
Ready for some brawling? Superfighters from MythoLogic Interactive is a single-screen single-player or 2-player versus fighting game replete with weapons, tactical maneuvers, and chunky pixel art your eyes will adore. It's a game where little dudes shoot, stab, burn, kick, shoot (again) and trick each other until they pass out from non-livingness, and once that round is over, you get to do it all over again!

A new Bart Bonte game has just been released, this one a sequel to an entry from our "ball physics" competition a year ago. Factory Balls 2 is a unique and original puzzle game in which you must match a target ball by adding elements from those given, one at a time. Order is important, and so you must plan your moves carefully.

Not enough cute in your day? Never fear, Chibi Knight is here! An action/adventure title with RPG elements, the game has you sending your itty-bitty hero out to save the land from some big, bad beasties, and maybe uncover a secret or two along the way. How cute
is this short little gem? Just give the title screen a gander, and a listen. Melted yet?

Just released from On at Eyezmaze, a new a very different type of GROW game. In Grow Cannon, the objective is figure out the correct sequence for firing each of the 10 cannonballs by selecting the fire power on the large meter provided. Warning: charming animations and situations ahead.

Tasha's Game is a whimsical platform adventure about a woman rescuing her friends and co-workers from evil black tentacles with the help of her magical flying cat Snoopy. Did I say "whimsical"? I meant "insane".

The Dreamerz is a point-and-click adventure game where you play a cute little astronaut who is tasked with collecting "dream spheres" filled with "dream ingredients" to fix a "dream machine" on a little planet oozing with wonderment. And if that sounds trite, treacly and unappealing, you are in for a very pleasant surprise. The Dreamerz is not a cotton-puff excess about the power of dreams. If you find yourself put off by that sort of syrupy exhibitionism, then The Dreamerz is the game for you.

Music Catch 2 delivers everything you'd want from a sequel to Reflexive's surprise hit Music Catch, especially if what you want is more ways to collect thousands of shimmering doo-dads. You get three more lovely piano tunes by composer Isaac Shepherd, and a few different choices for how the collectibles will bloom and fade away. Some of the new movement patterns make the game dramatically easier than others, but Music Catch was never about challenge anyway. It's just an easy way to relax, scooping up armfuls of trinkets and grooving to the mellows.

With modern and sharp looking graphics, Cube Mayhem brings isometric puzzle gaming to anyone looking for quick yet demanding casual experience. The cube will rock and roll along the map and follow the programmed sequence of action tiles you place in its way.

You must sprint, kick, and bribe your way to athletic glory! Refusal to use exclamation points is counterrevolutionary! Grab a bowl of rocky road or double chocolate chip some morning and double your pleasure and/or fun by accompanying it with this game.

The latest in Toge Production's popular series of zombie action-strategy games, Infectonator 2 thrives on frenetic chain-reaction based gameplay, its awesome sprite art, and the pure adrenaline rush one gets by infecting the world, continent by continent. It may be a bit taxing on the CPU for such mindless fun, but that just means you'll keep going even after someone has taken a chomp from your brain

What's in a life? What makes up a person? Are we influenced by our environment more than we realise? This free browser port of the classic deep PC "alternate life simulator" from 1986 may just make you ponder that a little. Explore the events of the life you might have had from infancy to death, and see just how much even the little things matter.

Take up the mantle of Gem Keeper and protect your glittery hoard from all comers in this official level pack from tower defense maestros Iriysoft. Make strategic use of three different terrains and towers, upgrading your offensive capabilities to stand firm against hordes of powerful enemies, each with their own unique abilities. Just remember, when the going get tough, the tough rain down a fiery hail of massive meteorites.

This version of Tetris is very friendly indeed. Bright, clear visual and sound effects accompany your every move. A three-tiered strategy guide and a basic history of the game are just a click away. Even if you think you're burned out on Tetris for life, give Tetris Friends a try. You might just re-discover what once made this your favorite game in the world.

See the icon next to this text? That's exactly the size of Nitrome's newest puzzle platformer, Gunbrick. You've got to roll, slide, and shoot your way to the exit in this compact 50x50 pixel game. It may be tiny, but Gunbrick is a big puzzle adventure. (Unless if you cheat and play the game in the larger frame... but what's the fun in that?)

