The 2025 showcase season is finally upon us, promising an absurd amount of game announcements and reveals. What was once the time of E3 is now a flurry of directs introducing us to hopefully our next favourite game. Summer Games Fest is now the big highlight of the season , but there are plenty of excellent Directs happening before the big show.
The newest addition to the roster is from Thinky Games, who have not only just released their first-ever Thinky Direct but also the first direct solely based on puzzle games. Thinky Games concentrate mainly on puzzle or problem-solving games, with strong coverage on their website and YouTube channel of brain-busting games.
Joseph and Rachel put on a wonderful show, with plenty of interesting games featured, showing the diverse range on offer in the genre. In this article I’ve compiled some of my favourite games from the direct, standouts that I feel deserve to be considered for your wishlist. Please find links to the games’ store pages for each game, and I will also highlight if the game has a demo for you to try out. Enough rambling from me; let’s check out the games!
Pup Champs
Pup Champs showed up right at the start of the direct and captured my attention straight away with its intriguing gameplay and cute visuals. In this cosy tactical puzzle game, your ahem ‘goal’ is to guide a football (soccer) team of pups to glory and solve over 170 stages along the way.
To succeed, it’s important to position your pups in the right place to pass or shoot successfully, but there will be hazards along the way to make things more difficult. Balls will get stuck in mud puddles, monkeys will mimic your movements and bunnies will react to your passes, with many more promised by the developers. Throughout the game you’ll also discover a narrative about friendship and sport told through interactive motion comics.
Pup Champs promises to welcome novices and experienced players with challenges that will fit all types of players and the best thing about this announcement is that this game is already out and available on Steam, priced at £9.89.
Demo Available
He Who Watches
In this first-person puzzle platformer, take control of an archer as they traverse rooms in a dungeon to find a way out. Manipulate gravity and walk on walls as you delve deeper into the dungeon and find the secrets hidden within.
Hit blocks with your arrow to solve the puzzles and with just one arrow, you’ll have to recall it every time, and the developers promise unique ideas to the solutions as the core mechanics get built upon. He Who Watches screwed with my head with the twisting viewpoints, but I found myself captured by what it was trying to do. The trailer showcased some inventive-looking puzzles and it has this Portal feeling to it that I can’t shake off. Hopefully it holds up to its potential to really shake up the genre.
Demo Available
Is This Seat Taken?
In this logic puzzle game, your mission is to seat characters next to each other to fit their personal preferences, and if you don’t match them right, then prepare for failure. Set around a story of an aspiring actor on a global journey to meet their hero and figure out how to fit in, Is This Seat Taken? promises fun puzzles set to zero timers or leaderboards.
One of the biggest draws is how you solve the puzzles, with having to learn the personal traits of each character and making sure to match them correctly. Who prefers a window or an aisle seat on a bus or who likes a booth or table in a restaurant? It’s your job to find out and organise them correctly. With a range of locations, including a cinema, wedding reception, and a cramped taxi, this game will not only stretch your puzzling aspirations but also your smile through its charismatic and fun gameplay.
Demo Available
Is This Seat Taken? Steam Page
Nonolith
Nonolith looks such an interesting and original puzzle game that I was wishlisting it before the trailer had even finished. With gorgeous pixel art and an inventive hook, this one could be a hit in the making.
In the game, the main protagonist has been imprisoned in the Nonolith, a structure of many secrets. Your main tool in your bid to escape is to copy and paste tetromino-type blocks to complete bridges, stairs and other structures on the landscape so you can reach the next stage of your journey. The Steam page promises hidden mechanics that will let you do the impossible and I have a feeling there are going to be quite a few surprises in store in the full game.
I for one can’t wait to discover the mysteries held within the Nonolith and solve its many puzzles and hopefully we are not in for a long wait for the full game’s release.
Cipher Zero
Instantly piquing my interest with its glorious visuals, a derelict world and original gameplay, Cipher Zero truly looks like one to watch this year. Not much is known about the game, as the trailer didn’t give much away, but from what we’ve seen, it looks like you are attempting to repair the damage done to a world and restore it to a liveable space.
Doing this apparently requires only two actions: to toggle tiles on or off on mysterious glyphs and to check if your solution is correct. Get it right and your efforts will have positive effects on the surface, and with the game promising over 300 handcrafted puzzles to solve, this should keep you busy for some time.
Boasting several locations and an immersive chill soundtrack that reacts to your actions, Cipher Zero seems to be offering something truly original and I am excited to experience the full game when it releases on July 22nd.
Echo Weaver
Classed as a MetroidBrainia, Echo Weaver doesn’t necessarily look like a puzzle game at first glance, but its promise of platforming and puzzle solving can’t be one to ignore. Here you are, the last of the Weavers, a remnant of a ruined society that’s trapped in a glitching time loop. To solve the mystery, you must explore, uncover the truths and perfect the loop.
Uncovering secrets is the key to unlocking your powers, which you already know from the start; you just don’t know how to use them all. You’ll also use the loop as a resource and can grab pickups to extend it, to give you the time to unlock gates, heal, trade and much more.
You’ll also need help from characters that are stuck just as deep in the time loop as you are and free them in the process, and with many more curious elements to uncover and its time-extending mechanics, Echo Weaver certainly seems worthy of our time.
There were plenty more excellent-looking games during the direct, and I hope that not only will you consider checking out my recommendations but also take a look at the show itself, with the video available on the Thinky Games YouTube channel. The show ran for an hour, with Joseph playing some of the featured game demos in the post-show. Also keep an eye out for an interview with Thinky Games in the near future.
Let us know on BlueSky what your favourites were; we’d love to hear them!
