April 2009 Archives

I'm sorry, you have to be the blue key to read this review. No, wait, now be the green key — I mean, the red key. Oh, sorry, I drifted off there. You see, in Neon Maze, by Vitaliy Zlotskiy and Sergey Arseniev, things can get a bit crowded with all the colour switching and pattern memorizing. An up-front warning: Anyone with a colour-related eye issue will have difficulty with this game.

Playing equal parts as a maze, a hide-and-seek game and a guessing game, the idea is to run around a glowing labyrinth in your little mouse-controlled blur-pod while attempting to find the exit platform. Easy, just like a maze. Except that it's not. The neon-coloured walls and corridors do more than add decoration — they are a warning! Attempt to touch anything not the same colour as you and expect a sharp, shocking jolt and a reduction in bonus points.

To explore new sections of the maze, you will need to change your ship's colour. Touch a red gear to become red, and move effortlessly through red walls. Touch a blue gear for the same with blue walls — and expect the red walls to now be your enemy. As the levels advance, you will need to collect keys of the same colour as yourself, which then open new areas as the levels unfold around you. Each level uses this manipulation of boundaries to its own end, resulting in an expanding spiral of technical and involved level design, rather than a linear approach.

Analysis: Tossing in new surprises every now and then, such as locked doors, teleporters and one-way walls, does a lot to stretch the simplistic idea the game is built on. However, the large, similar-looking levels, which can only be viewed a section at a time, can cause disorientation as you move through them hunting for areas that have just become accessible. That said, the graphical presentation and the surprisingly intricate level design more than make up for any shortcomings. And at just 25 levels long, Neon Maze is the perfect length for a decent challenge.

Play Neon Maze

Ah, Japan. Progenitor to the weirdest and most original games you've ever seen. Home of Mario, Katamari Damacy, and more web-based games than you can shake a stick at. Truly, we owe those crazy thinkers a lot.

Kinda makes you want to hire an army and invade them, doesn't it?

Well, put down that walkie-talkie, because ZigZaGame have created a game to scratch just that itch. The Great War of Prefectures plays like a cross between Risk and a Real-Time Strategy game, with Japan's prefectures (analogous to other countries' states or provinces) serving as the territories you fight over.

The first thing you get to do when you start a game is pick your initial prefecture. It's an important choice, because the prefecture you pick will determine whether you are immediately crushed, survive but can't expand, or begin squishing all who come near you. You want a prefecture with as few neighbors as possible, but it's not quite that simple.

Each prefecture comes with a special power, and some are definitely better than others. For instance, some produce units for free, an immense boon when you're just starting out and haven't acquired enough prefectures to get lots of gold. Then again, maybe you'd just prefer to start in a prefecture that gets a bonus to its gold.

Whichever you choose, your first turn will be quite uneventful. Buy some units from the panel at right, then move to the second tab and pick a base for your prefecture. Bases act like secondary powers for their prefecture, and you can hover over them to read a description. Choose carefully, because you can only pick a new one if an enemy captures the prefecture and you retake it. Whichever you pick, you'll want to end your turn next (double click Finish Turn), because your neighbors are far too strong to attack just yet.

At the start of your second turn, the units you bought last turn will be available for attacking, so you might be ready to make your first conquest. To do so, click and drag to select your units, then click one of the red arrows to attack. Depending on where you are, you might want to wait another turn, because you can only move your troops once per turn. It would be rather pointless to take over another prefecture only to lose your first one.

When you do make your first attack, you'll enter the battle mode, which is where the RTS part comes in. You control your units by using the tags at bottom, one for each unit type. Drag the tag around to have your units form up in a line at that point, or click it once to change it to Will, which lets them leave formation and fight whoever they please. If you need an extra boost to defeat your opponents, double-click Strategy at bottom right to call upon an ancient Greek god for a temporary power-up. You can only do this once per battle, so if you get in dire straits again, you'll have to double-click Withdraw and make a run for it.

Analysis: When I first opened The Great War of Prefectures, it made a bad impression. The graphics—especially the tutorial—reminded me of a webpage from 1995, which is to say "brightly colored, annoying, and hard to read."

It also has one of my pet peeves in Flash games: a custom cursor that can't be disabled. I can't say if it was the game, the Linux version of Flash, my particular system, or some combination thereof, but for the entire time I played, the cursor was lagging behind the actual position of the mouse by half a second or so. Simply clicking a button was an exercise in frustration. I got about a third of the way through, saved my game, and walked away for a day, because it was driving me up the wall.

But, and this is the important bit, I came back the next day and finished it anyway. I didn't force myself to; the next time I remembered it, I wanted to play it again.

There's a certain elusive quality that some games have, a combination of fun and compelling that makes them stick in your mind. You don't always even see it right away, but it's what pulls you back in after you thought you had enough. It's the reason you say to yourself, "Oh, I'll just play one more round before I quit." Thirty rounds in a row.

Whatever it is, The Great War of Prefectures has it. Despite a bad first impression and a continuous dose of frustration (which, with luck, most of you will never see), I really liked this game. There's a fascinating little strategy game hiding behind the often-clunky interface, and if you can stick with it to the very end, you will be amply rewarded for your patience and effort.

Play The Great War of Prefectures

Raise your hand if you think that six whole months is simply too long to wait until Halloween. Go on, don't be shy, I'm raising my hand too. Well for those of us who wait all year for Halloween to find us again, Quest in the Dark provides a good excuse for us to pause our scary movies and put our costume planning on hold.

After picking an avatar and entering your name, you find out that you have somehow fallen down the "rabbit hole" and are trapped inside your own nightmare. An eerily cheerful host greets you and tells you that in order to escape, you must first find a magic potion. This is the only way out.

