Arche is worried about fitting in. Her family has just moved to the little hamlet of Tonkiness to open an item shop, and it turns out her dreams of learning magic may be short lived once she discovers she needs an expensive elemental stone to even practice at her new school. But a simple rumour might lead her on to a much bigger adventure than she ever imagined in this beautiful but difficult action platforming RPG.

The three modes of play make the game attractive to a wide variety of hybrid enthusiasts, the story is intriguing, the gameplay amusing, the visuals stunning, and the overall experience is one that freaks out and delights in equal measure. Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini proudly carries the series banner forward and provides great entertainment at a reasonable price. Give it a try and prepare to be both entertained and enlightened.

Originally released in mid-2011 by indie game creator E. Hashimoto (Buster), Hydra Castle Labyrinth is an old school-styled platform adventure that was previously only available in Japanese. A brave soul recently translated the game to English, and now the cute metroidvania title is available for a much wider audience to enjoy. And enjoy it ye shall!

How do you feel about... TACTICAL MISDIRECTION?!!! *flashing lights* That's good. Glad to know it. Now, how do you feel about a game semi-sorta doing that with its title? And what if that title involves felines?

Dustforce is a speed-centric acrobatic platform game from Hitbox Team. A demo first appeared back in 2010, showing off the concept and basic design. Since then, the game has undergone some silent but effective changes, improving upon the controls and adding loads of content to sweep through. It's a fast, combo-centric arcade experience that emphasizes speed and perfection, and thanks to the online highscore boards and per-level badges, you'll be strangely compelled to keep playing until everything is just right.

A rousing mix of games this week, featuring pleasantly strange free releases alongside some sturdy demos. A bunny who likes to yell? A demon that can live in a candle? That'll get you to sit up straight and start downloading some games!

A letter telling you about a relative you never knew you had brings you to the shadiest looking mansion ever in the dead of night, but before you can say "bad idea" you find yourself knocked unconscious at the gates. Things don't get much better for you from there out, as you soon discover there's some very bad magic going down and this house holds all sorts of bizarre and creepy secrets you'll have to conquer if you want to escape. A gorgeous and creative hidden-object adventure that's definitely worth a look.

Bringing in the end of 2011 with a happy little ring, the 22nd Ludum Dare competition challenged participants to make a game based on a given theme within a 48 hour time frame. Over 700 entries were submitted, and after some rounds of user voting, everything has been ranked and categorized according to awesomeness. We've featured a few of our favorites below, each one representing the compo's "alone" theme quite nicely!

Awem Studio has done it again, putting together a prequel sequel to the fun title, The Island: Castaway. In The Island: Castaway 2, play as the young tribesman, Yati, as he travels around the island during a time when everything was whole and right, just before any 'strangers' came. Using the same interface that worked for them before, Awem Studio offers another great simulation game that weaves a tale of wonder and mysticism.

A bountiful harvest of platform games? Sure, why not?! They're sort of the trail mix of the gaming realm. They're everywhere, and there are so many different flavors you can barely choose one to munch on at a time. Some of them have unsavory elements (like coconut flakes, who puts that in trail mix?!), but others are irresistibly delicious with all those banana chips and almonds and tiny bits of chocolate...

When Sam's girlfriend Anna is kidnapped after his articles in the local newspaper about a crazed maniac begin to get too close to the truth, he has no other options but to bow to the madman's demands and come alone to an old mansion on the edge of town. What he finds inside is both disturbing and strange, but if he wants to save Anna and make it out alive he'll have to master the puzzles and unlock the truth behind the kidnappings. A somewhat campy but extremely entertaining hidden-object adventure that will keep you wrapped up for hours in a surreal, dramatic world.

A New Beginning is a classically-styled adventure game from the well-respected Hamburg-based publisher and developer Daedalic Entertainment. With A New Beginning, the team has created a great-looking game that's billed as an "eco thriller", two words you wouldn't necessarily want associated with each other. But halfway through the prologue, you'll realize Daedalic pulled it off, as A New Beginning successfully combines socially aware environmental messages with a smart, puzzle-driven storyline.

If you're a logic puzzle fan (both paper-and-pencil and electronic, alike), you've probably heard of a little game called picross. It's a crossword puzzle meets number logic with an artsy twist. Fugazo brings their puzzles to you in the next installment of their popular series, World Mosaics V, where you find a familiar experience with a new storyline and, of course, 100s of new puzzles!

