July 2014 Archives

Stop me if you've heard this one. A plucky young boy or girl is given equipment by an eccentric professor to venture out into a colourful world to find, capture, train and evolve elemental monsters of varying rarities hiding in tall grass, while earning tokens of worth from powerful leaders, and winds up saving the world from an ancient powerful creature and a shadowy organization along the way. Sounds familiar, right? But surprisingly, ZigZaGames' RPG adventure Micromon for iOS isn't just another half-hearted Pokemon rip-off. While the influences and similarities are glaring in a lot of ways, Micromon's incredibly polished presentation, and colourful world filled with strange characters and quests, make it well worth checking out. When you find yourself sucked into a bizarre digital world, you jump at the chance to go on your very own monster catching adventure as any nerd would do, but strange things are happening in the world. A colossal Micromon appeared not that long ago and destroyed a small town, which could be tied to a mysterious artifact you just found, and there's some weird people following you... they don't want your Micromon, they want you! Micromon features a robust single player quest that's more than worth the price of admission, but sadly offers a monetization model that means players who pay will always be on top in the optional multiplayer arena if you haven't ground levels and monsters until your fingers are a fine powder. This is somehow Gary Oak's fault isn't it? I hate that guy.

In the last episode of Aries Escape, you enjoyed a sun soaked, blue sea drenched island vacation marred only by a slight wardrobe hitch: a misplaced suitcase key resulting in an inaccessible bikini. Now the holiday is over, you're returned to much more mundane surroundings and it's time to wash the spilled Mai Tai and suntan oil from your clothes. I mean, you can't always go around in a lime green cropped top and sweatpants, can you? But since this is an escape game—Aries Escape: Episode No.13 to be precise—doing laundry isn't a simple affair. Not only will you have to search the coin-op from top to bottom for the secret codes to operate the washers and dryers, you'll also have to figure out how to solve the puzzles and unlock the front door. You know, so you don't live out the rest your years in this place and become the plot for the next Japanese horror movie.

[New Version: July 2014]

It is every alchemist's dream to discover the Elixir of Life, that mystical brew which grants its drinker eternal youth. But in Tim Ned Atton's Brew or Die, the King has decreed that you should be achieving your dreams quite a bit sooner than you had initially expected. Now, just as the full moon begins to peek into your window, he has locked you in your alchemy tower, with only a surly guard and a contingent of rats for company. You have until the break of dawn to successfully discover (and concoct) this legendary potion. The king has left you but a few tools of your trade to work with: Leftover potions, the remnants of failed experiments. Tea leaves, for analyzing brews. Various metals, for transmuting potions. And of course your great alchemical reference tome, full of tips and recipes. Succeed in creating the elixir, and you will have your freedom. Brew or Die is one of those puzzle games where the thrill of discovery is easily one of the best parts of it, such that spoiling too much about it would ruin part of the fun. Fail the moody king, however, and the gallows await.

I don't do so well with rhythm and coordination. The trainers at my gym have long since made peace with the fact that trying to get me to do anything that involves more than two muscle groups ends in disaster, and that maybe some people just... shouldn't Zumba, like, ever. It doesn't stop me from trying, though, to the embarrassment of my husband or anyone who has ever been around me while I attempt my best approximation of "dancing", and it definitely didn't stop me from being really, really excited to finally play indie arcade/roguelike hybrid Crypt of the NecroDancer by Brace Yourself Games. In it, you play a young woman named Cadence who literally goes digging for trouble and winds up tumbling into the sprawling crypt of one very unique necromancer. Now, though her heart's been ripped from her by dark magic, our heroine is somehow still moving, but she has to keep to the beat if she wants to stay that way as she battles her way down through the depths filled with monsters, traps, treasure and more to take down the ancient evil once and for all. Now available in early access and playable with either keyboard, controller, or USB dance pad for the brave (or in my case foolhardy), Crypt of the Necrodancer is a fast-paced and gorgeous game that marries strategy with skill and really, really sweet tunes.

In conclusion, Firecaster's Tomorrow and Yesterday combines its simple and elegant presentation with clever and challenging timing puzzles, making it a great time at home or on the go. Wait. Sorry. Games that quantum leap me back and forth through time, like Chronotron or Cursor*10 always leave me a little muddled. But as your playing back and through this HTML5 simple idea puzzle game, your clock may get a little wound up, but you'll be having too much fun to notice. Using the [arrow] keys to move, guide the circle to the triangle exit in each level. Keys can be collected to unlock doors, and resting the circle upon an "X" can activate and deactivate walls. However, one circle can't pass all these tests by itself... or can it?

If three's a crowd and four's a party, then why not? We'll have a party just for the sake of it this week, to celebrate hump day or to herald the end of July or for a happy birthday (early, late or on time) for all our Weekday Escape crowd. Not that a reason is needed to enjoy these four free online escape games, but each brings its own brand of fun to the party. FunkyLand provides the place: hip and happening and loaded with sweets. Wanpa's Quest delivers the quirky characters and oddball jokes. Hottategoya, while a bit of a wall flower, contributes to intellectual stimulation. Best of all, Yuri brought ten very cute chicks for you to pick up...

If there is one genre the smartphone seems designed for, it's card games. Dozens, if not hundreds, of card and card collecting games have been churned out like government surplus butter. So when a rare good one comes along, we strategy nuts do a little joyful dance (much like I do in the fresh produce section of my local Whole Paycheck on payday). Behold, such a game has arrived. Star Admiral by Hardscore Games is a completely free-to-play card collecting strategy game that eschews the standards that have become rife in the genre, saying "no thank you" to both the pay-to-win model and the auto-battle snorefest we normally encounter. Instead, making your way through this game's universe absolutely never requires you to spend--it simply requires you to use your brain. You can win dark matter, salvage for light matter, and obtain everything including the best crafts and the highest ranks without ever spending a penny. You can purchase the most common currency, dark matter, with real money as a way to speed things along, but it won't give you an undue advantage, as strategy is the real focus in this game.

The fact that Smokoko S.A.'s physics-based stunt racing game Theft Super Cars doesn't use Danger Zone as its opening theme seems like a missed opportunity, but hey, nobody's perfect. Especially not you, our Ken-doll-lookin' brotagonist, who winds up owing a very powerful crime lord a very large amount of money when you're caught by the police while attempting to make a delivery for him and he bails you out. To pay him off, you'll need to track down and steal all the cars he wants, only in this case "steal" means driving the car through a psychedelic landscape full of ramps, constructs, enormous sports balls, and more to try to reach the garage before time runs out while the cops chase you with sirens blaring and rockets blazing. Yes, rockets. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to accelerate and balance, and hold [spacebar] to use your boost when the meter is full. [Z], [X] and [C] will fire rockets at the nearest hazard if you have them, but since police cars can do the same, keep an eye on your health at the top of the screen. It goes down as you take damage, and if it or the time runs out, you'll lose the level and have to try again. You'll earn cash you can spend on upgrading things like your overall speed and health, and also special parts used towards the construction of your "dream car". Which makes sense since this whole game feels like something you'd dream up after a night-long binge on pop rocks, Grand Theft Auto, and hoodies.

Getting lost in an underwater cave sounds like a nightmare for most of us, but for the team of Lampogolovii and Leric it's an adventure. Hero in the Ocean 2 is an immensely satisfying sequel, dropping the submarine from the first game into a slew of new underwater challenges. You control with the [WASD] or [arrow] keys, navigating past myriad nautical dangers including buzz saws, mines, and the odd sea monster eager to scarf you down. Unlock most submarine games, nudging the wall doesn't cost health, leaving you free to focus on exploration. The game has sort of a "Metroidvania" feel to it as you backtrack to find keys and switches to unlock doors, and the physics system is spot on, even if the puzzles take a while to get challenging. This is a game for casual players and those seeking relaxation (the beautiful soundtrack is a vacation in of itself). Lovers of gore and guns need not apply.

They're coming for you, Baaaaaaaaaarbara! Good thing you've got some serious man-and-woman-power on your side in Goody Gameworks' zombie-riddled tower-defense game Zombie Riot, where you're trying to get from one end of a newly post-apocalyptic city to the other in order to escape. Standing, or, um, shambling in your way? A whole lot of brain-eaters. In each level, zombies will come at you along set pathways, and it's your job to place defenses (in this case, characters with different abilities) in their way to kill them before they can reach the other side of the screen. Characters will only attack a zombie headed straight for them, so covering all the rows onscreen is essential. Placing characters costs Command Points, which are generated slowly over time from the golden poles onscreen, but if you place a character near one of these mysterious shiny objects, points will be generated much faster. As the game progresses, you'll find different characters with different abilities, and also be able to upgrade the ones you've got. You even have special skills you can deploy, but since each one has a cooldown before it can be activated again, you might not want to be so quick on the trigger to use them.

