The annual community puzzle-making event has come to a close once again: the 5th Thinky Puzzle Game Jam wrapped up last week, and that means there are dozens of new miniature, experimental puzzle games you can play for free right now.
The secret theme this year only revealed at the start of the jam was "Rare Animals," and it's evident that people had fun thinking of strange beasts to feature and how they could integrate them into new ideas for puzzle mechanics. I can spot birds, snakes, owls, dragons, axolotls, eels, octopi, lizards, bees, elephants, squirrels, sheep, caterpillars, cows... and the list goes on.
The jam has always fostered a spirit of community and mutual creative motivation, focusing much more on sharing fun ideas and making things rather than time pressure, competition or rankings. It is possible to sort the entries by popularity, but my recommendation is to choose "random" and roll the dice and see what you get. There's always a lot of clever creativity hiding amongst these jam submissions, so who knows, you could come across a hidden gem to share with others.
I definitely have not played every entry myself, but as is always the case, lots of these games were made to be played right in-browser without any download fuss required. There's something about so many of them being web-friendly that always excites me: the page filled with submissions, little windows into new creative ideas only a click away.
Dig through and play the entries to the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 5 on itch.io, and if you'd like, come discuss your finds and favorites with us on Discord where we have a channel devoted to the jam games for the next couple weeks.
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