According to popular myth, werewolves are pretty much all over the place, leading normal lives just like the rest of us tax-paying citizens. For the most part, they're pretty normal. Walking around, visiting Starbucks, and maybe even holding the door for you when your hands are full. But when it's the full moon, werewolf kind has a difficult time blending in. And we're not just talking about the smell! In the new hidden object adventure game from ERS Game Studio, Shadow Wolf Mysteries: Bane of the Family, you get to dive a bit deeper into the family structure of a family of werewolves, learning all about their curse and how this odd transformation travels from parents to children.

Q.U.B.E.: Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion is one of those special games you don't get to see as often as you would like. It's a first person puzzle game, which is rare enough in its own right, but then you combine that with a stark method of storytelling, creative use of environmental puzzles, and an interface that's as smooth as the shiny blocks that make up the levels. What you're left with is a thoroughly satisfying game with masterfully designed puzzles from beginning to end.

Pity the poor dude who is in charge of Middleshire, one of the areas of the kingdom we first saw in Royal Envoy. First, he's late to the meeting with the king, then all he can report is bad, bad news about the region. The King is not happy about any of this, so he once again appoints someone (as in you, the player) to go and get this poor place redeveloped so that the folks will be happy in Royal Envoy 2, the latest time management amusement from Playrix Entertainment.

While the claim of holding a thousand doors may be a little much, Alawar's casual adventure game House of 1000 Doors: Family Secret is certainly packed with family secrets, not to mention a twisted plot that reveals information about as slowly as an episode of Lost. The story is the star, but the gameplay pulls its own weight, leaving you feeling confidently thrilled as you crawl through the hallways of the mysteriously vanishing mansion.

Bundling up indie games is what all the cool kids are doing these days, as is pricing them "pay what you want" while donating portions of the proceeds to charity. But here's something refreshingly different: The 99 Percent Bundle. This totally free collection of indie games aims to highlight some of the lesser-known developers out there, the people who continue to make the games they love and release them for free. It's sort of the indies of the indie community, and it's the perfect way to discover new titles you might have missed over the last few months.

Hey—hi there! Welcome! Come on it, have a seat. Would you like a warm beverage? Cold one? Just a handful of games? All right, that's fine too. Although the hot cocoa is stunning... Anyway! You asked for games, and so you get them. One game to make you scratch your head, one game where you can shoot Mecha Santa, and one game where you can learn to be a thief. Game enough for you? No? Maybe some hot cocoa would fill the void, then?

Temple of Life: The Legend of Four Elements is a casual adventure game dusted with a sprinkling of hidden object scenes. Unlike most hybrids out there, Temple of Life ditches the whole spooky mansion bit in favor of a classic cursed burial chamber, complete with traps and some delightfully complicated puzzles. The plot may not be anything new, but the mini-games are crisp, and the overall sense of mystery and danger are as strong as any movie where the main character runs from giant boulders and wears superb brown fedoras!

Dark, grim, and filled with ghosts. Yes, that's what most adventure/hidden object hybrids seem to be these days. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it's done really, really well. There's a new developer out there, Play Favorite Games, that has taken up the challenge and done just that with 9: The Dark Side, a spooky exploration of a cursed castle and town that delivers just about every bell and whistle you could ask for.

Think open world platform adventure games like Knytt Stories are falling out of favor? Treasure Adventure Game is happy to prove you wrong. With its massive open world stocked from end to end with treasures, secrets, characters, quests, puzzles, and more, this old school throwback manages to combine adventure, RPG, and platforming genres into the kind of game you'll only have the honor of experiencing a few times in your life. Also: it's free!

Charles and his twisted son Victor are back in Mystery Case Files: Escape from Ravenhearst, the third and final (?) installment of the popular Ravenhearst adventures. Replacing the standard hidden object scenes with morphing objects, this is not your usual hidden object adventure hybrid. The mini-games are fun and challenging, and best of all skippable if they turn out to be not your cup of tea. There is a bit of back-and-forth backtracking, although not nearly as much in Return to Ravenhearst as Escape from Ravenhearst is divided up into more manageable sections. If dark and twisted with a side of gorgeous is your cup of tea, then this is definitely the game for you!

How long has it been since you played a game of Arkanoid or any of its numerous modern-day children? A year? Five years? A billion-dy hundred years? Thought so. Tribute Games wants to fix that egregious error with Wizorb, an 8-bit-styled Arkanoid clone that adds a little bonus fun on top with the addition of magic spells, a shop, and some minor RPG elements. Sound awesome? You bet your slow-moving paddle it is!

