Troll Games

Stretch an arm across the room, grab the loot and stay out of the guard's sight.

Stickman Troll Thief Puzzle

Troll Thief - Stickman

Troll Thief - Stickman Puzzle

Troll Thief

Where the trolling comes from

The label comes from the trollface, a crudely drawn grinning face from early internet comics that became shorthand for pranking someone, and troll games are the ones built on that spirit: levels that lie to you, exits that are not exits, spikes that appear only after you have committed to the jump. The provider tag gathers two very different kinds of game under it. One is the rage platformer, a maze or obstacle course where every trap is a joke at your expense and the joy is finally seeing through it. The other is the sneaky stickman thief, a puzzle series in which your character's arm stretches across the room and you have to grab loot, pull levers and slip past guards without being spotted.

Trap courses live next door on the obby games and platformer games hubs; the stretchy-arm puzzles are a branch of stickman games, and the unfair-level tradition runs through maze games as well.

Categories:Platformer

Trap levels and stretchy thieves

The platformers use arrow keys or WASD on a desktop and on-screen buttons on a phone, and the trick to them is patience: move a little, watch what happens, remember it, retry. Deaths are instant and restarts are instant, so a level is really a memory test dressed as a jump-and-run, and the best ones telegraph their pranks just enough that you feel clever rather than cheated. The thief puzzles are the opposite tempo. Nothing moves until you do; you drag the stickman's arm toward an object, watch the guard's line of sight and the timing of the patrol, and choose the moment. Failing usually means a comic caught-in-the-act animation and one more try.

Two-player escapes put a pair of brothers in the same level, one on the arrows and one on the letter keys, and the escape games and prison escape games hubs hold co-op and solo versions without the trolling. The crossover with the beat-making meme cast sits under Sprunki games.

Categories:Escape

The rest of the shelf, and who it suits

A few titles use the word in its older sense. A fashion maker lets you dress the big-haired forest trolls of children's toys, an island-tribe game is a small survival builder, and there is a memory board and a hidden-star picture with troll characters as the subject. They are calm, one-finger games and the ones to pick for a young child. The pranking platformers suit a different mood: they are frustrating by design, and the players who enjoy them are the ones who laugh at being tricked. Nothing on the shelf is graphic, the deaths are cartoon pops, and the thief puzzles in particular are a fine choice for a phone, where a fingertip drags the arm as precisely as a mouse does.

Players who like the meme side more than the mechanics will find the neighbors on brainrot games and Skibidi games; players who like the puzzles should try puzzle games and hidden object games for the same formats with fewer pranks.

Categories:Puzzle