Thinky Third Thursday

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Thinky Third Thursday
January 2026 (2025 GOTYs)

Welcome to Thinky Third Thursday, a roundup of thinky puzzle games that the puzzle experts from Draknek & Friends think are worth your time. In this month's newsletter, each of us at Draknek have chosen some of our personal highlights from all the thinky games that released in 2025.

Giveaway time!

To celebrate all these fantastic games, we're giving away three steam keys each for some of the games recommended here. To enter, simply go here and sign up:

Join the giveaway

Winners will be chosen randomly on Friday 23rd January. Thanks to the developers of these games for providing keys!

What did Draknek & Friends get up to in 2025?

LOK Digital (iOS, Android)
We started out the year in January with our first release: LOK Digital on Android and iOS. We think this game feels totally at home on your phone, especially if you want to get into the daily puzzle mode!

A Good Snowman (Pay What The Temperature Is)
In February, to mark the 10 year anniversary of its original release, we introduced a permanent Pay What The Temperature Is pricing model on itch.io for A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build.

The Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition
Next, we released The Electrifying Incident in April. This project was all about testing Godot and a short, 60 minute long game based on our game jam game Cyber Lasso was perfect. Featuring the titular character from A Monster's Expedition, The Electrifying Incident challenges players to explore the facility and manipulate electrical hazards to find a way deeper to the reactor.

Bonfire Peaks - Lost Memories
May saw the long-awaited release of Parts 2 and 3 of Bonfire Peaks: Lost Memories. This completes the DLC, with two new mechanics and hundreds of new puzzles guaranteed to give you even more of the great eureka moments that Bonfire Peaks is so good at.

A Monster's Expedition (Android)
Also in May, we were able to finally bring A Monster's Expedition to Android! This game celebrated its fifth birthday this year, and is still as great as ever.

Spooky Express
Our second full game release for the year was Spooky Express! Released in October, just in time for Halloween, this spooky puzzle game has over 200 thoughtfully designed levels and a whole host of Halloween locations to explore by train.

LOK Digital (Nintendo Switch)
Starting the year just as we began it, our very last release of the year was LOK Digital on Nintendo Switch! Another perfect platform for a perfect game.

In other news...
Outside of releasing games, we kept busy in 2025. Last year saw another successful Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant programme (more about that below), and the 4th year of the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase. Perhaps most excitingly we hired two new team members: Ben Wilson as our newest Producer and Dan Pearson as Head of Marketing. Welcome!

Draknek & Friends Official Podcast
We released a whopping 36 episodes of the Draknek & Friends official podcast last year! Our recent episodes:

  • Chatting to Dan Pearson, introducing him to your ears and talking about his career and the challenges of marketing puzzle games
  • Our GOTY podcast, where we were joined by Joseph Mansfield of Thinky Games to chat about over 20 of our favourite releases from 2025.

The Draknek Team's Thinky Highlights from 2025


Blue Prince, by Dogubomb and Raw Fury
Since almost every single member of the team nominated Blue Prince, this one is a collective GOTY. Dan sums it up nicely:

"For a few weeks in Summer, my living room looked like I was planning a museum heist. Hastily scribbled notes on random envelopes, half finished circuit diagrams in dog-eared notebooks, random sequences of colours daubed in marker on any flat surface. Blue Prince consumed me, and my girlfriend, as we spent countless hours playing it together on the couch, taking notes and generally managing to avoid any puzzle-based relationship ruptures. There were multiple WhatsApp groups devoted to it with friends and industry contacts, simple typos in emails became fiendish cryptographic clues, every time I saw a chess piece IRL I had to fight the temptation to log its location. Blue Prince is so beautifully layered, so subtle with its multi-faceted web, that it was all I could think of for a while."

Alan's picks


Öoo, by NamaTakahashi, tiny cactus studio, and Tsuyomi
From the creator of ElecHead, Öoo is a short and elegant puzzle platformer that frequently made me go "Ooooo". With deceptively simple graphics and controls, you play a little caterpillar (who looks exactly as the title suggests) and you can place bombs. That's it! And yet it's a masterclass in pulling the same trick on you multiple times over - a trick that's delightful every time. Ooooo indeed.


Glowkeeper, by oolimry and bucketfish
You could accurately describe Glowkeeper as a match-3 puzzle platformer, but that description wouldn't do it justice - those are surface-level qualities, not what makes it special. What this really is, is a brilliant metroidbrainia game filled with secrets and mechanical surprises. The opening sequences are a little slow in revealing its depth, but I promise it's worth the journey.