Life as a little green blob should be simple, shouldn't it? You're as cute as all get up, reside in the most charming cartoon world of colors and spunkiness, and have not a care in the world. Such laid back peace and quiet is nice and all, but rather boring, don't ya think? You just couldn't blame a little green blob like Filo if he started thinking existential thoughts and perhaps, along the way, tempting into being a malevolent force out the destroy the world. Filo's call to adventure wouldn't be the first to begin in this way. Yet little Filo isn't alone in his hero's quest; he has his ME and there's a lot of them. So Many Me, in fact, that Filo is well-equipped for any problem life throws in his path. And in this action-filled puzzle-solving platform adventure by Extend Studio, there are as many obstacles thrown in Filo's path as there are ways to circumvent them. Enemy fire, foes, spikes, unreachable heights and locked doors, to name a few, might at first appear insurmountable. But as Filo travels onward through his whimsical universe, you help him acquire new abilities to reach his goal in a creative twist on lemmings-style resource management. Available for both Windows and Mac on Steam, So Many Me is instantly engaging and filled to the core with enough content to absorb you for hours on end.

Realism is the name of the game in C&C Game Studio's new strategy game, Command & Control. The game blends tower defense mechanics with more free-form strategic planning in a way few browser games can match. Rather than simply marching single file down a corridor of death into the range of your artillery, the enemies will attack from multiple angles in increasing strength and speed. Tanks, trucks, and basic grunts will come parading down the dusty streets of these real-world warzones with nothing but you to stop them. Place riflemen and rocket launchers on the rooftops and be ready to call upon the chopper and bomber for some gloriously rendered retribution. It's modern warfare with a bird's eye view, always tense and thrilling.

What's a demon to do when the end of the shift is nearing and they haven't yet met their daily quota of stolen human souls? Fruit just isn't the temptation it used to be, and going down to Georgia is way too risky. Oh, and there happens to be a dangerous human wizard on the loose who wants to make your life He... erm... Heaven. But one small demon, specifically the one starring in Olip's Inner Demon: Soul Trader, is ready to become the villain Pandemonium deserves by possessing as many people as people as possible. In puzzle game fashion, no less. Mwahahaha. In fact, he's not merely content to tackle one type of puzzle; his delightfully dark adventure will see him both skidding around the room in a sliding block fashion when he's his demony self, and pushing objects in a more controlled, Sokoban-like manner when he's possessing some poor slob. Just use the [arrow] keys to make him zip along the floor until he hits something; preferably a tasty human. Once you've captured a terrified victim, you can walk them back to your portal to Hell in a more controlled fashion... if you don't need them to gather gems, push buttons, and break floors for you first. You'll have to combine you speedy sliding skills and your human-manipulating prowess to reach that wizard king and make things safe for demonkind! It's a simple idea, and it's the kind that works so nicely (or evilly) you have to wonder what took the world so long.

You wake to find yourself in a strange place. This bed is not your own; you've never even seen this house before. The small room is empty save for an old computer, desk and bookshelf. Warm light filters in through a foggy window, bathing everything in a pinkish hue. The clean hardwood floor is partly covered by a soft looking purple carpet. This place is beautiful, but unsettling. And this is the first view you'll have of the breathtaking world of Oneshot. Made for the 2014 Indie Game Maker contest and downloadable free for PC, Mac and Linux, Oneshot is a puzzle-based adventure which plays only in windowed mode, and yes, there is a reason for that. No, it's not a room escape, though the game's first few minutes would certainly have you believe so. It's not a horror game, but it is certainly atmospheric and has a few untraditionally "creepy" moments. The game's co-developers, Mathew Velasquez and Casey Gu, describe the experience as a mission to "guide a lost child through a strange world, utilizing items, characters, and the environment to progress." That could describe most any adventure game. With such an intentionally vague description, it is difficult for any player to have any idea what this game is really about—and that's the point. This is a game about exploration and mystery, the kind of experience you're meant to have with as little prior knowledge as possible. Don't even read any comments before you start, or it will be spoiled for you. All the information you need is the controls: move your character with the [arrow] keys, perform actions and use items with [Z] or [spacebar], and use [X] to open the menu. Now go play it. Oh, one last thing: put some time aside, because once you begin, you can't stop playing it for at least a little while. Luckily, this reviewer's hardware is sturdy enough that I was able to see everything through to the end, but other players have told horror stories of computers shutting off mid-game and losing everything. There are three moments throughout the game where you can save and quit safely, and you'll know them when you find them, but that's it.

In Mad Head Games' hidden-object adventure Nevertales: Shattered Image, you and your husband, Pierre, have your hands full with your daughter Alice. Only instead of normal pre-teen annoyances like pirating music or putting the milk back in the fridge empty, she's been opening portals to other worlds even though you expressly told her not to. See, although you and Pierre share the same ability, Alice can open these portals using mirrors alone, and though you've warned her these places she opens doors to aren't always safe, your worst fears come to pass when you find her in a coma on the floor next to a broken mirror. The night she finally awakes, however, a strange creature hauls her off through yet another mirror, and to bring her safely home, you'll need to discover the root behind the mysterious power your family can wield, and put a stop to an ancient evil, because it isn't a hidden-object adventure if there's no ancient evil threatening something. I think that's the number one sign you might one day become a protagonist in a casual game is if your day-to-day life involves a lot of stories and warnings about ancient evils. Search for clues, solve puzzles and hidden-object scenes, and travel to worlds beyond your own in a way that the nerdiest of us always knew was possible. Butterfly in the skyyyyyyy....

Playing DrawManEater's point-and-click adventure Nekra Psaria is weird, mostly because Nekra Psaria is really weird. And surreal. And sort of disturbing. It calls itself an escape game, though that might be only in the loosest sense. See, you're watching television when your generator quits on you, and you need to find fuel for it. You know this because your generator is an enormous talking head. It is at this point you might find yourself channeling Mabel Pines as you nervously chuckle to yourself, "What is haaaaappening here?", but you'll have to press on and explore one seriously strange city in order to win. To play, all you need to do is click on zones that highlight to show you can interact with them. If you need to use an item from your inventory, just click it at the top of the screen, and it'll automatically be used if you're in the correct location. In some cases you can find notes scattered around to help you figure out what to do, or a character might tell you what they want, but largely you're left to explore on your own. Search every scene and every angle, pay attention to your environment, and tell me I'm not the only one who suddenly feels like it's the nineties and we're watching MTV Animation again.

In Hypnotic Owl's turn-based puzzle The Wizard, titular magic maestro Kevin loses his most precious treasure... his face. That's right, someone has literally made off with his moneymaker, and he has no choice but to pursue the thief through the sewers and into a dangerous castle filled with tricks, traps, treasure, and beasties galore that would love to chew Kevin's non-existent face right off. The game is divided into levels, with the goal being to make it safely past any dangers and to the exit, casting spells to deal with anything that gets in your way. Click and drag on green tiles to make a path, but beware... monsters will come after you if they spot you. You can click a creature to see its range, which will be helpful in planning your method of attack. See, as you play, you'll unlock new spells for Kevin (how great a wizard can he be if he literally has no magic until you find it for him?) that need to be triggered by drawing specific patterns. When you find a spell, it'll go to his notebook in the upper-right corner of the screen for you to refer to. Click on Kevin, and then draw the spell's path around him to cast. As you incinerate monsters, you'll actually level up, which can earn you points to upgrade spells you've discovered. Sadly, no upgrade for the Magic Missile will allow you to attack the darkness. Hey, can I have a Mountain Dew?

iOS puzzle adventure game The Phantom PI: Mission Apparition by Rocket 5 Studios Inc manages to make dismemberment, stalking, haunting, and signing over your eternal soul absolutely adorable as you play Paranormal Investigator Cecil, who helps ghosts with their problems. The ghost with the most (issues, that is) here is Marshall Staxx, who's being bullied by a gluttonous demon named Baublebelly who keeps stealing important mementos from Staxx's rock-n-roll career. Once inside the strange mansion Staxx is, uh, "living" in, however, Cecile discovers this is no ordinary place... the doors don't seem to obey the laws of physics, spooks and danger lurk around every corner, and then there's Famke, the girl who used to be Staxx's number one fan and now just wants to make sure Cecil doesn't get in her way while she loots the place. Cecil has no choice but to keep following Baublebelly deeper into the mansion, learning the secrets behind the place and Staxx's bizarre demise, in this vibrant and funny point-and-click puzzle game aimed at players of all ages.

