A bear's gotta eat, but when faced with shadows that mimic and dog your every step, how long will you last chasing after food in this simple but fast-paced high-score based arcade platformer?

Also free for iOS and Android, this simple but addictive multiplayer arcade game has you zipping around as a dot, trying to eat as many smaller dots as possible while avoiding being eaten yourself. While some may find it a little too basic, it's captured the

Make your score climb by gobbling down green dots while avoiding the green that spawn for each one you eat, but with different characters to unlock and faster, angrier enemies, this little arcade game is simple but addictive!

A charming little physics action game that has you controlling a little boy floating through his own dreams in a bubble. Use the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to avoid walls, spikes, and lasers, and to get your little trooper to the gate that will take him further into his own bed time story.

Also free for iOS and Android, Nitrome's putty pup is back for more as you need to stretch around saws, lasers, spikes and more while nabbing gems to activate checkpoints. It's challenging and full of variety, while designed to be a casual pick-up-and-play game for whenever you have a few minutes.

You have eight bricks. That's it, that's all. Just eight. And with these eight bricks at least one must make the daring climb up and out to the surface and to the world that awaits you there in this fast-paced challenging platformer.

Cyberkat is a digital kitty in a high-tech world, and he's got a hankering for some seafood! Help him hunt down digital fish, crabs, scallops, and more in this side-scrolling shooter.

**11/13/2014: New version, NO ADS** Catch, breed and sell diverse species of fish and make your tourist attraction all it can be in this cheerful tycoon-upgrade-avoidance-minigame extravaganza!

An educational puzzle game that has you guiding your little proton with the mouse, avoiding obstacles and combining with particles and lasers for a variety of scientifically-accurate effects.

Tap this crazy little box through obstacles, around dangerous lines, and solve puzzles to reach the always desired, dotted line across the screen. Each level has a new twist and new ways to make you grind your teeth.

Looking for a stylish arcade challenge? All you have to do to play Krome is to keep lapping the center circle as long as possible without running into the trail of squares you leave behind, but changing colours and explosives makes this harder than it looks. How high is your score?

Created for Flappyjam, Ridiculous Glitching is a mashup of Flappy Bird's gameplay, Pac-Man's sprites, and the malevolence of a monetizing ghost thrown in for good measure. This free but difficult avoidance game done in the glitch style (a la Rom Check Fail) has you weaving in and out of perilous paywalls and scooping up vulnerable birds for valuable bonus points. How long can you keep your Pac airborne?

Fireballs. Tesla towers. Explosions. Power-downs. This arcade avoidance game puts a few chaotic twists on a simple concept as you must avoid everything the stages have to throw at you while carving up slices of the landscape!

We begged, we pleaded for another dish of Nitrome's top-down arcade puzzle series, Bad Ice Cream. Now, all our pretty pleas have been answered with the cherry on top that is Bad Ice Cream 3, and it has all the charm, challenge, and gorgeous pixel art we've come to expect.

Komix-Games and ProGamix deliver a simple yet gorgeous and addictive twist on the classic avoidance genre as you sweep through levels of lovely yet lethal hazards popping all the bubbles in your path. Though some might find it a bit too simple, it remains a fun dose of casual gameplay for a coffee-break sized break.

It's finally time for your dream holiday in a serene fishing village. Of course, that's exactly when demon fish start floating our of the sea, thirsty for revenge. Just your luck. Before you call your travel agent to demand a refund, try to stay alive, save as many people as you can, find a boat and escape the fishing community island.

Watch, learn, adapt... oh, and don't get blown up. Impulse is part physics puzzle, part arcade game, with obstacles modeled after Newton's Laws of Motion. Get the green ball to the portal by generating a pulse that moves anything around it... sounds simple, right? But when propulsion, gravity, positive and negative charges and more come into play, you'll find it's anything but.

Spin round like a record baby in this musical avoidance game. Soundodger makes beautiful patterns in time with the music... just don't touch any of them! Best enjoyed with sound up and lights down, see what percentage of the objects you can avoid. Slow things down to get out of a tight squeeze at the expense of points. Earn enough points to unlock new songs.