Johnny has one wish... to go to the moon. As he lays, a dying old man, his only hope to fulfill it lies in the hands of two doctors with a new technology that allows them to alter the memories of their patients and give them what they desire. As they dig deeper into Johnny's past, however, they'll find his wish isn't as simple as it seems, and the path to happiness isn't always a perfectly smooth one. By turns funny, touching, and eerie, this is one indie adventure game you shouldn't miss.

Striking a balance between highly tactical, challenging combat and one of the deepest, most engrossing stories of all time, Bioware's original real-time RPG series still holds up today, almost thirteen years after release. Create a character and discover the truth about yourself in this complex game filled with memorable characters, dangerous encounters, magic, plot twists, and much, much more. Enjoy this deep Dungeons and Dragons game "vanilla", or install one of the many fan-made mods from the robust community to give you even more reason to replay.

What? An entire Weekend Download dedicated to shooters? Has someone gone mad? Apparently, yes! The shmup genre has a loyal fanbase of dedicated players, eating up crazy-difficult releases like they were candy and picking on the finer points of swarm-based action gaming. Casual players can enjoy a good shooter or two as well, and the games below will provide some challenge without alienating the less, shall we say, reflexually impared amongst us!

You thought you had it bad when you were forced to trick-and-treat with your twin, but things only get worse when he (or she!) is mistaken for an actual piece of candy by the real monsters that are pillaging the town! None of the adults will believe you, but unless you want to be in a lot of trouble when you come home alone, you'll have to embark on a rescue mission in this charming, laugh-out-loud funny adventure RPG from DoubleFine. Create and unlock new costumes and do epic battle as you become the very thing you're dressed up as, and stop a candy conspiracy that could threaten the world!

Can't decide if you want to play a rhythm game or a good old fashioned dungeon crawling RPG? Now you can have both, with Iridium Studios' hybrid gem, Sequence. Originally released on the Xbox Live Arcade platform, Sequence takes a little bit of music, adds in combat, spells, weapons and items, shuffles them around in a sort of time management kind of manner, and sets it before you with a side of humor and a dose of "what the heck was that I just fought and why did it insult my mother?".

This week's games were presented before a panel of elite judges prior to publication. They were coffee tasting judges, but you gotta figure their impeccable sense of taste transfers from beverages to games, right? After rigorous screening, the scientifically-verified result is as such: three out of four coffee tasters think the games below are definitely very very fun! The fourth judge thinks they're "rather" fun, but that doesn't make for a very interesting pull quote...

Each year, the Independent Games Festival (IGF) holds a competition to showcase innovation in the indie gaming community. This year, a group of developers got together and submitted a pirate kart, a collection of "cheap", fast-made games packaged together into a single release. The kart features more than 300 titles created by over 100 developers, including some highly-recognizable names such as Terry Cavanagh, Adam Saltsman, Petri Purho, Bento Smile, Andy Moore, and plenty of others!

Not too long ago a relative newcomer to adventure/hidden object hybrids, ChaYoWo games, took us on a journey through the heart of Southern India in The Dark Hills of Cherai. Now they're back and once again the player will be transported to a place few will ever be able to visit in The Dark Hills of Cherai: The Regal Scepter.

The dead are still unquiet, and aspiring writer and awkward medium Rosangela Blackwell is having a more difficult time dealing with it than usual... especially when one of her friends turns up among the spirits. Together with her sarcastic spirit guide Joey Mallone, will she be able to break open a conspiracy before it claims even more victims, or is she more vulnerable than she thinks? Find out in this stellar continuation of the point-and-click adventure series from Wadjet Eye Games.

In the world of time management/casual simulation games there are plenty of Build-a-Lot clones, so it was exciting a few years back when a new player entered the field with Virtual City. Rather than concentrate on building or development, Virtual City took the genre in a whole new direction by focusing the gameplay on the movement of goods, services, and people. Now, G5 Entertainment is back with Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort, which takes the transportation madness to new and interesting heights.

The Pied Piper. Stories tell of the strange man who offered to rid the town of Hamelin of its rat problem using nothing more than a musical pipe. The citizens agreed, but when they refused to pay for his service, the piper grew angry. Using his magical/musical talents, he led the town's children away into the night, apparently because it's difficult to break kneecaps with a flute. In Alawar's latest hidden object adventure hybrid, Oddly Enough: Pied Piper, you take on the role of hero (well, debt collector), investigating the piper's doings and trying to track down the kidnapped children.