Lab Rat, by Chump Squad and Klei Publishing
Lab Rat combines Portal vibes and sokoban gameplay, and while it stays consistent to that throughout it also changes things up much more than you might expect - some of the later areas feel a bit silly in the best way possible. It contains excellent puzzle design from Lucas Le Slo (who also worked on Spooky Express), so even if the comedic tone doesn't draw you in, the puzzles should.


CorgiSpace, by Adam Saltsman and Finji
In 2025, Adam Saltsman released a treasure trove of tiny PICO-8 games and they're all free and lovely. CorgiSpace packages many of them into a collection that adds a little commentary about each (and a bonus hidden game not available elsewhere). You won't be missing much if you play them individually, but if you're like me, their quality will convince you to pick up the collection just to support him. If you only have time for a few, some of my favourites are Skeleton Gelatin, Sebastian's Quest, and Mole Mole, but you really can't go wrong picking at random. It's a big inspiration to me that Adam developed and released so many great little games whilst working fulltime at Finji (juggling publishing and development roles just as I do), and his ThinkyCon talk about the design philosophy that led to these games is recommended viewing.


Loophole, by Levi Pinkert
Loophole has to be one of the best versions of the "time loop co-op with yourself" concept I've ever played. You're escaping an exploding sci-fi facility, but your past version can't observe you directly or it will cause a paradox. So far, so familiar, but what I loved about the game is the extra mechanics that are layered on top, creating many genuinely satisfying puzzle moments and interactions.

Syrenne's picks


Is This Seat Taken?, by Poti Poti Studio and Wholesome Games Presents
Is This Seat Taken is a short and charming series of logic puzzles that tells a story about feeling out of place, and the importance of representation. In each level you have a number of seats to fill and each would-be sitter has their own requirements such as "I don't like strong smells" or "I want to chat to someone" or "I hate bubbles" (seriously, who hates bubbles?!). With a lot of very challenging puzzle games released this year, Is This Seat Taken? is a real standout in how forgiving it is.


Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping, by Happy Broccoli Games
This year, Eugene McQuacklin was back! He's everyone's favourite detective, and he also happens to be a duck! If you enjoyed his first case, The Secret Salami, then The Ghost of Glamping brings more of the same puzzle solving, but with new suspects and a new crime scene to explore. What's not to love?

Mairi's picks


Escape Simulator 2, by Pine Studio
If I don't nominate a game for my GOTY that has the word "escape" in it, can I really call myself an escape room enthusiast? Jokes aside, Escape Simulator 2 is the successful follow-up to one of my most played games of years past: Escape Simulator. Its sequel has a massive improvement in graphics, mechanics, and allows for more players per room. It's a pretty faithful reconstruction of the "escape room" experience, complete with accidentally putting important keys in your pocket and forgetting. As more community members start building custom rooms, I expect the game will only improve.


The Roottrees are Dead, by Evil Trout Inc.
It's easy to forget The Roottrees are Dead released this year as it happened way back in January, and on top of that it's a remaster of a game many of us played back in 2023. However if you haven't yet picked it up, I highly recommend you give it a go. It's something very special indeed. The premise (and interface) is simple. You play a private detective tasked with researching and filling out the Roottree family tree in order to find the true heir to the fortune. You use a PC terminal to look up names in the search engine, access old libraries, read online articles. Then, once you're sure of a link, you select a name from a drop-down. The simple interface hides its absolute genius, and I think about this game constantly.

Ben's picks


Strange Jigsaws, by FLEB
This game immediately won me over with its charm, its sense of humour, and its defiant unwillingness to stick to being one thing. With a traditional jigsaw, you always know exactly what you’re getting, and a quick glance at the front cover will clue you into the experience ahead of you. But in many ways Strange Jigsaws is the absolute opposite of a jigsaw – instead it’s an offbeat collage made up of some delightful puzzly riffs on the jigsaw motif, fun visual setpieces, and a few sections that feel more like a point and click adventure than a jigsaw puzzle. All of this is playfully arranged in a way that constantly surprises but never feels disjointed. This is the sort of game that’s best recommended in the vaguest of terms so that you can discover its surprises first-hand, and so I’ll stop there. It’s possible that I may have already said too much.