Using your mouse, navigate your avatar through the haunted mansion that looms before you, collecting items and solving puzzles as you go. Beware the various ghosts and skeletons that stand in your path (or don't. They aren't that bad, as it turns out), and above all else, don't forget to find that potion!

Analysis: Perhaps the best way to describe Quest in the Dark would be Trapped for kids. There are many basic similarities: lots of items and puzzles, a dark motif, and an isometric layout with a point-and-click interface.

But Quest in the Dark is most definitely softened up for a younger crowd. The story line, for starters, is nowhere near as hardcore as Trapped's, and even the main bad guy is kind of cute and cuddly. The graphics are far more friendly and the puzzles are, for the most part, much simpler.

But don't be fooled. There are a few puzzles/tasks that can be elusive or tricky to get around. It's even more challenging because a majority of the items you collect are not actually employed in the game, but only add to your final score total.

Unfortunately the game does employ an isometric layout, which is very clunky and takes a while to get used to. Moreover, while the artistry is quite good and hits the mood it is going for perfectly, I think including hardly any sound at all was a missed opportunity. And finally, if I were to come up with any further gripes, it would have to be a kind of awkwardness in the dialogue, but I am forgiving on this front, given this is translated from an originally Japanese game.

But if you are willing to overcome the isometric design, Quest in the Dark is an exceptionally cute and surprisingly engaging point-and-click adventure. There's not nearly the depth you'll find in similar games, but the upside is that you can feel comfortable sharing this title with the little ones.

Play Quest in the Dark

Finally we find out why we have been trapped in so many different rooms in the Great Escape series by Mateusz Skutnik and the Pastel Games crew. Apparently there have been ghosts at every turn, slamming doors and locking us in various areas of the house, and now it's up to you do deal with those ghosts, once and for all. The Great House Escape takes the locale from each of the six previous installments, plus hallways connecting them all, and turns them into one big final "great escape" game.

Included are the same super-saturated visuals, groovy soundtrack, and peculiar puzzles we are used to seeing from this series. Use your pointing and clicking skills to locate items, and use those items to help you make your escape.

Play The Great House Escape

All you pathetic humans have the concept of reincarnation wrong, as you will discover playing Chris Gianelloni's point-and-click adventure, Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out. You see, reincarnation isn't karmic. You don't come back as a banana slug if you were bad, and you aren't going to get to be a Hollywood heart-throb if you were good. No, reincarnation is a loophole that Hell has to put up with in the ultimate battle for souls. God decided to give the dam… er… darned a way out of Hell and redeem themselves, thus finding their way up to Heaven. Lucifer, in order to overcome this, has to send out his demons to re-kill "reincarnies" before this happens.

This is, of course, EVIL…

As a demon, you use your point-and-click skills to manipulate the objects around you, solving puzzles as you go. Your demonic powers include levitation and the operation of simple machinery while your creativity allows you to get to no limit of utter mischief.

This is, of course, EVIIIIL…

Gain entry to the reincarny's house, find his sin, and then come up with a way for him to return from whence he came… That's to say, Hell.

This is, of course, EEEEEVIIIILLL…

Well, maybe not finding his sin, that's probably justice, but let's never mind that. Remember… EEEEEVVVIIIILLLLL!

Analysis: This style of point-and-click adventure is really beginning to come into its own, evolving much from the plainer Hapland-style games. With the Reemus series, The Visitor , and now the Reincarnation series, the type of point-and-click adventure where you act as an invisible hand that modestly affects the environment on behalf of the character has come to develop loads of character, depth, and charm.

With Reincarnation we see healthy doses of humor blended generously with a sort of light-hearted taste of the macabre. Nicely drawn in cartoony drawings, gorgeously animated, and fairly well written, Reincarnation is easy to look at and easy to get into. This is helped along by the surprisingly good voice acting which really throws its weight into the project. Lucifer has a notably posh accent, while the demon you play as has an accent I can only characterize as standard evil.

And did I mention he was EVIL? If I haven't, don't worry. In an endearing way, our little purple imp takes no end of pride in expressing how EVIL he is.

The puzzles hit a sweet spot between easiness and creativity. A deductive eye should be able to suss out what needs to be done in each room without taxing the gray cells too terribly much, but the difficulty level isn't dumbed down so much that you don't appreciate the level of intricacies of all of your EVIL-doing.

There are a few downsides that should be mentioned. For one, while the voice acting is well done, the recording of the voice acting could have used a quick polish or two and you can hear some of the hisses and static that accompany amateur recordings. Meanwhile, while the puzzles themselves are decent, there are a few moments where you are forced into pixel hunting, which is always maddening.

Aside from that, Reincarnation: ADDO is a nice little EVIL point and clicker with a dark sense of humor and puzzles that should neither place a heavy burden on your brain nor your time.

Play Reincarnation: A Demon's Day Out

[Hungry for more EVIL? The second chapter in the Reincarnation series is out.]

Play Reincarnation: Riley's Out Again

Wow! Just two weeks following their last release, increasingly prolific Japanese developer Place of Light has bequeathed onto us Loom Blend, another high-quality escape game to satisfy our mid-week cravings. Most excellent! The game's scenario is nothing new: you are in a room filled with diabolical puzzles and more than a few secrets, and must employ all of your wits to escape. A simple premise, but one that Place of Light does very well.

Before I get on with the review proper, one quick thing I want to mention: after Loom Blend loads, two swastikas appear around the game's title. These are not, however, the type of swastikas associated with the Nazis; rather, they are symbols of good fortune that have been used around the world for thousands of years. Nazi swastikas are tilted and the "arms" always run clockwise, while the traditional symbol is not tilted and may run in either direction. The swastikas that appear in the game fall into the latter category.

