We’re delighted to announce that the Thinky Awards are back for 2024 and public nominations are now open - so let us know which thinky games you loved this year!
Last year we started our very own Thinky Awards show to highlight the many amazing thinky games from throughout the year, and we were so happy with how it was received. We had lots of amazing feedback from folks who discovered games they otherwise never would have seen, and it was so much fun to hear these games getting mentioned in other great places (a highlight for me was Can of Wormholes getting a shout-out in the Noclip podcast!). If you didn’t see our nominees and winners from last year, please do go take a look.
So, since we had such a blast last time, we’re back for 2024! Just like the previous awards, we’re kicking off the process with public nominations - this helps us get a sense of games people really want to see in the awards and helps us avoid any blindspots we might have. Please note that we’re only keeping public nominations open for a week this time, so make sure to get your submission in soon!
So head over to our form, where you can submit games for each of our 14 categories:
Nominate your favorite thinky games of 2024 now!
Public nominations
We have 14 award categories to nominate games for. Additionally, any games nominated and selected for the Thinky Game of the Year, Most Anticipated Game, and Best Content Creator categories will also get to take part in a community vote.
There's much more information in the nominations form, but here's a few key details:
- Only games released between 1st December 2023 and 30th November 2024 are eligible for the awards.
- Nominations are open until midnight UTC on Monday 9th 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.
- Nominating a game also doesn’t count as a vote for that game to win in its category. Winners will be determined by votes from our panel and the community, after the nominees for each category have been selected.
If you're ready to let us know your favourite games from the past year, head over to the nominations form.
Awards process
Even though last year was our very first awards show, the whole process went shockingly smoothly! It can be tricky to balance everything — so that we have a curated yet diverse selection of nominees that is representative of the thinky space, so that every game gets highlighted and has a fair chance, and so on — but I think we got things pretty much spot on, if I do say so myself.
For that reason, we’re sticking with prettty much the same process, which will take place over 4 phases (dates are rough estimates):
- Phase 1 - Public nominations (December 2nd-9th) This is the phase we've just kicked off, during which anyone (you included!) can nominate games for each of our categories.
- Phase 2 - Category curation (December 9th-16th) 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 - Awards panel and community voting (December 16th to January 10th) Panel members will vote on the games in each category, while a public vote will be held for our three Community Awards. We aim for our panel 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 (late January/early 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 - oooh, ahhh!
We'll have more information on the awards panel and the ceremony in due course. If you'd like to stay notified, I highly recommend joining Thinky Games to receive our biweekly newsletter (well, I highly recommend doing that anyway!).
That's pretty much all, folks! Remember, nominations are only open for a week, so make sure to submit yours as soon as you can. And if you need a reminder of some of the great games that came out in the last year, go take a look through our Thinky Games database — you'll discover some amazing games!
