You know what? I don't think there have been enough awards ceremonies recently! At least, none that celebrate our wonderful genre of thinky games as much as it deserves!
That's why we thought it would be fun to launch the Thinky Awards, our very own little awards ceremony dedicated to highlighting the incredible thinky games that boggled our minds over the past year. With these awards, we hope to shine a spotlight on as many thinky games as we can (not just the winners!), helping many more people discover their new favorite games.
The first phase of our awards process is for you, our wonderful thinky community members, to send us your nominations. So without further ado:
Please note: the nominations form requires a Google account to verify your email address and to allow you to amend your nominations before the closing date.
Nominations
We have 15 award categories to nominate games for, including the all-important categories of "best aha moment" and "most cursed game". Additionally, any games nominated and selected for the Thinky Game of the Year category will also get to take part in a community vote that we'll hold throughout January.
There's much more information in the nominations form, but here's a few key details:
- Only games released between 1st December 2022 and 30th November 2023 are eligible for the awards.
- Nominations are open until midnight UTC on Friday 29th December. You will be able to edit your nominations up until this deadline.
- Anyone can nominate games to whichever categories they like and can nominate more than one game for each category.
- Nominating a game won't guarantee that it'll be selected in that category. There will be a manual curation process to ensure we have a balanced representation of games and developers.
If you're ready to let us know your favourite games from the past year, head over to the nominations form.
The full awards process
We expect the full awards process to take place over 4 phases (dates are rough estimates):
- Phase 1 - Public nominations (December 12th-29th) This is the phase we've just kicked off, during which anyone can nominate games for each of the categories.
- Phase 2 - Category curation (December 29th-January 5th) Our Thinky Awards curation team will use the public nominations to help curate each category in order to a) ensure the nominations meet the eligibility criteria, b) ensure a balanced and fair representation of games and developers, both within and across categories, and c) limit the size of each category.
- Phase 3 - Jury and community voting (January 5th to late January) Jury members will vote on the games in each category, while a public vote will be held for the Community Award. We aim for our jury to represent a diverse range of voices and to include professionals from across the games industry, experts of the thinky genre, and members of the community.
- Phase 4 - Awards ceremony (early-mid February) The big day! We'll highlight all the amazing games that were selected for each category and award the winners with a highly coveted Thinky Award!
We'll have more information on the jury and the awards ceremony in due course. If you'd like to stay notified, I highly recommend joining our newsletter (well, I highly recommend doing that anyway!).
This is our first time running an awards process, so it might be a little scrappy as we figure things out and iterate, but please bear with us! We really appreciate your support.
Our hope is for the Thinky Awards to be a fun activity for the whole community, and with any luck we'll have the opportunity to do it again in the years to come. Thank you to all the developers for making so many brilliant games over the past year, and thank you to everyone who sends us their nominations. I eagerly await the results!
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.