Ok! Lesson over, on to the review. Loom Blend is, to put it simply, excellent. Place of Light has consistently presented some of the best escape games out there, and this one is no exception; with attractive graphics, some exceedingly clever (and, for the most part, logical) puzzles and a professional, clean interface (complete with save feature!), Loom Blend is a joy to play. Oftentimes, one of the most enjoyable elements of an escape game is the room's transformation from seemingly ordinary to intriguingly complex as the player discovers its secrets; Place of Light seems particularly skilled at these sort of metamorphoses.

You will, several times during the course of the game, be presented with Japanese characters without an English translation. Don't panic! You do not need to know what they say or mean in order to escape. You may have to remember or identify the characters when solving some of the puzzles, but that's completely doable without an understanding of the language. Unfortunately, however, for those of you running Linux the game may be unplayable; it seems that there's one code (that changes every play-through) that Linux has a text display issue with and so will not display. Sorry, Linux guys/gals.

For the lucky rest, you're in for a real treat. So, enjoy...and let's hope that Place of Light keeps up the pace!

Play Loom Blend

There are any number of tower defense games available nowadays (In fact, you may still be laboring under the yoke of Gemcraft Zero). But one that has stood the test of time, and one of our all-time favorites, is the classic Desktop Tower Defense.

Now Paul Preece of the Casual Collective has released yet another version of this classic time stealer. Desktop TD Pro is a substantial update to the original game, both in terms of graphics and features, while still remaining true to the reasons we continue to come back to this particular tower defense title.

For those that haven't played Desktop TD, the concept is a bit different than the majority of tower defense titles, in that the main game has no defined path for the enemy to follow. Much like When Orcs Attack, it is up to you to use your weapons to build maze-like structures that guide the enemy towards their ultimate doom. Since there is no pre-defined path, the game makes sure that there is a path through your defenses so that the enemy at least has a chance of making it to the exit. No chance of blocking them in a corner and watching them squirm.

The other unique property of Desktop TD is the artwork. The game literally takes place on an office desktop, with notepads and telephones and pens and such scattered around. Your towers are hand-drawn representations of cannons, rocket launchers, and gun turrets, bombarding the cute, hand-drawn minions bent on getting to the exit and decimating your life points.

Desktop TD Pro keeps these concepts, while adding new ones to the mix. For starters, you can now choose between five different desktop backgrounds, once they have been unlocked by playing through the scenarios. You also have a choice of tower graphics. You can stick with the tried-and-true hand-drawn look, or you can choose the more modern-looking rendered towers. The graphics do not change the gameplay in any way, but it does suggest that further updates to the game may include new graphic sets.

Also new to the series are a number of gameplay options. Scenarios are basically an extended tutorial, slowly introducing the player to the different enemies and towers in the game. Sandbox is the basic game, but this time around you have control over many aspects of the game, from the difficulty of the enemies, to how often waves appear, to what towers are available and what you can do with them. And, once you register with the Casual Collective, you can save your game settings for the future.

Next are the Sprint Modes, where you can challenge yourself not only to survive through all of the waves, but to complete them as quickly as possible. Because of this, waves will only come one at a time, no matter how long it takes to defeat them. But once a wave is defeated, the next will start immediately, leaving you little time for building or upgrading your towers.

The last mode is the online mode. This allows you to compete in online matches against other players. Unfortunately, with the relative newness of the game, I was unable to find a game to join to test this particular option. Once people start playing the game more regularly, this mode will no doubt become more popular.

Analysis: Desktop TD Pro's new game modes really add to its shelf life. The Scenarios in particular are excellent, allowing new players to work into the full game slowly. Some of them are truly challenging, making them must-plays even for tower defense veterans.

Another fine addition to the game, the Sprint Modes will keep you on your toes. They are as much about finding the right strategy to survive as they are about making on-the-fly decisions about tower placement and upgrades. With no space for planning between waves, you will find yourself scrambling to make your changes, trying to anticipate the needs of the next wave while not completely ignoring the current one. I've only been able to beat a couple, and my times were not that impressive. Since the scenarios play out the same each time, you can use trial-and-error to hone your tower strategy.

A strong contender for Best Tower Defense Game Ever, Desktop TD Pro is definitely one that you should take a look at. Even if you think that your tower defense skills are sorely lacking, Desktop TD Pro gives you the tools to improve your game and defeat the onslaught of baddies coming around the corner.

Play Desktop TD Pro

Once in a while, we come across a game that is more than a game; more like an experience, something that hits you deeper and offers a message more profound than your average coffee break pastime can supply. Take Gray, by Intuition Games (Effing Hail, Dinowaurs), a very curious entry, but a potentially enlightening one as well.

There's not much to the gameplay. You are a white or black androgynous person in the midst of a rioting mob, filled with people of the opposite shade. Your goal is to "talk" to the people who are highlighted and attempt to convert them to your point of view.

This conversation mode provides Gray's only actual gameplay. When you stop one of the rioters, an interface opens up. No, you will not be convincing this person using well-crafted arguments or a firm command of facts and figures. Instead, you simply wait for their signal to head your way, and you hit the [space bar] to send your own signal to meet it. Ideally they will meet in the middle, and if you get enough signals to meet, you will convert this person.

You keep doing this until you have converted the entire mob, at which point you change to the opposite color and start right back from the beginning. After a bit, a twist will be thrown your way. This twist is essentially what the game is all about, and so I won't ruin it for you.

What you take away from the final revelation is up to you and will probably rely upon your own life experiences. One of our staff thought the game was broken. Me personally, having spent four years in political blogging before coming here (off topic, working at Jay is Games is way better than political writing, hands down!) I was absolutely floored by what I saw, and amazed at how accurately such a simple little game could hold a mirror up to modern political discourse.

