With just one week left to the competition, we just want to remind everyone who hasn't already played and voted on the game entries, please do so soon. We will announce the results next Monday (November 9th)!

Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6 games are now ready to play!! All entries are available to play immediately on the competition page. There is a place to enter comments for each game, so please use each respective thread to leave your kind feedback and constructive criticisms for the game authors. The competition period will span 3 weeks, and we will announce the winners of the competition at that time.

Just a quick competition update to announce that due to some technical issues with getting the new competition page ready, we are extending the deadline by 2 weeks. We don't want to delay getting the entries up once the deadline has passed, and so we are extending the deadline to give us a little more time to prepare for it.

Another quick reminder that there are now just 2 weeks left to finish up a browser game that incorporates the theme "EXPLORE". Please see the official competition announcement for details.

Just a quick reminder that there are 4 weeks left to design and develop a browser game that incorporates the theme "EXPLORE". And we are pleased to announce that we have just added more prizes, too!

A quick update to highlight a few things we have been working on to improve your experience here at JIG (just in case you're a new visitor or one that doesn't poke around the site very much)...

Do you Twitter? Seems everyone is these days. If you have a Twitter account, be sure to follow us @Jayisgames We'll be giving away random free stuff all spring and summer, including Big Fish Games coupons, iTunes gift certificates, and more! Tell your family and friends to follow us, too. The more eyes watching, the more chances you have to win! :)

After much deliberation and discussion for our largest annual "Best of the Year" feature yet, we have just published the results of the audience voting, along with our own picks that will serve to represent this year's "Best". Thank you again for participating in the Best of 2008, and here's to another year of great casual games!

Just a quick update to mention that voting for the Best of 2008 is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated and voted. We are now tabulating and preparing the results for publishing, so please check back in a few days for a list of the winners.

A big thanks to the folks over at G4TV for giving us a mention in their latest Blog Watch feature! Wooty tooty!

Just a heads-up about a major site upgrade that we've begun, so you are likely to experience a few bumps during the process. The site is getting a major overhaul to the underlying structure, as well as a much needed facelift, and therefore many scripts and templates are changing. The entire process will take at least the rest of the day to complete.

For those of you who have been waiting for Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze to be released at Big Fish, the wait is finally over! The second chapter of this gorgeous series of games is here and offers a unique mix of point-and-click puzzles and hidden objects that are all woven together into a compelling narrative adventure.

I have a confession to make: before August 2007, I knew nothing of Jayisgames. Back then, I was this little guy who keeps coming up with game ideas, but had no drive to execute them. It wasn't because I was lazy or anything; I just kept questioning the games' purpose. I was drowning in a culture where people keep questioning the financial feasibility of a creative piece. Of course, this was the after-effect of being in the advertising industry for some time. In the end, no effort was taken to realize those ideas.

Total from voting... $437.34!
Not quite the level of support we've seen in previous competitions. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who voted and for your kind support of these competitions!

We have another winner to announce today, and we also want to thank everyone for participating in our Asylum plushie drawings! Be sure to keep checking the site, as we'll be giving away another plushie again soon!

Finally, the moment we've been waiting for, the day all the finalists into our 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition are now available to play! The extension of the deadline was well worth the wait as we now have 21 solid entries for you to enjoy. Don't forget to leave your kind feedback and constructive criticism for the game designers.

We have another winner to announce today, and we also want to thank everyone for participating in our Asylum plushie drawings! Be sure to keep checking the site, as we'll be giving away another plushie again soon!

Just a quick note to point you to two new updates to previously reviewed games that you might want to know about: Amateur Surgeon and Bow Street Runner.

We have another winner to announce today, but before we do we want to thank everyone for participating in our drawings! You guys rock! Keep the great comments coming, we read each and every one and we appreciate all the kind words of support!

The deadline for CGDC5 has come and gone, and the entries are in. Looking over the 25 entries we have so far, although impressed, we think we could be a bit more impressed. Some of the entries need a couple more coats of polish, and many of you wished you had more time to finish up and get your entries in. The judges and sponsors have talked it over, and we have decided to allow a bit more development time by extending the competition deadline by almost 2 weeks.

Today is the day! The deadline for our 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition! It's time to finish up those games and send your entry in to us before midnight tonight. Even if you have previously filled out an entry form, we still need your game SWF for judging purposes, so don't delay!

