Spooky rather than scary, Mystic Asylum is an escape game of chills rather than frights. No jump scares here, just a lot of spooky atmosphere enlivened by the standard conventions of a room escape. Stunning to look at and fun to play, Mystic Asylum is also a nice, creepy escape slap dab in the middle of the holiday season, something to cut the treacle and a relief from all of the frantic shopping.
Who's up for a taste of the Orient? No, not a Yum-Cha banquet as much as I'd like to be able to take us all out for. Rather, a nice little point and click entree from Abroy> games, a delightfully seasoned escape game without the MSG. Golden Dragon Mystery is a pleasurable break from routine, as sweet as ordering Chinese take-out on the weekend.
Ah, the little joys of childhood, rolled up into one fun puzzle platform game from Sandeep Saha, Paper Venture. In a carefree doodle art style, you use a simple block attached to your cursor to guide your lemming-like protagonist around a dangerous or simply tricky area to the goal.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that the Inuit culture has more than a hundred words for snow, but it is true that the Japanese language has roughly fourteen symbols and words for the English word 'perfection'. I bet you're all enthralled at this little piece of trivia, so to avoid contentious discussion let's now turn our attention to Room Perfectio, a lovely, albeit brief, escape game from the creators of the Dismantlement series.
With graffiti on the walls, funky-fresh music and a grunchy-chic environment, you'd think that Truck Loader was trying a little too hard to be cool. Were this another shoot 'em up or platformer, I'd probably have dismissed it outright but Truck Loader is a refreshingly ghetto-looking stack 'em up puzzler with a twist.
From the logic puzzle masters at Conceptis, creator of the recently-released Mix Sudoku Light, comes another great pencil and paper game transformed for your browser. B&W Pic-a-Pix Light, volume one, is an online version of picross that does one thing and does it very well. Instead of trying to dazzle you with pretty colors or distracting mini-games, Pic-a-Pix Light presents you with a simple, highly usable interface that allows you to get in, solve picross puzzles, and take a break whenever you like. It's another great entry in the logic puzzle universe that's primed to be your main resource for picross!
Escape from the Art Studio has a nicely balanced mix of exploration, puzzles, and use of found objects. Even better, the puzzles have become more unique for a Tesshi-e escape, especially the little robots with the moving arms. These escapes continue to evolve, rarely falling back on cliché d, "I've seen this before" puzzles. That is one of the reasons that Tesshi-e escapes are so entertaining.
Serendipity in 2D is an arty game, maybe even an experimental one. You view a hospital from the side, the walls cut away. With your far-reaching cursor you have to orchestrate chains of events that will ultimately lead to three things: someone being saved, someone finding love and someone dying.
Prizma Puzzle 3 starts out with some breezingly easy levels that may either have you feeling like the world's cleverest puzzle solver, or mildly bemused and wondering why you're bothering. But persevere, because guaranteed you will find yourself stumped in some of the later levels. The combination of easy and challenging puzzles to solve, the fabulously 3D rendered structures, the amazing light display and excellent music all combine to give us some wonderfully satisfying good fun.
Dwarf Complete is now available for iOS devices! And best of all it's FREE! For anyone who hasn't been around JIG for a few years, Dwarf Complete is an awesome dungeon escape adventure game from On of Eyezmaze. If you haven't already played the Flash version, or if you don't have an iOS device, you can play the game in your browser.
There's a strange little town you might not have heard of, but once you find your way there, you just might not be able to tear yourself away. Pastel Games offers up a chilling, atmospheric point-and-click adventure set in the wild west. There are legends about a woman who appears to be linked to a series of bizarre events, and you probably don't want to be around when she finally shows up... even though she's dying to meet you...
In this point-and-click puzzle game from Andrey Kovalishin, you're responsible for ensuring that Snail Bob doesn't die a hilarious death. Pull levers to activate platforms, push buttons to move barriers, anything that it takes to get poor slow-moving Bob over to the other side. What makes Snail Bob entertaining is not the complexity of the game but the sheer amount of quirky charm it contains.
