News

Croteam's first-person puzzler The Talos Principle 2 now has an editor for building levels and worlds. It is a free update, and your creations can be shared through the Steam Workshop.

Tools for scenery and structures are included, along with community-made "semi-official" puzzles that show off what the editor can do. The editor first appeared in the 2025 remake, The Talos Principle: Reawakened.

The game is also 90% off on Steam ($2.99) through October 8.

— Kawara: “From playing to making. The sequel now has the machinery that keeps puzzles coming.”

PostCurious (California), known for Emerald Flame, launched a Kickstarter for its new narrative puzzle-box game The Witching Hour on September 29. The campaign runs through October 29.

Players open sealed envelopes and packages one by one and solve puzzles with physical props: maps, documents, jewelry and hand-assembled mazes. They work through a cursed maze to uncover a mystery from the past, in an escape-room feel packaged as a board game.

According to Kickstarter tracker Kicktraq, the $15,000 goal was met in about 15 minutes.

— Kawara: “Paper puzzles differ from on-screen ones: the props in your hands are the clues. Nothing ships yet; for now it is only pledges.”

DUAL PROTOCOL: The Case of Eva & Miles launched on Steam today, October 2. It is developed by AEGEAN CRAFTERS and published by Rock Paper Publisher.

It is an asymmetric noir puzzle game for two. One player is field agent Eva, the other is analyst Miles working from a desk. You cannot see each other's screens.

You relay what you have by voice and cross-check it to uncover the truth behind the Castellari murder. Online co-op is supported.

— Kawara: “Co-op puzzles where each player sees different information keep coming this month. Here the conversation itself is the tool.”

Teka Teki Studios of Jakarta, Indonesia has put up the Steam page and trailer for Two & Two: Agents, a two-player co-op mystery puzzler. No release date yet.

Players are secret agents infiltrating a scientist's lab. Each sees different clues: one holds the key, the other knows where it goes. Talking is how the clues connect.

It is a point-and-click escape-room game with a comic-book look, online co-op only. Steam tags it Puzzle and Adventure.

— Kawara: “Games where you cannot see your partner's screen are becoming common. This one makes the act of trading clues the game itself.”

Tiny Flock launched on September 29. It is made by No Brakes Games, the studio behind Human: Fall Flat.

You guide a lost sheep to safety by moving objects and mechanisms in hand-crafted dioramas to build a path. It is a physics puzzler with 21 levels, and it is VR only.

— Kawara: “A studio known for wobbly physics has settled into a small, tidy diorama this time.”

TOEM 2, the sequel to the black-and-white photo adventure TOEM, launches on September 29 at 9:00 am EDT. It arrives the same day on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Steam, in twelve languages.

The camera is the new hook. Each region hands you a different attachment to clip on, and you use it to sort out the locals' problems. You run, jump and climb through a hand-drawn world, and whatever you photograph goes into a journal.

Something We Made, the studio behind the first game, is back. The sequel was meant to arrive in summer; the team pushed it to the end of September to add a few bits of extra detail and polish.

— Kawara: “The charm of the first game was that taking the picture was all you had to do. With tools bolted onto the camera, only playing will show which way the difficulty tips.”

Line up a set of numbers in the right order and every running total along the way can be made different. Ronald Graham conjectured this in 1971, and 55 years later it is settled. Quanta Magazine laid out the story on September 28.

The setting is clock arithmetic. Fix a prime p, keep only the remainders after dividing by p, and pick any of the nonzero ones. Graham claimed that whatever you pick, some ordering makes all the partial sums distinct. The idea is said to have come from juggling: if balls stay up for different lengths of time, there should be a throwing order in which no two land on the same beat.

The last gap was the middle case, where the set holds about half as many numbers as p. Lisa Sauermann of the University of Bonn and Huy Tuan Pham of the University of Chicago closed it in February 2026, joining two earlier results to complete the picture. Their move was to start from a random ordering and show it can be patched up at least 90 percent of the time. The proof only applies when p is enormous, somewhere around 10 to the 100th.

— Kawara: “Graham himself filed the question alongside Latin squares, the shape sudoku is built on. It had been sitting on that shelf all along.”

At World Cube Association (WCA) sanctioned competitions, six-year-old Chinese competitor Yunzhi Lian rewrote the women's world record for the 3x3x3 cube twice in three days. She averaged 4.52 seconds in Wuhan on September 13, then 4.27 seconds in Guangzhou on September 16. She is the first woman to average under 4.5 seconds.

Her five solves in Guangzhou were 4.20, 4.39, 4.54, 4.02 and 4.22 seconds. In this sport an "average" means the mean of three solves, after the fastest and slowest of the five are dropped. The previous women's best was 4.68 seconds by Qixian Cao.

The 4.27 average also places her fourth in the world rankings across all competitors. Ahead of her are Yiheng Wang at 3.51, Xuanyi Geng at 3.67 and Yi Shen at 4.24.

— Kawara: “Because the average is taken from three of five solves, it rewards consistency rather than one lucky run. The small spread in her times says more about the record than her age does.”

Rivage, a first-person puzzle game about escaping a space station caught in a time loop, launched on Steam on September 22. It is developed by Exnilo Studio of Montreal, Canada, and published by Raw Fury. The setting is the 25th century, aboard the A.R.E.S. research station orbiting the planet Vesta.

Miranda, the researcher who wakes up on board, is the only one left; the rest of the crew is gone. You repair broken machinery and work through contraptions that bend gravity, magnetism and the flow of time, piecing together what happened from the logs left behind.

The unusual part is the K9 System. It records answers you have already worked out, so they survive a reset. The price is $24.99, with a 10% launch discount, and Japanese text is supported. As of September 24 the game sits at 125 Steam reviews and 72% positive, so opinion is split.

— Kawara: “The tiresome part of any time-loop game is redoing work you already know the answer to. Designing that away from the start looks like a plainly correct call.”

Thekla, the studio led by Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness), released a new trailer for Order of the Sinking Star called "Explore the Realm" on September 23. The game arrives October 8 on PC (Steam), PS5, and Switch 2.

Four paths branch north, east, west, and south from a central starting point, and you can take any of them first. Each region has its own characters and mechanics, and you can back out and try another one when a puzzle stops you. The regions are The Hearty Heroes of Hauling (north), The Mirror Isles (east), The Promise (west), and Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes (south).

The big reveal is the Gold Rooms. Clearing one bridges two regions and opens a large area that mixes both of their mechanics, for six combinations in all. The game holds over 1,000 puzzles.

— Kawara: “Rather than four small games side by side, the back half multiplies them together. That is where ten years of scope starts to make sense.”

A German Army Enigma message sent on July 10, 1941 has finally been read, 21 years after codebreakers started trying. The work was done by OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. Crypto Cellar Research, a site that collects wartime cipher material, published the account, and cryptographer Bruce Schneier picked it up on September 22.

The target was an 82-letter message known as MVUEH, number 172. It had sat on a public list of unbroken intercepts since 2005 with no one able to read it. The AI wrote its own programs in Python and C++ to simulate an Enigma machine and the wartime Bombe used to attack it.

Its way in was a repeated place name, "ROSENOW ROSENOW", that appears in a related message. A guess at the plaintext like this is called a crib. From there it narrowed down the key and found that the rotor order differed from the day's shared setting. One reason the message had held out so long, the write-up says, is a rare turnover of the left rotor at the 72nd letter.

— Kawara: “The check that it was right came from a human researcher. Finding the way in and confirming it are still two different jobs.”

Place a portal, rotate it, and the direction of gravity tilts with it. Nomori, a puzzle adventure built on that idea, launches on September 23. It comes from Enchanted Works, a small studio in the Netherlands.

A time-manipulation power is layered on top, so any surface can become the floor. The official press kit likens the puzzle design to M.C. Escher's impossible drawings, and the game spans more than 40 islands, crossed by a girl named Kiko. The story is said to draw on Japanese folklore. Japanese interface and subtitles are supported.

The project began in 2020 as a university assignment and became an independent studio in 2022. The core team is six people. It costs $19.99 (€17.99) and ships on Steam, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. A demo is already available.

— Kawara: “Gravity-flipping puzzles are nothing new, but rotating the portal rather than the room is unfamiliar. One island of the demo should be enough to tell whether it suits you.”

The World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship in Valladolid, Spain closed on September 20. Maartje van der Meer of the Netherlands won the individual final, assembling a 500-piece puzzle in 27 minutes 57 seconds. Maja Von Borstel of Germany took second at 29:31, and her compatriot Nina Schicks third at 30:06.

The pairs event gave teams of two 1,000 pieces in two hours, and Von Borstel with Franziska Treber won it for Germany in 43:40. The four-person team event on the 19th used 2,000 pieces in three hours, won by the Czech Republic's "Czech Puzzlequeens & Martin" in 1:07:11. The German team behind them finished just six seconds later.

For Japan, Santos Martín Kato, entered from Matsue in Shimane Prefecture, placed 87th in the individual final classification at 42:22. Three Japanese pairs also appear in the pairs standings. European broadcaster Euronews reported that roughly 1,700 people from about 70 countries took part.

— Kawara: “The top five all landed between 27 and 30 minutes. Assembling 500 pieces in half an hour looks like the current bar for a world final.”

We Were Here Tomorrow, the fifth entry in the two-player co-op puzzle series, launches on October 20. The date was revealed on September 20 during a showcase timed to Tokyo Game Show 2026. It is coming to Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

The series is built for exactly two players. You are separated from your partner and can only talk over walkie-talkies. Because each of you sees something different, progress comes down to describing what is in front of you accurately.

This time the roles split as well. Each player carries a different tool and faces different tasks. The setting moves from castles and Antarctic ice to a retro-futuristic complex called Norček. The Steam page lists Japanese support.

— Kawara: “How do you describe what you are looking at to someone who cannot see it? Five games in, the series is still built around that single question.”

The winners of SENSE OF WONDER NIGHT 2026, the indie contest held at Tokyo Game Show 2026, were announced on September 18. The Audience Award Semi-Grand Prix went to Unknot! -Annot!-, a puzzle game built on knot theory. It comes from Chinese developer P.F.J. and carries a $500 prize.

SOWN is an event where developers pitch unusual games on stage and the audience in the room votes for the winners. This year 8 titles were chosen from 151 submissions, and they presented on September 17 at the International Conference Hall in Makuhari Messe.

Unknot! has you untangle knotted rope with a physics simulation. It has more than 100 levels grounded in mathematical knot theory, and has been on Steam since September 17, 2025, with Japanese support. The top prize, the Audience Award Grand Prix, went to Kao UFO (Takahiro Miyazawa, Japan, $3,000), which also took Best Experimental Game, Best Game Design and Best Presentation for four awards in all. LEGACY CODE (Room 127, Japan) won both Best Technological Game and Best Arts.

