Our annual digital conference ThinkyCon is all about experienced designers, developers and puzzle enthusiasts sharing their knowledge and insights on the game-making process. The ThinkyCon Jam is about taking the ideas and lessons shared in those talks and applying them in real time: pick a presentation that spoke to you and make a game with that topic in mind!
Your game should:
- Be thinky!
- Be inspired by one or more of the talks from ThinkyCon 2026
Watch some talks from the event and get inspired! Then make a game that explores or expands one of the topics from the presentations. Maybe a speaker had advice about how to approach puzzle design, spoke about new avenues the genre could explore, or shared some of their creative process or tools. Whatever the subject, incorporate the themes into your game and use them as creative inspiration.
Thinky games are those that invite you to carefully reason your way through problems and challenges — games involving puzzles, logic, deduction, strategy, deep systems, engineering and more, full of learning and aha moments! While many thinky games are also puzzle games, we find thinkiness all over the gaming landscape, from strategy games to adventure games to deckbuilders. If you're taking your time reasoning through things, and not under pressure to perform quick or physically difficult tasks, you're probably playing a thinky game.
Our Thinky Games Database is a great place to poke around and explore what exactly fits under this big umbrella.
This is a very relaxed game jam: Just aim to make a thinky game that follows the theme. Use any game engine, make a puzzle book, create a physical card game or whatever you feel inspired to do. (If you're not sure where to start, PuzzleScript is a great free tool.) Feel free to use any existing assets you have the rights to use. We don't allow the use of elements (art, code, text, music, etc) made using generative AI.
We'd love for you to join in and make a game no matter your background and experience, even if it's your first time participating in a game jam. This is a community focused, non-competitive jam: there are no votes, ranking, or prizes. The jam runs for ~10 days to allow people to find time in their schedules, but we only expect you to use a couple of days actually working: whatever pace is relaxed and comfortable for you. There's no competition and it's all about mutual motivation to be creative and share some ideas.
We may remove submissions if they contain offensive content or if we suspect the project wasn't made for this jam (make sure to tell us about the specific talk that inspired your game on the submission form).
ThinkyGames.com is a community hub for anyone who loves puzzle-adjacent games. On our site you'll find the latest news about game releases, our huge database of thinky titles, our charming Thinky Dailies puzzles and more. We also have a very active Discord community where you can hang out and chat with other puzzle lovers.
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Please be kind and respectful towards each other! We expect all participants to behave according to our code of conduct, and may take actions such as warning or removing an individual from the jam in the case of any unacceptable behavior.
