Cosy puzzle and mystery games for a rainy night in: 7 picks you can settle into

Some evenings the rain hammers on the window and you want something a bit more absorbing than watering crops, but nothing that’ll make you swear at a boss fight. That’s where cosy puzzle and mystery games come in: slow, thoughtful, no timers, and very happy to wait while you put the kettle on.

We’ve already covered this autumn’s cosy games and the cosy releases coming to Switch and PC this winter, so this list doesn’t repeat them. Instead, these are established puzzle and mystery games that are already out, with release dates taken from their Steam pages. We’ve linked the PC versions; several are also on consoles or mobile, so check your own platform’s store. Store availability can vary by country.

Gentle sleuthing

Strange Horticulture (2022)

You run a plant shop in a misty English town, identifying plants from a reference book and handing them to customers whose requests get stranger as the story goes on. The pleasure is in the detective work: matching leaf shapes and smells to descriptions while rain streaks the shop window. It’s the most “rainy night” game on this list.

Botany Manor (2024)

A retired botanist, a grand country house and a collection of forgotten flowers. Each plant is a puzzle: you piece together clues from letters, posters and notebooks to work out how to make it bloom. There’s no fail state and no rush, and it’s short enough for a couple of long evenings.

The Case of the Golden Idol (2022)

Each case shows you a frozen moment, often a death, and you click around the scene to collect words, then slot them into a fill-in-the-blanks account of what happened. It’s darker in tone than the rest of this list, but it’s very cosy in pace: you can stare at a scene for as long as you like.

Puzzles with a story

Chants of Sennaar (2023)

You climb a tower where every level speaks its own language, and you decipher them by watching, listening and guessing. When the grammar suddenly clicks it’s one of the best feelings in puzzle games. Keep a notebook by the sofa.

Lost in Play (2022)

A hand-drawn point-and-click adventure about two siblings whose imaginations turn their town into a fantasy world. The puzzles are light and the animation is lovely, which makes it a good one to play with someone watching or chipping in.

Something to fiddle with

A Monster’s Expedition (2020)

A small monster pushes logs around tiny islands to reach museum exhibits of “human artefacts”. It’s an open-world block-pushing puzzler, and you can wander off from a hard puzzle and come back to it later, which makes it ideal for half-attention evenings.

Unpacking (2021)

You unpack boxes in a series of homes across someone’s life, and the story is told entirely through the objects you put away. There’s no dialogue and no clock, just the satisfaction of putting things where they belong. It’s best played with a hot drink in one hand.

How we picked

Everything here is out now, so there’s no waiting for a release date, and every game lets you pause or leave mid-puzzle without losing progress. We left out anything with combat, timers or competitive multiplayer. If you’d rather play with someone, our two-player games list has sofa-friendly picks, and if you’d prefer to watch something on a wet night, try our anime films for a cosy night in.