— Kawara: “The ranking came from a vote by the people in the room. A subject as mathematical as knots got across on sight, without a long explanation.”

The world championships of pencil-and-paper puzzles run from October 11 to 18 in Kolkata, India. The 19th World Sudoku Championship and the 33rd World Puzzle Championship are held back to back, hosted by Logic Masters India. The official site lists 121 confirmed entrants from 24 countries on the sudoku side.

Sudoku competition days are October 12 and 13; the puzzle rounds run October 15 to 17. October 14 is an excursion day and carries the puzzle championship's opening events. This year's theme is the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata.

On September 16 the organizers published version 1 of the instruction booklet for the individual sudoku rounds. The team-round booklet is said to be coming soon. India has hosted the World Sudoku Championship twice before, in Goa in 2008 and Bangalore in 2017.

— Kawara: “Once the booklet is out, you can read the exact round formats ahead of time. For a spectator, there is no better preparation than that.”

MONOMOON, a pixel-art exploration puzzle set on an island at night, arrives on Steam on November 11. It is developed and published by the small studio Gentle Giant Games. The date was announced on September 17 alongside a new trailer.

It is billed as a metroidbrainia: you do not unlock new areas by collecting items, but by working out how the world runs. You push blocks, read constellation maps and play instruments to gather clues.

There are no real instructions. The Steam page puts a surface run at about 10 hours; digging into the hidden mechanics takes longer.

— Kawara: “When understanding is the key, half the value evaporates the moment you look up a guide. How you spend the first few days after launch decides what kind of game this is for you.”

Tokyo Game Show 2026 is running at Makuhari Messe. September 17 and 18 were trade days; the public days run from the 19th to the 21st. Publisher Game Source Entertainment (GSE) says the first-person puzzle game THANKS, LIGHT. is playable at booth 02-N02 in Hall 2.

Shine your flashlight and a flat shadow rises into a solid object you can stand on. Absorb the light and the solid flattens again, letting you slip past it. Mirrors and lenses bend the light so you can copy shapes or change their size. The game has three chapters and more than 60 stages.

It is developed by Lightersgames and published by GSE. Release is set for October 15 on PS5 and Steam (the Steam store lists October 14 local time). Japanese is supported, and a free demo is up on Steam. GSE's booth also has Ratatan and Castle of the Alchemist playable.

— Kawara: “Light hits a shadow and the shadow stands up — the idea reads instantly in a screenshot. How it feels to play is another matter. Getting hands on it before release is worth the queue.”

The deduction puzzle The Bird of the North launched on Steam on September 17. It is set in 1921, in a world where an ice age has halted industrial progress, and you investigate a kidnapping and a revolution.

You look into the memories of the people involved and rebuild who did what, where and when from fragments of dialogue. Answers go onto an investigation board that lines up locations, clues and a timeline. It is short: about two hours to two hours and forty minutes.

It was made by a solo developer called Uvost. In June, on the official Godot engine forum, they wrote that the game was inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn and that it was their first commercial project built in Godot. It costs $5.80 (17% off, through September 29). There is no Japanese support.

— Kawara: “Deduction games tempt their makers to keep going. This one wraps up in two hours. Games that treat brevity as a design choice rather than an excuse tend to stay with you.”

20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes, the new game from FLEB, the developer known for collections of tiny mazes, launched on Steam on September 17 exactly as scheduled. It is free, and takes about 30 minutes to finish.

As the title suggests, it is twenty mazes that have somehow gotten even smaller. Like its predecessor 20 Small Mazes, each board fits on a single screen and you work through them one after another.

Reviews piled up right away: Steam passed 200 reviews within a day, more than 90 percent of them positive. FLEB also released Strange Jigsaws, built around jigsaw puzzles, in 2025.

— Kawara: “Thirty minutes and free is a size that needs no pitch. It fits into a coffee break as is.”

On September 12, at the Wuhan Golden Autumn 2026 competition in Wuhan, China, Ziyu Wu solved the 7x7x7 Rubik's Cube in a mean of 1:39.32 and set a new Asian record. The result is listed as an Asian record on the results page of the World Cube Association (WCA), which keeps the official records.

The 7x7 is a large cube with seven rows of seven squares on each face. For 6x6 and above, rankings are decided by the mean of three solves. Wu's three were 1:39.52, 1:34.31 and 1:44.13 — fastest to slowest within ten seconds.

Wu also holds world records on the Megaminx, a twelve-sided puzzle. In the 7x7 world rankings he sits third, behind only Max Park and Timofei Tarasenko.

— Kawara: “On the big cubes, turning fast matters less than never losing the algorithm. The scarier number is not the record but the ten-second spread across three solves.”

Woodo, a puzzle game about building small wooden dioramas, launched on September 16. Place a piece correctly and that part of the scene gains color and starts to move.

The pieces are hidden inside the scene. You rotate the diorama in 3D and hunt for parts you could not see before. If you get stuck, the difficulty eases on its own and the game offers a hand.

It was made by the two-person studio Tiny Monks Tales and published by Daedalic Entertainment. PC, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch and Switch 2 versions all arrived on the same day. The narration that carries the story is dubbed into eight languages, Japanese among them.

On Steam it is 30% off at $11.89 until September 30. User reviews stand at 49 with about 85% positive (as of the morning of September 17). It is also verified for Steam Deck.

— Kawara: “This looks like a puzzle game chasing the feel in your fingers rather than the click of a solution. The difficulty that quietly softens fits that same aim.”

Sniper Dan, a puzzle game about looking through a scope to find what is broken and shooting it to fix it, launches on September 17. It arrives the same day on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch and Switch 2.

Nobody gets shot. The game is about spotting the problem — a leaking tap, say — somewhere in a densely drawn scene. Six locations hold more than 160 jobs, plus three minigames including bowling. It is rated for all ages and contains no violence.

The developer is Denki, based in Dundee, Scotland. Four former staff of DMA Design — the studio behind Lemmings and the original Grand Theft Auto — founded it in 2000. Its 2001 puzzle game Denki Blocks! won Game of the Show at the European trade fair ECTS.

— Kawara: “The team describes it as Where's Wally? colliding with a light-gun game. A hidden-object game with no enemy at all turns out to be a rare shape.”

MONOWAVE, a puzzle platformer built around switching between emotions, launched on Steam and Nintendo Switch on September 16. It is hand-drawn 2D and supports split-screen two-player co-op.

You play a guardian of four emotions. Happiness jumps higher, Sorrow moves through water, Anger wall-jumps, and Anxiety dodges danger. Picking the right emotion is the solution to the obstacle in front of you.

The developer is Studio BBB in Seoul, South Korea. The team started the game while still at university and incorporated after graduating together. Japanese publisher Phoenixx shares publishing duties. PS5 and Xbox Series versions are planned before the end of the year.

— Kawara: “Mapping abilities onto emotions is not new. Giving all four a distinct way to move is where this one places its bet.”

Thinky Dailies, the free daily puzzle run by the puzzle site Thinky Games, began Season 4 on September 15 local time. Season 3 ended on July 31, so the break lasted about six weeks.

You get one puzzle a day, and the puzzle type changes from day to day. The opening puzzle is "Ready To Go?", a Spiral Galaxies grid designed by JinHoo Ahn. Every puzzle ships with its rules and hints, so an unfamiliar type can be learned on the spot.

It is free to play and carries no ads. An account syncs your progress across devices, but you can play without one. Past seasons remain playable from the start, and the Season 4 index shows slots for 65 puzzles.

— Kawara: “Because the type changes every day, a puzzle you cannot crack is replaced by a different one tomorrow. That makes it an easy way into a wide range of puzzle types.”

Ghost Town Games, the studio behind Overcooked, has announced a new puzzle game called Stage Fright. It is a two-player co-op adventure built around solving escape rooms, and it is coming to Switch 2, Switch and PC (Steam) in 2027. The reveal came at the Nintendo Direct on September 9.

As the official site puts it, "the challenge is in the mind, not the finger-tips". You search rooms, work out the mechanisms and chase an ancient mystery. The studio describes it as Overcooked-style chaotic moments mixed with escape-room co-operation. You can play online or side by side.

The story follows three characters: Drew, Blake and Charlie. You switch between pairs, and the tale is told from two points of view. Hello Games, the studio behind No Man's Sky, is publishing. No release date has been set; the Steam page still says Coming Soon.

— Kawara: “Co-op in Overcooked was about syncing your hands. What happens when the same team swaps speed for conversation is the thing to watch here.”

“Would You Love Me If I Was a Snake?”, a puzzle game about guiding a snake out of locked rooms, launched on Steam on September 10. Andrea Boroni Grazioli developed and published it alone.

Its standout move is biting off your own tail. You can also push objects, block lasers and use teleporters. The store page says the game holds 150 hand-crafted puzzles, each with “a unique idea” and “no filler”.

A 25% launch discount runs until September 24, cutting the usual $13.99 price to $10.49. Steam reviews are still thin: nine of them, 75% positive.

— Kawara: “In snake games the length of your body is the constraint. Being able to cut that length yourself adds one more way to think when you get stuck.”

Level-5 has announced a remake of Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the first game in the series. It was revealed on September 10 during the studio's own broadcast, LEVEL-5 Vision 2026 II Dream, and is planned for 2027.

It is coming to Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Steam. The official site lists two changes: characters redrawn in 3D for richer exploration, and animated scenes remade in high resolution and widescreen.

The original came out on Nintendo DS in 2007. Layton and his apprentice Luke visit the village of St. Mystere in search of a treasure called the Golden Apple. The official site credits the puzzles to Akira Tago, author of the Japanese puzzle book series Atama no Taiso.

— Kawara: “The release date for New World of Steam landed only a day earlier, so the newest entry and the very first one are now moving at once. The thing to watch is how puzzles built for the DS two-screen layout get rearranged for a single screen.”

On September 4 the official White House website opened a page called Arcade, collecting games you can play in a browser. One of the five, Build the Wall, was a Tetris-like puzzle about stacking falling blocks.

The same day, The Tetris Company, which manages the rights to Tetris, said on Instagram that it had no involvement in the game. In the comments it added that it takes copyright infringement very seriously.

Since then that one game has disappeared from the page. As of September 10 four games remain, and Build the Wall is not among them. No reason for the removal has been given.

— Kawara: “The Tetris Company has long been strict about its rights: in 2012 it won a court case against a game that copied the look. Falling-block puzzles are simple by design, so where imitation begins keeps getting argued.”