Vanilla, jeans, thunderbolts - there have been many variations and 'improvements', but nothing that beats the original. That also goes for many puzzle games and while people are less inclined to meet an old favourite during an adventure game, on their own they hit the sweet spot. That, more or less, summarises my opinion of Bomboozle 2. It might not break new ground or usher in the new era of 'pop the colors' puzzle games, but this take on a classic isn't broken either!
Modern Mystery is the escape title of the week this time around. The game, naturally, begins with you trapped in a rather comfy lounge-like room. It's nicely furnished—a bit of abstract art on the walls, a potted plant, two leather chairs, a laptop computer—but you still want out by any means. Go around collecting objects, putting clues together, and solving puzzles in order to collect more objects, hopefully at some point getting one or both of those doors open and terminating your confinement.
Liquid Measure 2 mixes Pipe Mania, water collection puzzles and simple idea physics into a nice glass of flash gaming fun. The difficulty is perhaps overly easy, but the mechanics are clever and the professional presentation should quench your thirst for a half hour.
This is your mission in Aah Little Atlantis, a pixelated turn-based strategy game; try to save as much of the Atlantean populace as you can, using nothing but floods, meteors, and the populace's own panicked fleeing. Your tools are floods and meteors, and you will deploy one of each on a single map tile, once every turn. Your charges are little Atlantean sprites, who will flee in terror from the ravaging deluge you let loose upon them, though they are oddly sanguine about meteors and will happily run toward them.
Doodle Devil is here and, as promised, we have it here first! The sequel to the amazingly popular Doodle God is now out in a Flash version for all those without a smartphone. More Doodle God is never a bad thing, and even though Doodle Devil doesn't reinvent the alchemical wheel, there's still plenty to love. The series distills a very basic element found at the core of all video games: exploration and discovery.
It's possible you might be familiar with Jonas Kyratzes' philosophical point-and-click, The Infinite Ocean. It was originally released back in 2003. Not entirely satisfied with the finished product Kyratzes has revisited the game and re-released this new version with changes to the writing, programming and music. It contains an amazing story that's revealed slowly as you progress, and it sets up a mystery that persists even after you get some answers.
When evil robots strike and steal all your lighthouse bulbs, it's GIL to the rescue!... easily killed Gil, with no defenses and a soft, pink body, but GIL nonetheless! This simple looking but tricky platformer from Animals Play Games is guaranteed to test your skills as you run, leap, and flying-machine your way through increasingly difficult worlds filled with spikes, robots, switches, lava, missiles, mines, and much more.
Long before they discovered a save button, long before they found a competent translator, long before we first featured one of their games, Tesshi-e created this cute little puzzler that deserves a spot in the Weekday Escape spotlight. Give Escape from the Dome Room a try and enjoy playing this early and amusing effort from the brilliant Tesshi-e escape game designers. Despite the flaws, there is a lot of entertaining room escaping to be had.
Fragments is a tile-sliding puzzle by Ozzie Mercado that's as simple as getting in touch with your shape-shifting side, with a bit of planning and some geometric twists. Mix in a mellow color scheme and a funky riff in the background, and you've got a fun puzzle to slide right into.
The Beatles don't know what they're talking about. All you need (all you REALLY need) is a pile of wet, squishy brains. At least, that's assuming we're talking about dealing with zombies. Use tasty brains to lure the zombie invasion to their demise in this simple but charming little puzzle game, utilizing tricks and traps as well as the terrain to fool the slobbering hordes. Cute slobbering hordes, in this case.
In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, some things were created by an all-benevolent superbeing-type god. A not-so-benevolent deity also has a job to do, though, and once the world exists, his task is to cause a little mayhem. The original Doodle God, both the iPhone version and the browser game, focused on creating the universe by mixing basic elements one after the other. Doodle Devil, on the other hand, is about crafting the darker side of life, blending rudimentary concepts together to create chaos.
Bart Bonte's Me and the Key sent us all on a voyage of self- and key-discovery. But the hunt for the self/key is an eternal quest, is it not? Luckily, the journey has been lengthened by another 25 levels in Me and the Key 2. As you progress through this series of abstract thinking puzzles and mini-games, maybe you'll discover that the key that you were searching for was around your penguin-thing's neck the whole time.
