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Thinky Games Thinky Games

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11 January, 2024

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ABOUT Thinky Games

A community for games you love to solve

Welcome, puzzlers and problem solvers! We're a community of thinky fans who want to share amazing games with as many people as possible.

What's a thinky game?

Thinky games are those you love to solve — all about careful reasoning, rather than fast reflexes or dexterity. If you find yourself thinking through a problem and then, when the insights finally dawn on you, exclaiming “aha!”, you’re probably playing a thinky game.

We believe thinky games are for everyone. If you enjoy relaxing with a crossword, figuring out whodunit before the TV detective does, or wrapping your head around an intriguing riddle, we think you'll love these games. Logic games, detective games, mystery games, strategy games, math games, adventure games — there are so many wonderful thinky games to discover!

What do we do?

We publish news and reviews[thinkygames.com] about thinky games, and we curate a huge database[thinkygames.com] where you can find thinky essentials as well as more niche releases.

We send out a biweekly newsletter[thinkygames.com] to help you catch up with the latest thinky happenings. It includes a free web game recommendation to play and discuss — like a little thinky book club!

We also host the Thinky Awards[thinkygames.com] to shine a spotlight on the very best thinky games of the year.

Our curator page & our socials

You can follow our curator page to get recommendations right from the comfort of your Steam account. :)

And of course you can follow us on socials[linktr.ee] or come chat with our community on Discord![thinkygames.com]

(We also recommend checking out the Puzzle Lovers group and Anokturnus's curator page on Steam, they're a great bunch!)

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RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

The 3rd Annual Thinky Awards

4 February - Thinky Games | 0 Comments

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Thinky Awards!

This celebration of the very best thinky games of 2025 highlights games that get you thinking, asking you to carefully reason your way through challenges until you hit one of these sweet "aha!" moments. 2025 was such an excellent year for the scene, it was hard to keep nominations to a reasonable number!

The Awards in most categories were voted by a jury of developers, content creators, and thinky fans. Three community choice awards were also voted by our wonderful public — thank you to all voters!

We've set up a Sale Page so you can browse the categories and enjoy the show when we announce the winners in a broadcast on February 4. There's been so many great thinky games released in 2025, it's honestly hard to keep track of them sometimes. Hopefully this page comes in handy!

Note that our complete nominations include a number of games that are not published on Steam. And our Best Content Creator nominees also cannot be displayed on a sale page — I'll be stating the obvious here, but these are people, not games! Head over to our website to browse the full list of nominees[thinkygames.com].

The Thinky Awards are organized by Thinky Games[thinkygames.com], a website and community for fans of games that really make you think. There are various ways you could join us:

Play the Thinky Dailies[thinkygames.com]: the Thinky Dailies are free puzzle treats you can play in your browser. Season 1 just wrapped up after 61 puzzles that include logic grids such as Nonograms or Irregular Sudokus, and also some visual riddles drawn by our talented artist!
Subscribe to our newsletter[thinkygames.com]: every 2 weeks, we send out some of the latest thinky happenings and a free web game recommendation.
Follow us on our socials[linktr.ee] or join our Discord[thinkygames.com]
Follow our curator page on Steam

Tune in to our Awards show on February 4 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC to discover the winners, and check out our event page afterwards: despite all of this happening on short notice, several games among the nominees will be discounted for a week!

[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44830649/8f659f11b3dc04114dd886c8f4824960f73d0a44.png"][/img]

ThinkyCon 2025

2 November, 2025 - Thinky Games | 0 Comments

ThinkyCon is back!

ThinkyCon is back in just one week![thinkygames.com] From November 5-7 we have three days filled with presentations from game developers, publishers and other industry veterans covering a huge range of topics about how and why thinky games get made. This is our second (completely free) annual digital-video-conference event and we couldn't be more excited.

[previewyoutube="g1mhl2UlzuQ;full"][/previewyoutube]

Check our schedule and join us on YouTube

The ThinkyCon homepage[thinkygames.com] has all the info you need, including the full schedule of who's talking at what times and what their topics are, links to both our Discord[thinkygames.com] and our YouTube where you'll be able to watch the talks live, as well as a link to the itch.io page for our ThinkyCon game jam[itch.io] running immediately after the event(!) more on that down below...

From Wednesday to Friday next week, starting at 8:00am PT/11:00am EST/3pm GMT on the 5th, we'll have rolling presentations happening all day long. Of course the good news is that everything gets uploaded to YouTube in the end, so you'll be able to pick and choose whatever talks interest you if you miss any during ThinkyCon. (All of last year's talks are available to watch[thinkygames.com], many of them very in-depth and interesting, and they'll give you a good idea of what to expect from the event.)

Meet our speakers

This time around we've got well-known developers from the scene like Patrick Traynor of Parabox[thinkygames.com] fame, Adam Saltsman from Finji[thinkygames.com], and Corey Martin who made Bonfire Peaks[thinkygames.com]. There are talks about making hand-painted games and designing for emotions, a presentation from someone working on games for a major newspaper, and Thinky Games' own Luis is doing some kind of rant about Nicolas Cage?? Wonder how he slipped through our selection process...

Introducing the ThinkyCon Jam

The big accompanying event to our online conference is the ThinkyCon Jam[itch.io]! After the three days of talks have concluded, some researchers from the University of Utah are interested to find out what learnings aspiring game developers take away from the event.

They're partnering with us to run a game jam specifically themed around ThinkyCon 2025: you have a little over a week to take your time making something thinky inspired by one of the talks from the conference this year. The great part about being connected to official University research is that, as long as you agree to be part of the study, you're eligible to receive a $40USD gift card voucher just for joining the jam and making a qualifying game.

This is a relaxed kind of jam, as we prefer them to be, and there won't be any winners or prizes. It's all about getting the community together and having a reason to get inspired and try making something.

Even if you've never made a game before, if one of the presentations this year sparks your imagination, there are great free options[www.puzzlescript.net] for game development that work well for making small thinky games. Check out the jam page[itch.io] for details and join our discord[thinkygames.com]: there are lots of knowledgeable and friendly people there always willing to answer questions.

Join us on Nov 5-7!

We're seriously excited about all the ThinkyCon happenings this year[thinkygames.com], and we hope you'll tune in and enjoy everything we've got planned. See you there!

[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44830649/baa48d9eb107e5f365d5bdac282e743ce4123a8d.png"][/img]

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Thinky Games reviews

"Thinky Games reviews games you love to solve: puzzle games, detective games, logic games, strategy games..."

Here are a few recent reviews by Thinky Games