Hazard Pay, a block-pushing puzzle game in the Sokoban tradition, launches on September 10. It arrives the same day on Steam, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Smitner Studio developed it; Numskull Games is publishing.

The setting is a secret research facility in 1982. You are sent in as a government cleanup worker after a containment accident. The job is to wipe the blood trails off the floor, destroy the evidence, and collect your hazard pay.

The levels are handcrafted, and each one adds a new hazard. Branching choices change how the story ends. Pixel art and dark humour set the tone.

— Kawara: “Adding a cleanup motive — erase the traces — to Sokoban is a neat twist. You watch not only where the block goes, but the trail you leave behind.”

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, the next entry in the Professor Layton series, arrives on December 10. The date was revealed during the Nintendo Direct on September 9. It launches the same day on Switch 2, Switch, PS5 and Steam.

This is the first Layton game to appear on PlayStation since the series began in 2007. The story is set one year after Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, in Steam Bison, an American town booming on steam power. Layton teams up again with a slightly older Luke.

The puzzles are made by QuizKnock, a Japanese quiz group. The announcement says the game will hold more puzzles than any earlier entry. The price has not been set.

— Kawara: “A series solved with a stylus is moving to home consoles and PCs. How the puzzles work on a screen you cannot touch is the thing to watch.”

The World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, a global contest for assembling jigsaws as fast as possible, runs from September 16 to 20 at the exhibition fairground in Valladolid, Spain. The individual event splits qualifying into four groups, each given 90 minutes for a 500-piece puzzle; the semifinals and final use the same 500 pieces in 75 minutes.

The pairs final is 1,000 pieces in two hours, and the four-person team event is 2,000 pieces in three hours. The 2025 edition drew 1,154 competitors from 65 nations, and 2024 drew 1,777 from 74. This year's entry list includes 25 names from Japan.

On opening night, an event called "Challenge Pokemon 42k" also begins. Entrants take on a 42,000-piece Pokemon jigsaw, scheduled for the evening before the individual qualifying rounds start.

— Kawara: “Speed jigsaw as a competitive sport is still unfamiliar in Japan. Where the 25 Japanese entrants land will be clear at the final and awards ceremony on the 20th.”

Code: Terraform, an automation game about running rovers, power grids and drone fleets on a frozen planet, is entering Early Access on Steam. The store page lists the launch for September 9, 17:00 UTC.

The hook is that you write the machines' instructions yourself, as code. The language is a custom one modelled on Python, and syntax highlighting, autocomplete and debugging tools sit inside the game. It is the work of a solo developer, AppsMafia.

The store page says flatly that there are no tutorials: figure it out like a real engineer would, with documentation and hints provided instead. Early Access is expected to last about a year. A free demo is available now.

— Kawara: “SteamDB first recorded this app ID in May 2018. That works out to eight years before it reached the surface.”

TsumeRush, a free browser site that ports the chess training format Puzzle Rush to Go, has gone live. You solve as many tsumego (life-and-death problems) as you can before time runs out, across three modes: 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and survival.

You get three mistakes. The third one ends the run. It plays without an account, but signing up keeps your personal best and puts you on the leaderboard.

The author, who goes by kyubic, posted it on September 6 to Show HN, the self-published project slot on the developer community Hacker News. They wrote that they enjoy both chess and Go and wanted Puzzle Rush to exist on the Go side. Existing tsumego sites such as goproblems.com were tried, but the feel of them did not click.

— Kawara: “Tsumego used to mean opening a book and working one problem at a time. Add a clock and a mistake limit, and practice takes the shape of a contest.”

tobspr Games, the studio behind the factory-building puzzle series shapez, announced a new game on September 7: puzzlez - a shapez game. A Steam page is up, and no release date has been given.

It drops the expansion side of the main series and keeps only the challenge of building shapes inside small 3D dioramas. More than 75 official puzzles ship with it, plus an editor for making and sharing your own and leaderboards for comparing solutions.

The studio says the project was first planned as DLC for shapez 2 and grew until it made sense as its own release. They describe it as an evolution of the puzzle DLC from the first shapez.

— Kawara: “Factory games are usually sold on the pleasure of sprawling outward. This studio picked the opposite: a tight board, where the gap between a good solution and a great one is easy to see.”

Locktale, a puzzle game in which you decode messages to move a story forward, launched on Steam today, September 7. It has more than 50 levels, and each one uses a different method of encoding.

Alongside real ciphers from ancient to modern times, there are tricks invented for this game. Some puzzles look outside the text box: an earlier level, or even the colours of the interface, can be the clue.

It was made by solo developer Mina Pêcheux. Each puzzle offers up to three levels of hints, and the price is $7.99 ($6.79, 15% off, until September 14). A free demo is available.

— Kawara: “When the thing in front of you is a string of letters rather than a board, the hint system decides the difficulty. Three tiers per puzzle is a careful choice.”

Amaze Kings, a logic puzzle you play in the browser, has been released. It was posted to Show HN, the self-published projects section of the developer community Hacker News, late on September 6 US time, and it comes from Amaze Security BV in the Netherlands.

The rule is simple: place one king in every row, every column and every coloured region, and never let two kings touch, not even diagonally. It is the same format as the pencil puzzle known as Star Battle. Boards run from 5x5 to 20x20, with 1,400 puzzles spread across 16 regions.

The maker says every level was checked with a solver and that none of them require guessing. The free tier covers 4 regions and 100 levels. A one-time 5.99 euro purchase removes ads and unlocks everything, and there are iOS and Android versions too.

— Kawara: “In a genre full of sites that pile up machine-generated boards, saying outright that all 1,400 were graded by hand is unusual.”

He Who Watches, which we reported in August as dated for September 2, arrived on Steam that day as planned. It was made by solo developer Bobby Vanden and published by Draknek & Friends, the studio behind A Monster's Expedition.

You walk on walls and change which way gravity pulls, working toward a god imprisoned at the centre of an old labyrinth. There are more than 100 handcrafted puzzles, and they get harder as you go.

According to SteamDB, four days after release the game has 66 user reviews, about 83% of them positive. It costs $19.99, with a 15% launch discount bringing it to $16.99 until September 16.

— Kawara: “Finishing something this large alone is rare in itself. The review count is still small, but the start looks solid.”

Shoe it All!, a physics puzzle game from the Swiss studio Amberbite, launched on September 3. It arrived on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and smartphones all on the same day, published by Sweden's Bright Gambit.

Lace, the main character, never gets off her swing. All you decide is the angle and the speed at which she lets a shoe fly. The shoe breaks things, opens a path, and gets you to the goal.

There are more than 65 handcrafted stages, and many of them have several solutions. You can play for the fastest line or simply wreck everything. It costs $7.99 on PC and consoles and $4.99 on phones, and a 17-level demo is on Steam.

— Kawara: “It is not only where you aim but when you let go. The swing never stops, so the waiting itself becomes part of the input.”

The New York Times Games team began rolling out Bonus Puzzles on September 2, a set of twisted takes on its existing puzzles. New ones arrive every Wednesday at midnight in your own time zone.

The headliner is Wordle in 1. It has five rounds, and each round gives a single clue with exactly one valid answer. Instead of narrowing things down guess by guess, you are meant to land it on the first try.

The other five are Connections 3x3 (three groups of three), Colorful Strands with more elaborate board art, Mystery Mini with a twist on how clues are presented, a Friday crossword grid with easier clues, and a special crossword that arrives at the start of each month. They are for subscribers, though a free starter set is available to everyone.

— Kawara: “The better you know the originals, the more these will trip you up. What stands out is the direction: not more games, but a deliberate disruption of habits players have already built.”

Divider Dave, a puzzle-platformer in which you make copies of yourself and use them as footholds, launched on Steam on September 2. It was made by two developers, Louis Vidal and José-Manuel Girona, and published by Chancla Interactive.

Dave spawns a duplicate at the press of a button and can switch which body he controls. You throw, stack and squash the copies to reach places a single Dave never could.

There are more than 50 handmade puzzles across four zones, with hazards such as lasers and crushing blocks. It costs $7.99, with 15% off until September 16.

— Kawara: “Puzzles about multiplying yourself are nothing new. This one leans less on making copies than on spending them.”

Uncanyon, a puzzle adventure, was announced on September 3. It is developed by Graceful Decay, the studio behind Maquette, and published by Annapurna Interactive. It arrives in 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC.

You play as Sonia, who carries a device powered by fragmentstone. It pulls another reality into the one she is standing in. Which reality you pick, and when, changes the paths and the hazards.

The setting is a forgotten world formed in the seam between realities that were never meant to meet. You travel five semi-open regions and solve the riddles of their ruins. The Steam page even carries a Sokoban tag.

— Kawara: “Maquette was about nested models. This time the realities sit side by side. Release is 2027, so the wait is long.”

Portal: Alive & Kicking, a free mod that rebuilds the 2007 puzzle game Portal from scratch in the Portal 2 engine, went live on Steam on August 28. It is the work of a team called Rhubarb & Rhubarb. The project started around 2011, when Portal 2 came out, and took 15 years to finish.

The visuals are not the only change. The test chambers have been reworked so that the cues telling you what to do next read more clearly. The soundtrack was remade by blending the styles of both games, and the story was rewritten to fit Portal 2's setting.

You need Portal 2 on Steam to play it; the mod itself is free. Fixes have kept coming since launch: an August 29 patch handled crashes and save problems, and an August 31 patch adjusted map brightness and cleared soft locks.

— Kawara: “Fifteen years in the making. All you need is Portal 2, and the rest is free. That is a low bar for giving it a try.”

Fangtopia, a puzzle game about laying tiles to build landscapes, now has a release date: October 26. When the PS5 and Switch 2 versions were announced in July, the window was only "2026." The date arrived on September 2 alongside a new trailer.

You draw hexagonal tiles from stacks and place them so the terrain connects. Meeting an objective scores points, and high scores unlock new landmarks. There is no timer and nothing chasing you. Aim for a pretty landscape or for the score, as you prefer.

Once the land is finished, you settle friendly monsters on it, from ghosts to werewolves. Absolutely Games develops and Secret Mode publishes. It is coming to PS5, Switch 2 and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Stove), with Japanese interface and subtitles.

— Kawara: “Parked right before Halloween. For a game about a monster paradise, that is the obvious slot.”

Orbitals, a two-player co-op puzzle adventure set in space, launched today, September 3, exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2. It is developed by the Japanese studio Shapefarm and published by Kepler Interactive.

The design makes a bold call: there is no single-player mode. Nintendo's own page states that the title does not support single player. You need a partner, on split screen or online, and that partner joins through GameShare or the Orbitals Global Friend's Pass.