Apparently the titular hero of keybol'sJohnny Why Are You Late believes in total honesty with management. Of course, Johnny also seems to have a little bit of a weird memory. He needs you to point and click through his strangely puzzle-filled house to remember exactly why he was late to work.
Fancy Maze is a classic room escape and a fun little time waster in which there are a lot of fun things to discover and puzzles to solve. Wander around, pick things up, see if you are up on the latest (and not so latest) technology, and see if you can find the two different endings in this amusing game.
When the hero's gone, what happens to the ones who get left behind? We're talking about the bad guys, of course, the little enemies you usually never think twice about. Nitrome's latest arcade platformer stars Enemy 585, who's not smart enough to figure out how to escape his tiny patrol area even seven years after the hero has beaten the game. As a friendly platform, figure out how to guide Enemy 585 through the levels, avoiding obstacles, and hopefully towards a better life.
Dark Visions is a point-and-click adventure game in the style of the classic Quest games by Sierra On-Line. In 1928, Emma Fischer has been summoned by her uncle, Dr. Frank Mahler, to assist him at his mental clinic in New Hampshire. But where is the doctor? Search throughout Hill Crest Manor and solve puzzles in an attempt to uncover the mystery of what's really been going on there. This is a robust free Flash game on par with some downloadable adventure titles.
Red and Giant Panda's master has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough panda to rescue him? So is the challenge of Neutronized's new teamwork platformer. Guide them through twenty levels of puzzles, alternating control between the differently-abled Giant and Red all the while. This is a slow-paced, almost zen, walk through a pixelated garden.
In this platform fighting game, evil has no chance as you take the Blackmist form of a young hero named Leo and his Eagle, to puzzle and fight your way through various worlds, eliminating henchmen and completing boss battles to overcome the evil that threatens to annihilate your village.
Sudoku fans should rejoice with this new release from Conceptis. It contains a number of classic puzzles, along with several variations including Diagonal, Irregular, Chain, Odd/Even, and Multi. The sixty puzzles are over far too soon, but with such a well-done interface, the next volume is eagerly awaited.
Not the most difficult point-and-click escape out there, and the pixel hunting can get a little annoying, but Ice Stone Escape delivers some fun logic and puzzles in this compact little game. Cute backgrounds and quirky, logical puzzles make Ice Stone Escape a fun mid-week break, something that will refresh your logic circuits and help you clear your mind for the rest of the week.
Get into the undead-slaying groove once again by playing this latest physics puzzler from Mibix. Zombies have been set up throughout the girders of a construction site, and you need to get rid of them by smacking them with objects like wrecking balls and boards. It's a solid use of your time whenever you want to send some zombie heads a rolling.
In this new fun-sized Halloween-themed installment of the popular Reincarnation point and click adventure series, control the snarky demon as he attempts to see if Darcy, a soul that has escaped from down below, has taken up his old ways. Use the mouse to manipulate and combine objects to complete your mission.
This is your chance to be the spook, and we don't mean the sort that stare at goats. This simply vibrant and unusual action puzzler by the Super Flash Bros puts you in the role of a ghost who seeks to haunt a house in peace and quiet, but your house has been overrun by a bunch of noisy party guests and it's up to you to scare the living daylights out of all thirty, yes thirty, of them.
In this physics puzzle platformer from WoblyWare, the Maoi Duck God has demanded tribute, and has luckily granted you, his humble servant, power over gravity to fulfill his godly demands. Waddle through forty colorful and increasingly challenging levels, bounding from surface to surface, avoiding enemies and collecting golden eggs.
Wallace and Gromit are back with another game, a physics puzzler that will well and truly test your noggin. Necessity is the mother of invention and apparently it's a necessity to get Crash-Test-Wallace from one end of a workshop into a waiting chute by inventing contraptions to help him get there. You'll use a variety of apparatus and mechanisms in your creations including balloons, motors, wheels and rockets. There's even dynamite!