It ain't easy bein' freezy in Gameshot's physics puzzle game Freezy Mammoth. All your wooly little friends want to do is get inside their igloos, ideally nabbing all three stars on each level along the way, but they're frozen solid. Luckily for them, you can defrost, and refrost, both them and any other frozen elements on any stage with a click. Every mammoth needs to reach the exit safely, so if even one of them topples off into the icy abyss that apparently constitutes the rest of their world, you'll need to try again. As a result, you'll need both quick thinking and quick reflexes to get them home, taking into account the way freezing a moving object affects momentum and even the angle they might be falling. All of which sounds like a lot to ask an animal in order to ensure survival. Heck, I consider it a success if I remember to wear a jacket when the temperature starts dropping outside. I'm not actually sure I deserve my place at the top of the food chain, which basically means I'm constantly on the lookout for wolves.

So I had to look up what Warcraft actually was, as opposed to being that MMORPG you play if you're not still putting around Ultima Online and too invested to quit. I wanted to feel like I was at least a little qualified to even look at Blizzard Entertainment's card-based strategy game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, available free for iPad, Windows, and Mac. (Free account registration required.) With the release of their new single-player expansion, The Curse of Naxxramas, it seemed like a good time to dive in and see what all the fuss has been about, though I was more than a little apprehensive about it. Though the first act of the new expansion is free, you'll need to pay for the others, but even if you aren't willing to crack open your wallet, you can still play practice missions or against other players online without paying a penny. Any game that offers multiplayer with microtransactions is automatically a little suspicious... free-to-play can easily turn into pay-to-win, after all. Fortunately, Hearthstone manages to provide some seriously addictive and strategic gameplay without ever feeling like it's leaning on your wallet. Unlike other free-to-play games, there are no timers or other restrictions placed on how often you play, either against others or by yourself, so you can play the game as much as you want.

When you unwrap your Weekday Escape delivery this week, you're in for a bit of a variety. These three escape games have little in common but one thing: pure puzzling entertainment. You could dig into our weekly package of fun in any order you choose, or try it omakase-style, starting with a fruity dish of whimsy in a grapefruit dressing from FunkyLand, a mental palate cleansing course of puzzles from Yomino Kagura, then a No1Game and Sneedle fusion geared toward the more adventuresome minded. They come with a money-back guarantee to please while you look forward to next week's escapers' curation...

For everyone who ever got in trouble during science class for mixing things to see what would happen and wound up singeing their eyebrows off, H.F. Games' sandbox puzzle simulation ReactionLab for Android was basically a dream come true. With 42 different elements like fire, water, hydrogen, and radon to experiment with, you could draw onscreen and simply make explosions, discover the way certain elements interacted, or even build. Now the game is back with more mayhem in ReactionLab 2. Sporting twelve new elements, rewind and zoom functions, a save feature, and more, it's an infinitely more healthy way to get the destructive scientific genius in you the opportunity to experiment... which is what we're going to call it to be polite when you cackle softly to yourself while playing this in public and people begin edging away.

You've been thrown out of your home and on your birthday too! You're going to have to go through Hell to get back. And I mean that as literally as possible, seeing as you're a demon and you sort of live there. Escape to Hell is from both Rob Donkin and Jay Armstrong, the latter of whom did Bearbarians so you know you're in for an action packed, dungeon-crawl brawl as you cross over the dimensional planes trying to get home. Traveling through, apparently, cost money but thankfully you can get jobs along the way. Smashing important statues, collecting magical items, saving little demons who were taken by the larger demons, or just the good old slaughter rewards you stars you can then use to cross onto the next area where new monsters await. This game makes use of both the keyboard and the mouse, and while doable with a track pad, its probably best if you have the real thing for the later levels.

Something has gone horribly wrong aboard the Nautilus. All the power on the submarine is out. The great Captain Nemo is deceased. And you've come to a dead stop on the sea floor. It seems like a nearly impossible situation to escape from. But where there's a will, and ingenuity, there's a way. In Nautilus Escape, from Just Pine Games, you will not go down with this ship, as you endeavor to get the sub back in working order and find your way back to dry land. You'll have to make use of both the items in your surroundings and unravel the puzzle-like mechanical workings of the ship to get back to the surface. Just click around your environment to investigate; the cursor changes to indicate clickable objects, and the game even helpfully explains what you're hovering your mouse cursor over before you even click on it. When you've built up an inventory, just click on the items you're carrying to use them; although you can't zoom in on them, you can still combine them by clicking in succession on the two items you want to put together. Stay strong, sailor... Even if there is something kind of creepily atmospheric and fun about being trapped 20,000 leagues under the sea!

Ever wanted to live in the world of Joss Whedon's Firefly but in bright colors and the lording government replaced by a loan shark? Well RokSoft has you covered in their new, Android game, Space Trading Profiteer. A turn-based strategy game of trading and hauling cargo, you'll get the vague feeling that you're playing Pocket Planes in space. With a single goal of rising to domination over the eight other traders, who will be the first to garner 1 million Chings and corner the transportation of black market goods? Or the less exciting legal stuffs, if you don't like the excitement of running from the cops.

Chilled out, smart, and difficult without being frustrating, TacTicTos Studios' Quebrix is everything a puzzle game should be. The game offers you thirty levels of picture sliding puzzles set to a smooth jazz soundtrack that could play in only the classiest of elevators. Simply slide each segment of the picture to try and assemble a recognizable image. Take your time. There are more points for fewer tries, and you get rewarded with a deep inspirational quote from one of history's great thinkers when you succeed. It's like an interactive motivational poster, perfect for any mid-workday break. Also, the hint system won't solve the puzzle for you. You have a limited number of hints you can play that only move the puzzle one move towards completion, so if you run out and remain stuck, you're stuck for good until you earn more by solving puzzles with the minimum moves.

From the very first time 58Works placed us in front of a door and said, "Go ahead, go on through... if you can figure out how," we were charmed. Straightening our shoulders, grinning widely, we sauntered over to it and it opened. The next one wasn't as simple as that: a key was to be found before any door was to be got past. After that, the machinations involved in door opening continued to evolve. "Alright," we thought, "so we're playing games here, are we?" But from that moment on, the fixation was irrevocably set. Which is why we're so happy to see DOOORS 4, a surprisingly inventive endless escape escape game available to play on your iOS or Android mobile device. As usual in these matters, your goal in DOOORS 4 boils down to finding what needs doing to unlock and exit the door. This can mean a lot of things, though—tapping to move obstacles or using helpful tools, swiping to push things out of the way or operating a dial, tilting and shaking your device for... well, various reasons in puzzle purposes.

You know, I wouldn't exactly call myself a Biblical scholar, but I really don't remember the part in the story of Noah where God called down fleets of giant robots along with the rains. But if Berzerk Studios' Kick the Critter is to be believed, this is but one of the many trials faced by poor Noah in addition to his sudden acquisition of beachfront property. Or rather, faced by one small, unassuming beastie whom the perhaps not-so-poor Noah unceremoniously voted off the boat. Since he's kind of into the whole "perpetuation of his species" thing, you'll have to help launch him to get him onto the ark. Just click to set the angle and power of your kick, and watch him fly! You can click again when he's airborne to send him dashing forward, and if the type of kicker you're using has any "Smash" shots, you can press the [spacebar] when he gets close to the ground for additional kicks. Oh, did we mention that you can buy a wide range range of alternate kicking machines with different stats, so you can tailor your critter-kicking experience to your liking? Because you can totally do that. You can also upgrade your critter, and even the various obstacles and objects scattered around the field have their own power levels. And did we mention that you can even play a variety of amusing minigames in-between your punting sessions? While it starts off with the simple arcade formula that makes launch games so addictive, Kick the Critter brings with it a wealth of extra content.

They say an artist puts their soul into their works of art. Apparently, it also happens when restoring paintings too; quite literally in the case of Painted Hearts, a free indie RPG. A young acolyte named Corbin, who is training to be a Pictomancer, is called in to restore a very historical painting, but it's not the paint cracking or fading on this piece that's the problem. Pestilence, a strange mysterious monster, is actively destroying the grand image and Corbin must stop it before the prominent picture is lost forever. It is not an easy journey to take, especially for such a young boy still in training, but with the help of his own creations they will fight through till the end and destroy the Pestilence before it conquers them. With stunning artwork, fantastic vocals, and a unique fighting system that is a puzzle in itself, this is one game you're going to want to see through to the end. And did I mention it's free? Because it's totally free.