Og Og Alive is an original concept action adventure game of life back in the stone ages when days were spent foraging for food and protection. Play as either male or female Og Og, and pay particular attention to the hints they give as you adventure through the game. This excellent and unusual game is part of the Game On initiative of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

We see clones of classic casual games everywhere—games with blocks that fall and lines that clear. But the ones that really shine through are those that build on a classic formula and make something new out of it. Chain Factor is one of the those games. While the game may seem intimidating at first, with its grid of all sorts of numbers and the occasional boulder, it is actually deceptively simple.

The third installment in the block-manipulating, anagram-solving, funny-bone-tickling series, the first installment of which was voted one of the Best Games of 2008 by JIG. After nearly two sad blockless years, Marty Sears is back with all the fiendish brain-teasing action and absurd animations fans have come to expect. And if you're new to BWLO, you'll find this even more of a treat... and even more of a punishment. A punishing treat? Anyway, yay!

Voted Best of 2005 by the visitors of Jayisgames, Hapland 2 is less a continuation of the original as it is the same game with all-new puzzles: The objective is once again to open the stone portal and unleash the power within. And while that doesn't exactly give any clue as to what to do, it does at least provide a goal to work towards. Thanks to its popularity, there is now a Hapland 3!

A soothing sound toy with which to bathe the aural senses, Pianolina is a beautifully designed and gorgeously sounding Flash application created to introduce you to the sounds of the Grotrian piano. Choose between several different compositions and see how the notes react to gravity as they bounce around the display.

Flashxed manages to breathe a little life into the familiar block-matching puzzle theme with a new mechanic: block dragging. You're presented with a set of bricks with colored orbs sparkling inside. Drag blocks left or right one at a time, and if two or more blocks of the same color touch, they smash and crumble away. It's extraordinarily perplexing at times, but that challenge is what makes it so fun.

Anyone familiar with Ferry Halim's Orisinal collection of games will immediately recognize his characteristic style of art in the image to the right. Those who are not yet familiar are in for a treat: These playful pups are the main characters in his latest Flash game.

As a slightly dimwitted hero, you'll proceed down from the top floor of the eponymous tower in an attempt to escape... but chances are you'll meet your death a fair number of times along the way. Make sure you bring your sword and shield. Or fez and rapier. Or skull and mace. Or... you know what, we'll let you decide.

General Zoi brings us an easy to use webtoy based on the show you love to watch when you think nopony is looking. Choose from a huge array of options to create and share your inner pony. Not included; premade denial and excuse in case any of your coworkers catch your designing your own custom cutiemark.

Nearly a year after the first installment was released, the Gretel and Hansel trilogy continues in this twisted, dark and slightly comedic take on the classic fairytale from Mako Pudding. Separated from her brother in the forest, can Gretel outwit all manner of strange and scary fables to be reunited with Hansel? Of course she can, with your help! After all, girls rule, and boys drool... in Hansel's case, at least, that's literal, so you might want to get a move on.

This is your chance to be the spook, and we don't mean the sort that stare at goats. This simply vibrant and unusual action puzzler by the Super Flash Bros puts you in the role of a ghost who seeks to haunt a house in peace and quiet, but your house has been overrun by a bunch of noisy party guests and it's up to you to scare the living daylights out of all thirty, yes thirty, of them.

Get ready to smackdown your opponent in the one or two player game Wrestle Jump! Control a Mexican wrestler with the single goal of pounding the other guy's head to the ground. Kick your leg against the arena floor to throw your opponent wildly around. Whoever gets the most smackdowns wins!

Strike Force Heroes, by Sky9 Games, is a frenetic action arena shooter that proves that the best way to unravel a shadowy conspiracy is blasting everything in sight. Shares a developer with Raze 2, and many similarities with that game. Still, Strike Force Heroes offers a lot of variety and customization, and even if online multiplayer is a sad omission, pwning CPU newbs has never been so satisfying.

Calling all tiny knights! The tiny princess has been captured by the tiny wizard and is being held in his tiny castle! We need someone to go on an itty-bitty platforming adventure to rescue her while avoiding monsters, traps, and a frequently changing environment. Think you've got what it takes? All of you who aren't knee-high on a grasshopper need not apply.

Welcome to The Water Well by no1game.net, a quiet room escape game that won't solve all your problems, but is certainly an oasis of calm in an otherwise frantic week.