Emma and Lilith are two little girls with a lot in common despite some differences... like fangs and a few centuries. These two spot-the-difference games are meant to be played together for both perspectives, and the end result is a short but sweet little experience that lightens up the spooky Halloween season, and is perfect to be enjoyed with whatever little monster you have in your life.
A previous work from Rosetta Escape author, Otousan, Enigma is an escape game that takes place in a pretty bare bones room. While not the elusive perfect room escape game we are always searching for, Enigma is still an amusing beginning and highlights the ability of a new talent on the escape scene.
Here are two creepy treats that will have you playing the role of a thief to avoid death traps in a creepy, abandoned house while seeking out some loot. And you might not get out alive. Cat burglars might have nine lives, but common thieves only get three.
Using your mouse navigate through creepy, old houses to find keys, unlock doors, search rooms, and use objects to assist you in your thieving quest.
Boondog is an action/puzzle platformer similar to classic titles such as Another World and the original Prince of Persia. The main character is quite the acrobat, able to jump, climb, and leap all over the place at will. The action is parceled out in simple moves, though, forcing you to perform your physical feats one step at a time, and only after careful thought and execution. Add to that a bit of Sokoban-style barrel pushing and you've got an excellent diversion that tests both mental and physical reflexes.
Blosics 2 Level Pack is a new series of levels and a custom editor for the physics puzzler, Blosics 2. Shoot different-sized balls at various structures made of blocks, causing them to fall down. You have to deal with blocks on and around various stone, rubber and ice surfaces that effect trajectories, as well as exploding blocks and floating balloon blocks.
SpreadPath is a unique new puzzle game from Andrey Shponko that uses growth by spreading as its core gameplay mechanic. In order to achieve enlightenment by spreading, you must cover each target square with a creature of the matching color. Wherever your path takes you, SpreadPath is an intriguing challenge to push your logic and puzzle-solving abilities into new territories.
FireBoy and WaterGirl 2: The Light Temple is the sequel to Oslo Albet's last Forest Temple offering. In it, you control two cute elemental characters as they attempt to grab various gems and reach their exits. Each character can be controlled independently or at the same time, leading to some interesting teamwork-based platform puzzles. The Light Temple includes extra light and darkness-based stages in a robust 40 level pack.
A lively combination of beautiful scenery, strong puzzle design, and manipulative ability makes Kalaquli a fantastic escape-the-room game. Not too easy, not too difficult, easy on the eyes, and the added bonus of charming animations give this latest game from 58 Works must-play status for any escape game fanatic. Or anyone who just likes point-and-click adventures. Or anyone who just likes Ninjas. Okay, so it's fun for everyone!
Why can't pirates and ninjas get along? Why can't you crazy kids just join hands, or hooks, and sing a little Kumbaya? Why must you alternate through sixty levels of smashing, launching, physics puzzle madness? Your creator ought to be ashamed of you.
One of these things is just like the other. One of these things, oh it belongs. Can you tell me which thing is just like the other, before I finish this song? If you just had a flashback to a kinder, gentler time of your childhood spent in hypnotic rapture before a television, take For the Twin for a spin.
Bustabrain is a series of click or drag-and-drop minigame puzzles by Ninjadoodle. Play through 39 levels of rebuses, memory games, pattern recognitions, and others. Try to beat the game using the least number of mouse clicks possible.
Escape from the Same Room 2 contains everything we like about our Tesshikins: photorealistic graphics, catchy music, and logical puzzles. It's four interconnected rooms, all of which look alike at first glance: a little teakettle on a round table, a green box on a square pedestal, a mysterious picture on the wall next to a button that doesn't do anything. Obviously, you've got to solve puzzles that span all four rooms if you're to get out, with or without the usual Happy Coin.
Morbid 2: The Cure picks up where the first chapter in the series left us, and just in time for everyone's favorite spooky holiday. The best part of this horror-themed, point-and-click adventure series remains the atmosphere. The black-and-white art and subtle ambient sounds are creepy and evocative. There are no jump scares or shocking gore, just a mood of well-crafted, eerie desolation. If you can get over the wonky navigation, Morbid 2 is a fine bit of quick, atmospheric spookiness, just right for Halloween.