You've probably heard that "all roads lead to Rome". What you didn't count on is that you'd have to build them all! In Roads of Rome III, a building-centric time management simulation from Whiterra, you take orders from the Caesar himself and set out to repair damage to the empire caused by barbarians. It's no easy task, and you're not really in the mood to do it, but it's your duty, and one never questions the Caesar!

Travel through the ages from the time of the Roman gladiators all the way to the Aztec pyramids. Solve riddles and brain teasers in order to collect Civilization Points that can be used to rebuild civilization. World Riddles: Secrets of the Ages is a worthy successor to Seven Wonders and is a definite must for all picross puzzle fans. Hours and hours of gameplay awaits along with a lot of interesting trivia about various objects from different historical times.

Demakes, you say? Retro games? We got those! Another weekend of nostalgia on this edition of Weekend Download, featuring games that both remind us of the past and games that directly copy titles from that bygone era. Point of fact: any game that simulates the original Game Boy is a winner.

Often when game designers try to throw everything but the kitchen sink into an adventure/hidden object hybrid, what you end up with is an incoherent mess. In the case of Voodoo Chronicles: The First Sign by Space Monkey Games, start with a hard-boiled detective film noir, cross it with a horror movie, add in elements of steampunk, and the result is a fantastic, glorious sprawling mess of a game that is very difficult to put down and harder still to walk away from.

Ready for some very serious RPG adventuring? The Ultima series has been grabbing players and pulling them into complex worlds for over 30 years, creating games that may look primitive on the surface but have helped define what a role playing game is since the beginning. The titles have graced almost every gaming platform known to humans, from the Apple II to the NES, PlayStation, and modern computers. Now, thanks to the nostalgia-hungry folks at GOG.com, the Ultima series is being made available as a series of digital downloads, packaging the games together in groups of three for all to enjoy!

Build-a-Lot: On vacation is still casual gameplay that sucks you in and doesn't let you go until you've expert leveled the last scenario. Fans of the series will appreciate the new twists in strategy and newbs will just love the addictive gameplay. Forget the depressed real estate market; it's time to get building!

It's time for a super special demo-only edition of Weekend Download! A number of extremely promising demo games have been released in the past few weeks, showing off some big titles from big indie developers that will soon be released as full-fledged games. And, if you're like most people, you hate waiting like you hate ketchup on ice cream, so these will give you a little taste of the awesomeness to come! Look for more coverage when the full versions of these games hit.

There's something lurking beneath the ice and beyond the veil in Greenland, but Norwegian researcher Rune Knudsen and the others aboard the ice station Alpha Polaris are more concerned with their own work. With pressure from the oil companies to deliver samples and new discoveries, everyone is pushing themselves hard... and over the course of four nightmarish days when a malevolent force turns its gaze on them, maybe even past the breaking point. A point-and-click horror adventure from indie developers Turmoil Games with gorgeous professional production.

The newest adventure/hidden object hybrid from HitPoint Studios, The Secrets of Arcelia Island is an experience in sumptuous environments, beguiling scenery and affable puzzles. Help Greta on her mission to save Arcelia Island from the witch Sirenia's curse by gathering clues, searching for objects and solving puzzles in expertly rendered realms that mix fantasy and mystery, surrealism and substantive locales. On the way you'll meet and help island inhabitants including a regal fairy queen and king, an elf, a satyr, and the sorceress Sirenia herself.

Prince (now King) Arthur and his lovely Queen Helen are back for more time management shenanigans in Nevosoft's My Kingdom for the Princess III, which explores what happens when the kids try their hands at running the kingdom. This is the story of what happens after "they lived happily ever after", although the gist of the tale may just be never have kids. Ever.

A great Calamity rocks the world, wiping out all of civlization in an instant and leaving behind only a handful of floating islands in a vast void. As the Kid, along with your ever-present Narrator as a guide, search the remnants of the world for something that might rebuild it, uncovering the truth about the Calamity (and human nature) as you do. Featuring stunning visuals, an engrossing story related in a unique, immersive fashion, and fast-paced combat with upgradeable weapons, Bastion is a top-notch indie action RPG players looking for another realm and a good story will definitely want to investigate.

It's been a long, strange year, hasn't it? First your great uncle passed away, then you had to move to the odd little town of Queensbury to help your grandmother run the family soup stall, then a curse hits the town and suddenly the only thing standing between the townsfolk and complete chaos is your great-uncle's magical spirit soup recipe. Wait, wha? Seriously, that's the premise behind newcomer Twilight Games' fabulously goofy new adventure. Play Spirit Soup: The Queensbury Curse and travel back to a simpler time when adventure games were goofy and magical soup could save the day!

