What Are We Playing? [Oct 2026]

October's What Are We Playing features a puzzle box that would make Houdini proud, a small box containing the most dapper animals, and four deduction-based video games.

Houdini Box by Puzzle Potato

Houdini Box is a unique play-at-home puzzle box that contains electronics. Powered by ambient lighting, with no batteries in site, it caught my attention for the novelty alone. The mechanical parts of the box are well-executed, and the electronic elements add a twist to the gameplay.

There are some fun puzzles and neat "magic tricks" throughout the game, but some of the cluing runs uneven and could use more signposting. There is also one physical task, which, while clever, is quite finicky and may prove frustrating for some players. The fun aha moments and novel mechanisms outweigh the negatives overall, though, and I can recommend this for anyone who likes this style of puzzle boxes or wants to try something a little different.

Time: 1-2 hours

Difficulty: 3.5/5

Petiquette by Oink Games

Petiquette is a small box game built on deceptively simple pattern-recognition, featuring animals in dapper suits and snazzy hats. A round consists of six random cards: five animals and one question mark card, and players secretly decide which animal-hat-number combo best fits in the blank spot. There's never one correct answer, because points are only awarded to players whose answers match with someone else's.

It's not a puzzle game in the traditional sense. Rather, it's a game where you need to simultaneously search for patterns yourself while anticipating other players' choices. It's quite entertaining, and often surprising, to see how different people's sequencing logic works. This is a great quick play that can be a nice palette cleanser between longer game night stretches.

Time: 10-20 minutes

Difficulty: N/A or 1/5

Image via Steam

The Mermaid Mask by SFB Games

There's been a murder, and this point-and-click detective adventure hands the case over. The characters feel developed, and both the voice acting and background music add to the atmosphere of the game. The deduction elements are enjoyable, and the story comes together in a way that felt satisfying. I also really appreciated the humor sprinkled in throughout the writing. Some of the puzzles needed better signposting, and a few of the choose-an-object prompts felt more like guesswork. Overall still a solid pick for anyone who loves a good point-and-click puzzle game with fantastic art direction.

Time: ~12 hours

Difficulty: 2.5/5

Image via Steam

Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure by DigiTales Interactive

A predecessor to Between Horizons by the same publisher, Lacuna is a pixel art sci-fi noir mystery that strikes a slightly different tone than expected. You play as a CDI agent, this world's equivalent to an FBI detective. There are many connecting threads between the two titles in terms of mechanics and political themes interwoven through smaller cases. The story develops in an interesting way, asking some good questions, and offering consequential choices. Conversations and clues are logged in a way that's useful to reference, but often lacks detail. There were many instances where I had to take a photo of the terminal screen to keep certain information accessible, and this is where an in-game photo feature would make information tracking much easier to manage. Manual saves and loading earlier saves are absent by design, which keeps the player moving forward, but also adds a bit of worry about choosing correctly, as one wrong answer affects the entire playthrough.

The limited dialog and lack of inventory items maintained a clarity of the scope of what's in play. This was nice in contrast to Lacuna (more on this below), which felt less "on rails". In contrast, this had no puzzle challenges in addition to the narrative mysteries, but luckily the narrative mysteries already felt like enough.

Time: 5-6 hours

Difficulty: 2/5

Image via Steam

Between Horizons by DigiTales Interactive

Between Horizons is a 2.5D video game made of deduction quests aboard a spaceship preparing to populate a new planet. At times, the game is straightforward, but often enough searching for the next step feels like exploring too wide of a scope without any way of tracking character locations. Small improvements in the evidence and record keeping interface would smooth things out, along with an internal hint system to provide nudges when needed.

Dialogue options are easy to miss, and being unable to ask everyone about everything forces intentional choices. A few characters had no comment on something seemingly central to the plot, so more interaction options were needed at times. The story had enough of an arc to stay engaging and touches on some interesting subjects, but also has a lot of room to go further. If you enjoy a sci-fi detective theme with a light mix of deduction, puzzle, and choice-based narrative, give this game a try.

Time: 5-6 hours

Difficulty: 2/5

Apothecary of Trubiz by kinjo

Apothecary of Trubiz is a delightful, short deduction puzzle game about mixing health potions, and it plays like a blend of Chants of Sennaar and Strange Horticulture. Armed with a manual in an unknown language, combine ingredients to discover which tinctures heal each ailment, gradually deciphering the manual along the way. Early mistakes are part of learning, and because the game stores all progress, its set up for the perfect speedrun to achieve the "best ending". If you're a completionist, you can even just play some purposefully bad runs to experience all possible endings. The art style is simple but charming, and though the gameplay is pretty tight, it manages to be funny once or twice. Overall, a very nice puzzle game you can play in once sitting.

Time: ~2 hours

Difficulty: 2.5/5

What have you been playing lately?