Our thinky highlights of 2023

A whole lot has happened in the past twelve months! At the end of February we hosted the Thinkathon, showing off and giving away 6 new puzzle games all releasing in the same week. The 3rd Thinky Puzzle Game Jam ran in June, and the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase returned to Steam in August, with a bunch of new game debuts and an ocean of sales. Thinky Games celebrated our first anniversary, and then November and December brought  a whole lot of community game-making activity with both the 3rd year of the Confounding Calendar and our Case of the Thinky Game Jam. Last but not least, the nominations for our first Thinky Awards will be revealed early next year!

To cap things off for 2023 we thought we’d once again each share some personal highlights, a casual chat about some thinky experiences we enjoyed this past year.

Last year I commented on how many excellent games had come out during that year… and 2023 has only gone and surpassed it! I’m constantly surprised by how much our thinky world has grown over the last 12 months. It’s always tricky to pick favourites, but here’s a few of the games that really defined 2023 for me:

• Can of Wormholes – Can of Wormholes is absurd – after some kind of crash in what looks like a retro game of Snake, you emerge as a tin can that walks around on worm legs and shoots colorful hoops that bring other worms to life only to squish them and collect their worm juice. Makes a lot of sense. It’s also absurdly brilliant, with non-stop surprises, elegantly designed puzzles, and an innovative hint system that will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on the genre. (Oh, and I was fortunate enough to be able to chat with the developer about it!)
• Headlong Hunt – I had some idea of what to expect from this game, having played and loved it in its original PuzzleScript form, but still I was blown away. Headlong Hunt was reborn this year with fancy new art, sound, mechanics, and with around 3x the number of puzzles. Every one of those puzzles is delightfully snappy and feels so great to solve, delivering twist after twist, including perhaps my favorite “aha” moment of the year!
• Magicube – The first thing you’ll hear about Magicube is how difficult it is, but boy are those difficult puzzles satisfying. Right off the bat, with just simple box-pushing platformer mechanics and the ability to conjure a magical yellow cube from a distance (a “magicube”, if you will), this game finds every possible way to make you say “this is impossible”… until it isn’t!
• Chants of Sennaar – I’d heard great things about Chants of Sennaar and have loved other games about interpreting languages (like Heaven’s Vault), but somehow it was still a surprise delight for me! The gameplay, art direction, and narrative themes all seem to line up just perfectly. This is one of those subgenres that I desperately want to see more of, and Chants of Sennaar has really raised the bar!

This was also a great year for DLCs, with the first part of Bonfire Peaks: Lost Memories and two DLCs for The Case of the Golden Idol (The Spider of Lanka and The Lemurian Vampire). These are two games that I would happily keep playing forever, so the DLCs are very welcome. Fortunately, we still have the remaining parts of Lost Memories to look forward to, and the Golden Idol team just announced a sequel coming next year.

Aside from all the excellent games I’ve played this year, I’ve had the opportunity to organize and take part in so many wonderful things — the Thinkathon, speaking about the thinky games community at GDC (a dream come true!), partnering with Draknek & Friends for another Cerebral Puzzle Showcase, introducing families to thinky games at EGX, and organizing a detective game jam. Wow, such a busy year – it’s been a delight!

I get to play a lot of puzzle games for the Thinky Games streams but there are few I finish.

• The Talos Principle II – The year’s standout for me, a game I had been waiting years for. It has a more approachable difficulty curve than the original and the same slow burn approach to story, where narrative fragments make little sense until you’re almost at the end. If you missed the hard puzzles of the original – don’t worry, the late game gold puzzles are all headbangers.
• Let’s! Revolution! – This Minesweeper roguelike was a real surprise. It’s clever and the alternative characters you can choose to play as change the game entirely.
• bcat112a – After last year’s SquishCraft, bcat112a followed up with FractalFactory and PortalSnake which are just as amazing troll-level puzzle experiences as SquishCraft was. Play these and expect blood, sweat and laughs. I haven’t finished any of these titles but that’s not going to stop me from recommending them.
• SokoSolitaire – While I enjoyed the SokoChess series, somehow SokoSolitaire was the DaisyGames title that I found the most compulsive. Some neat card-inspired mechanics that make for interesting, tight Sokoban puzzles.
• The Ouroboros King – Quirky Chess roguelike which is uneven in difficulty and sometimes hard to follow, yet fascinating. I played it plenty and the boss levels can be gripping.
• Gridspech – There are now several Witness-likes around but this free one is stunning work. It’s just you versus the grids. Unputdownable.
• Bonfire Peaks: Lost Memories – I’ve always felt Bonfire Peaks was a bit of a spiritual sequel to Stephen’s Sausage Roll: tough but rewarding. The first part of the Lost Memories expansion flaunts incredibly rich puzzle design, all spawned from a single new puzzle mechanic. Towering work.