Bob the charitable robber is back! Once again you can steal to your heart's content, and you don't even have to feel guilty about it. Help Bob stay out of sight of guards, watchdogs and security cameras, and empty every drawer and pocket you can find. It's all for a good cause, so do your best!

Combining avoidance gameplay with puzzle elements, the queerly named ...=D starts off slow and easy, but in no time at all will have you sweating bullets as you struggle to keep up with a game that more and more resembles a chaotic disco dance floor!

It's dark. You're lost. You have to rely on sound to find the exit in this maze while avoiding the traps laid for you... but something else is using sound to find you. Created for the Ludum Dare "minimalist" theme, this simple game that tasks you with finding your way out before something finds you. Though slow and repetitive, the formidable atmosphere of tension the game creates with sound and simple lines alone is truly remarkable.

Beautiful music, moonlight reflected on the sea and birds gliding on the wind: things that are peaceful and relaxing and sweetly simple. Not your typical arcade avoidance game. Yet this is what Ferry Halim of Orisinal succeeds at best. Use your mouse to control your flight, gathering little blue birds and floating stars while avoidance hazards in this lovely, peaceful excursion that also happens to be a game.

Survival is the name of the game in Deep Space Dash, an avoidance game meets bullet hell. As your ship tries to kill you, use your dash ability to run away from hundreds of projectiles and to become temporarily invincible. Gather power-ups to help you last for 60 seconds in order to pass the level. Buy helmets in the shop to up your stats so you can unlock even more levels and gain achievements.

Under the sea! Under the sea! Darling it's better down where it's wetter take it from me! Eat a lot of little fish, without being turned into a tasty dish, chomp all the small ones, flee from the big'uns, under the sea!

Everything wants to kill or trap you in Nitrome's newest arcade game, where you control a cheerful little block that travels along poles it shoots out of itself as you move. Get to and connect the nodes on each level to win, but when figuring out the deadly properties of your environment is part of the fun, it's harder than it looks.

Lost and alone, the little gray pegasus stranded in the Everfree Forest doesn't seem to have a hope to safely navigate the hazards... until an expected friend shows her the way. Though the controls might be too frustrating for some, Derpy's Story features superb atmosphere, some lovely animated cutscenes, and unexpected heart.

Nitrome serves up a frosty sequel in this gorgeous, quirky game of arcade avoidance. Chow down on all the fruit to complete a stage while avoiding enemies by building or busting ice. But with smarter, faster baddies, tiles that can impact your own cone avatar, and even fruit that will flee, it's even harder than you thought to be a sentient cone of ice cream.

Juicy Beast's latest arcade game is an exercise in the bizarre as you control a bear with purple sunglasses trying to hold out as long as you can against hordes of zombies. The catch? You can't fight back unless you find and bash open a pink crate that temporarily turns all zombies into naked fleshy humans for you to devour. No, we don't know why either.

All you really, really want to do is find your car keys and get away from the lonely, isolated cabin in the woods... but with the hedge maze surrounding the property (because everyone has a hedge maze) filled with malicious, supernatural children who want to play with you, you'll need to move fast and carefully... until your flashlight's battery dies. More concept that full game, but beautifully designed for its 48 hour creation period.

The shadows and your wits are the only things keeping you alive in this clever stealth-based physics puzzler. Navigate your way through a series of increasingly challenging (and deadly!) obstacle courses, avoiding lasers, turrets, and more, by figuring out how to use the environment, moving shadows, and even the light itself to your advantage. Originally a simple prototype back in 2010, Shadow Drifter shows how to expand on a much-loved concept and provide a polished, engaging finished project without losing anything from the original.

An arcade avoidance game by Mortar Games that has you controlling a small. fragile virus, attacked on all sides by the defenses of the host body. The Fishy-styled gameplay little slow going at first, but the eerie atmosphere and a surprisingly affecting final level make Vivirion worth playing until the very end.

They say big things come in small packages, and you're one of the smallest around! But just because you start out on the bottom of the food chain doesn't mean you'll stay there, if you're fast on your feet, and with your teeth! A short, simple, and colourful action avoidance platformer themed around evolution and made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare.