But don't let my own political take on things scare you away, or even shade your interpretation of what happens. Since first playing Gray I have thought of many ways that the final twist is analogous to different facets of life. Could it be making a statement about popularity? Fads? Gullibility? It's up to you to decide.

Play Gray

Thanks for the suggestion, Thezeu!

It might not look like much at first – OK, it doesn't ever look like much – but the unassuming DeepLeap might well be one of the best pure word games to grace the internets in quite a while. Javascript guru John Resig dabbles in game design, combining the basic gameplay of Scrabble with the sweat-inducing intensity of Text Twist in this fast-paced word-forming game.

You are presented with a constant stream of letter tiles, which you must quickly dispense with by forming words of 2 letters or more. A word's score is the sum of the values of the letter tiles (much like in Scrabble), multipled by a number of bonus factors. Earn these bonuses by submitting longer words (+0.5x for each letter above two), maintaining a streak of validly submitted words (+0.1x for each word in the streak), and clearing your queue (2x bonus). You must act quickly, though, for if the queue ever reaches nine tiles, a timer activates and the first tile in line starts turning red. If you don't submit a word in the few seconds before the timer runs out, that tile disappears, its point total is subtracted from your score, and worst of all, your streak bonus is reset!

Fans of leisurely, puzzle-like word games may find DeepLeap too fast-paced and may feel tempted to head directly to the Jumble. But before you go, give DeepLeap a shot! I myself normally choose stress-free puzzle modes whenever they are available, but I found this game remarkably addictive, and here are some of the reasons why:

It's accessible! Whether you have the vocabulary of a member of the Decemberists or that of a fifth-grader, you should be able to find words to submit without too much difficulty. You don't ever have to let the queue fill up — if you see a 3- or 4-letter word in the tiles that are already up, just go with it! Keep that ever-important streak going! Of course, it's better for your score if you're able to hold out for longer words, but it's not like you ever have to find a 9-letter monster. Also, DeepLeap doesn't make you feel inadequate if you didn't know that fragments like CEL and AWL are actual words.

It's balanced! DeepLeap is both offensive and defensive. Sure, it's great that you are able to submit SPHINX, but if it leaves you with EEO in your queue, then maybe you're better off playing something something like POXES and leaving HINE – giving you a much better chance of clearing your queue with your next word. It's designed never to give you more than 3 vowels or 4 consonants in a row, so with some care you can avoid ending up with draws like AIEUUUBAI. On the other hand, this is exactly where the 2-letter words come in handy as panic buttons.

It's fun! If the first two games that come to mind are arguably the world's most popular word board game (Scrabble) and the most popular word video game (Text Twist), you can probably assume that it's captured at least some of what's made those games so popular, which this definitely does.

It's addictive! The short but intense nature of DeepLeap combined with virtually unlimited replay value make it oh-so-easy to finish a game, take a deep breath, and then jump right back into the maelstrom. This is sometimes known as the "just one more game" syndrome.

Now, that's not to say that DeepLeap isn't without its problems, and since John Resig currently presents it as a demo, I feel no hesitation in pointing them out for the greater good of the finished product: First of all, the letter values are definitely out of proportion, meaning that not only are words containing Q, X, or J pretty much guaranteed to be worth as much as most words twice their size, but if one of these letters shows up in your queue, you'd better do your darnedest to get rid of it, or pay a stiff penalty!

Secondly, the timer needs to be more visible, especially when your queue is full and you're trying frantically to find a word while simultaneously attempting to discern the subtle differences between crimson, cherry, and carmine.

Lastly, the tile timer could stand to be a little slower as the queue fills up; after all, the possibilities for forming words are increasing exponentially, so it would make sense to give the player more time to process the new letters.

Although DeepLeap is currently just a demo, I see very few other flaws. Part of the greatness of the game lies in its simplicity, and I don't see that adding new gameplay features like powered tiles could really improve it. Music, sound effects, and eye-pleasing graphics would certainly add a bit of polish, but that would just be the rainbow sprinkles on top of an already-delicious ice cream sundae.

Play DeepLeap

Wanna know what I did this past week? I grew flowers. I slithered around tiny planetoids. And I hurt my head messing with number puzzles. Oh, and I made a pie, but that has nothing to do with the games below.

Seek 'n Spell - Grab a few friends (with iPhones) and head outdoors to a park or other open area for fun in the sun collecting letters to spell words and earn points. Using the GPS capabilities of the iPhone (not compatible with iPod Touch), Seek 'n Spell displays an overhead view of your location with randomly placed letters all around. When the game begins, run around and be the first to collect each letter and then spell words with the letters that you find. Highest score at the end of the game wins. Customized settings allow for games from 1 to 30 minutes in length. It's such a simple concept that works great and is a lot of fun to play!

Flower Garden - Virtual pet games seem like more work than fun to me, but Flower Garden is changing my mind. Your garden consists of twelve pots, each filled with soil. Choose a flower seed to plant, keep it watered within the green safety zone, then kick back and wait. Not seconds or minutes, mind you, more like hours, maybe even overnight! The flowers grow while you're away, all you have to do is check up on them from time to time and see they receive enough delicious H2O. Unlock new flower seeds during the course of play, each with its own watering needs and growing times, and snip a few flowers to create a bouquet you can e-mail to a friend!

Snake Galaxy - If you've played Snake once, you've played every iteration out there, right? Not necessarily. Snake Galaxy takes the ever-growing reptile into space where you curl around 3D planets in search of more power-ups. At its core, this is the same Snake you grew up playing, but the addition of gorgeous 3D environments and responsive touch controls makes it surprisingly fun. And the unlockable "themed" worlds are brilliant!