This week, we present the exclusive debut of a super-duper, extra-special room escape game, one we can guarantee that absolutely no other website has yet featured. Don't you feel special? To all the JIG faithful, we present to you the world premiere of.... Casual Gameplay Escape!

Help a little robot get his life together in this melancholic Metroidvania platformer from Tony (Antony Lavelle) of Armor Games. Explore an ominous facility under the purview of your disappointed computer mother, gathering upgrades and fighting fellow robots. Worth the initial weirdness for a quiet gem of an experience with a surprising amount of depth in its simple design.

Aether is a gloriously imaginative and atmospheric puzzle adventure game in which you swing through the stars to reach several different planets, each with a unique puzzle to solve. The designers have made a truly compelling experience, and it's a fantastic artistic endeavor. You can also just spend some time flying through space or the clouds, the music and movement are so relaxing.

They pushed you down, then kicked you while you were there and stole your lunch money! Stupid Forces of Goodness! Can't tolerate a little badness at all, can they? Well now it's your turn to make them pay (and then some) in Cellar Door Games' quirky, addictive strategy title that puts you on the other side of things in a typical tower defense game.

Even if you don't speak Russian you are still probably familiar with matryoshkas, also known as nesting dolls. And just like the dolls this escape game unfolds in layers, each one revealing a lovely little surprise. Despite the fact that it is called a "mini-escape" Matryoshka contains all the bells and whistles expected in a well-designed escape game: easy inventory control, great puzzles, intuitive navigation, and even a save feature. Come and give Matryoshka a try and, even if you're a macho guy, discover the joy of playing with dolls (and escaping).

The McDonald's Videogame is the newest Flash creation of Molleindustria, an Italian design team dedicated to the discussion of the social and political implications of video games. Overall the game is an entertaining distraction that is definitely worth your time for the satire and laughs or if you enjoy a challenge.

LightSpeeder is a modern day update of a classic light cycle survival racing game. This Unity title features impressive visuals, dynamic cameras, and the ability to jump over light walls as you face against three AI opponents. You can also play against a friend simultaneously in split-screen.

In Submachine 4, there was a note mentioning thirty-two chambers filled with sand. Somehow, you've gotten teleported into this subterranean world. Do you need to escape? Or is there some higher purpose that's summoned you here? In addition to the obvious sand, Submachine: 32 Chambers evokes the exploration mood associated with sandbox games. There's no obvious goal at first; you need to figure that out yourself. Submachine: 32 Chambers was fully worthy of its prizes, and you won't want to miss it.

Music Bounce is a bit like Breakout, but with an unlikely musical twist. Each level presents you with a different layout of colored bricks. Your job is to wipe them all out by striking them with ammunition from an array of gates on the left side of the screen. And if everything is running properly, Music Bounce can be magical.

If you've not experienced Hashi before, Classic Hashi Light is ideal for getting familiar with the format. The goal of a hashi puzzle is to connect all of the numbered islands using a series of bridges so that every island is connected to each other in one system. Since this is Volume 1 in a periodically-released series, the difficulty might be a bit low for the experienced Hashi-head, but it's a great introduction to the puzzle for newcomers.

Trapped in a cave. Laser things shooting at you. Buttons everywhere. Spikes even
more everywhere. It's a normal day for our featureless friend in Focus, a puzzle platform game originally by Karoshi author Jesse Venbrux. Ported to the browser world by Joseph Ivie, Focus features over 50 levels of extra difficult action, sticking you in enclosed rooms with all manner of dangers and challenging you to use your platforming skills to make it out alive.

Exploit is a tile-based puzzle game with a computer hacking theme from Gregory Weir, the creator of
The Majesty of Colors and
Bars of Black and White. Plot out your moves carefully and pay special attention to incoming emails, and not only will you help the oppressed people of Locha, but you might, just might, prevent a terrorist attack here on our own soil. Good luck, hacker, you're going to need it!

Gigolo Assassin is a new point-and-click adventure from Mediatonic and created for Adult Swim. In this first installment of a three part series, you must guide your gigolo (I named mine Bruce Digelow) through an isolated tropical island in order to put a stop to the sinister goings on of one Alana Lamia. In so doing you will meet an assortment of unique (and decidedly non-unique) characters as well as solve item based puzzles much along the same vein as the old Sierra and Lucas Arts point-and-click adventures.