Platcore, an avoidance game by Chris Jeffries, pushes you to achieve perfection by threatening to destroy you with lasers, guns and the laws of physics. These are surprisingly good motivators, as it turns out! Platcore is definitely worth a look for action and avoidance fans.

Nitrome seriously overhauls their balloon-centric action avoidance adventure series with this latest installment! When the family pooch is stolen by a malicious spiky baddie, it's up to the son of a hero to venture out into the hostile wild blue yonder and explore stages packed with wild hazards and enemies. With a complete engine revamp, checkpoints, and more responsive controls, it's still a challenge, but not an impossible one!

More arcade avoidance action to be enjoyed in this sequel to the 2009 cat nomming adventure original. Considering how simple yet lovely the original was, it's impressive that Time 4 More Cat manages to improve on it without piling on so much that you lose the addictive ease and simplicity that made it popular to begin with. The art is beautiful, soft, and surreal, while the soundtrack only adds to the dreamlike atmosphere.

Ms. Particle-Man! Ms. Particle-Man! Showing off things that Silverlight can! What's it like? Pretty good! Ms. Particle-Man! A fun little work from Picobots where the quest for the Higgs Boson particle takes on the guise of a 1980s arcade hit, Ms. Particle-Man is so aggressively science-geeky and displays such love for the games it emulates, that a nostalgia trip is almost inevitable.

Slip and slide around with Lockehorn, the hero of Nitrome's wintry arcade avoidance game! Your fellow tribesmen have been imprisoned in blocks of ice by evil snow spirits, and it's up to you to save them while trying to avoid the same fate. Push your frozen pals across the temple floor and try to crush all enemies against the wall to open a pit of flame that'll thaw your friends. A seasonal treat that requires a lot of patience, but also offers a lot of charm.

An arcadey combination of mouse avoidance and WarioWare-style mini-games, Mouse Quest by Oilold takes two love-em-or-hate-em genres of casual gameplay and fuses them into something quite likeable. The plot is nothing too special: the mysterious Shapemaster has transported you to his dimension and presents your cursor with various fast-paced challenges so that you may prove your worth before facing him. Overall, the presentation has the minimalism of someone new to game development, but it's very enjoyable work all the same.

What time is it? Tasty Planet: Dinotime! Mathematical! The popular action series from Dingo Games is back, and this time things have gotten prehistoric. Like always, gameplay is one part Fishy and two parts Katamari as the ancient world faces the cutest darn grey goo scenario you ever did see, and you have the starring role as the goo! It's eat or be eaten as you grow from pebble-size to apatosaurus-size... and maybe just manage to do something about that huge asteroid in the sky.

In Bullet Audyssey by Rete, it seems we've been invaded by celestial bodies, ones who send out their bullets to a thumping galactic rhythm. It's up to your tiny ship to weave your way through their forces, absorbing energy for your interstellar counterattack. Will the world rave about your shooter skills, or will the aliens just leave you in a trance?

Bill is back and he's having a blast in this fast-paced side-scrolling arcade game. Guide one of Mario's oldest enemies on a side-scrolling journey through destructible levels, fight bosses, unlock new characters and powers, and maybe even invent some colourful new profanity in the process... or make use of the level editor to make your friends suffer instead.

Get your ommmm on with Hakim El Hattab's zen-like avoidance game that sends you soaring through a field of red dots to soothing ambient music, snagging power ups and soaking in the atmosphere as you pursue the high score.

If you're big on frustration games (it's okay, you can admit it) then Bullet Maze is here to be your next Everest. Use the mouse to steer your orb around through bullets and click to shift polarities. Each level becomes a sort of puzzle; there's almost always a way to get through that involves carefully recognizing the pattern of bullets and working with it.

Straight from the ghastly hallows of Nitrome comes the hobbling horror of a humdinger, Stumped! As a hopping foot that can only make right turns, can you bounce your way to the exit while dodging piercing spikes, frightening firepits, and eerie eyeballs?

Sometimes it's all about going fast and getting far. This is the premise behind Tenebrous' arcade game Accelerator. A deceivingly simple game, you only need a mouse for the controls. The game is in first person perspective where you careen around and through 3D obstacles towards a non-existent finish line. The longer you play, the faster you go. The menu offers many options in the controls to assist in your avoidance through these randomly generated corridors. This game's a trip, so roll your computer chair real close, flex that mouse hand and dive into a world of soft sound effects in Accelerator.