Kittens, cases, and groups of miserable people in 1800s France? How on Earth does one mix those elements together? Answer: one doesn't! One just adds them to Weekend Download and let everyone else decide which games they want to play! All right!

The long-awaited sequel to Hidden Expedition: The Devil's Triangle has finally arrived! H.E.A.T. (that's the Hidden Expedition Adventure Team) is back and is finally going to rescue the pilot! So was the nearly two year wait for Hidden Expedition: The Uncharted Islands worth it? Without hesitation, a resounding: YES! The Uncharted Islands is fun for everyone, from newbies to the most hard-core adventure addicts. Most definitely worth the wait!

Several years in the making, the darkly atmospheric (and strangely realistic) platform game LIMBO has finally migrated from console download to the PC ecosphere.Crafted by Danish studio Playdead, LIMBO drops you in a shadowy world filled with dangers, immensely difficult puzzles, and more ways to die than you would really want to count. It's an incredibly stylistic and engaging game, one that just about any player can pick up and enjoy from beginning to end.

A nightmarish wreck at sea one evening should have left you and your father dead, but instead you find yourself a lost soul stranded at the bottom of the briny deep, trapped somewhere between life and death by none other than Davy Jones himself. In this creative, cheesy-good hidden-object adventure, you'll have to play the malevolent sea-spectre's games if you want to win your freedom, but with so many other listless spirits trapped below the waves for who knows how long it looks like the odds aren't in your favour. Will you be able to rescue your father and the oddball assortment of other beings who lost themselves to Davy Jones' tricks, or are you doomed to an eternity underwater?

If you had the choice between a game that promised to kick your game-playing behind and a game that promised you'd look like an idiot when you first played it, which would you choose? Perhaps a complex personality test should be developed around that question? Perhaps... we'll just play some more games and forget about all that psychiatry stuff!

This is one of the best, most elaborate adventure hybrids to come out this year. With the emphasis squarely on the point-and-click adventuring, Sacra Terra: Angelic Night is a mind-blowing throwback to the days of yore in adventure gaming with its engrossing story, stunning visuals, and, most importantly, depth of gameplay. Alawar has created a world which is fascinating to explore and difficult to leave, and the combination of beautiful, otherworldly scenes juxtaposed with the grim, haunting asylum proper makes the entire experience surreal.

Life isn't easy for fairies. You have to shop in the newborns' clothing section, you leave messy dust everywhere you go, people think that by shaking you around and sprinkling your dandruff on themselves that they can fly. It's a tough life! This is a situation that our heroines Chante and Elise are learning about firsthand in Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters, a new action-RPG developed by EasyGameStation and published by Carpe Fulgur.

Epic games that claim to be not-so-epic, a battle game about politics, and a pixellated Indiana Jones who runs around stealing priceless artifacts. Welcome to Weekend Download!

From the study halls of Digipen, whose alum include parts of the teams behind Portal and Portal 2, comes an epic tale of digging, rigging, and more digging. Sounds as exciting as bathwater, right? But I'll bet you a load of rare minerals that once you get started in Dig-N-Rig, you'll lose your evening. Maybe more!

It's a Wkeneed Dwnalood mix-up edition! Do you like things? Things that are mixed up with other things to make yet another thing to love? Do you love liking mixed things that are things with other things? I hope you answered "what?" to at least one of those, because here come the games!

After the end of the world, we're all dead... but that doesn't mean we aren't still leading productive unlives! Dem, grumpy skeleton hero extraordinaire, doesn't have much interest in the past, but that all changes when bouncy, just-a-little-bit-crazy magical ghost Sara forcibly ropes him into an adventure to explore the ruins of days gone by. Breath of Death VII is a short but sweet classic RPG parody chock full of strategic combat, gaming references, technologically hip vampires, usurpers and more, it's a great funny treat for anyone who remembers what it was like to be a magically animated skeleton with barely contained loathing for his party members.

Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom, from Alawar Games, takes a few common casual gaming genres and breaks their molds all to pieces, creating a game that's one half hidden object game, one half time management simulation. How do you combine a sit and think genre with a frantic click-fest genre? Easy! You hunt for ingredients in a crowded restaurant to cook dishes for impatient customers!

Need a little weirdness in your life? Never hurts to have more, does it?! *high five* A couple of rather strange games on this edition of Weekend Download, one featuring a character whose name is an anagram of a common North American tree, one with solid boulders that are suddenly affected by gravity with you touch them, and a shooter by the creator of Knytt. How's that for odd?