You control two explorers, Maki and Omura. Each carries different tools, so progress comes from reading each other's moves. The setting is open space and an abandoned station. The retro-anime cutscenes come from Studio Massket, and the game is fully voiced in both Japanese and English. The digital version is $39.99; the physical and deluxe editions are $49.99.

— Kawara: “Choosing not to build a solo mode at all. Finding someone to play with is baked into the premise.”

Thinky Games has announced ThinkyCon 2026, an online event running October 26-28. This is its third year. The three days are filled with talks from the makers and fans of puzzle games.

The call for talks opened on September 1 and closes September 30. It is open not only to developers but also to players with real expertise in the field. The event runs on Discord and YouTube, and individual talks are posted afterwards for anyone who misses them.

Last year's ThinkyCon 2025 ran 37 talks across three days, covering puzzle design, art, music, accessibility and development techniques. A game jam follows the convention, with the rule that entries must be inspired by one of the talks.

— Kawara: “Watch a talk, then start building. Putting the jam right after the convention is a neat piece of scheduling.”

We Are Gum, a puzzle game about walking sticky gums back home, released on Steam on September 1. It carries more than 60 hand-made levels.

The hook is that all the gums move at the same time. Move one and the others slide the same way, stopping when they stick to a wall or to each other. You solve levels by arranging positions, not by picking an order of moves.

It began as a Global Game Jam 2025 entry and later won the Best Student Game Award at BIDC 2025. Developed and published by Curious Nessie Club. Windows only, English only. It is 10% off at 8.99 dollars until September 15, and a free demo is available. Its first user reviews are 10, all positive.

— Kawara: “Forcing every piece to move at once turns a game of remembering an order into a game of reading positions. With a demo up, you can find out in minutes whether that clicks for you.”

Nellie's Nonograms, a picture-logic puzzle game where numbers along the grid tell you which squares to fill, released free on Steam on August 31.

It ships with more than 100 puzzles: 15x15 grids made by friends and viewers of the vtuber NellieAndGrits, some edited from the original submissions so they can actually be solved. The Steam version adds daily generated puzzles, friends leaderboards, and an editor for making your own, which can be shared through Steam Workshop.

Developed and published by zikes. It runs on Windows and Linux, and the interface is English only. A free version also exists on itch.io and plays straight in a browser.

— Kawara: “A nonogram game that hands you an editor and Workshop support for nothing is unusual. That the puzzles came out of a stream community says something about the format: it is easy for anyone to author.”

Cognition Method, a first-person puzzle game set on a deserted space station, released on Steam on September 1. You change which way gravity pulls in order to move through structures built in shapes that should not hold together.

You play astronaut William Mortwood, investigating a vanished crew and an artifact of unknown origin. Developer Team Cognition says the story draws on the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. There are two contrasting settings - the human-built station and the warped geometry inside the artifact - and multiple endings.

It costs $19.99, discounted 20% to $15.99 until September 15. SteamDB first recorded the game in May 2021, which puts more than five years between that entry and release.

— Kawara: “First-person puzzles about gravity are bunching up: He Who Watches arrives September 2. The same idea can feel completely different in practice, so there is something to be gained from playing both.”

The first four Fireboy & Watergirl games, the two-player co-op puzzlers played in school computer labs worldwide during the Flash era, all launched on Steam on September 1. Oslo Albet, the studio behind the originals, developed and published every one. Each costs $0.99.

Two players steer a fire boy and a water girl, avoiding the liquid each one cannot touch while collecting diamonds on the way to the exit. Local split-screen co-op is supported, and Steam Remote Play Together lets you play with someone elsewhere.

The original first game, The Forest Temple, was a Flash title published on Cool Math Games in November 2009. A four-game Flash Game Classics bundle ($3.16) and a seven-game set including the spin-offs ($5.53) are also on sale. There is no Japanese language support at present.

— Kawara: “Flash has been gone a long time, but more of its authors are now reissuing their own work as paid releases. Whether the ports hold up is for the players to decide.”

A Sokoban solver that finds the shortest possible solution was posted to Show HN, the self-published project slot on the developer community Hacker News. It was built by Menachem Kornreich, who ported a C++ analysis engine to JavaScript so you can play 15 boards in the browser and hand any position over to the AI.

It runs on A* search. No machine learning here — a classical search algorithm, which is what guarantees the returned route is the shortest one. States are packed into bitmasks and dead positions are pruned in advance to keep it fast.

The final board is the exception. It is an eight-box maze that needs about 49 million states explored and more than 1GB of memory. The browser cannot finish it, so the 184-move optimal solution is precomputed by the native C++ build and hardcoded. The post drew 69 points and 42 comments.

— Kawara: “What is fun is that the line between solvable and unsolvable is visible as a thing — it is board 15.”

A child goes missing in a remote mountain village, and you solve it without a single line of dialogue or narration. Hillthorn, a detective game built entirely on cards, is coming in November 2026. The window was announced alongside a new gameplay trailer at the Future Games Show at gamescom on August 26.

All you touch are Clue cards. People, evidence, events and places each become a card, and you move the story on by Investigating them, Exploring them, and sometimes Talking to them. Cards can also be combined, which gives the whole thing the feel of an old point-and-click.

The clock ticks with every action, so you cannot pull on every thread. Choosing what to chase and what to drop is the point, and there are multiple endings. Fool Moon of Montreal, Canada is developing it, with Raw Fury publishing. It is planned for Steam plus Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android, and a demo is available on Steam now.

— Kawara: “Take every word away and see how far deduction still gets you. The demo lets you check the answer early.”

Puzzledorf, a pixel-art puzzle game about pushing blocks into place, reaches its Xbox release date on August 31. The Xbox Store lists it at $9.99. It is made by solo developer Stuart Burfield.

The headline addition is a new set of Ruins stages. They mix the usual block-pushing with a match-three idea: line up jewels to clear them. These new stages stay Xbox-only for two weeks, after which the developer says they will go out to the other platforms.

The same update adds several new languages, including Japanese, plus achievements and colorblind support. The game is Xbox Play Anywhere, so one purchase covers the supported devices.

— Kawara: “A small puzzle game from one person, using a platform-exclusive window the way a big publisher would. Whether two weeks buys much will only show up later.”

FLEB, the developer behind the collection of tiny mazes 20 Small Mazes, has set a release date of September 17 for the next game in the series. The date is now on the Steam store page, and the price is listed as free to play.

The title is 20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes. The store page puts the playtime at around 30 minutes and files it under Puzzle and Adventure.

The date went up only very recently. As late as August 21, a post on the game's Steam discussion board was still asking for so much as a release month. FLEB also released Strange Jigsaws, a game built on jigsaw puzzles, in 2025.

— Kawara: “A free puzzle that ends in half an hour, and people are still waiting on the name alone. That is what a run of small, careful releases buys you.”

Slovenian puzzle designer Blaž Urban Gracar (Letibus Design) has announced a videogame adaptation of his puzzle book Workworkwork, accompanied by a short teaser trailer. It is the second of his books to make the jump, after LOK Digital in 2024.

Workworkwork is a 130-page book of more than 100 puzzles, published in June 2025. You direct small workers to join blocks together and eventually fold the fabric of space itself. In the digital version you plot the workers' routes with the mouse first, then press a button and watch the construction play out.

The game is reported to be arriving sometime in 2027. The book itself remains available as a PDF (2.99 euros) and as a physical edition.

— Kawara: “Anyone who found it hard to keep rotating those shapes in their head on paper will understand exactly why this one belongs on a screen.”

"He Who Watches," the latest title from puzzle specialist publisher Draknek & Friends, has been confirmed for release on Steam on September 2. The game is the solo project of developer Bobby Vanden, working as Danga Games.

Players walk on walls and ceilings, shifting gravity to work through more than 100 handcrafted puzzle chambers. The bow isn't a weapon here — it's a tool for moving blocks, hitting switches, and pulling yourself across gaps with its chain.

A free demo is already available on Steam, and the store page notes no generative AI was used in development.

— Kawara: “A "Draknek-approved" stamp is usually worth a look — this one's going on the watchlist.”

Colorbound, a puzzle-platformer in which Aymara boy Anku reshapes the world with color to reunite his late grandfather's band, now lists its Steam release window as "October 2026."

Developer Panpipe Studio (Chile) and publisher Whitethorn Games had announced an August 2026 launch back in June, timed to a Steam Next Fest demo. No official delay statement has surfaced yet.

— Kawara: “The store listing changed before any press release did.”

Puzzle game Puzzledorf will launch on Xbox (Xbox One, Series, and Play Anywhere) on August 31, developer Stuart Burfield announced via Xbox Wire.

The release adds new "Ruins" puzzles where players match three gems of the same color to clear them, exclusive to Xbox for two weeks. Pushed gems slide until they hit another object, adding a fresh twist to the game's Sokoban-style puzzles.

The Xbox version also brings accessibility improvements, including new language localizations -- Japanese among them -- and a colorblind mode.

— Kawara: “Adding new puzzles for a port is common, but a full two-week exclusivity window is a bold bet.”

Developer Mindlabor released Pight on Steam on August 8, a minimalist puzzle game inspired by Minecraft's redstone system. Players push and pull blocks with pistons to guide light to its goal, across 90 levels that introduce a new mechanic every ten stages.

Mindlabor is known for minimalist puzzle titles like Quadrata, Lovux, and Netoo, and Pight is its latest release. All 13 user reviews so far are positive.

— Kawara: “No text, no tutorial — that confidence might make this the next go-to for redstone-style puzzles.”

Reanimal, a co-op horror game with puzzle elements from Tarsier Studios (Little Nightmares) and published by THQ Nordic, got its first paid DLC. "The Prisoner" was revealed at the THQ Nordic Showcase on August 7 and launched the very next day on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PC.

Two new characters, the Prisoner and the Soldier, work through environmental puzzles and creature encounters in a war-ravaged city. It costs $9.99 and is the first of three planned DLC chapters, with the next arriving October 14 and a third on February 10, 2027.

— Kawara: “The same-day announce-to-release move is the real story here. Tarsier's co-op puzzle-horror still has a quiet following in Japan.”

Tetro Battle, a 3D competitive puzzle game from Argentina-based developer Marcos Palavecino's Game Ship Studio, launched on Steam on August 7 for $4.99.

The pieces you stack are sent over as obstacles on your opponent's board, turning careful stacking decisions into the core of each duel.

There's no dedicated online mode; two-player games run through Steam Remote Play Together. Official guides are available in English and Spanish.