You Are Lucky! is a gorgeous little game, created by Shuichi Oshida, that is a cross between a point-and-click game and one from the Grow series. The aim is to uncover all ten of the characters (who look a bit like WarBears with pastel coloured turds on their heads). Unlike Grow, you don't have a list of items to check off - simply click things and see what happens.

An odd and addictive little game of violence against stick figures intent on invading your castle. From what I can glean, the gameplay has some depth by allowing you to purchase additional units and upgrades between levels.

Detective Grimoire is a point-and-click carnival murder mystery in which you play the title character, a hatless (but not hapless) crime-solver assigned to track down the murderer of Hugh Everton, ineffective caretaker of the carnival funhouse. It contains a higher-than-average level of cheese, but what good cheesy mystery doesn't?

Isle of Tune is a fairly simple webtoy, with a mere six elements that you can control to create a variety of sounds. There's just enough tools available to let you create some rather intricate loops. The pre-made loops are a great way to get an island started, and the simple sharing system is good for spreading your island creations with everyone.

Can you torque the talk? In this unusual Flash adventure game your spacecraft crash lands on an alien planet, and to escape you must observe the culture and learn a new language to communicate with the inhabitants of this alien world. Remarkable in its originality and design, as well as its gameplay.

Earning an honorable mention in our 2nd Flash game competition is Rings and Sticks, a captivating and original puzzle game from designer Komix and created expressly for the competition. More so than any other entry in the contest, Rings and Sticks took the Grow theme and made it a fundamental element of the gameplay.

This simple and elegant Flash game looks like a work of art: minimal design paired with maximum gameplay. While not an original concept, Gridlock features classic sliding-block puzzle gameplay that will surely exercise your brain. A well-executed game in the genre, and a very beautiful game to behold.

From Aztec, creator of Escape from Island and Jinja (The Shrine), comes yet another superbly crafted point-and-click adventure game, Escape from Octlien. The sci-fi themed title drops you on a spaceship with very little information on what you're supposed to do. Explore the environment, collect items, and try and make your way through this lengthy and challenging game.

Areas is a simple-looking but ultimately complex, addictive and atmospheric shooter by Ridulous. There is no text to be had in the menus, only icons, which are easy enough to figure out. And you don't click on them, or anything, throughout the game. If you want to interact with something, mouse over it and be patient, and it will unfold for itself.

For those who prefer a single-player experience, or at least one to practice with to hone one's skills in preparation for a heads-up match against another human opponent, and if a little Japanese text won't scare you off, then give Taro Ito's GameDesign Flash implementation of Hanafuda a try.

Winner of the Intel Indies film contest last week, The Wand is an animated short film by artist Nick Worthey and backed by Atom Films. Ever wonder what you would do if you found a wand that granted an unlimited number of wishes? That is just what happens to the central character in this Flash movie that is both humorous and thought provoking.

Not a game per se, but definitely fun to play with. Infinite Wheel is a series of Flash movies by Jim Johnstone that borrows samples from various 'Dub' artists and presents them in a virtual playground in which you click, drag, and mouse-over the unique and compelling interactive controls to create your own dub music mixes.

Back in 2005, Jay is Games introduced us to one of the creepiest, scariest, most popular point-and-click experiences the Web had ever seen, The House, which is still massively popular years later. It's been 5 years, and now Sinthai Boonmaitree has finally created a sequel, The House 2. Dare you enter the mind of this talented Thai flash designer? Oh,
heck yeah!

Voted Best of 2005 by the visitors of Jayisgames, the gameplay here is similar to the previous games in the series, Grow and Grow RPG. As with the others, the order in which you click the items determines the outcome of the game. Simple and delightful, these games are among the crown jewels of the Web. By Eyezmaze.

These fun, quirky little
point-and-click diversions star a large-headed, unusually plucky baby who must traverse land, sea and even across the street to rescue his beloved bamba snacks from the clutches of an evil squirrel (and then, when things take a turn for the weird, from a giant mosquito). So...adorable...excuse me while I go suck on a lemon to balance the sweetness.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who couldn't stay apart no matter how often it seemed like the world and their own emotions were trying to make that happen. A puzzle platformer with a beautiful sense of style and a sweet, nostalgic look at relationships, Mattia Traverso's game is short but well made and surprisingly warm and fuzzy.
D'awwww.