In each level of Robot Unlock, your goal is to program a path for your Executor robot to travel around a series of command tiles that alter the robot's stored memory. It's very much like SpaceChem and similar logic/programming puzzle games, only in this little game, you'll be using math more than you'd expect!

You wake up. Disoriented. Outside of an abandoned town. All you know is your motorcycle is ruined, but a series of vague images continually float through your mind. The town you're stranded outside of was evacuated decades ago because of a fire in the mines. Coal is still burning below the surface, and something ghostly walks the streets above ground. Vampire Saga - Welcome to Hell Lock, a sequel to Vampire Saga: Pandora's Box, is an extraordinarily well-done hidden object adventure that incorporates classic horror film methods to create a creepy, captivating world that draws your interest out with each and every step you take.

The business of fixing dreams is a delicate one. It requires a lot of time and energy, the clients are few, and let's face it, the pay probably isn't that great. That doesn't stop a young woman from helping out her tormented friend, Victor, from sussing out the source of his nightmares by traveling within his world of dreams. Foreign Dreams is a visually stylish hidden object adventure game that lays on imagery and mystery in its unusually-crafted world. As you follow a frightening young girl through Victor's dreams, you begin to piece together a bit of the puzzle surrounding the source of his nightmares.

Memorization has been a part of video gaming history since the very early days. Want to make it through the next level? Memorize everything, it's the only way. Arcade cabinets mastered this technique to get players to feed them more coins, but the concept has carried on through today, especially in action-oriented games.

From Intenium, the makers of the equally awesome Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 and Tulula: Legend Of A Volcano, comes Sandra Fleming Chronicles: Crystal Skulls, a hidden object adventure with heavy emphasis on the latter. Sandra Fleming cuts out most of the casual stuff we see in modern games, leaving you alone with a strange world with nothing but your wits to get you out. It's a challenging and intriguing game that goes to greater lengths to satisfy your puzzle solving itch than most other games of its species!

You want action? We got that. You want cheesy storylines with French villains obsessed about obtaining immortality, kidnapped scientists, plane crashes and giant spiders? Got that, too. Hide and Secret: The Lost World from Anarchy Enterprises is the fourth game in the hidden object adventure series, featuring a classic-styled plot ripped out of your favorite dime novel from a century ago.

Two words for you this weekend: Wyv and Keep. Well, actually, that "and" should be included, so it's really three words. You don't really have to pay attention to the third word, but it really helps establishing the relationship between the two nouns surrounding it. Stop reading, go play!

Mmm, delicious time management games. If slinging burgers, serving tacos, or making cakes doesn't get your appetite going, you probably need to play a little longer! Stand O'Food 3 is a new time management game that puts you in the chef shoes of Ronnie, a mega-talented restauranteur whose skills at making eateries popular rivals that of every other time management game hero! Now it's your job to run a series of burger joints that, apparently, sell burgers the size of a couch cushion. Business is booming, though, and you'll have a great time serving food and pleasing customers in this casual game!

Vampires are the new "it" thing, for reasons we shall not name, and recently they've become quite the item in casual games. Dracula: Love Kills goes back to the roots of the legends and casts you in the role of the non-sparkling Count Dracula, the original vampire that no teenage girl would ever want to date. It's a hidden object adventure from Waterlily Games that's heavy on story, atmosphere, and puzzles, and there are plenty of unlockables to get your cold, vampiric hands on, too!

From Nevosoft comes a quirky, lighthearted game that takes inspiration from the likes of Galcon and Risk, LandGrabbers. In a land filled with castles and knights and crusades, it's own or be owned. You are a brilliant military strategist (but you knew that already!) who has decided to show your prowess by taking over the land. One building at a time. Send units, fortify your homeland, and set out to conquer the medieval world the only way you know how: casual strategy gaming!

If you follow world news events, the weekend is a good time to catch up on what's been going on around our planet. That's pretty boring, however, whereas a 2D platformer, a Lemmings-like action game, and a game where you carry coal to feed a chugging train is much more exciting!

Terraria, a new action/adventure/creativity game from Re-Logic, is perfect for a sand emperor like myself. It offers the thrill of discovery mixed with the chance to meticulously construct your own little village, city or empire. And before you think it: yes, it's a lot like Minecraft, only in 2D!

