Award-Winning Before Release: You Can Try Stip for Free Now

Stip pulls off a neat trick: it takes a seemingly obvious idea and makes it feel surprisingly original. The upcoming puzzle game combines clever number puzzles with psychological horror—and you can try it for free right now.

What happens to your skin when I say "math"? Does it break out in a rash? You're not alone. School math left me with a few scars too—and perhaps developer Sixtyfour, aka Sam Agten, had something similar in mind when he turned an abstract logic game into psychological horror.

In Stip, the solo developer takes a different approach from the venerable Paul Norman in Monster Trivia. No monster bites your head off if you make a mistake. Something is lurking in the background, though... something with a vested interest in making sure you solve every number puzzle.

To put you at ease, Stip presents a bright, orderly setting and puzzles that always follow clear rules. But things aren't actually "all good," no matter how often the mysterious presence tells you otherwise through on-screen messages. One thing that actually is good, though: ahead of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, Sam has already released a playable demo of Stip (also listed on GOG's Dreamlist).

Stip's demo offers a taste of number horror

Rather than serving up one increasingly complex number puzzle after another, the game sends you through puzzle rooms with an unsettling story hanging over you. The demo has several of these rooms, with secrets in between—including a locked door you can interact with and open by solving a combination puzzle.

Why specify that you can interact with it? Well, you don't actually walk around Stip's world. You navigate something closer to a slideshow, made up of simple but stylish images. The screenshots below show that door and one of the early number puzzles; a number-sequence puzzle, in this case.

Icons beside or above the number tiles have tooltips explaining how to arrange them. One might tell you that the numbers in a row increase in a particular direction; another might give you the sum that row needs to reach.

The odd bust in the image on the left—whom I've affectionately named Turban Socrates—is your lifeline when you're stuck. If a puzzle has you stumped, click the bust icon in the UI and the little chatterbox will give you a hint. You can call on Turban Socrates whenever you like, though. He's quite happy to talk to you for no particular reason.

Even math haters can have fun

I've played the demo, and I can assure you Stip wraps its puzzles in plenty of style and personality. Stip doesn't feel like your old math teacher's idea of a game, designed to make you finally appreciate numbers after all these years. The demo points to an unusually engaging casual puzzler that isn't afraid to make you think.

The tutorial and first few rooms drew me in, and the game gradually tightened its grip. By the time the number puzzles got harder, I'd forgotten that this sort of game usually does little for me. That's a very good sign.

Stip also won Most Anticipated Game 2026 at the Belgian Game Awards, which I can understand now. Originally announced for this summer, it's currently due on PC sometime in "2026." That's hardly a satisfying release window, but at least there isn't much of the year left.