NOTE: the online Flash version of the new edition of Matryoshka is available to play from July 19 - July 27 only.

You're in a room that appears to be round; this is confirmed as you tap the arrows at the sides or swipe left and right on the screen, inspecting your surroundings. It's a pleasant enough room, painted in a pastel palate of blues and whites, a fashionably modern yet comfortable looking sofa, plant, desk, picture... but no door! As pretty as this room may be, eventually one has to eat, breath the fresh air, go to work. But how? To do that, investigate your surroundings, look for hints to help you solve the visual riddles nestled all about the room. Maybe then you can peel back the layers of this deceptively congenial trap and make your way out of Matryoshka (New Edition), available for iOS and Android, as well as on your browser for a limited time. The appeal of this cleverly inventive escape game by Kotorinosu, like the Russian nesting dolls it's named after, is in its many layers and surprises held within. Besides the satisfaction that comes from having your mental prowess challenged—and succeeding—there is much to enjoy in Matryoshka's design with very cool visuals and fun animations to reward your progress.

Free indie horror adventure Somnium is the kind of game Salvador Dali would frame on his wall and Freud would weep with giddiness to play, so you know you're in for a mind melting experience. Play as a boy named Thomas who is too scared to venture outside of his room and thereby does what we all wish we could do every time our alarm goes off. He lays around all day in bed and dreams. But if you had the dreams Thomas has you'd probably never want to lay down again. Each dream is more surreal than the last and the deeper you venture in the dream and the longer you play, the creepier they can become. In the dreams, however, are memories for Thomas to collect and while each dream has four of them, you can only gain one from each. Your choice is take a quick way out to find your assumed safe and peaceful harbor of reality, or dig deeper, treading the darkness to find the memories that really matter.

Let's get one thing straight early on... Larian Studios' turn-based RPG Divinity: Original Sin is not cheap, but it is huge, clever, entertaining, challenging, and packed with replay value. Set well before the events in Divine Divinity, you control two characters you'll create from scratch who are Source Hunters. Typically tasked with tracking down people who use magic for evil, you find yourselves sent to a remote seaside town to solve a murder, but quickly realize something big is happening. It's up to you and a group of rag-tag companions to save the world... but you'll have to do a lot to get there. Like join a pyramid scheme. Dig up graves. Unlock a portal dimension. Settle a blood feud. Help a cat find true love. Decide the fate of a lovestruck orc. And that's just before you leave the town! Sporting a new turn-based battle system that makes use of the elements in creative (and devastating ways), stunning visuals, party members, and all the piles of sidequests, humour, and exploration fans of the series have come to expect, Divinity: Original Sin is both massive, and massively fun for fans of classic computer RPGs and newcomers alike.

Step aside, Hercule Poirot, there's a new kid in town. And this one solves crimes without a fancy waxed moustache, so take that, you pompous Belgian snoop! (Disclaimer: the author of this article actually thinks Poirot is awesome) Now get your trench coat and your fedora, detective, we have a case to crack! In Eipix's newest hidden-object adventure, Dead Reckoning: Silvermoon Isle, our victim du jour is Veronica West, your stereotypically perfect red-dress-blonde-hair Hollywood star. She was having herself a little birthday party on a secluded island when things took a sinister turn and the dame took a tumble from the top of the lighthouse. I guess birthdays just bring some people down. I'm terrible at puns. All the suspects are still on the island, and there is a huge mansion to be combed through. You've got your work cut out for you, detective. And put that swimsuit back, there ain't no time for sunbathing.

We're not even sure what these monsters did that makes them so horrible. Poor fashion choices? Body odor? It's not our place to judge. What we do know is that it's fun chopping them to pieces with a laser gun and watching the bits fly hither and thither across quirky, creative maps. That's just what the team at Best Physics Games have given us in Cut the Monster 2, a physics-based puzzle game that marries Rube Goldberg contraptions with a hefty dose of schadenfreude. Simply aim the laser cannon with the [mouse] at various reflector plates, buttons, levers and ropes, and watch the monsters tumble and slide into firing range. Slicing them up is a joy, even if the path to get them there is fraught with trial and error.

Sometimes you really have to carve into a thing to reach its essence, to see the hidden meanings just below the surface, to open up answers ready for the taking. This is even more true in Yonashi's whimsy-doused escape game, Cut!. Everything you need to open the cupboards and get the exit key is near at hand, as long as you have the correct tool and know just how to cut out the distracting excess. You begin the game with nothing at all, though, and you may feel at a loss for how to solve the wall of puzzles in front of you. So you must explore the room, following a changing cursor to zoom in on interactive areas, clicking the grey bars at the sides and bottom of the screen to navigate, until you find something to help you get started. Then, though, your next task is figuring out how to use that one inventory item to help you acquire others. As you investigate everything in sight and put together clues, you'll be able to decipher more codes and make more progress toward your eventual escape.

A collaboration between Adult Swim and the adorably monicker'd Grumpy Face Studios, strategic defense game Castle Doombad, available for iOS and Android, has been out for a while now. In it, under the not cute whatsoever direction of Dr Evilstein, you're in charge of placing all manner of foul traps to fend off and destroy the heroes assaulting his castle to try to rescue the Princess, whose screams you're harvesting to fund trap production. Completing levels earns you coins you can spend on purchasing new traps and equipment, or upgrading your existing ones, because if there's anything better than cute, puppy-like devouring minions, it's cute, puppy-like devouring minions that are also on fire. As of today, however, Castle Doombad: Free-to-Slay hits, and as the name implies, it's a free incarnation of the game, but don't start curling your lip in disgust just yet. Though supported with ads between some levels and the ability to remove them for a flat fee, what the free incarnation doesn't come with is a whole lot of aggressive rebalancing designed to lean on you hard and force you to cough up extra cash. Though challenging, it's never unfair, and with a fantastic vibrant design and oodles of fun traps to unlock, Castle Doombad might just show free-to-play doesn't need to be a bad thing if developers are this dedicated to working with their players rather than against them.

Note: Currently the game has a bug where selecting "Next Level" after finishing your current stage opens a tab to the sponsor's website, though you will still proceed to the next stage. We will update with a fix as soon as one is available, but in the meantime if you wish to avoid it, you can return to the level select screen between stages and advance manually.

No one could say why the cat decided to destroy humanity that day. One too many disrespectful YouTube videos? Revenge for the discontinuation of Tender Vittles? No one knew. Perhaps more importantly, no one seemed to know how the cat managed to obtain that gigantic mecha-warrior, filled with all sorts of lasers that go pew and bombs that go boom. Does humanity have any chance at defeating it? Probably not! Purrmageddon is a side-scrolling arcade rail-shooter with a unique aesthetic by Ice Fix Games that lets you play as as one grumpy kitty crushing the whole world under his iron paw. You'll use the mouse to aim your ever-firing weapon as you walk at the assortment of soldiers, tanks, blimps, rocket launchers and other human-driven craft in your way, attempting to blast them before they collide with you and chip into your health bar. Defeated enemies will release cash boxes that must be collected with your cursor to score points. Falling from the sky will also be various power-ups that, when shot down, will be applied automatically or kept in reserve to be used with a click. New upgrades are automatically applied to your Mecha between levels, some more useful than others, especially as the later levels start getting filled to the brim with enemies. Defeat all 20 waves of enemies and the world becomes your personal litter box.

Something is very wrong. There is an energy of unknown origin and intent seeping into our world. It is known as Exotic Matter. The world is a much stranger place than you'd think. Particles of energy float invisibly through the ether that can only be seen with the proper app on your portable device. Now iOS users can learn what Android folks have known for a while now. An Ingress is in progress and the future of mankind is unclear. Is it a wildly popular and engaging massively multiplayer online adventure or is it an actual conspiracy that spans the globe? Only you can decide. Ingress uses Google Maps, Google Earth, and the GPS in your device to show the local area overlayed with the ubiquitous energies and portals. Travel to portals located at local landmarks and places of interest, and attempt to either capture (if it is in the hands of the enemy) or protect the portal. Once you've downloaded the app it will walk you through a series of tutorial missions exposing the hidden secrets that permeate the landscape.

