MazeReview

Independent notes from Dublin

Free puzzle games, read slowly.

MazeReview keeps a very short list. Three free puzzle games from Google Play, installed on our own phones and played well past the tutorial, so we can tell you what kind of thinking each one wants, how long a single move takes and whether the thing still opens when the signal drops.

Read the three notes See the thinking table
Icon of MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku
Icon of BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games
Icon of Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles

Three games on the desk. Nothing else pretending to be a recommendation.

On the desk

What we are playing this month

Each note below is written after the game stopped being new — somewhere around the point where the tutorial hints stop and the puzzle has to hold your attention on its own.

Icon of MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku

MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku

Conceptis Ltd.

4.8 out of five, Google Play rating in Ireland

Several sudoku grids overlap at the corners, so a digit you settle in one of them quietly answers a square two grids away. That shared region is the whole idea, and it turns a familiar puzzle into something closer to bookkeeping — you keep a mental note of what one grid still owes another. Conceptis leave the screen calm: pencil marks, an undo, and very little competing for your attention.

  • Our pick this month
  • Overlapping grids
  • PEGI 3
  • Plays offline

Open on Google Play

MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku, an eight-grid samurai layout with the number pad open MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku, a three-grid layout with pencil marks filled in
Icon of BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games

BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games

HDuo Fun Games

4.6 out of five, Google Play rating in Ireland

Wooden shapes drop onto a board and clear when a line fills, which is familiar enough on its own. The jigsaw levels are the reason to look twice: the pieces you place slowly assemble a picture, so a board that reads as cluttered is often one careful turn from resolving into a cat or a chess piece. Sessions are short, the timer never leans on you, and the wood texture keeps the whole thing quieter than the genre usually is.

  • Shape fitting
  • Jigsaw levels
  • PEGI 3
  • Plays offline

Open on Google Play

BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games, a wooden jigsaw board part way through level five BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games, a piece being dragged into a figure on level twelve
Icon of Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles

Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles

Gismart

4.4 out of five, Google Play rating in Ireland

Every puzzle is a quotation with its letters swapped for other letters, and you unpick it one guess at a time. Common letters give you a foothold, the punctuation does more work than you expect, and the sentence tends to arrive all at once somewhere near the end. It leans hard on English spelling habits, so it suits anyone who enjoys language as much as deduction — and it is the one on this list we reach for on a short bus ride.

  • Letter substitution
  • Daily puzzle
  • PEGI 3
  • Plays offline

Open on Google Play

Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles, a quotation being decoded letter by letter Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles, the daily challenge screen

Thinking time

How long a move takes

The one thing store listings never tell you: whether a single move is a two-second reflex or a two-minute think, and what the game hands you when the board stops making sense.

Kind of logic, help on offer, offline behaviour and a typical session length for the three games on this page.
Game Kind of logic When you get stuck Offline Typical session
MultiSudoku: Samurai Sudoku Deduction across shared cells, one grid feeding the next Pencil marks, autofill of candidates, hints on request Whole puzzle set 20 to 40 minutes
BlockPuz: Block Puzzle Games Spatial fitting, thinking one piece ahead of the tray Undo, and a preview of where a piece will sit Every level 5 to 12 minutes
Cryptogram: Word Logic Puzzles Letter frequency and English spelling patterns Reveal a single letter, then work outwards again Once a pack is downloaded 8 to 15 minutes

We timed ordinary sessions on a mid-range Android phone instead of counting levels, and checked the offline column by switching the phone to airplane mode before opening each game. Everything here describes the versions we had installed in August 2026.

Questions

Things people ask us

Are all three games free to download?

Yes. Every game on this page is a free download from Google Play. We link straight to the store listing, so you can read the developer's own details there before you install anything.

Where do the ratings come from?

They are the Google Play store ratings as shown to visitors in Ireland while we were writing this page. Store ratings drift as more people rate a game, so treat the figures here as a snapshot and check the listing for the current one.

Who writes these notes?

Two people in Dublin who like logic puzzles more than is strictly reasonable. We install the games on our own Android phones, play them well past the tutorial and write down what the experience is actually like — including the parts that annoyed us.

Why only three?

Because three is what we can honestly keep up with. A longer list would mean thinner notes, and thin notes are the one thing the internet already has enough of.

When a game leaves the list, its note comes down with it rather than sitting here going stale.

Does a developer pay to appear here?

No. There are no paid placements on this page, we show no advertising, and the Google Play links are plain links with no commission attached to them. The site is run privately by the two people who write it, which is also why it stays small.

Do you collect anything about me?

There is no form on this site, no account to create and no analytics of our own. Our hosting provider and Cloudflare keep the ordinary server logs needed to deliver the page; that is set out in the privacy notice.