Not long ago we wrapped up our 2nd annual online convention centered around the making of the games we love so much: ThinkyCon 2025 took place during the first week of November, and in case you missed any of it, we've now uploaded every presentation to our YouTube channel so you can watch at your leisure.
ThinkyCon brings together the designers, developers, publishers and enthusiasts of the puzzle-adjacent games world to share their knowledge and perspectives on how and why thinky games are made, from every angle. We've had all sorts of high profile speakers join us to give presentations, and 2025 was no exception.
You should browse the list of 30+ talks yourself to get an idea of the wide range of topics covered, but for some specific recommendations: the opening talk from FLEB is a wonderful short exploration of the layers between us and the games we play; Daria Jerjomina is making The Land Forgotten, a hand-painted puzzle game based on real-world languages, and she talks about what kind of linguistics work that entails. You can watch Thinky Games' own Luis preaching his love for Nicolas Cage's odd, unique brand of acting roles, or hear the designer of Blue Prince dive into what it was like to do playtesting for such a complicated beast of a game. I particularly enjoyed Adam Saltsman of Finji discussing how he thinks about making games and keeping them small.
Again: these suggestions only scratch the surface, and I'd really recommend looking through both the playlists from this year and, if you weren't around at the time, the playlist from last year's Con as well. I feel pretty strongly that I'd see these as juicy treasure troves of game-making knowledge even if I wasn't a TG brand representative.
Disclaimer: Thinky Games is part of the Carina Initiatives and may have professional relationships with individuals and businesses related to the subject of this article. Please see our Editorial Policy for details.