The premise of Sigma Studios' physics puzzle Laser Cannon 3 Levels Pack is that monsters have overrun the world, but I'm not entirely sure we need to get Buffy or the Doctor on the line just yet since the monsters' main activities seem to be "standing around looking dopey" and "loitering in close proximity to things that could be fatal with just a bit of coaxing". Still, we've got ourselves a laser cannon as the title implies, and the only way to win is to find a way to electrocute, incinerate, crush, or otherwise render finito the creatures in each stage, using as few shots and as fast as possible. Just use the mouse to aim and fire, either directly at those hideous monstrosities, or using their environment to take them out. Some surfaces will reflect the laser beam, for example, while things like chains can be blasted through. Destroying all the monsters is usually easy enough, but doing so fast enough and with enough combos to get all three stars is another matter entirely.

In this spot is where I introduce our weekly episode of Weekday Escape, a choice selection carefully culled from the burgeoning crops of free escape games along the internet landscapes. Here you might get a brief idea of what's in store for you, and as you've come to expect, you'd see there's another quest for five sweet treats in FunkyLand's Candy Rooms, or a package to dismantle in another episode of Find the Escape-Men, as well as something new, a "handmade escape game" from Tototo Room in which you must find 11 buttons. Or maybe you just see the colorful banner, think "Awesome sauce! More escape games," and skip straight to the fun stuff. Hey, it's cool, I get it. Go play. Have a good time! We can always chat it up later...

It's likely that anyone who has ever sat at a desk job has encountered the boredom buster Minesweeper. Such a great way to make it over the afternoon lull, as long as the boss isn't looking, that is. (I swear I got Dora's permission before spending hours on this game. Promise!) Galta has brought the old favorite back to our attention in the mobile multiplayer puzzle game A Few Billion Square Tiles, for your iOS device. So now you don't even need a desk job to be able to play. You just have to pull out your phone. The goal is to reveal blue and yellow tiles on the board to capture as much territory as you can while at the same time getting the highest score you can. All while other players from around the world are doing the same thing.

No1Game is best known for the staggeringly enormous catalog of Find the Escape-Men games, so a different escape game is bound to make a few heads perk up in interest. Bump Bump may look like a single-scene game, and, well, it kinda is, but it's got a few surprises up its sleeves too even if it's still on the short and easy side. To play, you just click to interact, and click an item in your inventory to highlight it for use, or on its question mark to get a close up view to see if you can manipulate it in an unexpected way. Sadly, there's no changing cursor to be seen, so if you're stuck, you're going to have to fall back on that ancient gamer prehistoric standby of clicking everything from every angle until you're blue in the face. Don't be fooled, however... there's more here than meets the eye, and you might find your perspective changing in some unexpected ways. Watch your head!

DA-na-nahh, DA-na-nahh... sliding bulkily down ropes on a rappelling harness. Infiltrating enemy headquarters. Tiptoeing through shadowy hallways, awkwardly displacing the furniture with five hundred pounds of body weight. Hurray! It's Spy Bear, the new physics projectile puzzle from Justin Villegas. Levels are comprised of oodles upon oodles of slack-jawed, uniformed guards who've positioned themselves tragi-comically in just the right spots to enable you to set up trick shots, and off several if not all of them with a few carefully-placed blasts from the diverse array of gadgets in your arsenal. Seriously. These guys have stationed themselves directly under heavy chunks of metal, immediately adjacent to barrels full of combustible chemicals, and lined up with easy angles for your shots. Whatever they're teaching bottom-rung guards these days at Nefarious Henchman School, it sure as heck isn't rudimentary physics. Aim and shoot with the mouse, and you'll quickly make friends with the [R] key to restart a level when you've used up too many shots. You'll be awarded up to three stars per level for efficiency, so you'll find yourself using it over and over again whenever a shot didn't go exactly as planned. This has the propensity to eventually feel a bit like you're just pixel-hunting, trying to find just the right trajectory through trial-and-error, but the frustration fades away with the satisfaction of watching five guards drop with just one well-placed shot.

It's an age-old story. You're soaring through space in your brand new ship, approaching an asteroid belt at high speeds. Odds of surviving such a place are approximately 3,720 to 1. Yet here you are, drifting through dreamland, coaxed to sleep by the tender curls of your magnificent, luxuriously soft beard. By the time you realize what's happening, it's too late! Your spaceship is crash landed on a desolate asteroid and your face is redder than a tomato on Mars. The nuts and bolts from your spaceship have scattered across the empty expanse of space before you, floating in shimmering lines of silver and gold. What's there to do? Why, strap on your space boots and go planet hoppin', of course! This deep space adventure, now available for both iOS and Android, is about to take you Beyond Gravity. While developer Qwiboo describes the game as a kind of "platformer," in reality it plays much like a cross between Jetpack Joyride, Escape the Red Giant and Nitrome classic Space Hopper. Your simple objective is to progress as far as you can jumping from planet to planet without hurtling into the deadly abyss. Boasting simple one button tap-to-jump gameplay and an assortment of achievements to conquer, Beyond Gravity will get you hooked after a single play.

Spiral Drive takes its notes from the heyday of games like Starcraft and Alpha Centauri, blending space-based sci-fi action and a thoughtful, accessible control scheme. This real-time strategy game by Nico Tuason puts you in charge of a fleet of beautifully rendered ships, having you maneuver, combine and separate them to defeat an array of evolving foes. Hardcore strategy fans will find the game somewhat quaint. There's only one ship type for the main campaign and units build automatically. On the other hand, this allows you to focus your attention on the various flanking and capturing tactics you'll need to seize victory from the jaws of defeat. Simply select a contingent of ships with the mouse and move them to each space station, capturing them (and frequently losing and recapturing them) and choosing the best time to strike. Think of it like real-time space checkers with an awesome look and great soundtrack, perfect for any strategy aficionado wanting to conquer the universe during a few lunch breaks.

Poor, poor Red and Green. They were two adorable, beastly catlike creatures... One might even call them MeowBeasts... with all their lives ahead of them, who turned to a life of crime to support their crippling candy habits. It would almost be tragic, what became of these two Candy Thieves, were it not for one thing: Helping them feed their addiction is just too much fun! This hybrid puzzle game pulls elements from Angry Birds, Bloons, and everything physics: Shoot wads of fluff out of an adorable googly-eyed cannon to push stuff around on the stage, and reunite Red and Green with their matching colors of candy. Use [W] and [S] to move the cannon up and down, and the mouse to aim; you can even make your attacks weaker or stronger by moving the cursor closer to or father from the cannon! And if at all possible, do it in a small number of shots; these guys need their sugar NOW, and they don't want to be kept waiting! The individual aspects of Candy Thieves are all tried-and-true, including the candy theme itself, but the way they're combined leads to something new and exciting.

Join the zany action and the crazy contraptions, because the fun is catching, it's Mousecraft! A puzzle game by Crunching Koalas that plays like a mix of Lemmings and Tetris, Mousecraft has you step into the paws of Cat Scientist Schrödinger. Which is to say, a scientist who is a cat, not scientist of cats. Just wanted to make that clear. Anyways, Schrödinger is hard at work trying to unlock the secrets of a mouse-powered machine. Sadly, recent Cat Science budget cuts has reduced his pool of test subjects to a trio of sightless specimens, and you'll see how they run head-long into all kinds of danger. You'll be using everyone's favorite four-segment dropping blocks, tetrominoes, to make a path to their cheesy reward, but of course, it's never that simple... Each of the game's levels has you helping Schrödinger in his experiment by leading at least one of the three blind mice to the cheese pad. Mice will travel in the direction they are facing until they meet with an obstacle. They can jump up one block level, but anything more than that, and they'll reverse course. They can also safely fall up to three block levels, but more than that, and they're off to mouse heaven. Unless, of course, something is there to catch them, like a pool of water. Too long under, though, and they'll drown.

So I was walking down a street one night when a door caught my attention. Being the adventurous sort I knocked and went in...wait, to anyone acquainted with Tesshi-e's room escape efforts this scenario is entirely too familiar, but it's not May so why is the opening from Mild Escape playing? Could it be that Tesshi-e has once again gone back into the vault and re-made another early effort? Why, yes it is! Welcome to Mild Escape 2 (2014), the designer's re-imagining of one of their early escape games.

In the game of love, its a dog eat dog world out there. Literally, in the case of HollyRose's visual novel and RPG. In Dog Eat Dog, help Daryl find his missing pup, Tyke, while trying to fight off the canine infection called D.E.D. Hordes of dogs roam the street, attacking dog and human alike, and Daryl must find Tyke before its too late. On top of all this, a strange but slightly familiar (and very cute) woman has shown up at his door, professing to know him. Mystery abounds but so does love, because hey, there's no time like the present, even if that present is a near dog-zombie apocalypse. Make choices for Daryl that not only help him get with one of the two ladies that show up, but also unravel the mystery and attempt to save humanity.

