Arcade, Puzzle Plays: 30 Rating:

(0.0 / 0)

2dgames 118 addictive 30 amazing 27 animals 44 Brain Teaser 28 BrainChallenge 14 braining 5 Casual Puzzle 40 Cat Puzzle 6 cats 17 challenge 16 connect 22 Connect Puzzle 15 dogs 4 kidsgame 39 kidsgames 33 logical game 26 photopuzzle 1 photopuzzles 3 PuzzleGame 117 puzzler 2 puzzles 14

How to Play

Game Overview

So I picked up Favorite Puzzles thinking it'd be just another jigsaw app, but it's actually way more flexible than I expected. The core idea is simple: you've got a massive library of pictures split into 48 categories -- landscapes, animals, food, even some abstract art that looks pretty trippy. You can also upload your own photos, which is neat for making puzzles of vacation shots or dumb memes with friends. The visual style is clean and colorful, nothing fancy but pleasant enough to stare at for a while. What surprised me is how the difficulty slider actually matters -- 6 pieces is basically a joke for toddlers, but 600 pieces with realistic mode? That's where it gets brutal. Realistic mode scatters pieces around and lets them rotate, so you're not just matching edges but also spinning things in your head. The classic grid mode is chill, with hints that point you to the next correct piece when you're stuck. Playing feels kinda meditative at low difficulties, then turns into a quiet frustration at higher ones, which is exactly my jam. The zoom and scroll controls work fine on PC with mouse wheel, and on mobile it's just pinch and drag, no weirdness. Who'd get hooked? Puzzle nerds who want more than a basic app, people who like customizing their experience, and anyone who enjoys turning their own photos into a quiet challenge. It's not some groundbreaking thing, but it does what it sets out to do without fluff.

About Favorite Puzzles

So you pick a puzzle, and that's where it starts. There's a massive gallery--48 categories, which sounds like a lot, and it is, but honestly I mostly use the option to upload my own photos. You grab pieces with the cursor (or your finger on mobile) and drag them onto the board. The default mode is a grid where pieces snap into place if they're close, and there's a hint button that highlights the next correct piece--handy when you're stuck and just want to move on. But the real fun is Realistic mode. That scatters pieces all over the place, they can rotate, and nothing snaps. You have to manually rotate each piece with the mouse wheel or a two-finger twist. It's way more frustrating and way more satisfying when a piece finally fits.

Difficulty scales from 6 pieces (basically a toddler's puzzle, but great for a quick warm-up) to 600 pieces. I usually stick around 150-200 for a good hour of zoning out. The game doesn't push you into harder stuff--you choose. Later on, when you hit the achievements, you unlock Malachite rewards, which are these green currency things used for cosmetic frames or special piece shapes. There's also a leaderboard, but I never bothered with it much--some people are insane with speed.

The loop is simple: pick a puzzle, drag pieces around, match edges and colors. Your brain is mostly pattern-matching--looking for distinct colors or textures. For realistic mode, you also need to mentally track rotation, which adds a layer. The satisfying moment is when you slot the last piece and the whole image animates briefly. Some categories are trickier than others--Sunset Landscapes is easy because of color variety, but Abstract Patterns is a nightmare of repeating shapes. There's no time pressure unless you want it, so it's chill. The game also saves your progress automatically if you quit mid-puzzle, which is a lifesaver. Controls are simple: click to grab, scroll to zoom, and on mobile you pinch. No complicated mechanics or upgrade trees--just puzzles and more puzzles. It's surprisingly addictive for something so straightforward.

Tips & Tricks

The hint button is your friend early on, but don't lean on it forever. Overusing it actually cuts into your final score in some modes, which I learned the hard way after wondering why my Malachite rewards were so small. I'd recommend saving hints for when you're truly stuck on a tricky edge piece.

Sorting pieces by color before you start assembling makes a huge difference, especially in the 600-piece mode. The game's piece tray doesn't do this for you, so spend a minute grouping similar shades together -- it saves tons of time later when you're hunting for that one blue sky piece.

Zooming out to see the whole puzzle is something I ignored at first. On PC, the mouse wheel lets you zoom in close for detail work on patterns or faces, but zooming out regularly helps you spot where a piece actually fits in the bigger picture. It feels obvious, but I kept forgetting.

Rotating pieces in Realistic mode is trickier than it looks. The game doesn't tell you this, but you can rotate a piece by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse -- not just clicking. On mobile, try a two-finger twist gesture. Once I figured that out, I stopped getting frustrated with angled pieces.

Don't bother with the grid mode's snap-to-grid feature if you want high scores. It slows you down because pieces lock in place automatically, which interrupts your flow. Manual placement feels faster once you get used to it.

If you're using custom photos, pick images with high contrast and clear edges. Dark, blurry photos turn into a nightmare above 100 pieces. I wasted an hour on a sunset photo that looked great but had no distinct shapes.