One of our biggest events of the year took place yesterday: the 3rd annual Thinky Awards show! We revealed the winners across 12 categories of nominees, ranging from the audience/jury Game of the Year awards all the way through Most Anticipated Game and Best Expansion.
The presentation itself was a great time, with lots of guest announcers and a whole slideshow of all-new art of our thinky characters made just for the show, so I'd recommend watching the whole thing. We're also running a Steam event for the next week featuring lots of the nominated games! But if you just want to scroll to see some highlights, here are the big winners:
Game of the Year & Community Choice Game of the Year
Blue Prince
I know some of you saw this coming... I was planning to write a bit of a description for each of these award winning titles, but let's be honest, you've heard of Blue Prince. This room-drafting, puzzle-roguelike, wacky rabbit hole of a game has been getting attention absolutely everywhere since it came out in April, truly sucking players in like few games have before with its layers and layers of secrets. Sweeping both our jury and audience voted GOTY awards, the Prince has taken its rightful place as king.
Best Approachable Game
Is This Seat Taken?
Among the highest quality casual-difficulty offerings in the puzzle games world this past year was Is This Seat Taken?, an extremely charming game of situating everyone according to their preferences in crowded environments. Whether on the bus, in the movie theatre or in a restaurant, people are picky and you're here to make it all work out. Published by our friends at Wholesome Games, this is a gentle and calm game of logic, cute shapes and a lovely visual style.
Best Challenging Game
Gentoo Rescue
Saving baby penguins! What could be cuter. As we find surprisingly often in the world of puzzle games, this thematic territory belies the mind-scramble of a meta-layered challenge Gentoo offers. There are hundreds of puzzles here, often within other puzzles, and a plethora of items to find that ramp up quickly into emergent scenarios, breaking the rules right when you think you've come to understand them. Each year we get a few games that offer some real meat for the die-hard enthusiasts who want to sink their teeth into something, and this is one of the best from 2025.
...and the rest of the awards!
There are nine more categories after the bunch I've listed out above, but I want to leave some surprises to be revealed when you watch our wonderful awards presentation. If you really only want the list, I'll point you to our official awards page where all 12 category winners as well as the nominees are laid out. I know some prefer to cut straight to the spoilers and just get the info, but I'll throw it out there one last time that the live show the team put together turned out brilliant and is really worth a watch. See you at next year's Thinky Awards!
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