Strange Antiquities, by Bad Viking and Iceberg Interactive
Having enjoyed Strange Horticulture quite a bit back in 2022, I was still really pleasantly surprised by this. Unlike the plants that featured in that game, the unsettling trinkets in this game are full of ominous character, and interactable in a much more tactile way. This might be the first investigation game I’ve seen where the player character can use their sense of smell to look for clues. It also nails the “small town mysteries in a world filled with unspeakable horrors” vibe, while still managing to feel cosy in its more quiet moments.

Dan's picks


The Séance of Blake Manor, by Spooky Doorway and Raw Fury
Another game which approached puzzling in a fresh way, SaBM is much less about remembering sequences of sigils and much more about human psychology and logical evidence matrices. The setting - a bleak and isolated hotel in late 19th Century Ireland - is draped in layers of mysticism, the occult and good, old-fashioned snake oil selling. Each action in your investigation costs precious time, and the sinister titular seance looms large in the narrative timeline. If you were ever a fan of those grid-based logic puzzles, this will probably set your brain alight in a very pleasing way.


LOK Digital, by Letibus Design, Icedrop Games and Draknek & Friends
I love LOK. I hate LOK. I see LOK everywhere I look now. Like just there - if only I could get rid of that extra O somehow... Yes, I'm a little biased on this one, as it's one of ours, but I did play it well before I joined in December.

For me LOK represents the epitome of the complexity which can be built from simple, layered rules. I remember seeing the book in a book store and thinking "someone should make a game out of this." Luckily, I wasn't the only one.

Simple, conniving, beautiful and cruelly-obvious-once-you-see-it, LOK Digital is especially well suited to mobiles and handhelds, so you can make yourself feel stupid (or smart, sometimes) anywhere you have a spare 2 minutes.

Free Games of the Year

On a budget? Check out some of our favourite free games from 2025! We didn't have time to gush about these as much as the ones above, but they're all equally deserving:

Ones we didn't get around to yet

Sometimes there are quite literally too many great puzzle games released to play them all. The following, whilst we didn't get a chance to play them (or only briefly), we've heard fantastic things about! So as some bonus, we think these titles are well worth checking out:

Thinky releases from the past month

Free games:

Paid games:

New demos:

Upcoming games to watch for

Whilst we're still working our way through 2025's thinky highlights, we can't help but be excited about 2026. Recently we announced the 2026 Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant cohort, and we're excited to share what these 6 new and upcoming thinky puzzle developers will work on.


Wyrmspace Tactics, by Wali Studios
If you've ever wanted to pull off a heist in space, then boy do I have a game for you. Wyrmspace Tactics combines drawing cards and laying tiles in order to move around each level. It's very well polished and consistently thinky.


Dreamhealer, by Niebla Games
Dreamhealer is a single-player roguelite puzzle game in which you play a young healer sent to enter the dreams of her community to mend their inner worlds. It's puzzliness comes in the turn-based combat and leans heavily on spatial problem-solving. Above all, it's a delightfully creative game and beautiful to boot.


Aether-07, by Prabhav Bhatnagar
Aether-07 combines first-person gameplay, test chambers and physics puzzles in a way that shows there's still interesting design space to be explored there. The prototype was very promising, and we're excited to see what the full game has in store.


Chess Tales, by IRG Studios
Inspired by Indian mythology, Chess Tales is an adventure game that takes the classic mechanics of chess and adds a puzzley twist. As you play through a series of themed dioramas, new puzzles and mechanics are introduced and each chapter concludes with the capture of the king.


LogiGolf, by Moon Tile
We promise we don't just love this game because the main character looks similar to the monster from our games. No, LogiGolf has a lot of charm in its own right, with a delightful mix of standalone golf puzzles and secrets/dioramas found in the world.


Proof of All Concepts, by Seren
Proof of All Concepts is hard to explain but very satisfying to play. It's a minimalist puzzle game that will constantly teach you new puzzle systems presented in unconventional ways. Learning the rules of each puzzle is half the game, and yet the rules are entirely consistent every time??

That's it!

Well, that's a wrap on 2025. So many fantastic thinky puzzle games released in 2025 - too many to cover in just one newsletter, which is why we release a new Thinky Third Thursday every month.

Did we miss any of your favourites, or do you have a recommendation for a game we should check out in 2026? We'd love to hear from you! Please get in touch.

And remember to enter the giveaway for a chance to win a free Steam key for one of the games we recommended above!

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