Alright, let's make sure we've got everything: Black and white stripped shirt? Check! Domino mask? Check! Lock picks? Check! Green toque? Check! Anti-heroic sense of morality that makes you more than happy to lift some cash from the unfriendly neighborhood mob boss? Oh, you'd better bet that's a check! It's Bob the Robber, new puzzle platformer from Flazm. All you footpads out should be prepared to burgle until the whole burg is burgled. Robble robble!

Have you Nyan'd yet? If you haven't you will when you try the bizarre endless game that is Nyan Cat FLY! Pilot a flying oddly shaped cat through the expanse of space to catchy music, collecting yummies and avoiding veggies until... until someone stages an intervention. As if you needed another excuse to Nyan even harder, Krang Games' addictive arcade experience gets sneaky with a bunch of new cheats that do a variety of things to your beloved pop-tart space cat and the playing field.

While we at JayIsGames pride ourselves on featuring the best and latest in casual gaming, we always have time to feature quality works that fell through the cracks. Case in point: Soap Bubble, a, if not the, prototypical avoidance game, was originally released in 2002 and became one of the earliest games featured on the site. The charming and devilishly difficult tale of an ultra-delicate bubble trying to make his way through a cave back to his friends was the start of great things for Anders Gustafsson including the Audience Award winning Gateway series and the coolly claymated The Dream Machine. So it seems that the 2006 sequel which continued the story of the iridescent sphere that could passed us by... until today! Soap Bubble 2 keeps what was best about the original while still feeling fresh.

It's a long way to the top, baby, and if you want to keep your job in Nitrome's latest action arcade platformer, you'll have to survive the Office of Doom! Make your way to the helicopters at the end of each level, running and jumping through floors stocked with all manner of traps, tricks, and hazards. It's just a fact of life, kids; if you want that promotion, you have to be willing to dodge a few zombies and let your resolution get downgraded once in a while.

Leap into a world of irresponsible driving and geometric collisions in Oslo Albet's simple but breezily fun and fast-paced 3D racing game! Swoop around the screen across 32 different courses, avoiding hazards and nabbing time bonuses, in an effort to lock in the high score and prove once again what all adults know... driving in the real world is boring.

Dust off that old Nitrome Entertainment System and maybe even your super sneaky Game Muscle cartridge for a little old-school arcade glory! Help the world's cutest pink elastic puppy stretch his way around all manner of dangerous obstacles to retrieve gems in this beautiful nostalgic homage to classic arcade avoidance gaming.

Cathode Rays starts out simply enough (with only one ray to handle), but the difficulty quickly ramps up as you're required to thread the rays through tight passages and time your movements to match moving and fading planks. Soon you'll be trying to manage four beams at once in sparkly vector glory. Can you wrangle these ridiculous rays?

If you like edgy atmosphere, mysterious trappings, and figuring things out without instructions, Eli Piilonon's puzzle/riddle game This is a Work of Fiction is well worth your time. Just be persistent, and don't let the paranoid ambiance get to you. It is a Work of Fiction, after all.

In Filipe Sheepwolf's stealth game, not only do you need to figure out how to solve puzzles to manipulate the enemy territory, you've got to do it without attracting any attention, and banging into walls or sailing in front of a security camera tends to hinder that. Newton, Newton, what hast thou donest. For fans of the genre it should be even more enjoyable, and the cinematics are quite cool, even if the plot is a little hokey. Elite players, get ready to mock us lesser mortals. The rest of you, grab your favorite sugary comestible and try your best.

Nitrome's latest damsel in distress is actually the one doing the distressing. Jump and run past Princess Nectarine's array of traps and monsters, rescuing villagers and avoiding peril in this cute, tricky arcade platformer. Just ask yourself... is this lady fair's hand in marriage really something you want? After all, it's not like there's going to be room at the loony bin for both of you...

This lovely game by inversecoma offers everything we could want in a game, and possibly even that much more. This is an avoidance sidescrolling game that looks simple on the surface, but there's a whole lot more to it that will test your skills, patience and perseverance.

