Sharing knowledge and experience is an integral part of the game development community. At Thinky Games, we organize an annual digital conference called ThinkyCon, which lead us to wonder the effect these talks could be having on future games. Speaking of which, we're also partnering with researchers from the Division of Games at the University of Utah for something quite special (more on that below!).

Your game should:

- Be thinky!

- Be inspired by one of the talks from the 2025 edition of ThinkyCon (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3).

Attend the event and get inspired! Then make a game that explores or expands one of the topics from the sessions. Maybe it was a talk about a puzzle genre you hadn't heard about. Or tools you'd like to try. It could even be a creative direction prompted by one of the sessions.

Right! For us, 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, often brimming with 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 narrative games.

For examples, take a look at the kinds of games we cover on our website. We also have a database where you can explore an extensive list of thinky games.

This is a very relaxed jam! Just aim to make a thinky game that follows the theme. Use any engine, make a puzzle book, create a board game, a VR game, or whatever you like. Feel free to use existing assets (as long as you have the rights to do so). We don't allow the use of elements (art, code, text, music, etc) made using generative AI.

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 session that inspired you on the submission form).

We welcome everyone to the jam, whether you're a designer, programmer, artist, musician, sound designer, narrative designer, or anything, and no matter your background or experience. 

There are no votes, ranking, or prizes in this jam. This jam runs for 9 days, but we don't expect anyone to use the full time! If you'd like to treat it like a shorter jam, we'd love to see whatever you make. Please just have fun and take care of yourselves.

This year at ThinkyCon, researchers from the Division of Games at the University of Utah will be conducting a study looking at how the ideas shared during the conference influence games made during the game jam following the conference.

Participants must be over 18 and will be compensated with a $40USD gift card voucher per game submission for filling out a brief survey and submitting any design documents generated during development. For more information and to participate, sign up for the study when you submit your jam entry.

Discord

Thinky Games has a very active community on Discord where you can find inspiration, resource, feedback, and even other developers to partner with.

Code of Conduct

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 case of any unacceptable behavior.

If you'd like to reach out to us with any concerns, please contact conduct@thinkygames.com.

Who is behind this?

This jam is organized by Thinky Games, the place to discover great thinky games and join the thinky fan community. We love playing and making these kinds of games, so we hope our jam encourages more of you to explore this space.

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