Another Ludum Dare competition is about to end, and the resulting slew of games are, as usual, numerous, creative, and wacky. The three day event encourages solo game creators to dream up and craft a game in just 48 hours. The only other constraint is that entries must adhere to the chosen theme, which was pretty unusual this time around: It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take this! See the full release list of all 352 Ludum Dare 20 games, then vote on your picks on the Ludum Dare website. And then, check out some of our favorites below!

More games need to be abstract. Just about every art movement comes with its own brand of creators putting their minds to their respective canvases and creating things that don't quite make sense. Games, on the other hand, tend to be more logical, linear, and easy to understand. Why not break down a few barriers and twist the user's experience around a bit, like this week's feature Contourmind does?

A space ship. An explosion. An escape pod. A crash. It's just you and an alien planet replete with jungle creatures who aggressively attack you, lone guy in a well-equipped spacesuit. Capsized drops you in an unfamiliar world and gives you just a few tools to survive. Fortunately, a grappling hook and a number of guns happens to be amongst these tools, the former of which is handy not only for swinging around and pulling yourself up ledges, but for grabbing and moving obstacles. Other than that, you really have to rely on your wits in this gorgeously-illustrated but challenging physics/action game.

Amanda Rose: The Game of Time, developed by Renergy, takes the idea of hurtling through a time-space continuum one step further by way of a small stone in an unfolding cube found by our heroine, Amanda, at the site of a plane crash. It's not an easy ride though and after several days of unconsciousness, she awakes to an adventure that will take her through the wild west of America to the amazing lost city of Atlantis. Of course there are multiple hidden objects to be found to help her on her way.

Hello, traveller! Did you know it's possible to have protagonists made out of clay? How about protagonists that are really tiny due to radiation? These facts and more on this edition of Weekend Download!

This happy weekend time, we are proud to present: fun games! Really, really fun games. It's like, if you wanted to get a bunch of games together that were just plain fun, not so much challenging, not so much brain-taxing, just awesome fun, then you'd assemble something like what we have below. And then you would go play them and have some of that fun everybody's always talking about!

Got some pals over and want to engage in some retro-styled multiplayer fight-a-thons? TIGSource has your answer! The recently-concluded TIGSource Versus Competition inspired a community of game creators to craft 81 multiplayer games, each one focused on combat. Some are playable online, others are confined to meatspace multiplayer, but they're all unique in that awesome indie sort of way. Below are a few of the top games as voted on by the TIGSource community!

Discover why a small tropical island has been over-run by the spirits of a sunken luxury liner in this captivating, beautiful and thoroughly fun adventure game. It is one of the best adventure games we've seen this year. Sometimes I struggle through these types of games, mostly the result of boredom. This title? I played it twice — in a row.

Even in the small-ish indie world, there are superstar game creators whose releases always turn a head or two. Two of our games this weekend are from some designers who have released heavy-hitting titles before. Check out the goods below!

New from Hitpoint Studios comes Guardians of Magic: Amanda's Awakening, a casual adventure game that focuses on inventory puzzles, exploration, and a lush fantasy setting. You take on the role of Amanda, a young girl who discovers some secrets about her late grandfather's life, including his feud with her mentor, Dr. Magus. It's technology versus magic in this well-spun game, and you'll get to explore a heap of scenes as you search for items to help you solve puzzles.

If you were to play one kind of game for the rest of your life, what would it be? Puzzle? Platform? Racing? If you said "awesome", you win the prize! The same prize everybody who said anything but awesome gets! Free games to play!

You're not sure who you are. You don't know where you are. And a mysterious dark shadow is following you around, clouding your memory. It's shaping up to be quite a bad day as Echoes of Sorrow, a new casual adventure game from BlitPop, begins. This title drops a few hidden object scenes to flavor an otherwise straight-up free roaming adventure game that emphasizes exploration and inventory puzzles. Not only do you have to gather items from various parts of the game, but you're usually not sure what to do until the very last moment. It's a smartly paced game that hits all the sweet spots for casual adventure fans.

Futuristic things abound in this edition of Weekend Download! One game explicitly states it takes place in the future, while the other two you pretty much just assume they do, as squares/circles aren't self-aware enough to hate each other in the present, and flamethrower technology has some decades to go before it matches Fire with a Riot.

The world is in your hands in Red Redemption's sequel to 2007's Climate Challenge. Assume control of the newly formed GEO in this complex and challenging strategy simulation game that forces you to cope with the needs of not only the environment but the people who live in it in order to change the future, dealing with the issues afflicting each country throughout the world as you try to bring about change. Real science and research guides your decisions, and Fate of the World offers up a challenging, complex experience that might get you thinking in more ways than one.

