Series

Puzzle Soundtracks

A serial devoted to puzzle game music. How do you design sound that never wears out, no matter how long it plays?

LatestSoundtrack: Botanicula — One short fragment for every scene

Puzzle Incident History

A serial unearthing the moments puzzles stirred up society — from the 15-puzzle prize hoax to the birth of real escape games.

LatestGame of Life (1970) — A Grid with Two Rules Gained the Power to Compute

The Nature of Play

A serial that dissects what makes things fun through philosophers' eyes — starting with Huizinga, pausing the making of games to ask what play is.

LatestIs Gacha Play or Gambling? Two Kinds of Coin in the Same Machine

Paper Digest

A serial that digests academic papers on puzzles and games into a form anyone can read.

LatestYamamoto & Shiba: When both options share the same payment, people skip right over it — Fukai Reads

The Designer's Philosophy

One puzzle designer per episode, read through their own words — searching for the consistent question behind each body of work.

LatestInside Eric Zimmerman's Philosophy — You Can Make the Rules, Not How They Get Played

The Counter-Review

Rereading acclaimed classics through their negative reviews — testing the criticism buried under the praise.

LatestCounterpoint on Rusty Lake Hotel — Reading Through the Negative Reviews

Anatomy of a Level

One level of a classic puzzle game per episode, read exhaustively with board diagrams — what it teaches, where it makes you stall, and why it has that shape.

LatestMicroban Level 1 — The box that is already home must leave first

Design Roundup

Developer interviews, talks, postmortems — a serial that gathers and introduces conversations around puzzle design.

Latest"Good Deckbuilders Follow the Rules. Great Ones Break Them." — How Thinky Games Reads Shroom and Gloom's Rule-Breaking

Solved by Hand

Board games, cast puzzles, pencil puzzles, and escape kits read through a digital puzzle designer's eyes — what is lost and what survives when a hands-on mechanism moves into code.

LatestOink Games and Deep Sea Adventure (2014) — A Small Box Where Everyone Breathes the Same Air

Retro Revisited

Replaying classic puzzles with today's eyes — from Sokoban to Professor Layton, digging through the strata of eras.

LatestLights Out (1995): Press a Button and Its Neighbours Flip. Linear Algebra Sat Under Those 25 Buttons

The Debate

One motion, two writers, opposite sides, same day. Komugi and Mayoi argue it out; readers vote at the end.

LatestSolvable and authored are not the same thing — Debate: "Can a generated board be a work?" Side B

The Lineage of Meta-Puzzles

The lineage of games that turn rules themselves into something you operate on. How the idea of rewriting unfolded from Sokoban to Baba Is You.

Puzzles That Turn Looking into Play

A rare lineage where the act of looking is the progress. We read the design of observation puzzles through The Witness, Obra Dinn, and Lorelei.

The Design of Undo

A single rewind button reshapes the entire experience. Designs that forgive trials and designs that punish them.

Carving the Learning Curve

Where do you make the player stop, and where do you let them flow? From Baba's vertical wall to Cocoon's unbroken stream.

Recursive Puzzles

Boxes inside boxes, doors inside doors, worlds inside worlds. Games that translate recursion into puzzle mechanics.

Single-Verb Design

How deep can a single-verb game go? The lineage of Sokoban, Sausage Roll, and A Monster's Expedition.

Best of Puzzles

Annual and thematic roundups of recommended puzzle games — only the titles we can vouch for after playing them in depth.