— Kawara: “Competitive Tetris-likes are a well-worn genre, but leaning on Remote Play Together instead of building online netcode is a pragmatic call for a small team.”

Together in Forgotten Lands, a co-op puzzle adventure from Vellichor Games, launched on Steam on August 7. Playable only in pairs, two adventurers explore four distinct biomes inside an ancient cave, solving light-reflection, labyrinth, platforming, and musical-rhythm puzzles together.

The game has no solo mode or AI companion — every puzzle demands constant communication and coordination between the two players. The developer has confirmed it is not a sequel to their earlier title Together in Between.

Early Steam reviews are strong, with all 14 user reviews positive (100%) so far.

— Kawara: “Building a puzzle game around the constraint that "you literally cannot solve this alone" is a bold, clean design choice for the co-op genre.”

Draknek & Friends, the puzzle-specialist publisher, has announced that He Who Watches will launch on Steam on September 2. The game is the work of solo developer Bobby Vanden under the name Danga Games.

This first-person puzzler combines gravity manipulation — letting you walk on walls and ceilings — with a bow-and-arrow grappling chain used to pull blocks into place. Players work through over 100 handcrafted puzzle chambers to reach the imprisoned god said to lie at the center of the labyrinth. A free demo is already available.

— Kawara: “Just seeing the Draknek name attached is enough to raise expectations — that's how much trust this puzzle-specialist publisher has built up.”

Is This Seat Taken?, the logic puzzle where players arrange characters with clashing preferences into seats everyone is happy with, developed by Poti Poti Studio and published by Wholesome Games, launched on PS5 on August 6, according to the PlayStation Store listing.

The game originally released on Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile on August 7, 2025, earning strong scores (84 on Metacritic for the Switch version, 79 for PC, 90% critic recommendation on OpenCritic), along with an IGF Excellence in Design honorable mention and a longlist spot for Debut Game at the 22nd BAFTA Games Awards.

The PS5 release landed just one day before the game's first anniversary.

— Kawara: “Turning small social awkwardness — bus seats, wedding tables — into puzzles is a clever hook, and it's easy to see why the game has kept building an audience a year on.”

Baba Is You (2019, by Hempuli), the acclaimed puzzle game where players move rule tiles themselves to rewrite the laws of the world, is coming as a 2-player board game called Baba Is You: The Board Game, published by Bitewing Games. Each game starts with nothing being WIN; players rewrite the rules on their turn to make something WIN and then move onto it to claim victory.

The game spans 7 worlds of 5 scenarios each, with each world taking roughly an hour to play. After each scenario, the losing player chooses which level to keep, so the same rule set can carry over across multiple scenarios or even worlds. A deckbuilding board game adaptation of Party House, from UFO 50, was unveiled in the same campaign.

The Kickstarter campaign is set to launch September 15; release date and shipping timeline are not yet announced.

— Kawara: “It'll be interesting to see how much of that satisfying feeling of physically rewriting the rules survives the jump to a tabletop.”

A team led by Tabea Dreyer at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface comparing how teams of "crazy ants" (Paratrechina longicornis) collectively transport a T-shaped load through a piano-movers-style maze against automated solvers based on simple gravity models.

Simple mazes were solved just as well by basic gravity-based models, but on harder mazes, larger ant teams moved the load more efficiently — and the models only matched that performance once ant-like distributed rules were built in.

— Kawara: “The next blueprint for swarm-intelligence algorithms might be the ants in your backyard.”

Engineer James O'Halloran has released Lawndle, a daily mowing puzzle: cut every grass tile on a grid lawn in as few steps as possible, then park back in the shed to finish the day's puzzle.

Every tile you mow throws clippings 2 tiles from the mower's chute, and landing them in the pond costs a +2 step penalty, so route planning matters. A new lawn appears daily at 4am UTC.

— Kawara: “Just posted to Hacker News's Show HN corner for indie project launches. Barely any traction yet, but worth watching as a fresh face in daily puzzles.”

Developer and publisher PressGtoGeorge has announced Sokogram, a puzzle game merging Nonogram logic grids with Sokoban box-pushing, arriving on Steam August 25.

Instead of coloring in a picture, players draw a path across the grid that must satisfy the Nonogram clues while also forming a valid Sokoban solution. The game ships with over 150 handcrafted puzzles and a non-linear overworld that expands as you progress.

— Kawara: “Multiple paths can satisfy the Nonogram clues, but only one lets you push every box home—that layered constraint is the neat part.”

Pight, from French studio Mindlabor, is a text-free, tutorial-free minimalist puzzle game where you push and pull blocks with pistons to light up a target block. It has 90 levels across 8 mechanics, introduced roughly every 10 levels, plus a level editor.

The full release on Steam is set for August 8. A demo is already available, and the store page lists it as an upcoming release.

— Kawara: “Turning Minecraft redstone into puzzle mechanics isn't new, but committing to zero on-screen text is a bold choice.”

Publisher Iceberg Interactive announced on August 3 that Allogloom, a hand-painted point-and-click mystery from solo developer Kate (working as Galactic Ghosty), will launch on Steam on October 13. Set in the emptied town of Gruesome Grove, the game spans six interconnected worlds and eight chapters.

Every background, character, and creature is hand-illustrated by Kate alone; players solve the mystery by combining items and negotiating with the Grove's remaining inhabitants. A free demo covering the first two chapters (about 40 minutes) is already live on Steam.

Iceberg previously published Strange Horticulture, which holds a 95% positive rating across 9,715 English-language Steam reviews. Allogloom is positioned in the same "warm but uneasy" tonal register.

— Kawara: “One person painting every background, character, and monster is no small feat. This Halloween's slot for eerie, emptied-town mysteries just got a lot more crowded.”

Big Walk, the new cooperative puzzle adventure from House House (creators of Untitled Goose Game) and publisher Panic, launched today, August 4, simultaneously on PC (Steam/Mac App Store), PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2. It's also available day one for PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers.

In a review published the day before launch, Game Informer awarded the game 9 out of 10 and its "Must Play" badge, praising its proximity voice chat-driven puzzles and its emphasis on communicating through gestures when talking isn't an option. The reviewer's group of three took about nine hours to finish the game.

The launch is tied to a single global moment: 10 p.m. JST on August 4 (9 a.m. ET).

— Kawara: “Turning "just walking" into a 9-out-of-10 experience is no small feat — vintage form from the studio that once let a goose terrorize an entire town.”

Thinky Games' web daily puzzle game Thinky Dailies wrapped up Season 3 on July 31. Over the roughly two-month season, it added trains, snow, new puzzle genres, and pencil-marking for its sudoku puzzles, along with its first-ever crossover cameo from sister game Railbound.

The season's headline feature was a new input mode for drawing blocky shapes directly on the grid, used in puzzle types like Wittgenstein Briquet, Frozen Polyominoes, and Kissing Polyominoes. The dev team said it started as an adaptation of the existing line-drawing input.

Season 4 is set to begin Tuesday, September 15. Fans who solved Season 3's meta-puzzle already have hints about where the story's mascot heads next.

— Kawara: “Building an ongoing puzzle narrative season by season is a model worth watching for daily puzzles here too.”

Pack My Order, a timer-free puzzle sim where you fill a cart according to a customer's shopping list and budget, has locked in an August 5 Steam release. It's developed and published by Owl's Howls.

The core loop is logic-driven: pick matching items from a catalog without going over budget. Steam tags it as both 'Puzzle' and 'Logic' — a no-pressure kind of puzzle game.

— Kawara: “Unhurried 'shopping puzzles' like this seem to be quietly multiplying lately.”

Puzzles of the World, a VR puzzle game where players build wooden miniatures of famous locations, will leave Early Access on Meta Quest on August 6.

The 1.0 release was originally planned for late July but was delayed two weeks for additional polish. Each of its seven stages, including Kyoto, Venice and Paris, comes with a small booklet of facts about the location's history and culture.

— Kawara: “A two-week delay explicitly framed around "polish" is a refreshingly specific admission for a VR studio.”

Big Walk, the new game from House House (creators of Untitled Goose Game) and publisher Panic, is confirmed via its official Steam store page to launch simultaneously on PC (Steam), PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2 on August 4.

It's a cooperative "walker-talker" where 2 to 12 friends roam a wide-open world together, solving puzzles and making discoveries as a team. The core mechanic is proximity voice chat — voices fade with distance and muffle through walls — supplemented by tools like walkie-talkies, binoculars, and megaphones.

The game supports crossplay and features three differently-scaled versions of its world depending on player count: for 2, for 3, and for 4 or more players.

— Kawara: “Turning "just walking" into something this deep works because the communication itself becomes the puzzle — very on-brand for the studio that made a goose menace an entire town.”

Belgian solo developer Sam Agten (SixtyFour) released a demo for Stip, a number puzzle game, on July 20. What looks like a simple number-placement puzzle is actually a "metroidbrainia" — hidden rules and an unsettling narrative unfold as you progress.

Secret codes are hidden in the trailer and store page; entering them in the demo via the C key unlocks bonus content. The game already won "Most Anticipated Belgian Game of 2026" at the Belgian Game Awards.

The full release is planned for later in 2026, and a playable demo will be available at the Indie Arena Booth during gamescom in August.

— Kawara: “A puzzle game that doubles as its own hunt for hidden codes in its own promo materials — exactly Kawara's kind of thing.”

Case Solved: The London Files, from Brazilian developer Minimol Games, launched simultaneously on Steam, iOS/Android, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X|S on July 29. Set in a cozy, noir-tinted 1960s-style London, it features hand-drawn paper-cutout visuals and a jazz-inspired soundtrack.

Players gather witness statements and scene clues, then slot them into a 'deduction grid' to identify the culprit through pure logic — the developer cites the classic logic puzzle Einstein's Riddle as an inspiration. Three story cases are included at launch, with hidden codes scattered around (including on the store page) unlocking optional secret cases.

A full playthrough runs roughly 3-5 hours. A demo had already been available on Steam ahead of launch.

— Kawara: “It leans more toward an 'adventure about filling in a deduction grid' than a straight puzzle game. Worth watching whether it joins Duck Detective in establishing a 'cozy deduction' lineage.”

Below, Rusted Gods from developer FromSouthGames launched on Steam today, July 29. Players take the role of an "Operator" supporting a squad descending into an uncharted abyss, reading status monitors, radar, and radio transmissions to relay information that determines whether the team survives.

Tagged as Horror, Exploration, and Immersive Sim alongside Puzzle and Management, the game leans into Lovecraftian psychological horror: communication grows sporadic the deeper the squad goes, and unexplained anomalies start appearing. As a same-day release, it has no user reviews yet.