Numbrosia - Now entering the numbers-based puzzle ring, Numbrosia! The presentation leaves a lot to be desired, but once you wrap your head around this game, you wouldn't mind if it were decorated with rainbows, stars, and pastel penguins. Your goal is to make all of the squares on the grid equal zero. You can slide rows or columns with a swiping touch, or do a "math move" and add/subtract one from a row or column. The trick is in lining everything up so that a little addition or subtraction evens everything out, but the challenge is doing it in as few moves as possible.

NOTE: Games listed may not be available outside of North America. Prices are subject to change and are therefore unlisted. Please see the individual game pages for purchasing info.

Windosill is the story of a toy car, a little blue box with wheels and a smokestack, who one day dares to journey outside of its confining storage shelf. You, armed with the power to touch, carry, poke, prod, and experiment, will lead the toy through a cool blue dream presented in stages, a series of shadow-boxes full of curious characters and structures, each with its own puzzle to be solved.

This is the new point-and-click (and drag and tug and spin) game from Vectorpark, a.k.a. Patrick Smith, who brought us the enigmatic Feed the Head, among other wonders. In fact, Windosill is very similar to Feed the Head. It lets you explore a surreal environment by touching things, watching their incredibly smooth animation as they respond to you, and unpeeling their internal logic. You do travel from place to place this time, but as with all of Smith's work, the focus is always, always on playfulness and discovery.

Unlike Feed the Head, Windosill costs a few dollars to play the full game. The first half is free, however, and worth experiencing on its own.

Is it worth buying the second half of the game? Yes. Yes, it really is. It won't occupy you for long, but neither will it waste your time. Playing through it more than once reveals all kinds of connections you wouldn't notice the first time. Even the winking blob in the first room has new resonance when you know the fractal mutant it appears as later.

Analysis: It's a joy to play Windosill, because although the tone is dreamlike, the population is so physical. Each object has its own weight and material, its own squishiness, sproinginess and yield. When you click on some widget or worm, your cursor disappears as the object reacts, and every time, you feel like you just reached into the screen and grabbed hold of something solid.

Smith offers a world where everything is magical, where you can discover the rules from scratch, like a child. The laws of physics are more or less familiar, but everything else is new. You play with Windosill and it plays back, sharing its secrets in baby steps, never cheating, never even betraying the presence of puzzles or goals. It feels like before you arrived, all these geometric plants and bird heads and giant moons were just sitting there lonely, blue, waiting for a playmate.

Windosill may be short, but it feels complete. The beginning is just like any other morning, right down to pulling open the curtains to check the weather, but the ending is downright spiritual. This game will reward you and intrigue you, inspire you without preaching, leave you wanting more.

Play Windosill

Thanks to Languidiir, Marglark, and Asher for sending this one in!

Virtual Families is the latest addition to the impressive lineup of simulation games from Last Day of Work, makers of the Virtual Villagers series. Virtual Families takes the basic concepts of Virtual Villagers and brings them home — literally. No longer are you concerned with a village of people trying to survive the ravages of the wild. Now it's just a single family in a single house. While the concept may seem over-simplified when compared to Virtual Villagers, you'll find that it's less about simplifying the game and more about concentrating on the details.

You begin by adopting your first virtual person. This is a very important choice to make early on, as the attributes that you settle on will affect how the rest of the game plays out. You can go through any number of different people to adopt. Each has their own physical appearance, profession, salary, likes and dislikes, and opinion on whether or not they want children. This last attribute is of particular importance. Couples who do not both want children can still have children, but you will have to work extra hard to keep them happy. Depending on how you want your virtual family to run, choose wisely.

Once adopted, your person moves into their house. You start immediately showing your person where and how to do certain things. Depending on their profession, show them their work area, be it the computer room, the shop outside, or the kitchen. Place them on the various pieces of litter scattered about the house and show them how to keep the place tidy. If you have played any of the Virtual Villagers games, you'll already understand the mechanics at work here. As your person learns behaviors, you can use one of two paddles to either praise them for an appropriate behavior, or to punish them for an inappropriate behavior.

As the game plays on, you will receive marriage requests from various suitors. Each have their own attributes, professions, and likes and dislikes, and views on children. The important thing here is to find one that is the best match for you little person, although the temptation to go after the one with the big, fat bank account and well-paying career will be hard to resist.

Whether you choose to remain single or to take that marriage proposal, the next thing to think about is growing your family. As a single parent, you may be given the opportunity down the road to adopt a child. As a married couple, you can try to make a baby at any point in the game. Keep in mind that there are factors involved in this process, such as how long it has been since the last pregnancy, the mood of either of the parents, etc. It's not 100% guaranteed to produce offspring, but it usually does. Once a child is born, the mother will have control for the first few months. After that point, the child will be another member of the family, which will require the same behavioral shaping as the parents once did.

There are a number of other things that can and need to be done around the house during the course of the game. You'll notice almost immediately that the floor is in disrepair in sections of the house. There are a number of other problems, as well, such as the leaky watering hose outside, or the garden shed without a door handle. Many of these problems will require the purchase of tools and other items to complete which of course will require funds, so your career of choice is very important. Money is also used to buy house upgrades, such as bathroom fixtures or a new flat-screen TV.

Just like Virtual Villagers, Virtual Families continues to run even when the game isn't open. It is an important aspect of gameplay, since your family will continue to evolve, even when you are not around. As long as they have food your family can survive a couple of days without interaction, but if you're not going to be able to play for a couple of weeks, you may want to go in and pause the game before quitting. You don't want to come back to a house full of skeletons, do you?

Virtual Families 2 is out! Check out our review and walkthrough for Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House!

Children that you have will grow to about 18 years, and then go off to college. When it is time for the current generation to move on, you will be given the option to give the house and all of its assets to one of your kids. At that point, they will move in and the game cycle will start again. Going to the Family Screen will allow you to keep track of multiple generations of people that have lived in the house. How many generations can you create?