Would you like a jet-pack? Sure, we all do! However, I'm not so sure I'd be willing to volunteer for the strict testing procedures that would have to be completed before it's released to market: what with the dodging of missiles, the zapping of lasers, and having to deal with the inevitably-snarky AI running the whole thing. Omega Box, the new action game from Ironzilla, is the tale of a test-subject either much braver or much less lucky than I, who must fly around the experimentation room avoiding everything said snarky AI can throw at him.

Survive for 30 seconds. Sounds simple, right? But you're just sitting there in your chair, reading this excerpt. You're not the hapless protagonist of styxtwo's challenging survival platform game, where the goal is to stay afloat as the island slowly shrinks beneath you.

How often do you find yourself playing a game and cackling: "Fools! You've only made me stronger now!"? Not often enough I'd say, but developer Dingo Games has set out to rectify this problem with its game, Tasty Planet. In this preview version of Tasty Planet you take control of a microscopic ball of grey goo. Designed by scientists to clean toilets, it soon becomes apparent that this goo can absorb anything and grow without stop.

There's something deliciously ironic about Canary. Set in space, Nitrome's "Best of 2011" award-winning game puts players in the role of a stalwart canary in the employment of the Canary Mining Colony. With rocks falling everywhere, hostile yet adorable aliens and a panoply of other things to worry about, the game really does give new meaning to the phrase 'canary in a coal mine'.

Nitrome wants to know how far you'd go to save a raccoon in this silly, tricky little physics avoidance game about a fish with a plant growing out of its head, and a bucket full of raccoons. It's the sort of crazy weirdness you'd only expect to find on the Nitrome Entertainment System done up with characteristic retro flair that you'll enjoy as long as you have some patience and a steady hand.

A three phase fishing game from Vlambeer. First, cast your hook into the water, avoiding fish as you head deeper and deeper. Second, snag as much sea life as you can as you reel your hook in. Finally, fling them into the sky and use your weapons to blast them into sushi. An over-bloody and surreal, but quite addictive time.

Never in history has one man worked so hard to collect so many that cared so little as to follow him properly. But that is just all part of the challenge in this noteworthy CGDC 9 entry. Zip through the colourful levels trying to gather enough friends to proceed, while trying to keep your massive human chain from blundering into dangerous obstacles.

Ferry Halim, in Orisinal's most recently released flash game, has recreated the pure enjoyment of an afternoon in the park, where puppies and bunnies frolic, in Carrot Track, a vertical scrolling, avoidance game delight.

In Flyde, you are trying to stay alive and earn points as you speed down a colorful, endless track. Move left and right to change lanes, running over special cells that zip you upside-down to the top of the screen while trying to avoid black cells that end your game. Try to get the highest score and be on top of the leaderboard.

Survive 'n' Risk has you controlling a stickman with your mouse and keyboard as you leap across platforms, avoiding enemies and spikes to earn cash. Increasing the risk on each level earns you more cash, but makes things more difficult. Upgrade your stickman by purchasing various hats, which modify your jumping, floating, and energy abilities.

Touch the Bubbles 3 is a mouse avoider that satisfies your childhood desire for wanton globular destruction, and you don't even need to dig around for bubble wrap. So get out there, avoid the red, earn some points, build your multiplier, and touch the bubbles. Touch the Bubbles THREE, that is.

Oh, Captain Bobulous! Why must you love the princess and not me?! I would never make you fend off intruders while avoiding spikes, snakes, meteors, and anything bigger than you are! A green alien is the unlikely hero of this fast paced arcade game of reflexes. Collect energy to grow bigger, just don't get too attached to your dashing green hero... not only is he rather fragile, but his heart belongs to another. *sniff!*

Take control of a flock of Canada Geese and fly for as long as you can, gaining more birds to increase points, and avoiding their natural predators. Like propellers. With upgrades to buy, achievements to discover, and high scores to capture, Endless Migration is a solid, if repetitive, avoidance title for the goose in all of us. HONK!

A light touch and a lot of patience will get you far in this deceptively simple game of shapes and stars. Guide your smiling square to the exit of each level, gathering stars along the way, but beware... spikes, traps, and even time itself are all poised to wipe that grin off its face! Easy to pick up and play, Shape Shape is a light afternoon snack packed with all the square-pushin' action you can handle. And we bet that's a lot!

