Thinky Third Thursday

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Thinky Third Thursday
July 2025

Welcome to the July 2025 edition of Thinky Third Thursday - a roundup of games that the puzzle experts from Draknek & Friends think are worth your time.

Recent thinky highlights


Workworkwork, by Letibus Design
Blaž Urban Gracar is the mastermind behind LOK, the puzzle book which then spawned our very own LOK Digital. He's returned with another puzzle book which I found just as delightful, in which you'll help ghostly workers to find the right path to construct specific shapes. It's not easy but nor is it as intimidating as it might first seem, and I think it does a great job of keeping you on board even as it pushes the concept further and further. You can get the game either as a digital PDF or order a physical book - keep it in mind for birthdays/christmas!


Kaizen: A Factory Story, by Coincidence and Astra Logical
Fans of manufacturing pipelines rejoice - Zach Barth is back to making engineering games. Kaizen: A Factory Story is a very approachable entry in this genre, but that does come at the cost of a somewhat slow start (personally I wouldn't have chosen to open the game with a DDR-style rhythm minigame). Apparently once you get past the first chapter the puzzles start to ramp up in complexity, and if you're someone who enjoys optimising your solutions there'll be plenty here for you. I think Opus Magnum is the stronger game overall, but this is worth checking out.


Golden Idol Investigations: The Age of Restraint, by Color Gray Games and Playstack
The third of four promised DLC expansions for Rise of the Golden Idol released this week and this time we're going back in time to the idol's creation. For fans of the lore, it's the first time we get a really good look at Lemuria itself and some delightfully rich backstory about some familiar Lemurian characters. And of course, the puzzles here are complex but still utterly satisfying - each DLC has offered something fresh in its format and The Age of Restraint is no different.


Many games from Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 5
Every year Dom Camus (creator of the legendarily tricky The Golem) organises the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam, and we get a deluge of great games from developers in the thinky puzzle community. The fifth edition just happened, with 67 entries made for the theme "Rare Animals". You can find all the games on itch, but here's just a few of the ones we played and wanted to highlight:

  • Cat by icely, a word game about figuring out playful animal rebus puns
  • Deductopia: Hill and Dale by Gwen Katz, a deduction puzzle about identifying visitors to a national park
  • Red Dragon Sauna by Toombler and Patrick Traynor, about a knight and/or a dragon and featuring several different gameplay mechanics
  • Only the Rarest are Animals by muratsubo, a confusing sokoban game (it's not buggy, I promise) with excellent puzzle design

Thinky releases from the past month

Free games:

Paid games:

New demos:

Upcoming games to watch for


Shape Sender Deluxe, by Dead Teapot
Meet "Sendy", your helpful guide and new best friend in Shape Sender Deluxe. To solve puzzles, move the shapes from A to B by placing physics obstacles to guide their path. Physics puzzles can often be fiddly, but this game does a great job of keeping it thinky without being all about trial-and-error. The recent demo confirms that it's one to watch out for (as you would know if you were paying attention to the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant).


Map Map - A Game About Maps, by Pipapo Games
Another game from the New Voices selection is Map Map, which as the name suggests is "A Game About Maps". You play a young cartographer exploring a series of desert islands. To help you 'solve' these islands and mark the right location on your map, you've got a whole host of tools including a step counter, protractor, compass and binoculars. This is utterly wholesome, and surprisingly satisfying!


Birdigo - bird word game, by John August, Corey Martin and GameTeam6
There's something in the water for "what if Balatro but Scrabble": Word Play and Wordatro! both recently released, and Corey Martin's Birdigo is coming on July 30th. Of course, you know Corey as the creator of Bonfire Peaks so it was inevitable that we have to pick his side and point you towards this one as the one to try. Word games can sometimes be more about vocabulary than puzzliness, but Birdigo does a really good job of presenting the rules then challenging you to work within and sometimes break them in the thinkiest of ways.


Spooky Express, by Draknek & Friends
Next stop: an exciting announcement about Spooky Express! Very soon we'll be revealing a few more details about our upcoming train-braining puzzler, and we can't wait. Don't forget to wishlist and help us stay on track for launch!

That's it!

Did you particularly enjoy any of the games above, or do you have a recommendation for a game I should check out? Please get in touch!

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