Which games do you recommend to improve thinking and reasoning?
Computer games, board games, etc. are accepted.
Go board game. This is the one game that changes as the way you change your thinking in life changes. It's also a two way street, in that lessons learned on the board can be applied in your real life decision making and conceptualizations. On the one hand, it's a board game, meant to teach tactics and strategy. On the other, it's a conversation between two players where ideas are laid out, interpreted, and the one-upmanship continues, with minor misunderstandings leading to local losses. The board is large enough that you can lose several of those and still recover to win. It most closely follows competing for market share and over-reaching exposes you to risk and large potential losses. The thing I like most is that the player's personality appears in their playstyle, and when confronted with a different playstyle may be required to adapt, as a fast and loose style doesn't stand up when it comes in contact with a 'thick' one.
Btw, the game server that I used was KGS[0] that has a nice easy to use client. Go gained some popularity so there could be other popular game matching sites/software now.
[0] https://www.gokgs.com/
Depends on what type of thinking and reasoning you're after. Different games will train different aspects.
Engineering and systems thinking games - Factorio, Dyson Sphere Project
Multitasking and heuristic decision making games - Starcraft, Dota
Physics and mathematics games - Kerbal Space Program
Out of all of these, my favorites to play are probably Dyson Sphere Project and Dota, but for pure mental training I always felt Starcraft was the hardest. Quick decision making and adaptation to the environment always made it feel like it kept me on the edge of my seat mentally. Dota has a team aspect, which can go a long way to helping (or harming) your ability to work as a team.
IQ can be reduced through maltreatment, but in general we don't know how to increase IQ. Higher IQ people are more likely to play chess, but playing chess does not raise IQ. So just play the games you enjoy.
"Most people think playing chess makes you 'smarter', but the evidence isn't clear on that" https://phys.org/news/2019-07-people-chess-smarter-evidence-... .
Into the Breach - turn based strategy where you know what the AI plans to do on their next turn. The same studio made FTL, which I also highly recommend.
This might be a captain obvious-type answer...but have you thought about Chess?
I really like playing "Immersive Sim" games (aka Prey, System Shock, Deus Ex, etc) because they generally have really tough combat but open ended gameplay. This means you must think very carefully about every encounter to come out on top.
Check out HackTheBox.eu
Gamified hacking challenges that will teach you real life scenarios. There's a lot of web based challenges, but others include databases, root escalation, etc.
Project Euler is fun for anyone who likes logic puzzles. I enjoyed working on those problems as I was just learning to code, and some (maybe many?) can be solved without writing code.
A few friends of mine who don't have any formal math or comp sci experience have had fun on the site as well.
Game of thrones board game - fun, negotiation, persuation and strategy in one package. There is variaty of strategies how to win and each requires interaction between players. The best moments were about reasoning why to everybody should ally with you instead of others.
Hitman 3 - many many many of ways to complete missions and engages creativity in really cool ways while being immersive and still fun / free form.
Any Zachtronics game.
"Human Resource Machine" and "7 Billion Humans"
I thought the idea that games can improve thinking and reasoning was debunked? Dedicating your life to chess doesn't mean they can put you in the general's chair and you'll be a military genius, just means you'll be good at chess.
I don't know if this is the kind of answer you want, but to this day I swear that playing Kula World (also known as Roll Away in the US, I think) made me smarter. It requires spatial reasoning, which maybe isn't what you're looking for. The game starts being ridiculously simple, but the difficulty ramps up fast, and it forces you to think carefully about your movements. And since the scenarios are de facto discrete, you don't need to be mindful about precision, just focus on the logic of the puzzles themselves.
I think something like DOTA would be up there, if only because of the immense state space that you have the game and the ability to use your superior understanding of those options to come out ahead of your opponents. Raw mechanics are important at the highest levels, but you can get a lot of mileage through "out thinking" your opponents in draft, in itemization, and in general strategic decisions about what to do, where and when.
Games with an established online group are an awesome way to interact with the world at large.
Chess is near universal and can almost carry a chessboard wherever you go whether online or in person almost like card games or the New York parks with Chessboards everywhere.
Starcraft 2 has an establish online presence damn near over the entire world. Great casters and fun events, that are fun to watch.
Progression path in Starcraft 2 is a clear path and the most transparent as far as effort to progress. This game gives you graphs and good replays of each game by default, so its geared towards progress. Has 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 modes plus a huuuge variety of other arcade and developed games.
Typical game of Starcraft 2 can be between 10 - 30 minutes and has a high ratio to fun and competitiveness, you feel your mind expand in each rank.
Check out the bronze to gm guides, here, well thought out with clear strategy, easy to follow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuS_PgtyAP8
Factorio if you're into engineering planning, or maybe community test chambers of Portal 2 for puzzles that can be picked up readily.
Magic: the Gathering is basically writing software and teaches how to optimize randomness ― high barrier to entry, unfortunately
Any DOS adventure game from the 90s that maliciously threw impossible puzzles at you on a whim with no hints. The Dig is a fun one.