Analysis: At first glance, Virtual Families seems like little more than a stripped-down version of The Sims. The limited effect that you have on the environment of the home and the house itself is quite evident. You don't have the option of creating a different living space for your families; you can't even move the furniture to a different part of the room. With the exception of upgrades, there is little you can do the physical house. This allows you the time to focus on the interactions with your little people.

The level of interaction with the virtual people in the game is totally up to you. Unlike The Sims, you do not have to watch your person's every move. Your virtual people will do things like get up in the morning, go to work, and eat without extensive prodding from you, as long as they have the supplies and materials required to complete a task.

I've never been a huge fan of the character designs for the Virtual Village series, and the characters in Virtual Families are almost identical. Something about the way the head gets positioned on the body at times, depending on what the person is focusing on as opposed to where they are walking, or what they are working on, just seems unnatural.

Virtual Families is a natural progression of the Virtual Villagers series, and the results are quite good. While Last Day of Work has already announced a fourth Virtual Villagers game set for release later this year, I hope a sequel to Virtual Families isn't out of the question!

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Download the demo Get the full version

Allow me to set the Wayback Machine for the year 1986. A new developer, Cinemaware, has decided to bring to the market a game with some of the most beautiful, detailed graphics ever seen. The platform of choice? The venerable Commodore Amiga. The game in question was Defender of the Crown, a strategy title set in the contentious medieval times of England. Unfortunately, the original game was released with many features either incomplete or missing entirely. Later ports would bring many features back into the fold, but none of them surpassed the graphic beauty of the original.

Fast forward twenty-some years, and Cinemaware, now under a new banner, has released a newly revamped version of the classic game, aptly titled Defender of the Crown: Heroes Live Forever. The graphics may not be as (comparatively) ground-breaking as the original, but the heart of the game remains true.

After the assassination of King Richard, a civil war arises, with Saxon and Norman lords struggling for control of the kingdom. You play as one of four Saxon lords. Each lord has strengths and weaknesses in leadership, fighting, etc. Much of the difficulty level in any game sets as much with your lord selection as your own strategic skills. Your goal is to defeat the Normans, either ally or defeat the remaining Saxon lords, and take your place on the throne of England. The core of the game takes place on a map of England, with various political territories marked out. You begin in control of a single territory, and move your army to capture adjacent territories. As you capture land, your gold value increases, allowing you to buy a larger army or to build fortresses to strengthen the hold on your territories.

When you come up against an occupied territory, you switch to a view of the field of battle, your army on the left, the opponent's on the right. At the beginning of each round, you are given the opportunity to activate a hero card. These cards are collected as you conquer territories, and offer such bonuses as reducing enemy archer effectiveness by 50%, or increasing your knight's effectiveness by 50%. Once you make your card decision, the round begins. Using simple yet effective animation, the battle plays out. If you find yourself outmatched, you can always attempt to retreat. This will often leave you with further casualties, and in some cases will be blocked entirely by your opponent, forcing you to fight to the bitter end.

There are other aspects of the gameplay that take place in the form of minigames. You can raid enemy castles for loot, or, in some cases, to rescue a fair maiden. This is accomplished in a series of one-on-one sword fights with various guards of the castle keep. Instead of the arcade thrusts and parries of the original, you are presented with a series of moves that the enemy will used during the round: attack, special attack, and defend. Some of these moves will be replaced with question marks. Your goal is to best match your attacks and defense against your opponent and hope that the outcome is in your favor. Once you defeat all of the guards of the keep, the treasure, whatever that may be, is yours for the taking.

You can also call or be invited to tournaments. These are either archery or jousting matches, and they can be played for honor or for land. Obviously, playing for honor is the easiest way to get experience with these games, for if you fall on your backside, all that will be hurt is your pride. Playing for land is just as it sounds: you put up a territory against one from your opponent, winner takes all.

The last of the minigames happens when you siege a castle. You start by lobbing boulders at the castle walls, attempting to crumble them. Once you have punched a hole in the castle defenses, you can lob Greek Fire and disease into the castle in the hopes of defeating some of the army that awaits. The more damage you do, the easier it will be to defeat the remaining soldiers and take over the keep.

Analysis: Defender of the Crown: Heroes Live Forever is an excellent successor to the original game. It keeps intact many of the important things from the original game, including the minigames, much of the strategy of the main game, and the beautiful graphics, while giving the game an update that helps to bring it into the modern realm of casual gaming.

The computer AI is something that some players will find a benefit while others will find frustrating. There are five other lords battling against each other for control of the realm. This means that it is possible to go an entire game with little or no interaction with your opponents, save what has been initiated by you. Watching the lords battle amongst themselves can be entertaining, but it can also make you feel more like an observer than an actual participant in the game.

The minigames help to break the monotony of the strategic game. Feeling a bit anxious? Raid a castle for some much needed gold. Feeling competitive? Call a tournament and take your opponents honor or, if your feeling particularly skilled, his land. This is one aspect of the game that I'm glad survived the transition. Not only are the minigames fun, but they also show off some of the best graphics of the game. Moving through the dark depths of the castle keep during a raid is particularly spectacular.

While not as strategically complex as modern games such as Age of Empires or Empire: Total War, Defender of the Crown set the bar for strategy games of the time, and this latest incarnation makes for a perfect introduction to these types of games in a casual setting. For what dost thou await? Get thee out and download this gem! As you command, my liege.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

Defender of the Crown is available to download from these affiliates:

A new hidden object mystery game has appeared: Cate West - The Velvet Keys! Following the style, story and gameplay conventions set by Cate West - The Vanishing Files, The Velvet Keys casts you in the role of the young scarlet scarf-wearing author/psychic as she digs through occult legends in search of a way to contact departed souls. It's a great-looking game with surprising variety and an enticing plot that gushes out as the game progresses.

