Welcome to Puzzle Lovers! - Play Hard. Think Harder.

Brainrack, Issue #323 (July 12, 2025)

Welcome once again to our weekly newsletter with puzzle game news, new and upcoming releases, giveaways, deals and bundles, spotlight on a lesser-known or forgotten game, and other stuff.

Greetings to those who’ve joined since last week! If you found us through a link to the newsletter, read the group overview to see what else we can offer, visit the forum for puzzle discussion, follow our curator for reviews and recommendations, check out our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide on how to improve your games, and tell your friends if you like what you see. Thanks!

Ideally, every group member would follow our curator[/url] and vice versa, but until then, here's the changelog. And don't forget our many lists based on themes and subgenres.

New Curatees with Full Reviews:

• Mistified (sokoban, adventure)

New Curatees with Mini-Reviews:

• ISLANDERS: New Shores (strategy, city builder)
  
• Number Way (math, pathfinding)
  
• Ornate Machina: The Thousand Trials (sokoban)

Please let us know in the Curator Info thread if you'd like to write mini-reviews (max. 200 characters, positive or negative) for puzzlers that aren't curated by us yet. Examples and inspiration can be found on the Group Member Recommendations list.

The giveaways are on SteamGifts, but no need to create an account, just visit the site and log in through Steam. Good luck!

Thirty-One 3D Premium[www.steamgifts.com] is available for everybody, and Super Blockbuster[www.steamgifts.com] only for group members, courtesy of the developers.

Got your own puzzler, adventure, demo, or some new content coming out on mobile or PC? Let us know in the forum or by adding sdumitriu on Steam Chat.

Free Game Highlights:

• Accordion Solitaire (card game)
  
• Blobun Mini (pathfinding, one-line)
  
• Celestial City Fantasy (strategy, city builder)
  
• Hold Me Still (point&click)
  
• Nelli The Seer (platformer)
  
• Pascal's Requiem (adventure, RPG)

Paid Games - Now Free:

• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock (strategy, turn-based) Free until July 16th
  
• Boxel 3D (platformer)
  
• Caribbean Crashers (casual, indie) Free until July 16th
  
• Evil Cult (board game)
  
• Fantasy General II (strategy, tactical) Free until July 16th
  
• Figment 2: Creed Valley[store.epicgames.com] (adventure) Free until July 16th on The Epic Store
  
• Jigsaw Wild: Animal Edition[apps.microsoft.com] (jigsaw) Free for a Limited Time on the Microsoft Store
  
• Just Arms (platformer)
  
• Line Link (casual)
  
• MindBloc (casual)
  
• Pepper Blast (match 3)
  
• VITAL (indie)

New Demos:

Still very much behind on demos, slowly catching up. The Demo of the Week is MIGHTY 1990.

• ChainKit Builder (model building): A simple model building game, put together pieces from a kit, paint, apply decals. Pieces snap together when they’re in the right position, but sometimes you have to find the right orientation since not all pieces are in the correct orientation from the start, but there is a manual for every model to guide you. Mostly “fighting robots”. That’s it, not much else to say.
  
• HEXA-WORLD-3D (strategy): One of those color-sorting mobile games: place stacks of hexagonal discs in a grid, with adjacent stacks of the same color merging, and once you get 10 or more discs in a stack, they disappear. Simple, addictive, not much of a puzzle game, but it’s nice for wasting time. There is one major thing wrong with it: the camera can be moved around, but only between fixed positions, which either are too low so you don’t see the stacks that are behind or straight down so you don’t see if there’s more than one color in a stack or how tall a stack is.
  
• Kosmocean - The Endless Sea (exploration, adventure): Explore the ocean in your submersible, discovering animal species, collecting scrap to upgrade your submarine, reaching new islands. The start of the story felt like a clone of Future Boy Conan, but that was just the setup. The gameplay felt a bit like an underwater version of SteamWorld Dig. Nice as a relaxing game, but not really a puzzle game.
  