In terms of board games, the game of Hex is mathematically interesting in that the impossibility of a draw can be utilized to prove Brouwer's fixed-point theorem.
I really like the HexCells series and the similar (and slightly better) Tametsi, both available on Steam. They both play like classic Minesweeper, except the puzzles are designed so that you never have to guess--every move can be logically deduced from the available information.
For getting out of the "just follow instructions" rut and for the joy of exploration, I can't recommend Outer Wilds enough. Go in absolutely blind, don't look anything up if you can help it. You'll have to piece together the story from (sometimes pretty obtuse) clues, and you'll have to fly your ship through a quasi-realistic physics simulation. There's no real permanent failure states, and no real dead ends.
I'd be truly shocked if anyone here on this website didn't enjoy this game, if not love it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/
Mahjong. Only playing for a few years but quickly became my favorite board game ever (I play japanese riichi). Randomness and luck involved but also pattern recognition, reading the opponents hand, and of course the multiple strategies involved. There are a lot of rules that seems very complicated in the beginning but it's not hard to pick up as long as you understand the core concept of the game. And there are great video game versions too which makes it easier to learn and play if you don't have anyone to play with irl.
Slay the Spire changed how I think in some ways. It's a brilliantly designed deckbuilding roguelike that asks very clear questions about how strong your position is and what you can afford to gamble, one after another -- and it eventually turns out that betting too much and betting too little are very much alike in how they make you fall off the power curve in an iterated game.
I agree with others that games won't improve thinking in an abstract sense, but some games definitely become analogies that I come back to.
I just started playing “7 billion humans” on Switch. It’s like a simple programming language. You are given tasks that you have to complete by drag-and-dropping statements and commands into the code area to form a simple program, and then you run your program and observe if it’s successful. There’s even a debugger button for stepping through the code. It’s quite entertaining.
Rocket League. It will take a good amount of hours to learn mechanics, but this has been a game that really helped me out on learning routines and then being able to use those mechanics for intelligent plays. It's a lot about decision making and response time.
Prismata is a little known online card game with very simple rules but it's incredibly hard to master.
The community is pretty small, but active enough that you can usually find an opponent if you wait a few minutes. (But try to beat the computer first, it's hard enough!)
Chess, you can play for free at open source lichess.org.
Splitgate(free to download and play) if you want some action. You may not be the best or most accurate shooter, but using portals and thinking can bring you up the leaderboard more quickly than just beeing good at aiming.
Go. Rules are much simpler than chess, but it took computers much longer to beat humans.
I like 'Sherlock' by Everett Kaser. It is the classic, a cat lives next to the blue house, a dog rides a bicycle, Who likes french fries.
Immensely configurable, I play with 6 x 6. If you get stuck it has a nice hint button.
Tetris games (quick-paced modern Tetris clones/block stackers like TETR.IO) are good for improving pattern recognition and, at higher levels, memorization (as in openers, perfect clear setups, etc ).
Be aware that any game on its own will only make you better at that specific game. The brain has enough plasticity to improve at one thing and dull at another. It's better to try different things.
It is an interactive algorithms visualizer packaged as a game.
For escape the room style puzzles, I highly recommend Outer Wilds.
The game is incredibly smart and fun. I urge you to go in blind.
The "we were here" series is also great in this genre as a co-op experience.
Good examples on this thread.
I'll add another one: Baba is you
Hades will help train you to be persistent and care for yourself in the face of adversity. And it’s a bloody computer game! Cheaper than (though not a replacement for) therapy.
Boardgames: Hanabi, The Voyages of Marco Polo, Innovation, Splendor ( I play all these at boardgamearena.com) Hanabi is especially good for logic, deduction.
Hanabi - a co-op game with surprising depth. You can get a physical version, but I would recommend going straight to hanab.live instead.
Elevate, available on mobile. It will make your brain sharper, and more attentive to detalis. While also horning your quick retail maths skills.
You won’t get better at thinking and reasoning in general. You will simply get better at thinking and reasoning at that particular game.
Chess - 8x8 square board, a long time classic. Can be very beautiful.
Braid - shift how you think about time
Baba is you - change the rules of the game to win
Maybe not what you’re looking for but golf combines lots of thinking and reasoning with a physical connection.
Escape Rooms. As in the real life variety. Best played with good friends.
Each one is a unique experience, so YMMV.
The only thing games improve is thinking and reasoning “in the realm of that game”, or in very similar situations at best. It’s a sort of a brain-trainers scam.
So the question is why do you need thinking and reasoning - where are going to apply it, from this answer will depend everything else.
Antichamber, The Talos principle, Portal 1 & 2
these will twist your brain.
Poker and 3d-platformers & first-person shooters.
I feel like I learned more about business from capitalism lab than from a lot of business books / economic books I've read.
https://www.capitalismlab.com/
Basically just an economy sim but has just the right amount of depth I think. There are several people I've encouraged to play this game just because of how it well it communicates the economics of a software business vs brick and mortar.
Settlers of Catan taught me not to trust anyone, ever.