The life of a mayfly is a short one, but that doesn't mean it's uneventful. As far as the titular character in SuperChop Games' musical adventure Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is concerned, there is far more to life than fleeting about along the waterways and musing about the various shades of green one encounters. There is a whole world to explore, friends to meet, enemies to thwart and love to share—all with an accompanying soundtrack to match the epic proportions of a life lived to the fullest. For you, the player, Ephemerid is a uniquely interactive iOS game of paper craft landscapes, rock'n'roll lights shows and thrilling escapades. Ephemerid wordlessly invites you to experiment with the environment, one that is hand-crafted from paper, glass and paint. In this way the game feels remarkably tactile as you tap and swipe the screen to make things happen from the beginning of a mayfly's life to the...end? In each stage, you're tasked with discovering just what to do to move the mayfly forward, removing obstacles or bouncing off flowers or defeating a foe. Usually this involves tapping at the right moment similar to a one button runner. Other times, launch physics are called on. Yet, however the action takes place, the emphasis remains solidly on the story and the musical harmony that drives it forward.

Shh! Don't tell anyone, but I've heard about this abandoned mine teeming with amazing crystals. I swear it's totally legit and I'll only take a 25% cut of what you find. Deal? Deal. Oh, there's one more thing you should know. It's also infested with spiky turtles and bats. In Hidden Crystals of Deep Earth, a puzzle platform mining game by Dharmasta Adriwara Widhayaka, the hero presumably took such a deal (how else do you find these places?), and now it's up to you to help him out. The goal of the game is to collect the three crystals on each level, which despite the name, aren't hidden at all, and make it to the exit alive. Use the [arrow] keys to move and jump, and push the [spacebar] while holding an [arrow] key to mine in that direction. It's important to note that you can mine while jumping, as there are levels you can't pass unless you use this technique. Miners are tough, but do still get tired, so you've got a limited number of blocks you can chop before you wear yourself out, indicated by the pick at the bottom of your screen. If you run out of moves, hit [R] to restart the level. Ready to strike it rich?

For most of us, an annoying relative is usually the uncle who always double-dips in the salsa at parties, the sister-in-law who assumes you can always babysit, or the cousin who thinks a t-shirt with a tuxedo screen-printed on it qualifies as "formal wear". Those of us who play hidden-object adventures, however, know that it could be a lot worse. In ERS Game Studios' Beyond the Unknown: A Matter of Time, your family needs help with something a little more complex than uninstalling a bunch of toolbars from their PC. You're on your way to an island where time has become "unstuck", and there you discover your grandfather's, ehhh, liberation of an ancient sarcophagus might have made some powerful deities just an eensy bit angry. I guess not every Time Lord is all about fish fingers and custard, since this one has cursed everything on the island until you can find and return the four golden eagles to the temple the sarcophagus was stolen from. Thanks a lot, Granddad. Couldn't you just need my help "downloading the Wi-Fi" on your phone or something? Together with your little yip-yip dog companion, who can sniff out clues if you show him certain items, you'll have to solve puzzles, search for useful items, and try not to get flung off a cliff by harpies. Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't help your family out, just that you might not want to set a precedent of being able to, y'know, save the world while they sit around.

If you're all filled up on cookies, why not got on an adventure to work it off? Nothing serious. Little stroll. Maybe some cardio. Endless cavalcade of colourful demons and monsters. That sort of thing. Playsaurus' Clicker Heroes is their entry into the incremental idle game genre, popularized by titles like Cookie Clicker, and it's all about heroes. And clicking. And coins. And clicking. And monsters. Mostly clicking, though. Click on monsters to attack and deal damage, and when they're destroyed, they'll drop loot, which you can pick up with a sweep of your mouse or will be automatically added to your coffers after a few seconds. Then keep clicking on monsters and getting more loot. To the left of your endless funnel of beasties is where you'll find your heroes, and though in the beginning you'll only have access to one, as you earn more cash you'll unlock more. Like, a lot more. Once they've been bought, everyone except Cid, the first hero you can buy, will attack monsters for you automatically, and not only can you pay to level them up, but at level milestones you can also purchase items that drastically increase their total Damage Per Second. You need to defeat ten monsters in each area before you can move to a new map, and every five levels you'll encounter a boss, who needs to be slain within thirty seconds or the battle starts over again! The game runs by itself in another tab or window, so you can leave it alone and check on it whenever you want once your heroes are doing all the work. Just like a real manager! I'm gonna need you to stay late tonight and slay that infernal cosmic slime horror from beyond the nether. If you could just do that, that would be greaaaaaaaat.

At what point do you stop bailing those helpless little monkeys out? At what point do you say, "Monkey, the time has come for you to be your own hero. You need to save yourself for once. Teach a monkey to fish, and all that. Monkey, get your life together." ... though maybe that's a lot to ask of a species that thinks eating bugs off of someone else's body is the height of a romantic evening. (Everyone knows you save that for your anniversary. That's your ace in the hole, son.) In Pencil Kids' point-and-click puzzle adventure Monkey GO Happy Sci-Fi 2, like last game, your mini-monkeys have once again been monkey-napped by an evil galactic empire, because in science fiction, any body of power in the galaxy has to be evil. Click to interact and solve puzzles, dragging inventory items to the place onscreen you'd like to use them, and keeping an eye out for the codes you'll need to bypass certain obstacles.

Playing Shortbreak Studios' action adventure/point-and-click puzzle escape game Hellraid: The Escape for iOS is sort of weird. The gist is that you're trapped and tormented by demons in an infernal world brought about by a power-hungry wizard, and you begin to find notes left behind by a totally legit sounding and not at all suspicious benefactor who claims he was imprisoned for trying to help, and he's willing to help you if you'll just release him. Standing in your way are a series of eight chambers filled with lethal puzzles, traps, demons, and shiny things, and while it seems like one dopey, schlubby looking dude with no shirt might not stand much of a chance against the forces of evil, well, what else are you going to do between torture sessions? And hey, don't worry if you screw up. You'll just be reincarnated back to your coffin at the start of the chamber you're currently working on. So, no matter how often you're sliced, diced, shot, crushed, impaled, or otherwise rendered finito, you can always pick yourself back up and try again. ... is it Tuesday? It feels like Tuesday. Heeeeeeeeeeat of the moment!

There are few things I love more in this world than a nice turn-based strategy game, and Dmitry Kozlov's post-apocalyptic Renegades, which draws inspiration from Xenosquad, Zombotron, and even the Fallout series, definitely fits the bill. Throughout each level, you may guide your lumpy-faced squad through danger to finish their objective, carefully utilizing the terrain and cover to make their way through safely. Sometimes you may need to defend a location from a zombie horde, others you may need to get your party all to a specific location, and so on. Click on a hero to highlight spaces they can move to in green, and then click on one of those to go there. If an enemy is within range, they'll display as red, and mousing over will give you your percentage to hit as well as possible damage. Every hero has their own Ability Point pool, and certain actions take more points than others, so think carefully about where you go and what you do with them. Once you run out of moves, you can end your turn and the enemies will take theirs. When you finish a level, you'll be awarded stars, and thus sweet, sweet, cash, to spend on purchasing equipment for your party members. Any character can be outfitted however you want, but pay special attention to each level's objectives. You may need a grenade to blast open a door, or a smoke bomb might be best to give your crew a bit of extra cover.

Fans of choose-your-own-undead-adventures and sepia-tinged drawings rejoice! Hyptosis has come out with another installment of humorous horror with Riverside. Taking place in the same continuity of his popular Sagittarian series of games, but with protagonists quite far away from Sage, Anna, and Dusty, both in terms of locale and of general competence, players will thrill as their choices help a group of overwhelmed city slickers live, die, or undie in a world plagued with zombies.

Part brain-training game, part innovative storytelling, A Life Worth Dying For by Mutlu Creative is likely to be one of the most unusual iOS games you play this year. Created out of the developer's personal fear of dementia, the game takes you on both a puzzling and emotional journey into the meaning and uses of memory in a way no game has done before. Unlike standard brain-training "games", A Life takes a much more game-like approach to memory play both through more demanding stages of gameplay over time, as well as through a leveling-up strategy that charts your progress to ever more difficult memory challenges. Using real memories in the form of audio and video files from the life of the developer, a picture of how memory works is developed as you get deeper into the game... as well as a picture of the life of the man himself.