How My Grandfather Won the War is a stunningly beautiful game that is worth a second, and even third play through. Treat it as a simple side-scroller or go deeper and explore every inch of its breathtaking cardboard world. The detail is so fantastic you can almost touch the screen and feel the rough edges of haphazardly cut items.

From Nitrome comes a game about space, stars, and making aliens blow up. Guide a fledgling star across thirty levels requiring a steady hand and quick reflexes. While the control scheme may take some getting used to, Nebula is a cute, quick little game that would be at home in any arcade, thirsty for your quarters. And remember, kids. Friends don't let friends play with space bombs.

Short and sweet, Para Cute sends a teddy-bear out searching for a gift for his beloved the old fashioned way. Parachuting through a series of caves and warp points to collect as many hearts as he can! At only six levels, Donut Games has crafted a tasty little title suitable for your coffee break, or any other time you feel the need to go awwwww.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage. I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for avoiding the solid black lines of architectural blueprints as they whiz by at unsafe speeds while you struggle to stay upright on your bicycle built for DEATH.

Reach for the stars — literally — in Casual Space, where treasure, danger, and secrets are sprawled across two enormous maps comprising over 40 levels of spacey action! Balancing a quirky, kid-friendly presentation with some genuinely challenging gameplay, Casual Space is good casual fun for all ages.

A space-themed mixture of Time4Cat and Replica. Your hyper-drive has malfunctioned, and deadly replicas of your ship are popping out of a wormhole behind you, retracing your path. They only move when you do, but you still have to travel fast to collect the research from nearby planets that will allow you to escape.

A game in which you face wave upon wave of enemies, and you don't have so much as a dull spoon to defend yourself with. That's not fair, you may think, but this is the fast-paced and frenetic hand you've been dealt, serving up a bountiful feast of action-y goodness that's hard to put down. You don't have any weapons of your own, but the hundreds of enemies eager to see your undoing have more than enough to make up for that, as you turn their heat seeking bullets right back onto them.

A mouse-avoider game from Finefin, the makers of Dotville. Your goal is to skydive from Point A (umpteen thousand feet up) to Point B (the ground) relatively unscathed. However, a series of walls and tunnels has formed in midair, and running into them would likely be painful. The cheery pixel-art and energizing music make this a fun game to play.

Time 4 Cat is a mouse avoider game in which your movements also control the enemy, so you can make everyone stop and start, or go faster or slower. Your goal is to hustle through the big city and scoop up all the food that is dropped. Each piece of food has a count-down timer on it, the faster you collect the food the higher your score. What makes this game stand out is the fact that you can slow everything down and go at your own pace.

Bomba is a new arcade avoidance game from Nitrome. Look just beyond the surface and Bomba reveals itself to be much more than a simple "don't touch the walls" game. There's strategy, there's speed, there's planning, there's even backtracking and careful timing involved. Think of it as an adventure/avoider and you'll get an idea of what to expect.

A unique new anti-shooter game of collection and avoidance by Felix Reidl. You have two minutes to collect as many yellow squares as possible, while various gun turrets try to mow you down. Whenever you start to feel overwhelmed, you should hit [Space], which instantly ends your game and adds up your score. If you don't hit the space bar in time—and this is important—you don't get any points. You have only one life, and if you die, your score is zero.

A fast-paced, single-player mouse avoidance game where your only goal is to survive as long as possible. Dodge angry red buggles and collect mysterious blue boxes to obtain a high score. Catch the little green buggles to become the mighty devourer, destroyer of red buggles! Eat them all! Muhahaha!

Trying to describe a game using splendiferous prose just seems so... right-brained-centric. How discriminatory! Thus, as a public service to all you left-brainers out there, I hereby present this mathematical description: Retroid = (Pong + Gravity - 1 player + Ball2 + 3Enemy) * 4 modes + Bob.

In Entropic Space, no one can hear you smash planets together. It's true, sound does not travel in space, but what does travel are "fun-waves", those mysterious quanta of play that science is just beginning to understand. A submission to our 4th Casual Gameplay competition from Studio Cypher, Entropic Space has you pilot an mega-scale space pod that can bump planets into each other, engineering parsec after parsec into entropy.