It's not often we get to post something on February 29th, so I'd like to take this opportunity to update you on a few things that have been happening around here, including the winner of our Lilo plushie giveaway!

With only 2 weeks left before the deadline for our 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, it's getting down to the wire. With more cash and prizes (over $10,000) up for grabs than any of our competitions to-date, along with a supporting $10,000 advertising campaign via MochiAds from Mochi Media, there has never before been a better time to enter a CGDC than now!

We are pleased to report that the competition buttons are now ready. Since each button needs to be customized specifically for your entry, they will be handed out individually and upon request. We need to know a few things from each of you as part of your entry, so we have set up a CGDC5 Entry Form for you to both provide us with your entry information as well as to request your buttons.

Just a quick reminder that we are just a few weeks into the design and development period for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #5, and there is still plenty of time to come up with an idea and to get your game design underway that incorporates the theme: UPGRADE. Up for grabs are prizes worth over $10,000, and the deadline is March 16th.

On behalf of the Ballistic Wars team, I would really like to thank you and your reviewer-judge panel for giving us the opportunity to show our potential in casual gaming. On top of that, you have ranked us in third place, so I really can't thank you enough.

Total from voting... $652.89!
Wooty! We have exceeded the donations record set by CGDC #3!!! Thanks to everyone who voted. Thank you for your kind support of these competitions.

Since beginning the Casual Gameplay Design Competitions in August, 2006, each competition has presented us with an impressive collection of entries, as well as a few challenges to deal with, too. This time the unprecedented number of entries received was unexpected, which has forced us to take steps to reduce that number to facilitate the next two stages: community voting towards the Audience Award prize, and the final round of judging to determine the winners of the competition.

Now that all the entries are up, I think most everyone will agree that nearly 50 entries is quite a lot to include in a competition like this(!) And while we want everyone to have the opportunity to receive the valuable feedback and constructive criticism the JIG community is so good at providing, we must also take steps to reduce the field to a more manageable size.

We have a lot of entries to share with you, and we're going to start rolling them out as we have done before, one every few hours, so that each game has a chance to receive attention and feedback from the JIG community. It will take us about a week to publish them all, so please be patient with us.

This is it! We are down to the last few hours before deadline for our 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition. Entries have been pouring in all weekend and today, and we have already surpassed all previous competitions in terms of number of entries received, so we are very pleased!

We are down to the final 5 days before the deadline for our Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4, and we're getting very excited to see and play all the games to have incorporated the "ball physics" theme! All entries must be in by October 1st, 2007 at 11:59PM. That is this coming Monday night. Please see the competition announcement page for full details on entering.

We are just two weeks away from the deadline for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4, and I have to say we're getting pretty excited about what is shaping up to be our biggest competition ever. With over $6000 in cash and prizes to give away, we're also looking forward to reward the best game designs that incorporate the "ball physics" theme.

Just a quick reminder that there is still plenty of time to come up with an idea and to get your game design underway for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4. The theme is ball physics and up for grabs are cash and prizes worth over $6000. The deadline is October 1st. Please see the competition announcement page for full details on entering.

Just a quick reminder that there is still plenty of time to come up with an idea and to get your game design underway for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4. The theme is ball physics and up for grabs are cash and prizes worth over $6000. The deadline is October 1st. Please see the competition announcement page for full details on entering.

We are just two weeks into the development period for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4, and I am pleased to report that we have even more prizes to give away(!) Sierra Online, lead sponsor of the competition and publisher of the amazing new casual game, Switchball, will be awarding a free copy of the game to all 5 prize winners!

Just a quick reminder that we are just 1 week into the design and development period for Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4, and there is still plenty of time to come up with an idea and to get your game design underway that incorporates the theme: ball physics. Up for grabs are cash and prizes worth over $6000, and the deadline is October 1st.

We have been working hard these last several weeks to bring you even more opportunities to show off your game design talent and to win fabulous prizes. And before we release the results of the 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition, we would like to take this opportunity to announce some exciting news.

Now that we have seen all the entries for the 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition, it is almost time for the voting to begin for the coveted Audience prize.

Whew! What a crazy week this has been, and another one just now starting... where did the weekend go? With the deadline for our 3rd game design competition now officially here, all the development and preparation for it seems to have been time well spent. Thanks to the participation and cooperation of some of the best Flash game design talent from around the world, we are now looking at nearly 20 sparkling new creative game designs to share with you. And we can't wait to begin to roll out the entries.

