Mentally Challenging PC games - Help

[Queen Elizabeth II]

Dear loyal subjects,

 

My partner isn't very interested in videogames. She doesn't go in for shooters or RPGs or builders etc. She doesn't like violence, and she is easily bored by many of the concepts found in video games. She even got annoyed and stopped playing Portal because she got irritated by GLaDOS' "Stupid voice". There is one genre she does enjoy though and that is puzzle games.  (That's why I suggested Portal). But every single puzzle game she has tried she says is easy, or not very mentally challenging where the only difficulty the developer has slapped on was a time limit.

 

Strangely the only videogame that has really captivated was 'Zork', she didn't mind the black screen and the white text. She enjoyed the difficulty and the reliance on visualising the scene and the problem in her head. (Something you do with maths a lot)

 

She is a Chemistry and Maths student at a very top university and loves her subjects, she wants to play video games with me because she loves me and I want to include her in this amazing hobby we all share. Guys and girls, can you help me? I need to find for her a mentally challenging game, that hopefully requires you to use complicated maths, logic or deduction or anything that is more challenging than sliding blocks and solving mazes, I want to show her that modern video games aren't all about killing and shooting.

 

Thank you

[Sakkura]

Maybe SpaceChem, if she's not averse to something that reminds her of her regular work. It's not expensive to test, since the game is on sale for 0.99€ right now.

 

Or if she's into history at all, maybe some of the Paradox grand strategy games. They're certainly cerebral, though they're not puzzle-based at all.

[Samfisher]

Theorycrafting perfect WoW builds and D3 attack speed breakpoints.

[minibois]

It's not on PC (Unless you count emulators), but Professor Layton on the DS and 3DS (there are like 5 games in the series now) is really fun. Maybe not super challenging sometimes, but some really clever puzzles are in there

[razor767]

Antichamber

KAMI

LIMBO

SpaceChem

[ManOfDisguise]

maybe The Witness, but I don't know if it's more than solving mazes and sliding blocks, because it seems all the puzzles consist of that, but there can be some very challenging puzzles in the game or so I heard

[evilarceus]

Antichamber. It just fucks with your mind.

[impure]

Sounds like you're looking for that game with all the Kerbals. I haven't played it myself but it should fulfill your requirements.

[SnakeDrone]

The Witness