Connor Ullmann fires up the Wayback Machine for those gorgeous little retro action adventure inspired by classic 2D games like Zelda. As a little boy who was apparently born from a breath of wind, your quest for self-discovery and the wishes of your maker will take you across a huge world teeming with enemies, secrets, treasure, puzzles, and more. A beautiful little gem with classic gameplay and a satisfying adventure that is well worth checking out even if you weren't born when games like this were in their heyday.

When you look at Not to Scale, you may be thinking, "A tile swapping puzzle that looks like the final project for someone's Flash Programming 101 course? What could possibly be worth my time here?" And you'd end up missing a really enjoyable experience. By using slots for the tiles of varying sizes, and carefully selected photographs, the game gives you a unique spatial sense twisting puzzle challenge.

Looking for a little Halloween every day? Then point-and-click through the latest Zeebarf/Steve Castro gore-fest, The Visitor Returns, another installment of the saga of the disturbing pink grub and his appetite for bloody, cartoonish mayhem.

Nations need to brace themselves for a complete loss of productivity as folks all over the world once again become immersed in the major time-suckage that is a bloons tower defense game. Enough talk, time to play Bloons Tower Defense 5!

Grow ver.2 is completely different than what Grow ver.3 turned out to be, and yet the basic premise is the same as it is for all of the Grow games: Just click on the various items, one-by-one, and try to make them all reach their maximum level. Hint: order matters.

Grow RPG takes the classic formula that made the original so compelling to play, and adds additional RPG-like elements, such as enemy combat, a shop to buy health and weapons, and even a dungeon with hidden treasure. Voted Best of 2005 by the visitors of Jayisgames.

In the Dog House is a cute sliding puzzle game that tasks you with sliding rooms around a grid to create a path from dog to dogfood in the kitchen. To encourage the pup to move, simply grab the bone and drop it somewhere in the house. You'll also have to contend with mechanical contraptions such as elevators and security gates, not to mention the tempting distractions of a cat!

Bart Bonte is back with another sugary sweet installment in his popular particle physics puzzle. While adhering to the same basic concept and gameplay mechanics of the prior two Sugar, Sugar games, this sequel delivers 30 more clever levels of imaginative obstacles in a simple block design plus jazzy tunes.

Evolution has you wandering a rocky underground base filled with mysteries and puzzles, your only company an egg-headed scientist who
really likes bananas and seems to have lost his pet cat. As is the 58 Works custom, you'll pick up and use various items that come in handy here and there, and more uniquely acquire pieces of a rather cool bodysuit that gives you all sorts of new abilities. Everything that made Solitude great (an interesting environment, totally logical puzzles, simple but appropriate graphics and sound) is back in Evolution, and the new content (intermittent short cutscenes, a somewhat more artificial setting) is nothing to sneeze at either.

Escape from the Big Windows Room is definitely a great break for the mid-week, a fun pick-me-up to get you out of the doldrums. And perhaps even dream of maybe someday being able to afford to live in such a fantastic space. Hey, even in this economy, a person can dream.

Dys4ia is a retro arcade-y piece of interactive art by transsexual author Anna Anthropy about her six-month experience with hormonal therapy. Raw and emotional, but surprisingly humorous, for good or for bad, this is the kind of game that will get people thinking and talking.

It's that most special time of year again. Time to get on your softest, most comfortable pajamas, and make a mug of peppermint hot chocolate. A crackling fire would be nice, accompanied by Bing Crosby crooning about white Christmases and silver bells...as you sit down, with a sigh of contentment, to play Neutral's newest holiday room escape game. Ah, that most special time of year, indeed.

We all love metroidvanias! But would we still love them if, instead of controlling a scifi bounty hunter, or a badass vampire slayer, we played as the alphabet? Answer: Yes! And ASCIIvania, an exploration platformer by Gharding3, is the proof! ASCIIvania is clearer documentation, a map screen and a mute button away from excellence, but its still a fun time.

After successfully defeating the ginormous Gi8000 in the first mission, Bowja the Ninja is back again and this time it's Bigman's Compound that is the target of ninja stealth and fortitude. Help Bowja defeat Bigman and save innocent people before it's too late in this charming point-and-click adventure.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... OW! Ew... is that a spleen? The fifth chapter of the puzzle-platforming Karoshi series is here, and it's one of the best of the bunch. This edition comes with a flying, indestructible, Super Saiyan alter-ego, a dubious power when the goal of the game is to kill yourself.

