There's something inherently soothing about sliding puzzles. No wait, hear me out. You're just thinking they're frustrating because so frequently they're the obstacle in your escape or hidden object game, the puzzle that rears its ugly mug when you just want to open up the safe or fix the breaker system. But if you distill it down to its essence and give it a relaxing ambiance, there's something pure and satisfying about sliding some blocks around, and that's just what this game from Ateta Games delivers.

Sticky Blocks, Aaron Maupin's new variation on the sokoban concept, introduces blocks that stick to each other as well as the avatar. With each move you make, your collection of blocks becomes larger and, possibly, more unwieldy, forcing you to consider every move beforehand!

Binary is a stylish puzzle game held together by a rudimentary platformer aesthetic. Repair orbiting supercomputers by climbing into the planet's surface and solving sliding-type puzzle games. Though the entire game is only a few puzzles long, if you're not familiar with how each puzzle works, Binary can be quite a challenge to get through.

Cyadonia is a new sliding block puzzle game in the vein of Blockoban or Orbox B. Its author, Newcolator, has packed the game with every idea for a tile-based puzzler you can think of, including pushable blocks, lasers, mines, key-and-lock combinations, and so very, very much more. Basically, it's just a mammoth game with an incredible amount of variety. It could be tighter, but it couldn't be much more ambitious.

An attractive, isometric block-shifting puzzle game about patience, spacial skills, and not getting your feet wet. All you have to do is position the wooden blocks so that they form an unbroken path from one bank to the other. There aren't a lot of tricks after you learn the basicsm, just pure, solid puzzle-solving.

A game that combines wordplay with Sokoban-style block pushing? Are they mad?!? Arrange blocks with letters to form words by sliding them into place. Luckily, Alphabox recognizes solutions apart from the one intended, so sometimes you can get creative and mix the letters around, saving a few moves. A level editor extends the replay value of this innovative puzzler.

Blockoban is the latest from JP, who has just launched a new website that features user-created content, called Bonus Level, along with fellow game designers, Wouter and Tonypa. With names like that attached you can expect high quality, and Blockoban delivers. It's a game where you slide blocks around and try to match their colors to specific spaces. That simple mechanic is fleshed out with challenging level designs and high quality production values, delivering an experience that will keep you hooked.

In the latest puzzle romp from Nitrome, you play the part of Magneboy, an orange robot powered by clockwork, with a dial in his chest set permanently to Neutral. He exists in a strange technological void, with pillars jutting out of the infinite blackness beneath. On each level, you must guide him to a checkerboard-patterned platform (robots are naturally attracted to early 60s diners).

Taro Ito has been a favorite of ours here at JIG for several years, so it is with great fanfare that we welcome new releases from his GameDesign.jp website. The latest of his designs is this sliding-block puzzle game called Shot. The objective is to progress as far as you can, through a series of increasingly more difficult levels, by knocking all but one of the balls from the play grid.

Excit is a puzzle game set on top of a page from a spreadsheet. If you have ever wanted a game to look more like work so that you could play in the office without fear of someone glancing over your shoulder and seeing particle effects shooting toward all edges of your computer screen while you're dodging asteroids and flying monkeys, then this is for you.

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.

A lecturer at The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University in Software Development for Games, Jeff Wofford has been working in the games industry for over 10 years. He has also just released this addictive little Flash puzzle game that plays like a cross between a tangram and a sliding block puzzle.

Cubrius is a commercial-quality puzzle game in which the player pushes boxes (cubes) to solve stages by removing all colored cubes from view. A variant of Sokoban, Cubrius extends the classic gameplay by introducing a variety of cube types, each with special characteristics and behavior, as well as time-based bonus scores.

Orbox B by GameBalance is a game of striking simplicity and compelling puzzle solving, and is the sequel to the original Orbox game previously reviewed here. A pure puzzle solving game with 30 levels, this one isn't the most innovative game you'll play this week, but it could very well be one of the most mind-bending.

Thanks go out to Nick Kouvaris for sending word about his latest puzzle game over at Lightforce Games, an excellent source for many wonderful and mind-bending puzzle games. CyberBox is a complete Flash remake of a DOS puzzle game of the same name created by Doug Beeferman in 1991.

Although this Flash puzzler is similar to other sliding-block puzzle games in its class, what I find special about this one is its presentation and execution. The goal of Orbox is to navigate the blue and yellow blinking box to the red goal in the fewest moves possible using just the arrow keys for control.