— Kawara: “The setup — deciding a squad's fate purely through monitor readings — is distinctive, sitting closer to an "information-decoding survival" experience than a straight puzzle game. Worth watching how reviews land.”

Last Spaceship, developed by China's Normal Games, launched on Steam on July 28. Playing as maintenance robot Traveler, you explore the abandoned starship Nuwa and solve puzzles woven throughout its systems to bring it back online, one compartment at a time.

Each area is built as its own self-contained puzzle, and repairing systems unlocks new sections and story beats. Along the way you piece together humanity's last voyage through logs and relics, following a story of war, extinction, and salvation.

— Kawara: “A free demo is also available, and the game is 15% off through August 11 as a launch discount.”

Rita, made by solo studio SporkTank, launches July 30 on PC via Steam. Players guide Rita, a young chick, through crosswords, word searches, rebuses, and anagrams, using the letters she collects to reshape the world around her in this light Metroidvania.

Set in the town of Aspendale in 1933, the game was made as a tribute to the developer's grandmother, who introduced them to word games as a child; the story follows Rita across generations, up through meeting her own grandchild. A free demo is already available.

— Kawara: “It's nice to hear not just how the puzzles feel, but why the developer chose this genre in the first place.”

Go North, from solo developer gazuntype, launched July 28 for PC via Steam and Xbox Series X|S. Players guide Dara, a young traveler known as a "Littler," through handcrafted labyrinths in search of the mythical Maze God who lives at the world's northern edge.

Each maze hides unusual tools, like a hoverboard or a robotic mouse that sniffs out the exit, blending puzzle-solving with exploration. After the story, an Arcade Mode offers an endless stream of procedurally generated mazes.

— Kawara: “Flipping the maze genre's usual "find the fastest way out" logic into an invitation to wander is a neat twist.”

Broken Reality 2000, from developer Dynamic Media Triad and publisher Digital Tribe, launched on July 27 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. Set inside NATEM, an ethereal metaverse where popularity governs everything, players glide on a hoverboard, slice viruses with a katana, and blend environmental puzzles with exploration and light platforming.

Collecting 'Likes' unlocks new areas, and the game leans into a tongue-in-cheek parody of early internet culture -- chat rooms, garish pop-ups, and overblown corporate marketing speak. It's priced at £12.49 on Xbox.

— Kawara: “Turning nostalgia for the early internet into a puzzle world is a clever setting for the genre.”

Zwamman, the co-op puzzle game from Dutch studio Baardmoeder whose free demo we covered on July 23, launched as promised on Steam today, July 28. Player 1 controls a spotlight with the mouse while Player 2 moves the swamp-dweller Zwamman with the arrow keys, working together to find crystals in the dark swamp and light a path home.

Difficulty can be adjusted on the fly, from easy enough for young children to challenging for adults, and the spooky-looking monsters can't actually harm the player. The game grew out of a project originally made for Cliniclowns, a charity that cheers up hospitalized children. As a same-day release, it has no user reviews yet.

— Kawara: “Splitting control between a spotlight role and a character role is a neat asymmetric-co-op fit for parent-and-child or mixed-age players.”

Kyiv-based five-person studio Dream Operator has confirmed that its picture-book-inspired puzzle adventure Tukoni: Forest Keepers will launch on Steam and the Epic Games Store on August 17, 2026. A free demo is already live on Steam and GOG, with 97% positive reviews out of 135 at time of writing.

The game adapts the Tukoni picture book series that Ukrainian illustrator Oksana Bula has been creating since 2016; Bula herself joined the team as art director. The story is told entirely without written dialogue, using gestures and pictograms instead, in the tradition of Czech studio Amanita Design (Botanicula, Samorost 3) - an approach that also avoids translation costs across its 28 supported languages.

Development has continued in Kyiv despite Russia's invasion, with an Epic MegaGrant cited by the studio as a turning point. The game has already picked up pre-launch recognition, including a Visual Art award at DevGAMM Awards 2025.

— Kawara: “Continuing development through wartime adds a quiet weight of its own to the story.”

Point-and-click puzzle adventure Endacopia, developed and published by Andyland, launches on Steam on July 27. Behind its nostalgic look reminiscent of 1990s edutainment software lurks body horror and psychological horror.

You guide Mellow, a boy who has lost all his senses, exploring areas in any order, punching and dodging monsters in first-person, talking to strange characters, and playing minigames as you uncover secrets that were probably better left hidden. Outlets have described its unease as a mix of Petscop and Pajama Sam.

— Kawara: “Another entry in the growing trend of hiding unease behind a nostalgic art style.”

Thinky Collective, a loose community of puzzle game developers, has released "The Snake That Eats Puzzle Game Mechanics" for free on itch.io, the latest in their tradition of passing around a shared PuzzleScript project file.

This time, each developer received just one element from the previous game and built a single-screen, one-level mini-game around it, resulting in a chain of 15+ playable games that share visuals or mechanics with their neighbors while transforming completely from one to the next.

Individual puzzles have been described as "PuzzleScript Hard," and players can jump into any game in the chain via a scrollable level-select screen.

— Kawara: “A neat structure where a single shared element mutates into a wholly different puzzle each time it passes to the next developer's hands.”

Gotham Immersive Laboratories' flagship New York puzzle-hunt event, "Great Gotham Challenge MMXXVI," returns for its second and final run today, July 25, following its first outing on July 18.

Teams of two to four race across the city decoding ciphers and clues tied to New York's culture and history, with the first team to finish and reach the final celebration winning the grand prize.

Organizers say expert teams can finish in about an hour, typical teams take around 90 minutes, and the difficulty is comparable to an easy-to-moderate escape room.

— Kawara: “Turning an entire city into the puzzle board is a striking example of scaling up venue-based puzzle design.”

Cyber Tank Pink, a Sokoban-style puzzle game from developer Rapid Snail and publisher Xitilon, launched on July 22 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC at £4.19.

Beyond simple block-pushing, it layers in laser reflections, crumbling floors, ice, conveyor belts, and teleports as mechanics stack up. Water crossings by placing blocks also make the environment itself part of the puzzle.

The previous entry, Cyber Tank Nano, was criticized for confusing design despite its potential, so whether this outing fixes that is the key question.

— Kawara: “Third entry in the "Sokoban plus a pile of gimmicks" line. Remains to be seen if it learned from the last one's flaws.”

Sudokuvania 2: Lineage of Logic, the sequel to the "sudoku metroidvania" series where players explore a sprawling grid to unlock new variant-sudoku rules, launches free today, July 24. It's made by Skeptical Mario, the same designer behind the original Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair.

Like its predecessor, it runs on SudokuPad, the browser-based puzzle engine built by Sven Neumann. The sequel is designed to go deeper for returning fans while also being more approachable for players who are new to variant sudoku.

The genre of gradually revealing a huge grid through fog-of-war exploration — seen in Digits of Despair and the Super Sudokoid series — has quietly become a small staple among logic puzzle fans over the past couple of years.

— Kawara: “Turning sudoku into something you explore like a dungeon has basically become its own subgenre by now — and keeping it free fits the scene's spirit.”

UK studio Miracle Tea released Club Soko on July 23 simultaneously on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and iOS. Players control graffiti artist Maude as she pushes through a crowded underground nightclub, tagging walls while dodging drunk clubbers and bouncers in classic Sokoban-style box-pushing puzzles.

The game packs over 100 handcrafted puzzles, a different music track for each of its six chapters, and 13 unlockable cameo characters borrowed from other indie developers and artists. The studio calls it "the first puzzle game in the world with a circle pit."

Club Soko already won the Very Big Indie Pitch at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2025, arriving with real industry buzz behind it.

— Kawara: “Swapping Sokoban's usual sterile warehouse for a filthy nightclub is a sharp idea — and the commitment to including a puke toggle is its own kind of dedication.”

Zwamman, a puzzle game from Dutch developer Baardmoeder, has released a free demo on Steam and itch.io. Players use a spotlight to find crystals hidden in a dark swamp, then connect them with light to guide the hero home.

The full game launches on Steam July 28. Levels are effectively endless, difficulty can be swapped from easy to hard at any time, and it supports local co-op — one player steers Zwamman with the arrow keys while the other controls the spotlight with the mouse.

— Kawara: “Spooky-looking but genuinely gentle in its difficulty curve — co-op puzzlers built for both kids and adults to play together are rarer than they should be.”

Void Future: Hacking Protocol, a hacker-infiltration game set in a corporate-controlled dystopia, is slated to release on Steam on July 23. Each mission blends firewall-breaching and password-cracking with logic puzzles.

The game is developed by RVL Interactive and published by RockGame S.A. A free demo is already available on Steam, letting players try a few missions ahead of the full release.

— Kawara: “Cyberpunk hacking-meets-puzzle games are becoming a genre of their own — execution quality will be what separates them.”

Helix: Descent N Ascent, a 2D puzzle adventure from Belgian studio Badass Mongoose, launched on Steam and Nintendo Switch today, July 23. We first covered its release-date announcement on July 13, and it has now shipped as planned.

Set in the forgotten world of Helix, it's a combat-free exploration puzzle game built around combining abilities to solve environmental puzzles. It features stark black-and-white art evoking 1980s monochrome comics, with a score by Jim Guthrie (Below, Nobody Saves the World). As a same-day release, it has no user reviews yet.

— Kawara: “Shipped right on schedule. Worth watching how reviews land on its all-in commitment to black-and-white art.”

PlayStation Blog published a hands-on report on July 21 confirming that Order of the Sinking Star, the new puzzle adventure from Jonathan Blow's studio Thekla (Braid, The Witness), is coming to PS5 in addition to its previously announced PC and Switch 2 versions.

The game has been in development for about ten years with a team of roughly 20 people, packing in over 900 levels and multiple endings. The preview described Sokoban-style puzzles where you switch between characters with distinct abilities — pushing, pulling, and swapping places across line of sight — while guiding a queen through an overworld.

The PS5 version is targeted for later this year; an exact release date has not been set.

— Kawara: “A decade after The Witness, the scope has only grown. The genre's flagship next chapter is finally coming into focus.”

Lost in Tandem, the debut original title from French studio Tempete Studio (Poitiers), launched on Steam today, July 22. We first covered its release-date announcement on July 13, and it has now shipped as planned.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it's a hand-drawn couch co-op puzzle-adventure where a young girl and an obsolete robot called Mech-ute combine their different abilities to solve puzzles; solo play is also supported. As a same-day release, it has no user reviews yet.

— Kawara: “The first original game from a team previously known for a mobile port of the board game Dixit. Its reception is still to be seen.”