It's time to make with the games! Or, to play the games that have been made for playing! Several fun little diversions below, and if you ignore hyphens (which, let's face it, we all do), each one has a one-word title. Isn't that... neat?

This edition of Weekend Download wants to look back to previous editions for inspiration. Problem is, can you really trust your hindsight? After Weekend Download played Hindsight, Weekend Download is not so sure! *bites nails*

When a vampire shows up unannounced at a wedding, it's big news. Not the fact that he's a vampire; everyone already knows about them. But it's the fact that he's out in broad daylight that's causing a stir. Under orders for her master, Dahlia travels to New Orleans to see if the rumours about a potion able to let vampires walk in sunlight are true... but she isn't the only one who will do anything to get her hands on it. A cheeky, quirky vampiric hidden-object adventure from author Charlaine Harris.

Life in the Gemini galaxy isn't easy; war has left its mark on the lives of the people within it, but most of them are more concerned with the all-seeing eyes of the Boryokuden, a crime syndicate that seems to operate outside the law and swiftly deals with any opposition. In this top-notch adventure game, you play as Azriel Odin, a detective on the streets of New Pittsburgh, and Delta-Six, an amnesiac test subject stuck in a sinister training facility, and attempt to stay alive while you uncover a conspiracy that might hit closer to home than you suspect.

From life sims to indie music to painfully difficult 3D games, we've got your weekend in gaming covered! Covered like your morning piece of toast! Covered like the wagon you rode in to reach Oregon! Covered like... something else that's covered!

You Don't Know Jack, the "irreverent party trivia game", features hundreds of hilarious questions in a fast-paced game show format, complete with cash and prizes, a wise-cracking host, and ample carpentry hardware. While released on multiple platforms last week, we're taking a look at the Steam release.

It's more than an action game meeting a role playing game. It's more than an amazing co-op experience. It's more than a collection of hilarious dialogue and geek culture references. It's Magicka, and it's the next game that will claim hours of your life. From Arrowhead Game Studios comes a hybrid title that emphasizes teamwork, alchemy-like spellcasting, and gaining an invincible knowledge of how elements work in relation to each other and the environment. Oh, and there are moose. Lots of moose.

Ready for more buildings, contraptions, machines, and inventions? Crazy Machines: New from the Lab is another resurrected hit from German game developers FAKT Software. Featuring gameplay very similar to The Incredible Machine, Crazy Machines features over 100 new levels, each one more complex (and zany) as the last.

Muse is a brightly creative hidden object game from Big Blue Bubble that ditches the conventions of the genre to focus on pure, amazingly-crafted hidden object entertainment. The artwork could practically come from a museum, the story is unique, and even the voice acting is top-notch, creating one of those rare games that aims to do nothing more than enchant each and every player.

Hello there, weekend gamer! Tired of the rest of the week sapping time that could be spent playing games? We know how you feel! Make the most of your weekend by playing a few free games. They won't demand your entire afternoon, leaving you free to kick back and play even more games!!!

Contrary to what you might think, police work has been made to look more glamorous than it is long before CSI and Law & Order stepped into popular culture. Yes, we shouldn't forget the profound contributions of Miami Vice. But the most realistic of the Sierra adventure games did not stoop to such base entertainment. Instead, all four games were grim thrillers with a penchant for making you walk through all kinds of police procedure (sometimes to a pedantic degree), all while hunting down drug lords, serial killers and satanic cults. Forget Space, Heroes, Kings, or Larry. This is Police Quest.

One of the best-looking and most thoroughly engaging time management games is back with a brand new installment! Delicious: Emily's Childhood Memories follows the gameplay outlined in previous games, such as the winter-themed Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season, but offers players a peek into Emily's past, taking you through a tour of different sections of her life. As before, story is a big part of the experience, and the way the Delicious series weaves fun diversions into the time management portions is perfectly balanced to keep your brain entangled for the entirety of the game.

Time to invent a new word! Or, phrase, rather. Ready? "Platform Adventure Paloozathonvania"! You like? Hope so. It took hours of intense research to come up with that particular combination of letters, not to mention the trademark hoops we had to jump through to print it. But now it's there, and it describes the bulk of this week's downloadable games quite accurately.

Trapped near an old mansion, car broken down and useless, old man saying spooky things, and a little ghost girl trying to convince you of her story. Nothing is quite what it seems in Spirit Seasons: Little Ghost Story, a hidden object adventure game from Tiki's Lab that utilizes some interesting puzzles, dynamic scenery, and a classic mystery setting of deceit.