Nearly a year after the first installment was released, the Gretel and Hansel trilogy continues in this twisted, dark and slightly comedic take on the classic fairytale from Mako Pudding. Separated from her brother in the forest, can Gretel outwit all manner of strange and scary fables to be reunited with Hansel? Of course she can, with your help! After all, girls rule, and boys drool... in Hansel's case, at least, that's literal, so you might want to get a move on.
If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that lasers owe allegiance to no man. Sure, lasers might be useful for blasting extraterrestrial invaders, but chances are those same aliens are also armed with human-frying laser weaponry. Lasers are dangerous! Chromatronix, a puzzler from Lyngo Games, is a great example of this: you'll need to practice proper laser safety as you match colored beam-emitting Chromas to their proper Power Cells.
Wake Up The Box 2 is a physics puzzle that has you attaching various wooden pieces to objects in order to wake up the tie-wearing Mr. Box. The game includes interesting contraptions, new gameplay elements, and a few surprises along the way. It's a solid, casual game that fans of the series and physics-aficionados should enjoy. The title feels even more refined and smoother than its predecessor. Give it a try!
Sticky Blocks, Aaron Maupin's new variation on the sokoban concept, introduces blocks that stick to each other as well as the avatar. With each move you make, your collection of blocks becomes larger and, possibly, more unwieldy, forcing you to consider every move beforehand!
Escape from Mr. K's Room 2 is this week's delightful room escape game and the perfect break for the mid-week. It's a chance to stretch the neurons and take them out for a little walk, and enjoy pure room escaping fun. Stripped of all of the extraneous scenarios of how you got in there in the first place, Tesshi-e proves that they are masters of the basic room escape. Test drive Escape from Mr. K's Room and find out for yourself how much fun escaping a locked room can be.
Word Bubbles is a word game of a different sort, exercising your brain as you devour round after round of word-guessing goodness. Enter as many words that begin with the set of letters given at the beginning. Float the numbered bubbles to the top and you'll earn a star!
Feed the King has you dropping various-shaped cakes on top of each other, forming a large tower and earning points through careful placement. Eventually you launch the king into the sky, controlling him as he gobbles up the pastries for more points.
Warp back to 1977 for some root beer and pizza with extra cheese in this retro themed point-and-click puzzle game from Nickelodeon. Colourful, photo-realistic art and some pretty groovy music combine to create a truly fabulous retro experience. But you'll have some unusual puzzle-solving to do before accessing that mmm...melt in the mouth cheesy goodness. If you're a post-70's child, then you're about to experience a taste of life at a time when technology was only just making appearances in the home.
Cheat Death is a puzzle game by Garbuz Games where you help a young man avoid turning to dust by leading him to the elixir on the other side of a cliff. This involves manipulating a series of floating tetris-like blocks and dragging them into a specific area. Once formed, the man will hike across the path, reach the elixir, regain his youth, and "cheat death" until the next level.
Tia's birthday means a time for her to play with the other children in her struggling, isolated village... but it may also mark the end of her childhood. Of course, that all depends on you, and whether you do as you're told. Gregory Weir's experimental narrative might be too experimental to be a hit with everyone, but it's a clever game that deserves a play for the few minutes it'll take you.
Original, enjoyable, and in some respects different from many of the samey room escape games out there, Rosetta Escape is a fantastic way to while away your time in the middle of the week. Although the game is from Japan, no knowledge of the Japanese language is needed. Any letter puzzles are in English, and everything else is a complicated code of colors, tiles, symbols, and funky drawings which, if interpreted correctly, will help you get out of the stark space.
Oozy and the Tower of Wulu is a new action adventure and puzzle game from Oddity Games. Oozy is a cute lil' alien mollusk. Oozy has a dream. Oozy wants to slime the whole world. To do this, Oozy needs a magical shard; one currently held at the top floor of the Tower of Wulu. All Oozy needs to do is climb through fifty levels of a top-down maze, sliming baddies, exploding ooze, collecting lime jellies, and battling bosses all the while. Won't you help poor Oozy to realize his vision?