Cate West has the unique ability to see places, people and things associated with items simply by touching them. Naturally, this is quite useful in murder investigations, and that's exactly where Ms. West finds herself in this game. The Velvet Keys begins in an asylum where you look into the disappearance of a former patient, a man you might recognize from The Vanishing Files. Cate uses her ability to search for clues by going through the patient's cell and gathering certain items, hidden object-style. She soon discovers this case may be more complicated than anyone thinks, and after a mysterious man visits her in the middle of the night, things start to get really serious.

Cate West - The Velvet Keys packs a fair amount of gameplay diversity into its unassuming package. Not only are there hidden object scenes, but you'll also have to put items back in their proper places, engage in "spot the difference"-style games, find a handful of one item (locating 15 stars in one scene, for example), and complete a few simple mini-games. You're never stuck in one mode for too long, which keeps the game's pace moving at a steady clip.

At the start of the game you can choose between normal and relaxed mode, the former featuring an in-game clock while the latter is without. In most scenes you have unlimited use of the hint button, and it recharges in just a few seconds, which is nice. Be warned, however, that with each use you decrease your points bonus at the end of the stage. Sometimes one more glance at the scene can be well worth the time.

Analysis: The Velvet Keys had me from the first scene in the asylum. While there were fewer crazy characters and wild conspiracy theories than I would have liked, the story spun by Cate West still captured me from chapter to chapter. It has an intriguing murder mystery/police drama/Da Vinci Code vibe, paired with Cate's psychic powers which makes the whole set-up possible.

The plot will have fans of The Da Vinci Code a little excited, as Gamenauts has woven quite a bit of arcane legend into this tale. Sometimes what the story asks you to believe is a bit far-fetched (one of the characters actually points this out, which made me feel a bit better), but it's all fair in the spirit of the game. I couldn't help but notice the dialogue was more expository in nature, with characters popping in and spouting things like "Ok. I just opened the cabinet.". It's a fair substitute for expensive cutscenes, but the game leans on them just a little too heavily.

Even though Cate West is a story-driven game, there are a number of points-related features present, including a penalty for frequent mis-clicks, chain bonuses, hint bonuses and more. Normally I couldn't care less about accumulating, but the ending you get is based on your score ' a mechanic I could do without, although some gamers will appreciate the challenge. I don't think a story should revolve around something as non-story-related as your score.

Just like its predecessor, Cate West - The Velvet Keys paints an intriguing mystery with varied gameplay and great artwork. The emphasis on scoring points and its affect on the ending is unfortunate, but the game draws you in so well you'll hardly notice.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

This edition of Weekend Download is dedicated to cells. No, not the kind you find in prison, the kind you find right here, inside your body. The squishy little things surrounded by a lipid bilayer membrane. How about a hand for cells? All 100 trillion of them!

The Mushroom Engine (download) (Windows, 4.1MB, free) - The Mushroom Engine is a platform game based on Hempuli's original Jump On Mushrooms: The Game, reworked in collaboration with Nifflas. In this game you don't play, you un-play. It begins with the end credits and you undo everything you would have done, from un-collecting coins to un-stomping enemies and so on. You can't break the game rules, meaning you can't do something that would have been impossible if you were playing the game from start to end (falling too far, getting coins twice, etc.). Because you have to mind things like the number of coins you un-collect or bumping into a reanimated enemy, the game plays more like an action-based puzzler. Which is... unique!

Madhouse (Windows, 4.8MB, free) - Described as a "top-down shooter adventure-RPG with a comical horror theme", Madhouse plays like a cutesy version of an old-school zombie splatterfest (Zombies Ate My Neighbors, anyone?), only it's much more than that. Play as a zombie, amnesiac mercenary, deranged sociopath dressed as a clown, a little guy wearing rags, or any of twelve other unlockable characters, each with its own special abilities, weapons and stats. There's even multiplayer support! And don't let the cute pixel graphics fool you, as this one packs quite a lot of blood and carnage into a tiny package.

Gate 88 (Mac/Win/Linux, 13MB, free) - A 2D multiplayer action/real-time strategy (RTS) game! You are in control of a small ship that must defend structures placed in the middle of space. As you fly around blasting foes, plop buildings such as turrets and research stations to help expand your little colony. Features multiplayer over internet and LAN.

Pandaland (Windows, 18.8MB, free) - As simple as platformers can be, Pandaland is all about an indie pop girl saving her home from evil brats. Throw cherries to defeat your enemies and grab food floating in the sky to keep your health up. The game is a bit on the short side, but the amount of quirky, colorful settings are worth running through at least once.

To celebrate Earth Day (April 22), National Geographic has sponsored Plan It Green, a casual building sim in the style of Build-a-lot that joins the sparsely-populated ranks of "green" games (see Electrocity, Climate Challenge and even Boonka for more examples).

True to its name, Plan It Green focuses on boosting energy credits by designing green buildings and communities using four types of structures: residential, parks and recreation, commercial, and facilities such as power plants. Your goals are structured in a similar manner to most building sims where you must meet certain targets, such as "build a pre-fab home with five upgrades, supply three homes with recycle bins, research eco-industries, etc.". Once you meet the goals, it's on to a new district to make things a little bit greener.

There are just a few things you'll need to pay attention while playing the game, including building materials (which can be ordered via the menu at the bottom), cash flow, and most importantly, district happiness and overall environmental health. In addition to installing Earth-friendly devices in individual homes, you can also upgrade your district with improvements that affect the entire community. Installing a bike path, for example, helps you meet your goals and benefits every structure. You can also turn on a grid to show you which structures are performing the best and which need extra attention. If you demolish structures, you get some of the materials back, which does have economies of scale — the bigger and more valuable the property, the more materials you gain.