Just a quick update to give a big warm shout-out to Matt Hammill, designer of the recently reviewed Gesundheit game, for the outstanding job he did on the new banners and graphics for the site! Cheers, Matt!

After a long hiatus and due to popular request, comment preview has returned to help in your quest to create nicely formatted comments and walkthroughs. Just click the "Preview" button below the text input field in the comment form to see a preview of how your comment will appear when posted, spoiler tags and all!

Now that I have your attention, I'd like to mention a couple of things we've been working on to make your experience here just a little bit better. Hopefully you have noticed that the site tags have been optimized and are now working better than ever. We've also been venturing deep into the archives to give all those long lost games and reviews the tags they deserve, so the tag listings should be looking more complete than ever as well. And yet we still have about 400 more games to tag(!)

We are very pleased to announce that JIG has made it onto the tangible printed page of WIRED magazine in the April issue (shown). You can find us mentioned in the Playlist feature, an article that lists 10 things the WIRED folks think are cool (or "wired") for the month.

If you're seeing this, then the DNS has propagated in your area and you are now reaching the new JIG server. We're running upgraded versions of several Web server applications, and so besides being a bit faster, there may also be a few hiccups along the way until we get things optimized. For example, some of the most recent comments posted since the switch over might have been lost if they were posted to the old server. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

It's here! Finally the next chapter in the captivating virtual island village sim is available to download. The follow-up to the monumentally successful Virtual Villagers game keeps the same formula as the original but adds all new puzzles, events, collectibles and more. Download it today and then join our active community sharing hints and tips for getting the most out of every puzzle.

Another quick update to mention that Kim JongHwa's captivating new puzzle game, Rooms, has just been updated again with the final, debugged version (v1.2) with all 14 levels playable. All links contained in our review from a couple of days ago point to the latest version.

As the US prepares for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I have my own chores to do in preparation for a house full tomorrow with family and friends. Therefore, unless one of the other contributing authors comes through with a review to post, things will likely be quiet around here until Friday. But be sure to check back just in case.

Good news for point-and-click fans and for those that missed it the first go-round, all four episodes to CDX are once again online and available to play, even if you live outside the UK! Be sure not to miss this fantastic adventure that includes full-motion video of live actors, selectable dialog, and top-notch production values.

I've been playing a lot of games lately trying to find something to sink my teeth into enough to write a review for. And while some games definitely look promising, the time required to play through each one enough to write a decent review is the bottleneck for me right now. So, here are links to a couple of games I'm currently evaluating; please help me by indicating in the comments which one(s) deserve(s) a review more than the others, and why.

The results are in from the recent Flash Forward Film Festival held in Austin, Texas, last week, and there are some exceptional items that simply should not be missed. In particular, be sure to check out the Bendito Machine, a stunning piece of work by producer, animator, and illustrator, Jossie Malis.

I took time out from playing and reviewing games today to give the Favorites feature a long overdue update. I switched the underlying technology from DHTML to Flash (8), which made cross-browser support a lot easier on me. Sorry Linux users; you will still have to use the old interface until Flash Player 9 comes out early next year.

Our first ever game design competition deadline is upon us, just a little less than 12 hours away, and already I am inundated with unbelievably good, fantastic puzzle designs to sort through and choose from. Picking the best of them will certainly not be easy. I am working feverishly hard to make sure that you are able to play each and every one of the finalists, and depending upon the quantity of any last minute submissions received, I will (hopefully) have something up and playable for you over the weekend, so be sure to check back if you are as excited as I am about it! =D

Welcome to Jayisgames' Casual Gameplay, simply the best selection of (mostly) free casual games you will find on the Web today. We have been here reviewing casual games most likely longer than any other site on the Web, since 2003. We could probably claim that we were the world's first site dedicated to reviewing casual games. But I loathe to make such a self-serving statement as that.

I just finished making a JIG Google Gadget using Google's Gadget API. The gadget displays a random selection of game icons on your Google home page, similar to what shows up in the recommended section on every page of this site. If you would like this gadget added to your Google home page, just click.

As it is a holiday today here in the US, all of the JIG reviewers are outside barbecuing and having quaint little get-togethers with friends and/or family. We'll resume things on Tuesday. Cheers! =)

Yes, I am still here, though I am busily working on finishing up my last quarter at RIT, and for which I have just one more paper to write. Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I promise to have a couple of new reviews for you very soon. Thanks for your patience! =)