Moxie 2 is a solitaire puzzle game where you try to create words by modifying or adding letters to existing words. Each letter has a different point value, and larger words earn you more points. Earn the most points by forming special Moxie words, based on animals, vegetables, or minerals. A simple concept with surprisingly deep, addictive play.
Quantum warping might seem like a simple mechanic after you've done some experimenting with it, but My First Quantum Translocator pulls out all the stops and sets up some brain-bending puzzles. You'll have to make seemingly impossible leaps, dodge murderous moving walls and avoid being smashed in any number of ways. Thankfully, you've got unlimited lives, but it almost makes you think that there's some sort of sinister undercurrent to these lab tests...
Play Knight or Princess in this third installment of the Knightfall series. Destroy groups of like colored blocks to help our heroes slay monsters, collect keys, and get safely to the exit. Survive long enough and you may find out what happened to your stolen loot, and what's behind this mysterious "Taxman".
When an expedition goes wrong, stranding a young boy deep inside a series of caverns lit only by strange crystals, he thinks he's alone in the dark. He's wrong. This retro pixel adventure mixes light puzzling with a creepy narrative and atmosphere that combines for a slow-moving but unique experience that's definitely worth a look.
Bloons 2 is here and it continues the high standard of quality the series has established. It looks and sounds good, there's a lot of fun new stuff to experiment with and those who want a challenge will definitely find it here. This iteration introduces a bunch of new bloons, a world map and even some puzzle solving rewards. With 96 levels, Bloons 2 offers a lot of fun and heaps of challenge to keep you entertained for hours.
Saunavihta Vortex is another physics puzzle game where your goal is to click away the white shapes and send your little fella tumbling into a nice, warm furnace...er,um...sauna. The puzzles appear deceptively tricky, but in fact, they are a little easier than the first two games, with a couple of exceptions which will have you replaying levels just to get the timing right. It's a distinctly unusual puzzle game that will warm you to the core with its smokey, crackling fire effects, mostly easy puzzles and the satisfaction of seeing your little guy reach his smokey sauna.
Ebul is an unusual "sandbox" platform game involving a crocodile pilot, his birdpal sidekick, and a blocky-looking landscape where the blocks themselves are at your command. Run, jump, and move various blocks across two-dozen levels of retro-feeling goodness in an attempt to recover items to fix your broken airplane.
Although Camel Eye is not technically an escape game, it does fill the expectations that escapers have when they play. It's a wacky crime caper in which you play Camel Eye, famous thief, attempting to relieve some rich man of his valuables. There are a lot of items to find and use, and a ton of puzzles to crack before you can become a very wealthy person. Fun, tricky, challenging, a good time will be had by all. Besides, who wouldn't like a chance to get rich? Even if it's just a game.
What do you do when you find yourself under attack by enemy forces? You could cry, you could pray, you could break out the tambourine and try to get them to give peace a chance... or, if you're one of the mice in Nob Studio's clever puzzle/defense/strategy title, you dig up an ancient, mysterious war machine, man it with your mousey comrades, and tromp your way across fifteen levels to ultimate victory.
Quiet please. If you'll look this way, you should be able to see the Flightless Dragons, Draco nonvolo, in their native puzzle habitat. Note how they are unable to reach the gems down there in the corner. Yes, I know they are staring at us with large, beseeching eyes, but it is simply not ethical to interfere with the ways of physics.
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.
Rupert's got a package to deliver to the spooky mansion on the hill, and nothing, not even ghosts, fallen staircases, exploding laboratories, or magical glasses, is going to stop him. A short but charming point-and-click adventure game for everyone with only one ending but cute, storybook visuals to get you into the spirit of the upcoming holiday.
Based upon the upcoming novel, this spot-the-difference title takes place inside a very unique museum that takes a certain type of person to find their way through. Despite lacking any real story, it's visually stunning and easily worth a play for any fan of the genre looking for something a bit more lengthy.