Polish studio OhNoo Studio will release Tormentum II on Steam on July 23, eleven years after 2015's Tormentum: Dark Sorrow. Development took about eight years; the game is priced at $19.99 with a 15% launch discount for the first two weeks.

The story follows David, a developer trapped inside a simulation he built, who discovers something calling itself a god living within it. The surreal, biomechanical world draws on the art of H.R. Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski.

The game features around 200 hand-drawn scenes (nearly 500 individual images with close-ups), roughly three times the original's scope. It runs 8-12 hours and is a standalone story requiring no knowledge of the first game.

— Kawara: “The developers note that the "AI" premise, which felt like science fiction in 2018, now feels uncomfortably close to reality after eight years of development.”

Spanish solo developer Miguel Dorta released an announcement trailer for Satelital on July 18, opening Steam wishlisting. Set in an uncharted solar system, the game has players decode each planet's own internal logic through observation and experimentation alone, with no tutorial.

Rising islands on an ocean world, ever-shifting fractal landscapes, quiet lunar structures, and geometric crystal formations each come with their own distinct visuals and rules; players place symbols, watch how the system reacts, and build their own understanding of what everything means.

It's being framed as part of the "rule discovery" puzzle lineage that traces back to Jonathan Blow's The Witness (2016) — a genre having a big year, with Blow's own next game Order of the Sinking Star also due in 2026. Satelital targets a late-2026 release on PC and Mac.

— Kawara: “Games evoking The Witness show up every year, but confining each rule system to its own self-contained planet is a clean way to differentiate.”

Belgian solo developer Sam Agten (studio Sixtyfour) released a free demo for the number puzzle game Stip on July 20. The title won "Most Anticipated Belgian Game of 2026" at the Belgian Game Awards.

On the surface it's a minimalist number-placement puzzle built around the tagline "Assign, undo, deduce" — you infer where numbers belong from given constraints — but as you explore its room-based spaces you start noticing unexplained rules and odd glitchy behavior, placing it in the "Metroidbrainia" genre.

Hidden codes are scattered across the trailer, social media, and even press releases; entering one in the demo (press C, type the sequence, hit Enter) triggers a response. The full game is planned to launch on Steam later in 2026.

— Kawara: “"Unexplained" puzzle design is common these days, but the understated tone paired with the award pedigree stands out.”

Looking For Fael, a first-person puzzle adventure from French studios Swing Swing Submarine and La Poule Noire and published by broadcaster ARTE France, launched simultaneously on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 on July 16.

You search for your missing roommate Fael through an apartment that splits into multiple divergent versions of itself, where actions taken in one room ripple out and affect others.

The visuals come from comic artist Benoît “Beloup” Leloup, and some puzzles are woven into mini-games played on an in-game 90s-style handheld called the Game Leaf.

— Kawara: “A quietly ambitious first-person puzzler — the way rooms interlock and affect each other feels genuinely fresh, carrying ARTE France's usual experimental streak.”

Solo developer Miguel Dorta has released the first trailer for Satelital, a puzzle game he has spent seven years building alone, and opened its Steam wishlist. Set across six celestial bodies in a small solar system, it's a rule-discovery puzzle game with over 120 handcrafted puzzles that players solve purely through observation and experimentation, with no tutorials.

Dorta built the custom engine, puzzles, art, and music himself, and the game is being compared to The Witness. A demo is coming in September, with full release targeted for late 2026 — the same year Jonathan Blow's own rule-discovery follow-up, Order of the Sinking Star, is also expected, giving the genre two very differently scaled entries to compare.

— Kawara: “"Seven years of working on it alone" carries real weight. This one's fresh enough that even Thinky Games hasn't covered it yet.”

Solo developer ShiftGaming has released a free itch.io demo for "Master Stacker: Tower Trials," a physics-based 3D puzzle about stacking awkward objects onto an unstable tower. Center-of-mass lines, stability indicators, and landing-shadow previews help players judge each risky placement -- if the tower falls, it's game over.

Beyond solo endurance and time-attack modes, the game includes a turn-based online PvP mode where two players alternate stacking pieces onto the same tower. Development is ongoing (currently listed "In development").

— Kawara: “Jenga-style balance puzzles are a small niche, but building out a full PvP mode is an ambitious touch for a solo project.”

Detroit-based indie studio Aerial_Knight has announced MrFreezy, a new puzzle game with dark comic flair: you play as the serial killer known as "Mr. Freezy," rearranging kidnapped men's severed heads so you can take them all off in a single swing of the axe.

Different head types complicate the puzzles: Pumpkin Heads explode if not collected in time, Stone Heads can't be moved, and Old Heads shift on their own, forcing a choice between cashing out early or risking a longer combo chain.

The studio, known for the runner series Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, says MrFreezy shares its universe. It launches on Steam September 1, 2026.

— Kawara: “The phrase "light-hearted serial killer" alone is worth a double take — the whole pitch seems to hinge on the gap between the grisly premise and the breezy puzzle design.”

D-topia, a puzzle adventure developed by Marumittu Games and published by Annapurna Interactive, launched on July 14. Set in a near-future facility where an artificial intelligence manages residents' lives to maximize their happiness, players take on the role of a newly assigned Facilitator who keeps the community running.

Daily "work" means solving a range of logic puzzles, from number-based sliding block puzzles to grids filled in with checkmarks and rotating number blocks. Currency earned from puzzle-solving can be spent decorating your apartment with paintings and trinkets, giving the game a cozy life-sim layer as well.

Players move between the bright public-facing reality and the facility's hidden "Block Side" to fix glitches and uncover secrets. The game is available on Steam (PC) and PlayStation 5, among other platforms.

— Kawara: “"AI curating happiness" is a familiar premise these days, but wrapping it in tactile puzzle-solving and cozy room decoration is what sets this one apart.”

"Great Gotham Challenge," New York's long-running citywide puzzle hunt, holds its flagship annual edition, "MMXXVI," across two dates: July 18 and 25. Teams of two to four race against the clock, cracking codes, riddles, and the occasional Google search.

Players follow interactive clues tied to the city's culture and history; the first team to finish and reach the final celebration wins the grand prize. This year's edition is built entirely from clues never before shown to the public, keeping it fresh even for repeat players.

Tickets cost $66.25 per person for teams of up to four. The event is run by Gotham Immersive Laboratories, which also stages corporate team-building challenges around the city.

— Kawara: “"City-as-game-board" puzzle hunts are becoming a familiar format, but building a fresh, never-before-public set of clues every single year is what keeps people coming back.”

At indie publisher offbrand games' Secret Sauce Showcase, developer Icedrop Games revealed a release date trailer for Ultrapool, a billiards roguelike.

Players rack up a triangle of balls, each carrying a strange effect, sink them for score, then spend that score at the bar to buy and upgrade balls across 10 rounds. Billed as "a pool version of Balatro," its build-crafting hooks should appeal to puzzle and roguelike fans alike.

Ultrapool launches simultaneously on Steam, the App Store, and Google Play on August 25; a free demo is already available.

— Kawara: “The kind of "tinker with combos" hook that scratches the puzzle-brain itch -- pool physics meets deckbuilding, curious to see where it lands.”

Fangtopia, a relaxing builder/puzzle game from developer Absolutely Games and publisher Secret Mode where you assemble a "scare-free" monster kingdom out of hex tiles, has been confirmed for PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 alongside its previously announced PC release (Steam/Epic Games Store), both due in 2026.

Players draw tiles to connect landscapes and complete landmarks and portals, which invite friendly werewolves, yetis and other spooky-but-cute residents, with no timer or pressure.

A free demo is already available on Steam.

— Kawara: “A quietly clever pivot -- a "horror without the horror" pitch that should land with both puzzle fans and console shoppers.”

Stretchmancer, a first-person puzzle adventure from developer Triangle Wave and publisher offbrand games, got a new trailer at the Secret Sauce Showcase indie livestream on July 16, hosted by offbrand games and streamer Ludwig Ahgren.

Players take on the role of the Stretchmancer, using a stretch-and-squish power to reshape objects and terrain to solve puzzles, all wrapped in a fully voiced story with 90s Saturday-morning-cartoon energy.

The game previously won 1st place overall at Ludum Dare #54 and was a finalist for Grand Prize and Excellence in Game Design at DevGamm 2025; a closed playtest is currently open for signups, and the Steam page is live for wishlisting.

— Kawara: “A first-person 'stretch everything' puzzler is a rare pitch. Still pre-release, but worth watching once the playtest feedback comes in.”

The speedcubing world championship "Rubik's WCA European Championship 2026" opened on July 16 at Sportcentrum Valkenhuizen in Arnhem, Netherlands, running for four days through July 19.

Organized by the World Cube Association (WCA), the event drew competitors from 53 countries against a 1,200-competitor cap, with events ranging from the standard 3x3x3 cube to blindfolded solving and solving while wearing oven mitts.

The finals rule is notable: the top 14 European competitors automatically qualify, but any non-European competitor who beats the 14th-place time also advances to the finals.

— Kawara: “Beyond the scale, the finals rule — top 14 Europeans plus any faster non-European — is a neat piece of tournament design.”

After multiple delays, Reflect Studios' dark-web exploration horror sequel Welcome to the Game III: Simon's Debt launched on Steam on July 16.

Protagonist Simon, forced into "The Game" to pay off a debt, works from a motel base, browsing 52 in-game websites and solving puzzles and hacking mini-games to gather what he needs to clear his debt.

— Kawara: “The first two games were infamous for offering no saves at all — worth watching how this entry balances difficulty.”

Developer Recurring Dream's point-and-click mystery Desktop Explorer launched today, July 17, on Steam and Mac.

Inheriting a late uncle's still-functioning PC, players find a letter asking them to investigate a missing-person case, digging through files, old chat logs, and broken apps inside a fictional 1990s operating system to piece together clues.

— Kawara: “Turning a nostalgic OS interface itself into the puzzle is a clever hook.”

San Francisco's popular puzzle scavenger hunt "Pursuit" launched on July 11 and runs for a month, through August 7. It starts with flyers posted around the city featuring a stick-figure character named Percy; texting the number on the flyer sets off a chain of clues.

Last year drew over 2,000 participants, and this year's puzzles and challenges are again staged at businesses and venues across the city. The opening mission reportedly led players backstage at the War Memorial building, where they performed a fairy tale before receiving special lenses to decode future clues.

It's free to join with no prize at stake — organizers say the goal is simply to get people exploring unfamiliar neighborhoods and talking to strangers. Co-founder Riley Walz is known for quirky tech projects, including an app that tracked San Francisco parking enforcement officers.