And here are some honourable mentions. Games I’ve been excited about but haven’t had a chance to get back to: Magicube, A Slug’s Dream, Headlong Hunt, Stoneman’s Adventure, Chants of Senaar, Trans Neuronica (Early Access), Can of Wormholes, Alephant, Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions.

2023 was a year of new beginnings and growth. I eagerly dove into the treasure trove of games released this year, and was fortunate to be able to cover a few events that allowed thinky games to shine their brightest. Here are some of my highlights of 2023:

• LOK Digital demo & Abdec – In the LOK Digital demo, you shade blocks according to the rules present with each word (eg. shading “LOK” meant you could shade an additional square). This digital version brought both new challenges and new ways both devs could tinker with the formula that would otherwise not work on paper (or vice-versa!). Having played both, I can’t wait for the full version of LOK Digital to really sink my teeth into their differences! Abdec builds upon the difficulty and mechanics of LOK, and introduces symbols alongside letters. I thoroughly enjoyed deciphering the secret language of the Abb. Where most puzzle games would teach you the rules, Blaž’s works make it about a process of learning the rules and then applying what you have just learned.
• Can of Wormholes interview (Ben of munted finger games) – Ben of munted finger games is the brains behind Can of Wormholes, a puzzle game that has you controlling a literal can of worm(holes). I dove into the process by which Ben came up with the game, alongside the less obvious sources of inspiration (Snake and Stephen’s Sausage Roll). Obviously, having played the game — I loved the finality of bringing all the worm(holes) together for the satisfying conclusion to a literal can of wormholes.
• Tokyo Game Show – A first timer at the Tokyo Game Show, I hung around the indie booths a fair bit and enjoyed the very creative ideas brought to life by several talented developers:
  • Paper Trail (Joe’s developer interview) – this is a fun 2-dimensional puzzle game about folding paper and the new perspectives they bring. I was so engrossed by the demo that I spent more than an hour clearing the first two worlds and exploring the third.
  • Opus: Echoes of Starsong –  a visual novel-puzzle game hybrid. With a gorgeous soundtrack that plays as you explore the world and solve puzzles, I felt the absolute need to obtain my very own Synthscepter — a microphone-esque device that could record and play the songs of Witches like Eda. Being key to detecting Starsong, the in-game Synthscepter never left my hands.
  • Out of the World & Electrological – both games created by solo Japanese developers. Toyota Ryouta’s Out of the World made use of a simple mechanic — you could literally “see” only what your eyes were facing. In the pitch black darkness of the levels, the metaphor of [In this world, “only what you see” is true.] really shone the brightest. Yutaka Kinjo’s Electrological brought a simple, yet beautifully mathematical approach to solving puzzles. Connecting circuits helped me figure out which scoring style and play style was most suited to me. I may not be able to assemble circuits in real life, but the satisfaction of hitting high scores and getting closer to the number zero in Electrological made up for it.

There was so much more I wanted to talk about — here’s to a 2024 overflowing with the thinkiest games possible!

My colleagues have done a good job covering lots of fun stuff from the past year. I, too, played and enjoyed Chants of Sennaar and Abdec. I also played many new tabletop games this year, with some stand-outs being the asymmetric Ahoy from Leder Games, the co-operative games Sky Team & Sail, and a few of the most recent Oink titles. Between all the commercial games and the myriad game jams, there are way too many thinky games coming out for one person to fully absorb, but here are a few web games that I particularly enjoyed:

• Magpie – the latest little broughlike from my friend Sunil, a wonderfully elegant creation.
• Droplets – a cute abstract-inspired PICO-8 puzzle game.
• Wordward Draw – from the talented and prolific Daniel Linssen, explore the space of 4-letter words.
• The Roottrees are Dead – sprawling evidence-digging detective game. Reserve an evening for this one!

The commercial game that stuck with me most this year is probably the unconventional Void Stranger. This game has been a bit of a surprise hit in some game design circles: it’s not afraid of embracing friction and frustration, bucking many of the traditional “rules” of making puzzle games. It’s thoroughly surprising and mysterious, aspects magnified by its willingness to be harsh and punishing. More than anything these days I admire a game with clear, bold intentions and the confidence to follow through on them.

Of course my year-in-review could never be complete without mention of the Confounding Calendar. This was my 3rd year running the project with my friend Beekie, and it’s only become bigger and better over time. It’s hard to put into words exactly how fulfilling it is to run a community project and have so many people truly embrace and enthusiastically engage with it, not only playing the games each day as they release, but contributing their ideas and time and effort making so many wonderful little surprises. There’s so much creativity to be found in the games on that page, and I see it as a beautiful reflection of the variety and talent present in our community.

We want to thank everyone who has joined the community, tuned into streams, or checked out the site this year. If you haven’t yet, you can join our Discord server where people chat about anything and everything to do with thinky games. Look forward to lots more coverage of lots more interesting games in 2024!