11 Best Wii Puzzle Games

Art of Balance is a puzzle game from Shin'en Multimedia, first sold as a WiiWare download in 2010. The idea fits in one sentence: you get a pile of oddly shaped blocks and have to stack every one of them on a small base without the tower toppling. When the last block is down, a countdown starts, and the tower has to stay up until it reaches zero. Later versions shortened that countdown, so the Wii original is the tense one.

The game went on to the Wii U and the Switch, then to the PS4 and a touch version on the 3DS, which tells you how well the idea holds up. On the Wii it is the calmest game on this list. It is the one to play when you want to think instead of swinging your arm around.

Fluidity, called Hydroventure in Europe and Oceania, was made by Curve Studios and published by Nintendo for WiiWare in December 2010. You are not a hero with a sword. You are a small body of water, and you get through each level by changing its state. Freeze it and it becomes ice, boil it and it turns into steam, and each form opens up a different part of the map. Richard Jacques, the Sega composer, worked on the music and sound.

Players who bring it up often give both of its names, which shows how many people found it on European consoles too. It came out four years into the Wii's life, when a lot of owners had stopped checking the shop. A sequel, Fluidity: Spin Cycle, followed on the 3DS eShop in December 2012.

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree is the sequel to the DS game Big Brain Academy, and like that one it claims to measure how heavy your brain is. You answer quick puzzles, and the faster you solve one, the more grams you earn. Get one wrong and it scores nothing. The puzzles get harder as your score goes up, so the game keeps pushing you right to the edge of what you can do.

It uses your Miis, and one mode pits you against a computer opponent built from a player's best test. That made it a family game more than a solo one, the kind you pass around the couch after dinner. It holds up better than you would expect from a game about the weight of your brain. A sequel, Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain, arrived on the Switch on December 3, 2021.

Mercury Meltdown started on the PSP in 2006 as the sequel to Archer Maclean's Mercury, made by Ignition Banbury. The Wii got its own version in 2007, Mercury Meltdown Revolution, with changed levels and motion controls. The goal never changes: tilt the stage and guide blobs of mercury to the finish. Ignition Banbury began work on it when Nintendo was still calling the Wii by its code name, Revolution, and the new controller was the whole reason it exists.

Critics praised its use of the Wii's motion controls and took points off for the missing multiplayer. That is fair, but this is a game you play alone anyway, leaning over the Remote like it owes you money. The worlds are called Labs, each one split into 16 stages shown as test tubes, and later puzzles have you mixing colours of mercury using the RGB colour model.

Tetris Party began as a WiiWare game by Hudson Soft, out in North America on October 20, 2008, and Tetris Party Deluxe was the retail version that followed in 2010. It is Tetris with your Miis and a pile of extra modes. Dual Spaces borrows from Reversi and has players fencing off empty space with their pieces. There is even a Balance Board mode where you lean left and right to move the falling piece and squat to rotate it.

Ask players for a straight puzzle game on the Wii and this is the one they name. You do not need the motion controls at all, and the game is better for it, since a Remote held sideways is all Tetris ever asked for. It is also the best way to play Tetris against friends on the console.

Marble Saga: Kororinpa came out in North America on March 17, 2009, roughly two years after the first Kororinpa. Europe got it as Marbles! Balance Challenge. You help Anthony the Ant on his quest to find the Golden Sunflower, twisting and turning the Wii Remote to tilt each maze and roll your marble to the goal. Producer Osamu Tsuchihashi said it took around 2 years to develop, with a team of 15 developers.

The North American release has thirty special stages for the Wii Balance Board, and the European one has one hundred. It is the bigger and more polished of the two Kororinpas, but players rank the first one higher, maybe because it was there when the Wii was brand new. Play them in order and you will enjoy both.

World of Goo was made by 2D Boy, an independent developer, and came out on Windows and the Wii on the same day, October 13, 2008. You use small balls of goo to build bridges and towers over chasms so the other goo balls can reach the goal, and the challenge is to use as few of them as possible. The story is told through signs left by an unseen Sign Painter, and it gets stranger the further you go.

It won Outstanding Achievement in Game Design at the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and became one of the earliest commercially successful indie games. Pointing at goo with a Remote just feels right. It can also make you very angry. One player remembered their wife getting so mad at it that she would "throw the controller and smash" their TV.

Bash Party is the 2009 sequel, again developed by EA Los Angeles and directed by Steven Spielberg. It has more than 400 levels and plays a lot like the first game, with some new mechanics and less of the shooting mode, which the developers said was their least favourite part of Boom Blox. The big addition was online sharing, so you could download new levels and upload your own.

That part is gone now. EA shut the online servers down in April 2012, so the level sharing no longer works, but the 400 levels on the disc are plenty. Players who recommend Boom Blox usually mean both games, and that is the right call. If you liked the first one, this is more of it with fewer things to shoot.

Kororinpa, called Kororinpa: Marble Mania in North America, was made by Hudson Soft and came out in Japan on December 2, 2006, as a launch title for the Wii. Hudson set out to make it a Wii exclusive from the start. You turn the Wii Remote to tilt the whole maze, and the marble rolls wherever the floor sends it. Beat a level fast enough and you earn a trophy, and the trophies unlock new balls and 5 additional bonus levels.

Critics at the time complained about the lack of levels or challenge and its camera, and Famitsu gave it 24 out of 40. Players remember it far more warmly than that. It sits third here, ahead of its own sequel, and it showed very early what the Wii Remote could do for a puzzle game.

Zack & Wiki is an adventure puzzle game from Capcom that came out in North America on October 23, 2007. Zack is an aspiring pirate and Wiki is his monkey friend, and together they hunt down the pieces of the legendary pirate Barbaros, whose body is cursed. It takes the point-and-click adventure and adds gestures, so you turn keys and pour liquids by doing it with the Remote. Shake the Remote and Wiki rings like a bell, turning nearby enemies into tools.

In one puzzle you ring Wiki to change a centipede into a saw, then cut down a tree by moving the Remote back and forth. IGN and GameSpy both gave it an Editor's Choice label. It is also one of the games players keep bringing up when someone asks what to play on the Wii, and it is the best adventure game on the console.

Boom Blox is a 2008 puzzle game from Electronic Arts, developed by EA Los Angeles and directed by filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Yes, that one. Every level is a physics puzzle made of blocks, and you use the Wii Remote to throw things at them or grab them out of the stack. Sometimes the job is to knock a structure over and sometimes it is to keep one standing. The angle of your throw and how fast you throw it both change what happens.

There are over 300 single-player levels and over 100 more for co-op and versus play, plus a mode for building your own. Players named it more than any other Wii puzzle game, and it is easy to see why. Anyone in the room understands it after one throw, and there is still plenty of depth for the player who keeps coming back.