ASTRA LOGICAL
Puzzle specialist Astra Games explains why publishing was the Logical next step
Almost two years ago, Astra Fund listed six ‘thinking games’ for which it would be providing financial support. The selection included music-themed puzzler Rytmos, foldable-space adventure Paper Trail and a then-untitled project from Zach Gage and Orta Therox, which would become morning mainstay Puzzmo. Just as the catch-all term for titles of this ilk has changed, Astra Fund has become Astra Logical, an “independent publisher of premium thinky games”.
That term is worth exploring. What is a thinky game? The term s been minted relatively recently, perhaps coming to greater prominence with the advent of thinkygames.com, a website and community hub set up by Warp Door co-founder Tim W with support from Astra Games. Per the blurb, thinky games "ask you to carefully reason your way through puzzles and challenges; games "ask you to carefully reason your way through puzzles and challenges; games brimming with curiosity and discovery
Zach Barth (whose new studio, Coincidence, is developing a game funded by Astra Logical, and whose career has been built on taxing players’ grey matter, having founded the nowdefunct Zachtronics in 2000) admits even he’s not entirely sure how to define it. “Our games clearly fit into it, because they’re some of the thinkiest thinking games,” he laughs. “Historically, we’ve just called ourselves puzzle games.” Yet he concedes that doing so hasn’t always been helpful.
Staggeringly, Steam doesn’t feature a dedicated category for puzzle games; although user tags can be attached, you’ll find Tetris Effect: Connected under the ‘casual games’ label, while Portal 2 is under ‘action’, and Zachtronics’ Opus Magnum is considered a ‘simulation’. Barth has thus come around to the idea that the thinky label is helpful, particularly as a way of distinguishing his catalogue from the likes of Tetris and crosswords.
Per the blurb, thinky games “ask you to carefully reason your way through puzzles and challenges”
As Astra Logical MD Heather Jackson explains, it’s less a matter of ascribing genre than ethos. “How do you start to describe a design ethos in one or two tight words? I guess we’re doing ‘thinky’ – that’s what we’ve got.” There has always been a community for these kinds of games, she adds. “But there’s not been a throughline. There’s not been a curation around it, as we’re seeing is a problem in a lot of different spaces in the industry.”
She rattles off a list of subgenres about which Astra is “excited”: tactics; deckbuilders; games about programming, automation and resource management. The common factor, she says, is “games that really give you those ‘Aha!’ moments, and help you to scale a system or go deeper into a system. It’s like, ‘Hey, you like games like