It's all well and good to lounge by the pool, sipping sweet mixed drinks and getting a sunburn that'll hurt long after your hangover is gone. You might even humble brag about the time this eccentric resort forced you to solve a bunch of puzzles before you could even end your swank vacation. Ah yeah, it's a rough life but someone has to live it. That someone in this case is TomaTea and, since you're just so lucky enough, you, in Pool Cocktail Escape 2. This time around, night has fallen on that very same Pool Cocktail oasis you escaped from before. With a moonlit sky above, there's no need to slather on the sunscreen. Concern yourself instead with finding the clues, which are well hidden in this poolside setting, and deciphering codes to gather the ingredients for another fancy cocktail, your key to escape.

Have you all gotten your daily recommended value of Vitamin C yet? No? Then how about a big ol' dose of Cover Orange to perk you right up? Johnny-K and VladG are here to roll out the latest addition of their scurvy-preventing physics puzzle game series. The cutest fruit on the Internet (and the iOS and Android marketplaces) is going West, young orange, going West in Cover Orange Journey: Wild West, but as always, they're being dogged by the meanest, spike-ball-spittingest storm front this side of the OK Corral. So much for "The skies are not cloudy all day"! It's your job to get these little doggies to safer pastures by pushing them, bouncing them, and, of course, covering them up by dropping objects into the stage with the mouse. When Mean Mr. Cloud does come a-calling, make sure every orange is tucked somewhere safe they can weather the storm!

Recently I was asked, "What do you like about escape games? How do they make you feel?" This is a hard question because there is a certain ineffability about the appeal of escape games. I muttered something about feeling witty, explorations of interesting places and unending playful whimsy. So I turn the question to you: what is it about these games that keep you coming back for more? Take, for example, the puzzles in a surreal paper world by Esklavos, the search for inspiration and No1Game's green men, or the ingredients for a cheerful celebration of Funkyland...

If you love the brutal thrill of Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) but wished you had one full of fey-like anthropomorphic animal creatures pounding the snot out of each other, Hammer and Chisel's free iPad-only Fates Forever might be up your queerly specific alley. Play solo offline in practice matches or online with others against bots or another player team. Gameplay is a mix of defense and action as your team tries to destroy the other's Gyro before they do the same to yours. Together with other players, you'll need to fight your way to the other side of a map, past enemy towers and "Tributes" (computer-controlled NPCs), while hoping your own forces are enough to keep your foes at bay. There are always several critters characters to play as available for free, ensuring you always have characters to duke it out with. If you want to make sure you always have access to someone in particular, you'll need to spend Ore... or, alternately, Jade, which can only be purchased through in-app purchases. Don't worry, every character has their own strengths and abilities that balance them against one another, so the game isn't "pay to win"... for now.

You Were Made For Loneliness (check out the official site!), a Twine narrative adventure by the Tsukareta writing collective, starts with an old lady purchasing a robotic maid from a pawn shop on Callisto, and from there weaves a tale of memory, the post-apocalypse, regret, murder, psychosis, and in its own skewed way, love. It's a work that heavy in subject, heavy on experimentation and it's very well done indeed. Players should be warned that the narrative deals with everything from suicide to depression and psychological abuse, making this a less-than-lighthearted tale, but one that will stay with you for a long time.

Platformers follow a pretty basic structure, right? Move to the right, collect the coins, don't fall into the spikes, enter the door, yadda yadda. The formula seems pretty played out... that is, until the player finds a snafu in the developer's design. There's nothing better than flouting the expected solution, finding your own way to win. Glitching—it's the cool new thing to do. But what happens when you're forced to rely on those bugs? When glitches become the only way to win? Well, then it becomes Glitch Lab, an experiment in "broken" gaming which absolutely revels in subverting expectations. Made by developer Nazywam in mere weeks for the recently finished Glitch Jam, Glitch Lab plays similarly to unique platformers like the Karoshi games, adding in a dash of original humour and a lot of style to create a unique, short and sweet package. Using the [arrow] keys to move and the [spacebar] to jump, your quest is to find and exploit the glitches that will enable you to reach the end of each level. Some glitches are subtle, others are colourful and in your face—and all of them are a ton of fun to find.

A new game design competition the Public Domain Jam, proposed an interesting challenge... to mine the wealth of the public domain for new characters. One of the best entries to come out of that endeavor is Scheherazade 3.0, a well-written futuristic retelling of One Thousand and One Nights, the tale of the young Persian queen who saved her own life night after night by telling amazing stories to the king. More interactive story than game, author Danielle Riendeau (who can also be found on Twitter) clearly has a deep understanding of the source material. Within the confines of the game jam, she has crafted a pithy, interesting take on the story and even provided her tale with three endings. Meet Scheherazade Williams. Get ready to step into her shoes. Just click bolded text to make choices that will advance the story.

Please note that we have hosted this game in an iFrame, and the ads that appear to the top and bottom of the game itself belong to and support the developer. Visit the official page to play on the developer's site.

The Elements of Harmony. The A-Team. Voltron. And now Yoshio Ishii and literally a billion other developers. Minnano Hoshi Saga 2 is another installment in the popular Hoshi Saga puzzle games that ask you to do just one thing... find and click on the star hidden in each level. This time around, however, the developer is joined by an entire host of other creators, each of whom has made their own level, so be sure you check them all out in the "link" section of the main menu to visit their sites! From the level select screen, the stars beneath each stage indicate how difficult it is, and it's up to you to figure out how to play since the setup of each one is vastly different. Sometimes you'll need to solve point-and-click scenes, others take an almost mini-game approach to the concept. Experiment by clicking around to find out how each level controls. Unfortunately, unless you speak Japanese, language will be a barrier in some levels, so sadly this game isn't nearly as accessible as other games in the series just yet. Completing levels will actually reward you with stars that you can spend on skipping other levels, five stars apiece, by clicking "menu" will playing and choosing "GiveUp".

First of all, let's just be clear that Damian Schloter's new game, Double Hitler, does not endorse or glorify Nazis in any way. It's satire in the vein of Mel Brooks or Monty Python, tweaking the nose of one of history's greatest monsters. If you're not offended by the idea, you'll find an exceedingly silly and well-crafted comedy game bearing a strong resemblance to QWOP or a 2D OctoDad. You play as the Schicklgruber brothers, two young boys with dreams of exploring the world of art, politics and adulthood. They don a trenchcoat and silly mustache and set out on their quest to achieve greatness, accidentally triggering a little mishap called World War II in the process. Gameplay revolves around completing simple tasks such as drawing or delivering a speech without falling over. Move the feet with [WASD] and balance the upper body with the [arrows], using the [spacebar] and mouse to point your paintbrush. Like many comedy games, it's just as much fun to watch yourself fail as it is to succeed.

In OneGoodGame's creepy-weird turnbased puzzle game Claustrophobium - In Four Steps From Death, you play a happy little worker who suddenly becomes a lot less cheerful about his job when his shadowy, evil boss orders him to work in the even shadowy-ier and evil-er warehouse. Is the way the walls seem to be so very toothy and close in around you purely a product of your freaked out mind? Well, then how do you explain the spike traps? Or the ghosts? Man, this is what happens when you take shady jobs on Craigslist. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move, and the [spacebar] to pick up or put crates down. The goal in each stage is to reach the stairs to the next level, but the catch is that every four steps you take, the walls literally close in on you, and if you're caught and crushed, well, you'll need to start again. Every move counts as a result, especially when spikes and switches and other obstacles become a factor, so plan your path, and keep your eyes out for little green orbs that will give you an extra move.

Project BC's 2014 Indie Game Maker contest entry Ars Harmonia, a visual novel/point-and-click adventure, begins with a dark and stormy night as a strange young woman is pursued by a relentless killer. She's saved by a hail of bullets at the last moment... but her would-be murderess isn't down for the count yet. Which as it happens is a good thing, since that mysterious killer is you, an unnamed woman with an unknown agenda and some seriously strange abilities. Your only clue to find your victim is a name, Fira, and together with your... uh... eccentric liaison Erich, you'll scour the city hunting for a serial killer with unique abilities and uncover the truth behind their rampage. Though most of the game plays out through dialogue, you'll be able to explore some scenes by using [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to pan around, and clicking on people or things to interact. You'll need to search areas for clues to progress, hopping through unlocked locations via the map.