In an alternate future, Britain's sprawling population is kept in tight check by a mandatory Curfew... all for their own safety, of course. Citizenship isn't so easily obtained, discrimination is everywhere, and if you're lucky, the government looks at you as just another number. If you're not, well... Kieron Gillen and BBC bring us a point-and-click game about civil rights and liberties, where the goal is to find someone you trust enough with some extremely sensitive information before time runs out.
The third installment in the block-manipulating, anagram-solving, funny-bone-tickling series, the first installment of which was voted one of the Best Games of 2008 by JIG. After nearly two sad blockless years, Marty Sears is back with all the fiendish brain-teasing action and absurd animations fans have come to expect. And if you're new to BWLO, you'll find this even more of a treat... and even more of a punishment. A punishing treat? Anyway, yay!
Tone of Vesper is less of an escape from a room and more of an escape to a certain state of mind. Strawberry Cafe has stripped away many of the usual room escape trappings, leaving a game that is more of a point-and-click adventure than an escape. The object, you see, is not to get out of the space, but to explore it and find out what hidden treasures it holds. Specifically, what hidden musical treasures.
Cap'n Goldgrubber is retiring and giving you fourteen days to find and dig up enough treasure to live the rest of his days in comfort. Succeed and you share in the wealth. Fail and it's a one way trip off the edge of a plank. What follows is a set of orienteering puzzles. Each day takes you to a different islet with numerous buried treasures and one "secret" treasure hidden therein, and the only way to find the very expensive bonus treasures is through following lists of cryptic clues.
Ready for some spelunking? Descend into the depths of this fiendishly difficult little isometric puzzler, where the goal is just to get to the exit... which only opens once all the floor tiles have fallen... and is usually behind some traps, switches, and unbreakable green crystals. All in a day's work!
Not a lot can be said without spoiling the fun of playing Srdjan Susnic's entry into our CGDC#8. What you should know is that ZOO Director is a truly traditional sandbox gameplay experience. Your aim is to rise above the rank of humble Zoo Novice to claim the glorious title of Zoo Director, by creating and maintaining your very own zoo. Sounds simple, but this quirky little game quickly reveals its challenges.
Fragger Lost City is the latest chapter in the Fragger series, taking place in a post-apocylptical world. The game features a new set of 30 grenade-tossing levels with different backgrounds, layouts, and puzzles. Use your mouse to aim your soldier-guy's grenade throws in order to destroy all the enemies on the screen.
Sneak Thief 1: Prime Catch is a point-and-click adventure from Pastel Games where you play a thief, a sneaky one if the title didn't tip you off. In it, you're tasked by a man called Don Fabiano to retrieve the inventions of Prof. Bellamy. For your efforts, you will be paid top money and isn't that the best kind of money?
Remember those choking-hazard-tastic plastic maze toys you would get as a kid, usually as a dinky prize for something? Relive those happy memories in Sand Trap, a puzzle where you rotate a box to pour the sand trapped within into a pail. It's another fine HTML5 game from Gopherwood Studios, and a runner up in our Casual Gameplay Design Competition #8.
We all learn as toddlers that square pegs won't fit into round holes. You can pound your tiny fist all you want on top of your Fisher-Price playset, it just isn't going to work. Now Blockage, a brain-teasing puzzle from Guillhermo v.S. Heldt., has come along to teach us another important lesson: red blocks won't fill green squares. Also, sometimes teleportation is necessary. Very, very important life lessons.
Akarimado brings nothing new to the room escape genre; you're locked in a one-view room (with an unlockable side room that's also one-view), and you have to solve many and various puzzles to get out. Although this particular dish of room escape contains few if any unfamiliar ingredients, there's not much to complain about; we enjoy these particular ingredients and we know it. It's a very satisfying journey all in all, and one that should not be missed.
Sometimes a game so weird and charming comes along that, despite its flaws, you have to enjoy it. Lost Head by Garbuz Games is one of those games. This short and simple physics puzzler won't change the world, but it might make you smile with its absurd characters and presentation. It seems that our titular hero has become detached from his friends by an evil hand. Luckily a glove waits for him in each level, ready to be his new body. The trick is getting there.