• MIGHTY 1990 (old-school adventure game, RPG): You must travel back in time to 1990 and save the world. Old-school adventure game with a list of items/actions on the bottom that you must choose, like LOOK + PAINTINGS, USE + TV, and TALK + MA. But it adds RPG elements with points for Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Intuition, Charisma, and your points really do affect the gameplay. You also have a class, and depending on what you choose, you’ll get an entirely different experience. As a hacker, I could use the computer to search for a phone number, but as a ninja, I had to crack a safe. With no points in Charisma, I had to find a way to trick Ma away from the phone, but with Charisma and a lucky dice roll, I could convince her to just go. Funny, replayable, and smart—definitely keep an eye on this one.
  
• Pragma Twice (programming): A serious programming game in which you have to write JavaScript code to write the game. You start with a robot that cannot do anything, but you find helpful panels that show you snippets of code you can use to do things, like “when pressing a, move self to left” or “when pressing t, read the text on the terminal above the robot.” Little by little you’re writing the actual code of the game that lets you explore the world. Not present in the demo, but there’s a hint that in the full game you will be able to write the entire code of a fully autonomous robot and let it loose in a level to solve it by itself. Great if you know programming and want to write code, but I feel that it is too technical and there are not enough tutorials to be playable by someone with no or little coding experience.
  
• Quadra Break (tetris): Tetris variants with challenges and gimmicks. In the two versions available in the demo, the focus is on speed: clear 40 lines in classic Tetris, and clear 1000 of each color in a huge board with rising lines and falling tiles. There are weekly challenges that add gimmicks, like no O shapes and random exploding squares, or no Z and “dusty” squares that refuse to fall.
  
• UNDERGROUNDED (adventure, escape room): You dropped an engagement ring down the drain, and it fell deeper and deeper through different timelines. You must go down, unlocking gates, completing quests, fighting bosses, and playing old arcade games. It’s nice, with a lot of dialog (if you like games with a story) and a lot of different genres mixed together.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3827340/Blobun_Mini/

A smaller and free version of Blobun, in which you must cover the entire level with your blobby bun body, a one-line kind of game with a lot of extra mechanics. If you’re still not sure about buying Blobun, this is a great teaser of what’s in it, but with smaller levels.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3319150/Cats_Catching_Mice_The_Black_and_White_World/

A metroidvania that reminds me a lot of Animal Well. You play as a cat trying to catch mice and fight giant bugs. Jump, use tools, pounce on crabs and bats and other small but deadly critters, scare mice then trap them and collect their souls. Use these souls to buy tools you can always summon: box, spring, balloon, fan, ball. From time to time you have to fight big bugs that take a lot of hits, and each such fight is slightly different: you have to jump on top of some, throw spears, push a hard to reach button, drop boxes… And there are also lots of hidden collectibles that you must look out for hidden inside walls.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330720/ChipWits/

Design 2D programs using chips that help guide your friendly robot to navigate puzzles, gather Goodies, and zap Baddies. A remake of a 40 years old classic, from the author of the original, this is a great programming-like game, family friendly but mentally challenging, now with modern features that make it a worthy zach-like (although it could be argued that this was a zach-like long before zach-likes were a thing).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3054330/Hogtie/

A different take on Sokoban, if it can even be put in that category. Instead of pushing boxes one by one when you are next to them, you can lasso many hogs at once and then move together, in line or parallel to each other, lengthening or shortening the ropes as needed. After the few introductory maze-like levels, more challenging mechanics are added: slippery ice, muddy puddles and clean water that only the hogs can go into, deadly acid swamps, and many others.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2368930/ISLANDERS_New_Shores/

A new Islanders game, with some improvements and new mechanics. Place buildings on islands trying to maximize a score, considering how buildings like to be near each other. There’s also a sandbox mode if you just want to relax and build beautiful cities.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3141420/Mirrormind/

