Games like Portal 2
The three best games after Portal 2 are The Talos Principle (the philosophical heir with the most Portal-shaped puzzles), Superliminal (perspective tricks with actual jokes) and INSIDE (the mood, the polish, and not one wasted minute). Ten games ranked below by which half of Portal 2 they inherit: the puzzles or the personality.
Portal 2 set a bar two ways at once — puzzle design that teaches without a tutorial, and writing funny enough that people quote a villain from a physics game fifteen years later. 99% positive across 465,000 Steam reviews; the best-reviewed big game on the platform. Most 'games like Portal' deliver chambers without charm.
So the ten below are ranked with the split named: which ones carry the puzzles, which the personality, and the rare ones that manage a piece of both. One entry is a deliberate skip — a genuinely brilliant game that answers this particular search badly.
Playing Portal 2 for the first time instead? Check its key price on ulov.gg
How we picked these
- Puzzles built on one honest mechanic explored fully — no moon logic.
- The 'I am a genius' click at least once an hour.
- Respect for your time: no padding between ideas.
- Finishable in one to three evenings, like Portal 2 itself.
- 80% positive or better on Steam, every rating quoted per entry.
The list
01 The Talos Principle
The Talos Principle is the fullest Portal-shaped meal since Portal 2: first-person chambers, lasers and cubes and jammers, and a story that swaps GLaDOS's sarcasm for genuinely good philosophy of mind. 95% positive across 33,000 Steam reviews. The sequel is also excellent — start with the original, it is usually far cheaper.
02 Superliminal
Superliminal is the personality pick: perspective IS the mechanic — things are the size they look — and it plays its one trick with Portal's exact blend of cleverness and comedy. 95% across 33,000 reviews. Short, and better for it; the ending swings sincere and lands.
03 INSIDE
INSIDE carries Portal 2's real secret, which was never portals: total confidence. Not one wasted minute, environmental puzzles that never stall, and an ending people argue about years later. 97% positive across 75,000 reviews, finished in an evening and lodged in your head for a week.
04 Viewfinder
Viewfinder has the single best new mechanic in this genre since the portal gun: photographs become places — hold up a picture, and it is real. 94% across 12,000 reviews. It spends its idea a little faster than Portal spent its own, but the first two hours are pure wonder.
05 Baba Is You
Baba Is You is the deepest puzzle design on this page: the rules are objects in the level, and you rewrite them. 98% positive across 24,000 reviews. No story, no jokes — the wit lives entirely in the puzzles, which regularly produce the loudest 'OH!' in the genre.
06 Antichamber
Antichamber is Portal's non-Euclidean cousin: corridors that loop impossibly and rooms that change behind your back, at 95% positive. It trades Valve's warmth for cold minimalist mystery — the closest a game has come to being an optical illusion you walk around in.
07 Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 is the same studio's other masterpiece and shares Portal 2's DNA where it counts: physics as a toy, pacing as a craft, and a world that explains itself without a cutscene. 98% across 278,000 reviews. Play it if you somehow have not; the gravity gun is the portal gun's older sibling.
08 Braid
Braid remains the time-manipulation benchmark: each world changes how time itself behaves, and every puzzle is exactly one idea, honestly presented. 93% positive. It carries an ambition Portal 2 sidestepped — being about something — and mostly gets away with it.
09 The Turing Test
The Turing Test is comfort-food Portal: clean chambers, an energy-transfer gun, and an AI conversation partner clearly written in GLaDOS's shadow. 88% across 8,000 reviews. Nothing here will surprise a veteran — everything is competently pleasant, and sometimes that is the order.
SKIP10 The Witness
Skip if Portal 2's warmth is half of what you loved — The Witness is a brilliant, humourless island of line puzzles that never once talks to you, and its 84% rating includes many Portal fans who bounced off exactly that silence. If you want profundity with your puzzles, The Talos Principle serves it with a voice. Come back to the island later; it rewards a different mood.
Similar but different
Return of the Obra Dinn
Return of the Obra Dinn moves the deduction into your head: sixty deaths on a ghost ship, and only logic to name them. 97% across 35,000 reviews — the strongest 'I am a genius' payoff outside a puzzle chamber.
Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds is what happens when the puzzle is an entire solar system: no locked doors, only things you do not understand yet. 96% across 106,000 reviews. The Portal 2 finale feeling, sustained for twenty hours.
It Takes Two
It Takes Two inherits Portal 2's co-op throne: two players, constant new mechanics, zero downtime. 95% across 268,000 reviews. The story is broader than Valve's writing — the invention rate is genuinely comparable.
FAQ
What is the closest single game to Portal 2?
The Talos Principle — chambers, escalating mechanics, and a narrator worth listening to. It is more sincere than sarcastic, which is the main flavour difference. Superliminal is closer in humour, lighter in puzzle depth.
Portal 2 co-op was the best part. What now?
It Takes Two, without hesitation — it is the only game since with the same rate of invention built for two. The We Were Here series scratches the asymmetric-communication itch specifically.
Are the Portal fan games and mods worth it?
Portal Stories: Mel and Portal Reloaded are free, well-made, and harder than Valve's chambers — good after this list, with tempered expectations for the writing.
Why is The Witness the skip? Everyone recommends it.
It is a masterpiece for a different mood: silent, solitary, and allergic to jokes. Portal fans looking for company and charm often stall out on it — the 84% rating carries a visible seam of exactly that. It is skipped for fit, not quality.
Want picks tuned to you?
Tell the recommender three games you love and get eight suggestions built from the same catalogue.