Ah, destruction. Who doesn't love it and the multitudes of games devoted to it. But, you know what they say about too much of a good thing and moderation. My point is that sometimes you need to destroy with a little restraint. That's the take-away lesson in Warspark's latest, the demolition physics puzzler, Sieger.
Help save your brother from a labyrinthine rubber duck factory in this quirky physics puzzle platformer from Garbuz Games. Oh, and beware the pools of deadly acid. Those can really put a damper on your day.
What's in a doooor? A puzzle by any name would not be as cute... or brainwracking. Developer Hempuli's first foray into the world of flash gaming is a deceptively adorable and simple looking platform puzzler where your only goal is to figure out how to get the glowing blue crystal on each level. There's only eighteen stages, but trust us; that's more than enough to give your brain a workout, thanks to some clever design.
Howard Glitch is about a space shuttle hurtling into the maw of a monster. You're on the shuttle, along with several other passengers, but there's no driver or controls. The shuttle is being controlled far away by someone who isn't paying attention. While you're rushing toward your doom, you have some choices to make. The first being whether you'll sit by and await death or will you escape reality?
Escape from Restaurant Minshio moves Tesshi-e ever closer to that elusive goal: the perfect room escape. Fantastically fun, challenging, and more accessible than ever, Escape from Restaurant Minshio is about as perfect a mid-week experience as you can get. You even get a yummy meal and maybe even a dessert out of the experience.
Light Up 2 is a physics/puzzle game from the creator of the original Light UP. This chill, relaxing game is all about moving circles around the screen to light up dark orbs, hence the name. You do this by turning neutral orbs into colored orbs that reflect certain types of orbs, creating a little bit of controlled chaos that will (hopefully) settle in to a fully-lit arrangement of circles!
5xMan is an action/puzzle game that plays on the now-familiar concept of controlling multiple characters one at a time. You play a team of five guys, each in a stunning single-color one-piece jumpsuit (is that a Louis Vuitton?!), and work your way through each stage. Make it as far as you can with one guy, then switch to the next to see what more you can do, opening new paths for subsequent team members as you go.
Bingo, another combo card is filled in Reeelz, an addictive blend of skill-based puzzle and luck-based slot machine from Game In a Bottle. No more mindlessly feeding coins into the one-armed bandit; if you prioritize and have a long term plan, you'll certainly come out on top. Take that, Las Vegas!
Done a bad deed lately? Catch up with your favourite little purple demon as he sets out to recapture a voodoo priestess and her lackies who have managed to escape back to the human world. Use all the dirty rotten trickery you can to wrangle them or your boss, "Luke", will want to have a very painful chat with you. The latest chapter in the Reincarnations point-and-click series is short, but very well made, and just might bring out the devil in you.
WayWords, TwistedSimple's new word puzzle release, is one part Boggle, two parts Magic Square, and three parts playing around with alphabet blocks. It has the sort of aesthetic that wouldn't be out of place between the Crossword and the Sudoku in your daily newspaper, and gameplay that would fit right in between Scrabble and Upwords in the ol' game cabinet.
Have you ever wanted to run your very own tile factory? Of course you have. But manual labour is so yesterday; these days we use electronic tiles to program our conveyor belts and other machinery into delivering our orders safely to their goals! All you have to do is puzzle out what goes where in this simple but tricky game that placed second overall in 2010's Casual Gameplay Design Competition #8.
Way back in the long-forgotten year of 2009, we reviewed a tile-based puzzle game called Electric Box. Since then, the game has maintained a steady following, with user levels constantly being added. Today, the people at Twinkle Star Games have released Electric Box 2, a supercharged sequel that's sure to make people forget all about the original.
What do you do when you find yourself the owner of a big empty valley? Well, you could call in a bunch of real estate developers, I suppose, and file all the necessary paperwork to have the land appropriately zoned before calling in all the inspectors for wiring and so forth... OR you could just hire a bunch of teeny-tiny people to do it for you! In this adorable follow-up to Grow Island from Eyezmaze, puzzle out the correct order of things to make your valley grow and thrive as big as possible.
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