Solve puzzles by switching between different cubes. Each cube is a “you”, and if you can see another cube in your line of sight, you can switch to it. Help each other reach further, for example by putting one on a button while the other goes through the gate, or stacking them up in a pile to reach higher, or, when things get even crazier and each one has a different gravity, use one as a platform to get across a big gap while for another cube the gravity is pointing towards your wall.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3547010/Occlude/

A solitaire game with an extra thinky challenge. You play a version of Klondike, but instead of building on the foundation from the Ace up, you can build both up and down with the Ace and the King already placed in there, and all the cards visible. But while winning the game is easily doable, the secondary goal is to have a specific card where each of the two halves of a suit on the foundation meet. And figuring out which four target cards are needed is the true challenge, with different games using a different kind of clue that you have to figure out. There is a story to the game as well, each game mode is a story about somebody trying to change their past by playing the game as a ritual that can alter reality. Winning each “story” requires getting all four coins to successfully change the world, with different results if you get none, or just some of the coins. Part solitaire, part rule deduction, a good card game.

And the Rest:

• Block Factory (factory automation)
  
• Brainf**k_Challenge[store.steampowered.com] (programming)
  
• Brainkilled (puzzle box)
  
• DOGWALK (cozy, adventure, exploration)
  
• HACKBAK (hacking simulator)
  
• Light Of The Ancients (3D environmental puzzles)
  
• Out of Sight (stealth)
  
• The Vault: Logic Puzzle Box (puzzle box)

Highlighting the best release of last week, at least according to the curator’s opinion.

A good chess-like challenge, I’ve had fun trying to get perfect scores on all the levels. I still wish it had undo, and bit more QoL features.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3359920/King_for_a_Knight/

Highlighting a short and free puzzle game every week!

Another entry for the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam, help four animals escape the zoo. A small, one level puzzle game, but still quite challenging to figure out how each of the four animals behave, how to trick them out of their cage and into the exit spots, especially the angry myopic bear who likes to maul you if you get too close. Works in a browser, even on a phone.

Highlighting another free puzzle game every week!

A really challenging game in which you must guide shy creatures to their target spots.

You can always check our curator for curated titles on sale. Specials on the front page is incomplete; click the Discounts tab for more.

Right after the Summer Sale ends there aren’t that many games still on sale. While not great, Icemaze Cave: Skate Escape is a decent sliding puzzle game, with 100 levels with two challenges each: get the rare mineral, and find the quickest way out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1834120/Icemaze_Cave_Skate_Escape/

Not to be confused with our Deal of the Week, which is just an especially good deal from the weeklies. Every week we'll pick a puzzler we really like and try to push it down everyone's throats. But with love because it's so good. Or highlight a lesser-known title that's unlikely to get curated. Comment below if you'd like to write about an undeservedly forgotten game for next time!

Despite the cute looks, this is quite challenging. In each level you must deliver food to monsters using up to three delivery people, each with their own strengths: Melonica can move a long way, but only carries one unit of food, Umarius can carry three units of food, but only for a very short distance, while Mun-Chi is in the middle, carrying two units of food for a medium distance. Figure out where each character goes, plan their paths, and make sure all the monsters get the right amount of food. As you feed monsters, you learn about them with pictures and short descriptions, filling in a photo album.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597720/Feed_All_Monsters/

Show the world how good (or bad) you are at puzzle games by submitting your Workshop levels, guides, walkthroughs, mods, artwork inspired by a puzzler, or whatever, even if it's not a game curated by us, in this forum thread or below in the comments to be featured here next time.

The Thinky Games collective finally has a proper curator set up, go check them out. Most puzzle games are thinky games, but there are other game genres that might not show up on the Puzzle Lovers curator, so go check them out if you want to see more detective, strategy, roguelikes and others.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44830649-Thinky-Games/

Here are a few quick & easy ways you can help us out. A little can go a long way; otherwise, we'll never achieve world domination.

• Feedback is important, so let us know what you like or don't like.
  
• Follow our curator and get notified about new additions and reviews.
  
• Tell your puzzle- and/or adventure-loving friends and your favorite developers about us and our Basic Functionality and Accessibility Guide.