— Kawara: “Weaving "make people walk the city" directly into the puzzle design is a neat reminder of how well puzzles and local community pair up.”

The Mermaid Mask, the maritime mystery puzzle adventure announced on July 12, launched as promised today, July 16, simultaneously on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Steam (PC). It's developed by SFB Games (Snipperclips, Crow Country) as the sequel to 2019's Tangle Tower.

Detective Grimoire and assistant Sally investigate a locked-room murder aboard the world's strangest submarine in this narrative puzzle adventure. A free Steam demo remains available, letting players try the hand-drawn visuals and newly 3D-rendered evidence inspection before buying.

— Kawara: “Hitting the announced launch date exactly, across every platform at once, is a quietly solid execution. Worth watching how reviews land.”

Moss: The Forgotten Relic, Polyarc's reimagining of its VR-exclusive puzzle-action games Moss and Moss: Book II (plus the Twilight Garden DLC) into a single no-headset-required package, launches July 16 on Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5, Xbox, and Steam (Steam Deck Verified) for $19.99.

The story remains the same: guiding tiny mouse hero Quill through environmental puzzles and ancient mysteries in a living storybook world, but camera work and controls have been redesigned for flat-screen play. Polyarc says the release finally brings Quill's story to players who could never experience it in VR.

The original Moss (2018) won more than 160 awards and nominations as a landmark VR puzzle-action title. A beloved VR-only series finally reaching standard consoles is a notable moment; a free Steam demo is also available now.

— Kawara: “A VR classic playable with a normal controller is a big deal -- welcome news for puzzle fans who never owned a headset.”

Developers Jacques-Yves Thomart and Arnaud Valensi, working together as BigSeed Studio, have released a free Steam demo for their upcoming box-pushing (Sokoban-style) puzzle game "Out of Body."

The full release is planned for Q4 2026, and the game carries the Strategy, Puzzle, and Sokoban tags on Steam.

— Kawara: “A modest but ambitious solo effort from a two-person studio -- worth keeping an eye on as more details emerge.”

Developer IV Productions has announced that Spinning Scarecrow, an arcade puzzle game starring a constantly rotating scarecrow, will launch on Steam on August 4.

Players must time direction-reversing springs and dodge trap-filled mazes in this hand-drawn, high-difficulty puzzle game.

The Steam store page itself describes it as what you'd get "if Kuru Kuru Kururin had a creepy sibling inked in madness" — a nod to the classic Nintendo puzzle game.

— Kawara: “Bold of them to namedrop a Nintendo classic in their own store description.”

Indie developer Thomas Hsu has confirmed that "Database Detective: Minor Crimes Division" will launch on Steam on July 17, 2026.

Set in the fictional city of Los Zorangeles, players take on the role of a newly hired Database Detective who investigates minor crimes -- from littering to overstaying a hotel checkout -- by writing SQL queries against case databases.

Designed for SQL beginners, the game includes a sub-20-page primer, detailed error messages, and an in-game assistant, with ten cases of escalating difficulty adding up to roughly 5-6 hours of play.

— Kawara: “It flips the usual edutainment formula: instead of dressing up a lesson as a game, it makes SQL syntax itself the puzzle mechanic. A rare case where the educational hook and the game design genuinely reinforce each other.”

‘ORPHEUS: TO HELL AND BACK,’ an action-puzzle retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth in 80s chibi-anime style, launched on Steam on July 12.

Originally released as a physical Game Boy Color cartridge after a Kickstarter campaign, the game has players use Orpheus's lyre to charm, put to sleep, or scare enemies into traps. It's priced at $2.99.

— Kawara: “Handheld-exclusive cartridge games quietly making their way to Steam has become a familiar pattern lately.”

Squingle Arcade, a spatial puzzle game where players guide glowing orbs through glass-like 3D mazes, launched free-to-play on Meta Quest on July 9. A faster-paced evolution of the original Squingle, it supports both controllers and hand tracking.

The game launched with over 60 levels, with more planned post-release, plus asynchronous multiplayer leaderboards. A standout feature lets players scale mazes from desktop-sized to room-filling.

Steam, Apple Vision Pro, and Pico versions are planned but have no release date yet; developer Squingle Studios says Meta Quest comes "first."

— Kawara: “Being able to blow a maze up to room size is a different kind of puzzle experience than a flat phone screen.”

French developer Florent "Salty" Martinais, a former level designer at Quantic Dream, Ubisoft, and DontNod, is releasing his first solo game, What Surrounds Us, on Steam on July 15.

Set in an abstract ecosystem, the adventure has players observe quirky creatures to solve environmental puzzles across three biomes, with no timers and a self-paced structure. The score is by composer Jérémie Frémont.

— Kawara: “A veteran studio designer's solo debut alone makes this worth a look.”

Lost in Tandem, a cooperative puzzle-adventure set in a post-apocalyptic world, launches on Steam on July 22. It's the debut original title from Tempete Studio, a small studio in Poitiers, France, previously known for the mobile adaptation of the board game Dixit.

The game centers on couch co-op puzzle-solving between a young girl and an obsolete robot called Mech-ute, each with different abilities, though it can also be played solo. Its hand-painted visuals give the post-apocalyptic setting a warm feel.

— Kawara: “Asymmetrical co-op puzzles are a familiar formula, but the hand-drawn art could be the differentiator here.”

Helix: Descent N Ascent, a 2D puzzle adventure set in the forgotten world of Helix, launches on Steam and Nintendo Switch on July 23. Developed by Belgian studio Badass Mongoose, the game features stark black-and-white art inspired by 1980s monochrome comics and 90s manga, with a mix-and-match ability system offering 25 distinct ways to solve its puzzles.

The score comes from Jim Guthrie, known for Below and Nobody Saves the World. A free demo is currently available on Steam.

— Kawara: “Committing fully to black-and-white art is a niche choice, but it should land hard with the right audience.”

The Mermaid Mask, the sequel to 2019's clue-connecting mystery adventure Tangle Tower, has been announced for Nintendo Switch, launching on the eShop on July 16. It's developed by SFB Games, the studio behind Snipperclips and Crow Country.

Detective Grimoire and his assistant Sally return, this time investigating a locked-room murder aboard the world's strangest submarine, where the captain was found dead beside an ancient stone cauldron. The hand-painted visuals carry over from the original, but every clue is now a fully examinable 3D object.

A Steam store page is already live, listing the release simply as "2026." With fully voiced suspect interrogations and layered puzzle design, the sequel looks to build directly on what made the original beloved.

— Kawara: “Tangle Tower was praised for both its puzzles and its character writing. Curious to see how 3D clues change the feel of the observation-based puzzles.”

Storyteller, the puzzle game where you piece together fairy-tale narratives through cause and effect, has received a major "Special Edition" update adding new chapters and characters. It's currently available exclusively through the Netflix mobile app.

New content includes chapters featuring Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, pirates Davy Jones and Marco Polo, and Hansel & Gretel, plus a new Index page for browsing your stories and "Jester Stamps," a new collectible achievement type.

A Steam version of the update is planned through PC publisher Annapurna, but no release date has been set as it still needs more testing.

— Kawara: “Netflix has been picking up more exclusive game content lately, but a mobile-only expansion for an acclaimed indie puzzle game is an unusual pairing.”

D-topia, a puzzle adventure from Kyoto-based Marumittu Games, is confirmed on its Steam page to launch simultaneously worldwide on July 14 across Steam, the Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox. Set in a near-future city where an AI curates residents' happiness, players take the role of a “Facilitator” who solves residents' problems.

Puzzles tie directly into the story: fixing system glitches in the hidden “Block Side” behind the everyday world, with player choices shaping residents' fates. A free demo is already available on Steam ahead of launch.

— Kawara: “It's a notable pairing: a Japanese development studio releasing worldwide as a flagship title for a major overseas indie publisher.”

Ellingboy House, a first-person point-and-click puzzle game released in 2025, has become permanently free to play on Steam. The title, which launched at $13.99 and was later discounted to $4.99, is not part of a limited-time giveaway — it will stay free for good.

Developer Jepfore Games said the move is meant to reach more players and gather more reviews. Set in a British house hit by a ‘ransomware plague,’ the game blends environmental storytelling with its puzzles and currently holds a 92% positive rating on Steam.

— Kawara: “A well-reviewed paid title going free is worth watching to see if it finds a wider audience.”

Seattle-based PuzzleTubes Company launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 7 for The Curse of Grimwold Manor, a 1,000-piece gothic jigsaw puzzle. After assembling the image, solvers hunt for hidden clues in the artwork, then unlock a final reveal through a companion AR app.

The funding goal is a modest $3,000, and the campaign had already reached 74% at time of writing. Early backers can choose a bundle that includes two other titles, Deep Ocean and Christmas Town.

— Kawara: “A nice touch: a single drop of AR reward dropped into otherwise screen-free puzzle time.”

UK developer Absolutely Games and publisher Secret Mode announced PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 versions of Fangtopia, a puzzle game where you build a spooky monster kingdom by placing hex tiles. Both join the previously announced PC release (Steam, Epic, Stove), with all versions launching later this year.

Matching adjacent tile types earns bonus points, and hitting score milestones unlocks new landmarks and monsters like werewolves and ghosts. A closed PC alpha playtest is open for sign-ups through July 14.

— Kawara: “A familiar tile-laying satisfaction dressed up in Halloween flavor — this one bets on the pleasure of incremental building rather than spectacle.”

Set in 1973, "The Message from Deep Space" casts players as a mission Translator decoding radio signals from a meteorite that reached Earth; the indie puzzle game launched on Steam on June 29.

Players build a shared language with the aliens from scratch using only universal constants of math, science, and linguistics, sending and receiving over 1,000 in-game transmissions.

Inspired by the Golden Record aboard Voyager I, the game's "realistic" approach to first contact has been quietly gaining word-of-mouth in puzzle communities abroad.

— Kawara: “A game that caught on without a big marketing push — still little-known in Japan.”

Enigmo, the physics puzzle game that won "Best iPhone Game" at Apple's WWDC 2008, has been reborn as a VR spatial puzzler and launched today on Steam. It's developed and published by Fortell Games under official license from original creator Pangea Software Inc.

Players guide droplets, plasma particles, and lasers into their target containers using nine types of puzzle pieces such as mirrors, drums, and slides. The VR version adds hand-tracking controls and new mechanics like gravity lenses and teleporters. It's priced at $9.99 with 50 base levels included.

A Meta Horizon Store version is planned for fall 2026, with the Steam (PC VR) release coming first.

— Kawara: “A 2000s Mac/iPhone puzzle classic reborn in VR is a genuinely fun pairing.”