Alan Hazelden

Welcome to the September 2024 edition of Thinky Third Thursday - a selection of puzzle releases from the last month, highlighted for your attention by Alan Hazelden of Draknek & Friends.

This twelfth edition is unfortunately the last to be posted to Cohost. Please subscribe if you've enjoyed it and want to continue getting my thinky recommendations each month.

Recent news from Draknek & Friends

Sokobond Express, José Hernández's mashup sequel to Sokobond and Cosmic Express, is out now for iOS and Android. In the UK it already hit #6 in the puzzle category, putting it in great company!

Submissions for the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant close in 2.5 weeks - if you're a developer from an underrepresented group working on a thinky puzzle game, we strongly encourage you to apply!

Some exciting LOK Digital news: it was recently featured in a double page spread in EDGE Magazine issue #402, is a finalist for Indie Game Contest 2024 in Strasbourg, and will be at IndieDevDays in Barcelona. Stay tuned, as we'll have more news to share real soon!

Recent thinky highlights

Slime Stretch, by Alan Hazelden (web)
Push slimes around to reach the exit of each level. I made this game for the recent GMTK Jam 2024, and I'm very happy with the result - among other things, it has the high honour of containing some of my most Bonfire-Peaks-esque puzzle design since Bonfire Peaks.

Welcome to the August 2024 edition of Thinky Third Thursday! As always, this is a selection of puzzle games highlighted for your attention by Alan Hazelden of Draknek & Friends. Some reviews were written by other members of the Draknek team.

News: Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant

In case you missed it, we have some really exciting news: applications for the 2024 Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant are now open! This year we're offering grants of $15,000 USD each and a year's mentorship to 6 thinky puzzle game developers from underrepresented groups all around the world. If that could be you, then I wholeheartedly encourage you to apply here.

Recent thinky highlights:

Thinky Collective games: Life of the Zip Bird, Theodoor, One Too Many (web)
These three games were each made "exquisite corpse" style - many contributors in sequence, each one adding something to the game and then passing it on to the next. It's always interesting to see how these turn out! Life of the Zip Bird is an impressive example of the value of theming, while One Too Many feels like that aspect could have been pushed further, and Theodoor has a very clever central mechanic only slightly marred by weird edge cases.

Welcome to the July 2024 edition of Thinky Third Thursday! As always, it's brought to you by Alan Hazelden of Draknek & Friends.

Shoutouts to everyone I met at Develop: Brighton last week, especially those of you who mentioned enjoying Thinky Third Thursday. As well as showcasing LOK Digital, we at Draknek & Friends sponsored the puzzle zone at the Brilliant Indie Treasures event, and it was great meeting and playing games from fellow puzzle game developers!

Highlights from Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 4:

Thinky Puzzle Jam is an annual game jam organised for members of the Thinky Puzzle Games discord server that I run (and others in the wider puzzle game community). It took place earlier this month, so there's now a bunch of great new free puzzle games to try.

My favourites were all made in PuzzleScript or a variant of it, so they're all low-res and Sokoban-y, but that's not true of everything made for the jam. If you're looking for more recommendations, ThinkyGames.com has some highlights that don't overlap with mine.

Welcome to the June 2024 edition of Thinky Third Thursday, featuring four recent releases and six demos from the recent Steam Next Fest. As ever, Thinky Third Thursday is curated by Alan Hazelden of Draknek & Friends.

Recent thinky highlights:

Last month I highlighted several upcoming games releasing as part of Cerebral Puzzle Showcase - I won't cover them all here again, but I'll do one last shout-out for my personal favourite, Leaf's Odyssey. Does the ridiculous number of great games highlighted last month mean there's less to cover today? Absolutely not, here are some more bangers!

Star Stuff, by Ánimo Games Studio and Astra Logical (Windows/macOS)
Program robots and cooperate with them to solve puzzles. I've been playtesting this since 2022, but hadn't touched it for a while until the final release and I'm delighted with the final result. It's highly polished and the puzzles are all great.