It looks simple, like what computers experience when they practice zazen. And it is, my brothers and sisters, it is very simple. Therein lies the beauty of Avoid! (I bet that exclamation point was jarring), a compilation of short vignettes by Alex Miller that plays off the theme of avoidance.

Hearken back to those adrenaline-happy days with Vector Runner, an arcade action game concerned purely with the sensation of speed. Control a humble blue cube on its journey down a futuristic highway, dodging deadly pyramids of various shapes and sizes. Wherever you need to be, you're going there fast.

Most everyone has probably played an avoidance game before. They are generally based on a very simple gameplay mechanic. Orb Avoidance is a simple game of mouse avoidance with the added bonus of a combo system. It's a little mindless fun to get your gears turning, and it won't take more than 10-15 minutes of your time.

Overhead Consistence is another mouse maze game, but please bear with me... this one's good, even if you don't normally go for manual dexterity games. If you don't believe me, go check out Overhead Persistence, reviewed here in March. Has JohnB ever steered you wrong? This one is well worth the effort.

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.

Instead of simply moving one object around the screen to avoid the falling dots, in Formation you must control an entire setup of orbs that rotate and periodically change position. Touch one of the flashing white balls that fall from the top of the screen and it becomes part of your formation, thus forcing you to be mindful of yet another ball's position and causing your brain to hurt.

Have you ever had that weird feeling that you are a giant, controllable, seeker missile flying down a long tunnel avoiding obstacles? What?! You say you haven't? Then you must not have played The Missile Game 3D by Damien of DX Interactive. For a fun and simple game that's taken a simple concept of "avoid the object" and infused some life into it, look no further.

Arguably one of the best (if not the best) Flash game series of its genre, Dr3i is more than just a game of avoidance. As before, collecting small positive and negative signs speeds up and slows down the rotation of the obstacles that you must make your way past. However, this 3rd version in the series introduces an animated "beast", an engaging cloud of black smoke that follows you in pursuit.

Drag the Dot is a simple Flash game, created by Oliver Castañeda of Scarsdale, New York, in which the objective is literally self-explanatory. Just drag the dot to the goal in each of the game's 16 levels, and a final boss level that is "better than doom" (whatever that means.)

An updated version of the original Reverse game (previously reviewed on JIG), Reverse 2 is a very simple point-to-move-the-block game where the basic rule is that the mouse input directions have been reversed, so pushing the mouse up pulls you down, and so forth.

Combo! and Blockdown are two great flash puzzle games by Anders Pousette. They're remarkably simple and build upon classic puzzle gaming themes while throwing a few fresh ideas into the mix. Each comes with a public high score board to give you a chance at your 15 minutes of fame. You'll have to earn it, but with the amount of time you'll spend playing each game, odds are you won't really mind.

You may remember the name Hannu Pelkonen as the creator of the infectiously addictive typing games, Letters and Words, both of which were previously reviewed here. He now has a new game that was recently added to his collection at 2addicted, and this one is based on a familiar classic arcade hit from days gone by.

Those shifty (har, har) 8-key critters are cruising down the screen towards you, an intrepid, er, lightbulb, as you ascend the y-axis in this evasion flash game. While 'don't touch the sprites' is a very (very very very?) common game mechanic, this is a superb execution with twists that make it less about endurance than about nerves.

String Avoider is an online flash game where you slide a string through a series of mazes using your mouse. Coded by fwe and part of the Gamenet network, String Avoider has the nasty habit of being both addictive and maddeningly frustrating all at once.

An official Katamari Damacy mini-game is now available on Namco's Japanese website. It appears to have been designed to illustrate the main concept of the game, which is to joyfully roll the katamari over smaller objects to collect them and make the katamari bigger so that you can then roll over even larger objects. To this end it works quite well; however, the mini-game does not even come close to the fun of the original.

German Flash-based design firm, Mach Parat, has released an update to its excellent Flash game, Dr3i, that was reviewed here back in October of 2004. This new horizontal scrolling version of the action game is played just like the original. Use the mouse to move the red dot through the maze and collect all the black dots.