
Not quite a pipe puzzle and not quite a gear puzzle, Grayscale is a melding of the two genres into something both unique to play and easy on the eyes. The difficulty ramps up quite nicely and is enough to hold interest through the levels as you struggle to produce the black and white fireworks that denote success. Quite a lot of brain twisting, turning, and teasing bundled up into a beautiful little bow.

The title, Finding Friends, is apt for this short and simple game that packs a satisfying, emotional experience. You start the game wandering around in the darkness, a little black square (with cute little white eyes) against a black background, in a maze with black walls. It's with the help of the friends you find that you'll be able to find your way to the exit of the maze.

What happens when the notorious Mr Evil has stolen some of the greatest works of art in history, and Batman is too busy hanging out on rooftops brooding about the girlfriend he doesn't have to be of any help? Why, you enlist none other than world famous detective Zigmond III to save the day, of course! Help navigate 20 increasingly clever mazes Sokoban style, avoiding lasers and dead-ends, to rescue real masterpieces! Just be sure to watch out where you point that mirror.

We added a new mini-game to the sidebar over the weekend. This one is named just "Tiny Game" and it was created exclusively for JIG by the Flash and casual game wizard, Tonypa. There are a number of features that make this little gem exceptional, besides the little gems that you must collect.

Playing equal parts as a maze, a hide-and-seek game and a guessing game, the idea of Neon Maze is to run around a glowing labyrinth in your little blur-pod, changing colours to open up new areas, while attempting to find the exit platform. The graphical presentation and surprisingly intricate level design make this one a winner.

Escape from the Starship is an
escape game that uses sound to convey the relative proximity of monsters that you must avoid. The starship is composed of a maze of rooms, each of which is composed of homogeneous grey dots. Each dot represents a floor tile on which you may land. The sound you hear, however, ultimately determines whether that tile is safe.

At first glance, Off Balance looks just like all those other maze games where you move your mouse from Point A to Point B without hitting any walls. And indeed, that's the general idea. You control a preternaturally cheerful ball of cotton on a mildly psychedelic quest through 25 stages full of obstacles. The trick is in the steering.

Mallet Mania is Nitrome's newest production, a Marble Madness-type puzzle game. By using what appears to be a wireframe croquet mallet, you whack your ball with varying direction and power to guide it through maze-like levels to the goal. Stating the obvious but still worth noting, Nitrome once again stays with its tried-and-true pixel graphics and vibrant color scheme.

Kava-what? Is it a Pacific island drink of shamans and storytellers? No, Kavalmaja is the latest game from the brilliant Tonypa. A departure from his usual explorations of the abstract, Kavalmaja is a tile-based, Zelda like exploration game, except you have a wacky, randomly generated name. Unlike Zelda, it strips away combat, re-emphasizing the flow of the maze.

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.

In Rat Maze 2, you are a mouse in a maze and you must collect all the pieces of cheese in the shortest time possible. Use the arrow keys for movement to zip around the maze. Running over a cheese is as good as eating it, so no time is wasted collecting them all. Simple retro fun from the highly talented developers at PixelJam.

The old "navigate through a maze" concept enjoys a small rebirth in the form of Overhead Persistence, a gorgeous Flash game by Acrid Rose. Guide the cursor through each level avoiding the walls and any other obstacles you come across. Normally a game like this wouldn't be anything special, but Overhead Persistence provides a stunning audio and visual package along with a level editor and other extras to make a worthwhile experience.

Back in 1980, Midway released an innovative maze game called Rally X. It involved the player driving a rally car through a maze collecting flags while avoiding enemy cars. Baja is an excellent Shockwave 3D implementation of the traditional gameplay first seen in Rally X, and delivered to you within the convenience of your browser.

Maze is another delightfully simple and accessible casual Web game by GameDesign of Japan. The object of this action puzzle game is to find the exit to each increasingly larger maze level within the time limit.

Iso-Infected is an action arcade Flash game created by Thorsten Diessner of Germany. With gameplay similar to the classic arcade sensation, Marble Madness, the object of the game is roll a ball around to collect all 15 blue gems hidden throughout the many areas of the game 'world'.

Next up are a couple of games with no name, simply refered to as NoName Game #1 and NoName Game #2, created by MadMax of Poland and hosted on his Freshblood.zic.pl site. An action puzzle game of hand-eye coordination, the games are similar in design to DR3I and Reverse that...
While on the subject of Pacman, several months ago there was a posting on Slashdot games about a Japanese programmer who re-created Pacman entirely in an Excel spreadsheet. Upon reading the story I was both amazed and curious, so I downloaded the zip file from the site linked-to in the story. And it really was Pacman, right down to the cut scenes b...

Another classic game, and this one needs no introduction. Arguably the single game that injected the most excitement into arcade video games during their infancy. Original game: copyright Namco, 1980; this version hand-coded in Flash by Paul Neave.