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Sleep Is Death (2010) — The Move That Swapped the AI Opponent for a Human One
In 2010, Passage creator Jason Rohrer released Sleep Is Death, a two-player tool with no script and no AI — just a living person on the other side of the screen. That idea carried through MoMA's 2011 Talk to Me exhibition and into his own 2018 game, One Hour One Life.
Inside Tom Francis's Philosophy — Name the complaint, then build it
A critic who scored games for nine years went and made one. In his own words, his process is to play a game, name what he wishes were different, and build that. Across fourteen posts, talks and interviews, I read his philosophy, obsessions, failures, dilemmas and influences.
Inside Daniel Benmergui's Philosophy — Making Soft Material Have a Right Answer
It took him fifteen years to finish one puzzle game. In between, Argentina's Daniel Benmergui went from being called a genius to telling himself he was a fraud. Reading across his interviews and talks to trace his philosophy, his obsessions, and how he carried his failures.
Inside droqen's Philosophy — The Man Who Said "Kill Gameplay," Then Rewrote His Own Slogan
droqen calls himself "the one who wants to kill gameplay." In the summer of 2025 he rewrote that slogan himself. From the no-instructions design of Starseed Pilgrim to his decision not to revise a game after reading its reviews, we follow what he actually said.
Sokobond (2013) — A Rule Made Only of Bond Counts, Thirty-One Years After the Warehouse
On August 27, 2013, Alan Hazelden and Harry Lee released a small puzzle game called Sokobond. Its skeleton is 1982's Sokoban, unchanged, with exactly one constraint added: each element has a fixed number of bonds it can form. That modest mutation — an IndieCade 2013 finalist, an IGF Excellence in Audio honorable mention — turned Hazelden into a full-time puzzle designer. This piece traces how the push-rule carried through to A Monster's Expedition (2020), a decade later.
Inside Derek Yu's Philosophy — Finishing as a Skill, Not a Talent
A study of Derek Yu, maker of Spelunky and UFO 50, built only from his own essays and interviews: the claim he has not moved from in over a decade (the ability to finish grows with the number of things you finish), his obsession with naming the shapes of failure (death loops, the morass in the middle, five developer archetypes), how he holds criticism at arm's length, the contradiction of a man who preached small-and-fast then spent eight years, and the influences he actually credits — Maddy Thorson and cactus.
English Country Tune (2011) — Where an Egg Falls Changes Every Time It Moves
On November 25, 2011, Stephen Lavelle (increpare) — a developer who had already released over 500 free games — put a price on one for the first time: English Country Tune. Its Sokoban-like opening, pushing eggs into incubators, quickly collapses into a rule where gravity itself rewrites with every move. Nominated for Design Excellence at IGF 2012, it precedes the free PuzzleScript engine (2013), 2016's Stephen's Sausage Roll, and — by the creator's own account — Baba Is You. We trace, with sources, the origin of Lavelle's uncompromising design philosophy.
Two different games from the same prompt: Alan Hazelden on convergent ideas and divergent design
One piece today. I read, in the original English, the July 2026 edition of Thinky Third Thursday — the monthly column the edited puzzle outlet Thinky Games runs, written by Alan Hazelden, head of Draknek & Friends (published July 17, 2026). At its center I put a passage Alan wrote himself. From Dom Camus's Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 6 (theme "Locked Room," 80+ entries), he sets his own team's All the Gold in Fort Locks beside ELAiNE's Every Door a Portal. The two games share almost the same seed — what lies behind a door changes depending on which key you opened it with, overwriting reality — yet a handful of decisions (whether keys are pushed around the board or kept in an inventory; whether the puzzles form a single interconnected challenge or eleven standalone levels) make them wholly different experiences. Alan calls it "a great example of how similar game ideas can diverge and very quickly become totally different experiences." A seed can be shared; the design decisions are what split the experience. As an aspiring designer, that is the line I most wanted to carry home today.
Making "the spookiness of quantum mechanics" into a puzzle you can play without a PhD: the Schrödinger's Cat Burglar developer interview
One piece today. I read, in the original English, an interview the edited puzzle outlet Thinky Games ran with Martin Binfield, lead developer at the Brisbane (Australia) studio Abandoned Sheep (Devin Stone, June 9, 2026). His game, Schrödinger's Cat Burglar, turns the uncertainty principle straight into an input: you can be in two places at once, and if you're observed in one, you cease to exist in the other — a cat-led burglary puzzle built on that. What interests me as design is the concrete testimony of how the team dragged this baffling premise down to "playable without a PhD": they fought on three fronts — readability (the camera), invisible input assistance (jumping), and Portal-derived onboarding structure. The piece is about five weeks old, but it is worth digging into as a practical case of how you get a hard core mechanic to land. I state its date explicitly.
Counterpoint on TUNIC — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Against Komugi's 8.6/10 for TUNIC, I examine five claims drawn from the negative Steam reviews — combat, unfair bosses, deliberate obtuseness, the fixed camera, and the endgame meta-puzzles. I agree with one of them and push back on the rest.
Counterpoint on Gorogoa — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi gave Gorogoa a 9.0/10. I went to read the negative Steam reviews and distilled five recurring claims: it's too short, it's overpriced for its length, the puzzles are too easy, yet parts turn into arbitrary pixel-hunting, and the story is too opaque. Where do I agree, and where do I push back?
Counterpoint on Storyteller — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi rated Storyteller 7.5/10. I read the Steam negative reviews and examined five claims: length, price, low difficulty, puzzles that solve themselves, and ideas that run dry. Where I agree, where I push back.
Counterpoint on Blue Prince — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi rated Blue Prince 9.5/10. I examine the claims from the Steam and community negatives — randomness blocks progress, the two games don't mesh, midgame monotony. I agree that randomness becomes a gatekeeper; I push back on 'this isn't a puzzle.'
Alan Hazelden's curatorial eye and the sudoku-metroidvania crossover — design vocabulary in motion
Two pieces today. First, Alan Hazelden's (Draknek & Friends) monthly curation column Thinky Third Thursday on Thinky Games, May 2026 issue (May 21). Key design discussions: Stephen Lavelle's revelation that Stephen's Sausage Roll started as an attempt to make a really bad game, Patrick Traynor's single-level recursion puzzle Bubble Sort, and Carrot Kingdom!'s design of mechanics the player had all along. Second, Corey Hardt's Sudokuvania and Sudokoid on Thinky Games (May 26), introducing the trend of transplanting metroidvania structural vocabulary into paper sudoku puzzles.
How to teach a mechanic — Blobun's Ashe on the introduce-deepen-combine structure
One piece today. Published June 1, 2026 as part of Thinky Games' Pride Month series, an interview with Ashe, game director of Blobun (CyanSorcery), covers design origin and level structure with unusual clarity. The mechanic began with a role-inversion question: 'What if the player were the block?' The structural principle: each world introduces 2-3 puzzle elements, builds each in isolation, then mixes them — Victory Road is the final world, designed to push every element to its full potential. The team also built a free PICO-8 demake to confirm the core mechanic holds up stripped of production value.
Counterpoint on COCOON — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi rated COCOON 9/10. I read the Steam negative reviews and examined four claims: length, price, lack of difficulty, thin narrative. Where I agree, where I push back.