Geez, you win a few races and you think you can take on the world! robotJAM and longanimals have gone mad with power and are using their new theme park, Ninja World, to train deadly ninja assassins... your former competitors, in fact! Set out to stop them the only way you know how (namely, through stunts, minigames, and sweet, sweet air time) in this wonderfully silly racing game packed with secrets and unlockables.

Welcome to the strange and somewhat twisted world of Tesshi-e, where the news of a friend opening a new restaurant means not only free food but a restaurant that is specifically set up as a room escape game as well. Escape from the Brick Room is a rather unimaginative title for a quite imaginative and tasty escaping experience. With gorgeous graphics, fun puzzles, and the usual twisted logic Escape from the Brick Room is a mid-week favorite for both escaping and a lovely snack, even if it is virtual. Time to visit your friend's new eatery and enjoy an escape from the everyday.

Brightly colored shapes and arrows. Classical music. Devious programming puzzles. They're all key ingredients in Jahooma's LogicBox, a rather apt name for a game involving lots of boxes and logic and made by a developer named Jahooma. Like SpaceChem and Robot Unlock before it, Jahooma's LogicBox is a game for programmers, and a good one at that. At 18 levels including 4 challenge levels, LogicBox is a little short, but Jahooma promises more to come.

The clans of the Norse-themed world of Nitrome's popular Ice Breaker series are gathering, but they need your help to release their Viking warriors from their icy, impossible, Goldbergian prisons! Ice Breaker: The Gathering provides short but succulent tidbits of new Ice Breaker levels for fans of the series.

Mr. Y is back with more room escaping goodness in Tesshi-e's 75th escaping effort, Escape from Mr. Y's Room 3. It features all that is good about Tesshi-e room escape design from the beautiful backgrounds to the easy-to-handle inventory. Welcome to Tesshi-e's world where random friends and strangers spend days creating puzzle-filled rooms for you to solve your way out of.

It's rough getting thrown in the Pit. Mainly because everyone there has the Plague, and nobody ever comes out... at least, not until you. Instead of dying, you, a mild castle librarian, unlock a hidden power within yourself that lets you and your friends battle monsters on another plane... and grants you the chance to save the world. A fantastic and engaging indie game from Level Up Labs that blends strategy, tower defense, fantasy, comedy, and even RPG elements for one wildly addictive game.

Here's a deceptively simple point-and-click puzzle game from Emiel de Graaf in which you determine just how to lay out a series of stepping stones to reach the goal. Each stone has a limited number of spaces in which it will move; select the stone and choose the direction you want it to go, using strategy to determine just how to connect pathways and successfully complete the sixteen levels. It's both easy and thoughtful, the perfect way to chill while still steppin' up those brain cells.

The full version of Auditorium is out! The purchase price gets you over 70 levels divided between 15 acts. It's five times as long as the demo was, and features much more particle-manipulating, puzzle-driven gameplay. No saving the universe, no destroying some ancient heart of evil, just a chance to listen to some good classical music and watch a light show.

There's very little to complain about with Escape Hotel 4: the puzzles are logical and flow, the navigation is pretty intuitive (except in some hidden spaces), the translations are excellent, and the pixel hunting is at a minimum. This is Tesshi-e room escaping at its best!

Improbable Island is a browser-based multiplayer RPG, consisting almost entirely of text. Almost all of it quite funny. It's jam-packed with references to everything from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: to "Sesame Street" to its own insanity. Even if you don't find it outright funny, you will still get a smile from the sheer craziness of it all. This is Improbable Island, where running into forgotten food from your refrigerator is a fairly mundane battle.

Wink: The Game is a graphical adventure in which the emphasis is on stealth over brute force. Wink is not exactly a tough guy: his most useful skill is the ability to vanish into the shadows and, whenever one of the hooded, glowy-eyed baddies passes by, creep up from behind and knock the enemy out.

Upon first beginning PonPon House 2, you may find yourself with a strange sense of déjà vu—those rounded, almost huggable graphics, those cutely surreal furnishings, they just seem so familiar. The whole experience is gentle and dreamy, without any sense of urgency or danger.

