Jonathan Blow says he spent a decade crafting 1,400 puzzles

Jonathan Blow - the designer behind Braid and The Witness - says he’s spent the past ten years designing 1,400 puzzles. What’s notable here isn’t the raw count so much as the commitment to hand-authored, systemic design at a scale usually achieved with procedural generators. Under the hood, sustaining that volume while keeping a clean difficulty curve and avoiding duplicate ideas typically demands ruthless curation, a dependency graph of concepts, and a tight iteration loop - the kind of process Blow is known for pairing with custom tech and uncompromising polish.

The bigger picture: this underscores how deep, deterministic design can be a durable moat for independent creators. A library of 1,400 teachable moments can scaffold player understanding far beyond a weekend puzzler, and it pressures competitors who lean on content-light loops. Worth noting: Blow has spent recent years investing in infrastructure (including his own programming language) to reduce friction in making things; while no toolchain details accompany this number, the outcome points to mature internal workflows and a long-run approach funded by evergreen hits. For players, it signals ambition toward breadth and pedagogy; for developers, a reminder that strong primitives plus relentless iteration still scale - even without a live-service playbook.