2026’s Best Puzzle Game Is an Even Trippier Take On Portal

Back in 2007, Portal completely rewired how I thought about video games. That first-person masterpiece felt akin to an impossible illusion, and very few titles in the years since have managed to capture that exact lightning in a bottle. Now, nearly two decades later, an independent creator has rekindled that exact sensation of intellectual wonder with the labyrinthine marvel that is He Who Watches.

Crafted by developer Bobby Vanden and published by puzzle game connoisseurs Draknek and Friends, He Who Watches takes the foundational DNA that made Portal singular and reinterprets it through a mesmerizing, perspective-shifting lens. It is punishingly clever, layered with hidden secrets, delightfully disorienting, and undoubtedly destined to stand among the finest puzzle experiences of 2026.

Spurning heavy exposition in favor of environmental atmosphere, He Who Watches casts you as an archer navigating an arcane, monolithic complex full of isolated test chambers. Your objective is straightforward: conquer each room to unlock new corridors, unearth hidden glyphs, and track down a deity-like entity imprisoned deep within the architecture. While you might loosely categorize it as a three-dimensional take on Sokoban—the classic block-pushing genre—the mechanics transcend traditional boundaries. By loosing arrows equipped with a tethering force, you can manipulate cubes from a distance, guiding them onto pressure plates or shifting them out of harm’s way. On paper, the loop of navigating to an exit via spatial deduction sounds simple enough. In practice? Not even close.

The true genius of He Who Watches lies in your complete freedom of movement: you can traverse walls and ceilings with absolute ease, dynamically shifting gravity to align with your chosen surface. Pick up a crate on the floor, set it down, and it remains grounded—familiar physics. However, should you carry that same cube up a vertical wall onto the ceiling and release it, it will cling steadfastly overhead. Naturally, this mechanic spawns riddles that utterly shatter conventional logic. It also occasionally induces a mild wave of vertigo as you sprint across every conceivable surface in a first-person perspective. Even so, it is a remarkably minor price to extract for such brilliant, flawlessly engineered spatial mechanics.

What elevates He Who Watches above mere gimmickry is its remarkable depth and variety. Instead of coasting on a single gravity-defying trick, Vanden continuously layers in fresh, inventive concepts that build upon one another. Later in my journey, I encountered a series of chambers centered around transport beams that propelled boxes along linear tracks of glowing green energy. I quickly realized I could intercept these trajectories with cargo to construct makeshift bridges across lethal abysses. Before long, that same tool expanded into something far more sophisticated, granting me the ability to essentially program automated machinery. The escalation in complexity is so organic that you suddenly find yourself operating with the mindset of an engineer without ever feeling overwhelmed.

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Should any of this sound intimidating, fear not. Vanden clearly recognized the common pitfalls of the genre and integrated an exceptionally intuitive hint system. Every main chamber is accompanied by an optional, bite-sized mini-puzzle designed to teach you the core principle needed for the primary trial ahead. Encounter an obstacle that requires clearing an impossible chasm? Your adjacent hint room will offer a scaled-down scenario demonstrating precisely how to transport a block across open air. It is a stroke of design brilliance that eliminates the genre’s most notorious hurdle: that frustrating moment of staring blankly at a screen, utterly clueless as to what the game expects of you. Here, the intent is always crystal clear; only the execution demands your absolute best.

I am still methodically carving my path through He Who Watches, deliberately pacing myself to relish every clever revelation. Even when a particular enigma stalls my progress for half an hour, the breakthrough always lands with a deeply satisfying sense of logic and fairness. Given how hastily I blazed through Portal all those years ago, I intend to savor every moment of this journey. A puzzle game this imaginatively intoxicating simply does not come along every day.

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Source: Polygon