The name of Hashi, the Japanese logic puzzle, is short for
Hashiwokakero, literally "Building Bridges". This is entirely appropriate for the game of lines and connections that it is. It's interesting however, that "Hashi" can also be translated as "chopsticks", which also would be a perfectly applicable title. Of course, the appeal of the game goes far beyond linguistic trivia. That should be clear from the success Conceptis found in its previous browser collection of the puzzle. Classic Hashi Light is back in a second volume, and, with a palpable boost in difficulty, your logical reasoning will be tested like never before.

XSketch is a multiplayer Pictionary-style game with an interesting twist on gameplay and scoring. Players can jump right into any game already in progress and begin to have fun immediately. Points are earned by drawing and guessing successfully, and monthly competition leader boards give the game a real competitive feel.

This simple and strangely compelling toy was just released onto Web featuring a primitive drawing interface with which to create a track for a little character to slide upon. Save and load tracks and even try to attain objectives to increase the enjoyment from this creative little sandbox webtoy.

Yes, it's true--the twelfth and final episode of 10 Gnomes is here. Let's bid a fond farewell to our timid multitude of miniature friends. The next time you look out at the world and fail to see any magic there, just imagine a gnome hiding around every corner. Then imagine you have only ten minutes to find them all.

la Pâte à Son is an amazing sound toy created in France. This original musical piece and compositional tool was conceived to encourage musical experimentation, and its achievements surpass its goal. Not only is this toy fun to play and experiment with, it is also capable of creating some very beautiful music.

The problem with jigsaw puzzles is that they engage two conflicting parts of my brain: my hatred of disorder, and my utter lack of desire to do anything about it. You open the box and there they are, laughing at you, hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of oddly-shaped bits of cardboard. Some of them are even upside-down! White Jigsaw, by gamedesign, solves a lot of those problems: there's no picture, the pieces can't be rotated or flipped over, and it starts out small.

Trapped is a series of 5 adventure puzzle, maze games that start with a minute long "training level" and progresses to 30 minute long (if you play it ten times and memorize the maze) high quality casual gameplay experiences. You are a lonely little arrow, trapped, as the title suggests, in a maze full of simply-shaped enemies set on keeping you there for eternity. Escape if you can.

Another great word game from East of the Web, this one combines the word finding frenzy of Boggle with the scrambled word anagrams of Jumble. 8 Letters in Search of a Word is a race against the clock to score enough points to move on to the next level. Points are awarded by finding words within an 8-letter anagram, established at the beginning of each level.

This version of the classic game of Snake is remarkable in that it comes with source code and a complete tutorial explaining the code by its author, Strille of Sweden. Available on his website, the tutorial is a great way for anyone to get started programming games in Flash. The...

Almost twenty years old, Woody Pop isn't as visually stunning or innovative as recent titles such as BreakQuest, but the collision detection and level design is solid, and the bright, chunky pixels still look good.

As an unnamed stick figure stuck in a prison cell, you've got to break out of a remarkably dangerous dungeon armed with nothing more than your reflexes, wits and patience. The rapid fire pace of the rooms in Dungeon Escape can be surprisingly tense, and the depth in certain areas goes beyond any interactive movie I've seen before.

How well do your hands work together? In FireBoy and WaterGirl: The Forest Temple, you're either your own best friend or worst enemy as you simultaneously control two characters throughout fast-paced levels of puzzle-y, platform-y goodness.

Tower Bloxx is a captivating action/puzzle game originally created for mobile phones. Using the mouse button you must drop pieces of a skyscraper from a swinging crane at the top of the screen. Stack the blocks neatly or you'll be in for a tough time as the building reaches toward the sky and sways in the wind. A quest mode lets you build an entire city one building at a time and also adds a little strategy to appease the more hardcore gamer in you. It's a near-perfect blend of casual and serious gaming that everyone will enjoy.

Papa's at it again, sneakily tricking you into running his latest venture... a pancake house! It doesn't matter if you're inexperienced, the customers are at your door and you're going to have to learn that griddle on the fly. Build towers of fluffy golden goodness and decorate them with delicious toppings, earn new items for your menu OR for your shop, and even play a variety of mini-games. It's another dose of the time management action you've come to love from the Papa's series, with all the breakfast artistry you could possibly want. Now I'm hungry...

Let your fingers do the walking (and the clicking) in this latest installment of NinjaDoodle's popular point-and-click series, packed with puzzles, mini-games, monsters, sad pirates, and robot-waiters galore. In order to proceed, you'll have to find and click the play button hidden in each level, but since each stage has a different setting and different solution the answer is never the same twice!