I don't know about you, but the minute mysterious, unwashable numbers appeared on my apartment wall, I would be getting my security deposit back from the landlord. Apparently the protagonist of rest.less games' free indie horror game Wait is a far more understanding tenant than I. He's been living with the digits for a long time now, and even posting about them on messages boards ranging from the mathematical to the supernatural have yielded no clues. One night everything changes, however. It starts with an oil lamp, and as the nights pass, it turns far darker, and far stranger, than he could have suspected. So... like I said, security deposit, yeah? Use the [arrow] keys to move and [spacebar] to interact, with [ESC] to close menus. You can only save when the game offers it, so make sure you always take the chance! Wait is inspired by both H.P. Lovecraft and the Silent Hill series, so expect things to move at a slow simmer rather than a roiling boil. As the days go by, when the lights go out, the apartment seems to... change... so make sure you examine even the things you've previously looked at more than once as the game progresses.

In Jonny Pickton's surreal puzzle adventure game The Cow Flew Over the Moon, a good night's sleep gets weird pretty quickly. After stumbling home late one night and falling into bed, you wake up to a knock at the door, only to discover you can't answer it. In fact, you can't open the door at all. As days blur together and you have no contact with the outside world, what follows is a bizarre journey filled with symbolism, subtle narrative, and novelty keychains. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move, [E] to cycle through your inventory, and click to interact. Most items will indicate that you can use them in some way with an eye or hand icon that will light up when you get near, but you might not always want to take the most obvious path...

The adventure begins with the discovery of a fabled lost tomb and priceless artifact that has been lost for centuries. This means, of course, that soon will follow betrayal, theft, murder, and hidden object finding. Yes, the agents of the Hidden Expedition League of Preservation (H.E.L.P.) are back in another rollicking adventure, Hidden Expedition: The Crown of Solomon. Produced by Big Fish Games and Eipix, this adventure hybrid really gets going with sudden defenestration (well, being thrown out of a plane, not a window) high over Turkey, and rockets through several exotic locales as you fight to solve the mystery of the Crown of Solomon while trying to discover the mole in your own agency. The life of a Hidden Expedition operative is never easy, is it?

"Flappy Bird." Those words tend to be polarizing, so there's a chance you're having difficulty reading this article because your eyes are forcing themselves shut. Some felt the smash-hit brutally challenging yet deviously simple arcade game didn't deserve the attention because of how basic its construction was, while others, well... the incredible success of its straight-forward yet addictive high-score formula speaks for itself. So when Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson release Let it Goat! for iOS and Android and call it "the next Flappy Bird", you have to wonder... can lightning really strike twice? Should it? It's the same basic concept, after all, just with creepy vertical demon pupils. (... what? Goats are weird.) You play a prancing goat named Mounty who runs without stopping, and you tap the screen to make him jump over spikes, gaps, and at nighttime... zombies. A single hit, whether it be impalement or running facefirst into a wall, will cause you to restart, so if you gather enough gems, you can buy... a bear. Naturally. A bear who will let you ride on his back and take a single hit for you. Look, I swear I'm not making this up or hallucinating... you can even feel my forehead!

Simple interface, challenging puzzles. That's the bread and butter of any truly addictive puzzle game. Yeti CGI's new title Fracture has this "easy to learn, hard to master" formula down pat. Simply click the little blue dot to send it from point to point in each starry constellation tracing simple geometric shapes. That's the easy part. The hard part is tracing each shape while not repeating yourself. Do it once and get a score deduction. Do it twice and lose the line forever. If you've found yourself hooked on mellow puzzlers like 2048 or its deluge of imitators in the past few weeks, Fracture is going to be right up your alley.

She found an interesting-looking room and contacts you: "Come on over." So you make your way over only to find she's gone off somewhere. What choice do you have now but to find a way to escape on your own? If this scenario sounds exactly like the kind of situation one of Tesshi-e's friends would stick you in, that's because it is. All in good-natured fun, of course! In order to Escape from the Room with Framed Pictures, you can expect your resourcefulness to be tried as usual. Point-and-click your way around the room; grey bars on the edges of the scene indicate where you can move while clicking on certain areas allows you to zoom closer and examine suspicious-looking objects. Although you won't be aided in finding these active spots by the unchanging cursor, Tesshi-e's crisp, photo-realistic visuals eliminate pixel hunts. Instead, all your efforts will go into solving a steady progression of increasingly clever puzzles.

Trigger Warning: This game contains scenes and themes that some people may find upsetting.

Nicky Case, best known for his demo of the upcoming Nothing to Hide and Gap Monsters gets more than a little personal with his interactive story Coming Out Simulator 2014, also available on Itch.io. Created for the Nar8 Jam, this semi-autobiographical game opens in a coffee shop, but primarily takes place back in 2010, when the narrator's boyfriend, Jack, encourages Nicky to come out to his parents. As you read, you'll be given different responses to choose that can drastically alter the flow of dialogue, and, as the narrator cautions, everyone will remember everything you say, so think about your words before you pick them, but don't expect to "win" in the traditional sense.

Couture Craft, by Resonant Craft, is a game all about taking smaller things and combining them into one bigger, more awesome thing. Weaving threads into cloth. Stitching that cloth into clothing. Taking the match-3 genre and infusing it with the likes of an puzzle game. Here, your playing pieces resemble fashionable accessories, but they don't just vanish into the ether when you get three of them together! Drop them two at a time into the playing field to combine them into newer, better pieces, and you can combine those pieces into even more pieces, and so on and so forth until your wardrobe is a veritable explosion of style. And if that wasn't enough alchemizing for you, you can also mix your socks and hats and whatnots into powerups and goodies between the levels! It's not quite clear how you turn a pair of khaki shorts into a T-shirt, and then morph three of those right back around into denim jeans, but that's the magic of alchemy, isn't it?

Here's the situation. You've got three tiles: a B, a C, and an L. You've got the root "-OCK" to work with, you can place up to two tiles before the root and one after. What words can you spell? No, this isn't Words with Friends or some everyday word game like that, this is Gatamari Escape #22, the latest escape game by developer Gatamari. If you've ever wanted to play an escape game and a word game rolled into one (a combination that's definitely a little unusual), here's your chance. The game is themed around spelling English words to make things happen around the room, so feel free to start having flashbacks to your days playing with letter blocks in kindergarten.

Here we go again, another round of fun free escape games to get you over the hump. Game designers have been busy this week as well, encouraging us to play under the sea while bringing plenty of smiles and cheerfulness to spread around. Surely you haven't had enough, though? Come along and help us escape the weekday inside Hottategoya's maze-like minimalism, FunkyLand's hip vibe and No1Game's silly humor...

I don't know about you, but where I am right now, the heat of the summer sun is enough to make a gal go nocturnal. The sky is always bluer on the other side of the Earth's rotation, though, and for one little vampire, all he wants in undeath is to be able to see the legendary sun. And in Eyesteam's The Sun for the Vampire, he's prepared to brave a dangerous castle full of guards, traps, obligatory box-pushing puzzles, and other platformer elements to find the secret that will let a vampire step into the light. Inside the castle, there are keys he must collect to unlock the doors that lead deeper inside. He can run left and right with the [arrow] keys, and he'll automatically start gliding with his cape if he happens to walk off an edge. But what about going upwards? Rather than jumping, you'll be flapping and flying through the dark and spooky castle, combining on-foot puzzle-solving segments with tricky, batty sections where you'll be dodging traps in the air. What first seems like a fairly ordinary puzzle-platformer experience suddenly becomes a tight test of skill, precision, and timing as you must deftly navigate the castle in bat form while solving puzzles and defeating enemies on foot.

There's no denying that an important component of escape games is the inclusion of logical, creative puzzles to reward players' sleuthing efforts with a sense of accomplishment. Still, all by themselves, puzzles are just puzzles, things easily bought in printed periodicals at the checkout counter. Really good escape games embed puzzles into fun environments, creating the idea of occupying an interesting place, one you'd want to immerse yourself in and explore to your heart's content. Yonashi's Sea Room is just such a place, filled with unabashed playfulness and a sense of whimsy that readily infects your mood with smiles. As you point-and-click your way around the various chambers, unlocking doors and solving puzzles, you almost don't want the experience to end.

Magick is a creative mixture of a puzzle game and a platform game designed by developer Ludonkey. Once upon a time in a place really far away there was a young sorcerer named Oz. A stranger knocked on his door one night to break the news that the evil queen had declared magic illegal. Not good news for a sorcerer, as you can imagine. Oz was tossed into a dungeon filled with snakes and lava and flying fireballs eager to turn him into toast. Leaving him for dead was a very super villain-type thing to do, but like most heroes, Oz didn't just give up and take a nap. Instead, he started making boxes to build a path to the surface!