As you work through each scenario you unlock bigger, more elaborate ways to save on energy costs, reduce pollution, and make your district as environmentally friendly as possible. Plan It Green doesn't hit you over the head with its cause, opting instead to provide a casual building game with a strong green slant.

Analysis: As you'd hope in an environmental game, the visual setting in Plan It Green is lovely — not as gorgeous and charming as Wonderburg, but pretty in an oddly retro way. The cheaper pre-fab and eco-buildings reminded me of Daly City, the suburb that inspired Pete Seeger's song "Little Boxes". You can build things like soccer fields and swimming pools that don't generate income but help you meet your happiness goals and spruce up the place.

The gameplay is very, very fast — if the Build-a-lot series makes you grind your teeth in frustration ("FINISH THE FREAKIN' UPGRADE ALREADY!!!"), you are going to LOVE the snappy pace of Plan It Green. The speed and simplicity of it all does make Plan It Green fall on the easy side, however. There are no ultimate deadlines as in Build-a-lot (which is ironic given that environmental upgrades would surely be imperative, unlike purely aesthetic ones), and the bonus for meeting the five star rating is so unobtrusive I didn't notice it was there for several levels. The tutorial also continues on a bit beyond what is necessary — I found myself thinking "Yeah, just leave me alone to discover things already".

So how good is the environmental message? Plan-It-Green offers the chance to build "eco-businesses" such as a bike shop, co-op food store and organic coffee shop. Aside from whiffing slightly of exclusivity (surely if we're serious about being green, we need to ensure environmentally preferrable products are in big mainstream supermarkets?), there are tradeoffs involved — your Fair Trade coffee may assist small farmers overseas, which is great... but takes up a decent amount of energy to ship to your suburb. Similarly, the best residential structure you can build is called a Zero-Energy Home — a "three storey family home. 100% self-sustained. They do not use a city's municipal energy", which immediately made me think "Why does a single family need a three storey home???" The whole "reduce" part of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" slogan tends to get ignored by people for whom shopping fills the void, and I say that as someone who very much likes filling the void with a spot of Prada.

The biggest surprise for me is that the best environmental power facility you can get, after you've built wind farms, hydro plants and so on, is... a nuclear facility. I'm old enough to remember when that suggestion would get you hung from the nearest old-growth tree, and not necessarily by the obvious suspects. I trust the developers are already living next to a nuclear reactor, and have the usual amount of eyes.

It may fall short of presenting the ultimate in eco-friendly building, but Plan It Green does its part to raise awareness. Beyond its message, however, is a great-looking casual building sim that shaves off frustration and easily competes with the well-established franchises already on the market.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Download the demo Get the full version

Plan It Green is available to download from these affiliates:

Let me read you a story. It's about a world filled with pop-up people who live in pop-up houses next to pop-up castles and pop-up trees. This is no ordinary fairy tale, though. This is Headspin Storybook, from State of Play Games, which offers a unique spin (literally!) on the spot-the-difference genre.

Click on "play" and the picture book opens, revealing a two-page layout. Your goal is to make the right side of the picture into a mirror image of the left side. You do this by clicking the previously mentioned pop-ups on the right side, making them flip around to mirror the left.

Find and fix all of the differences under the time limit, and you're rewarded with a rainbow or a star shower, depending on whether it's day or night in the little storybook world. Oh, and you get points. The faster you finish, the more points you get. Over 20 levels of gameplay, the images become more intricate, your time limit gets lower and there are more discrepancies to find.

Analysis: Much like Puzzle Defence, Headspin Storybook's graphics are simply adorable. The colors are perfect, the little pop-up people are precious, and the timer and points display fits seamlessly into the overall layout. The solid graphics made me want to dive into this little world, until I started playing the game and realized that my visual awareness skills? Not so hot.

It may seem simple to just find the object that doesn't match its opposite and click on it, but these little pop-ups are tiny and the differences between them grow more subtle with each level. When you hit Level 10 or so and you're faced with a page filled with nearly identical flags, you may resort to clicking around like a maniac. Don't despair, however, since there's no Game Over. If time runs out, you simply lose 1000 points and restart the level with a different layout altogether.

The Renaissance Faire-esque soundtrack fits the mood perfectly, but becomes repetitive over time. Add that to the jarring chorus of "Booo" you get if you fail a level and you may want to turn off the volume on this one, especially if you fail more than once or twice in a row.

Headspin Storybook combines fabulous graphics with a creative twist on a worn-out genre, providing a 20-30 minute diversion that you'll want to keep playing until the story ends.

Play Headspin Storybook

Thanks for the suggestion, Luke, Denver, and Addison!

How much thought do you put into laundry detergent? I mean, really, is this one of your great concerns in life? Do you wake up in the morning and worry if you made the right decision on aisle ten in the grocery store yesterday? Should you really have gone with that off-brand stuff? Was saving a little cash really worth putting your clothes at risk? Well... was it?

• Visible - Visible is the game you would have to play every day of your life if you had to mind your shadow's well-being. Oh, and if you lived in a 2D platformer. You play both the main character and his reflection below, but instead of avoiding obstacles on one side, you have to mind both. And just because the bottom is a reflection doesn't mean it's the same as the top!
• Germz - A Bejeweled-style game with germs instead of jewels. EWW GROSS GERMS BLECH!!! Fortunately you're zapping the little buggers, and a few power-ups appear from time to time to really get the virii frying. The colored pencil-style visuals are great, and I kinda like the germ sound effects as well.
• Guesstimation - I'm guessing this game is about making guesses. I'm also guessing you'll need to type in the number (according to your best guess) of items on each screen. Then you'll get some sort of "score" (I guess). I dunno, I guess you'll like it. I also guess it was made by Ninjakiwi.
• The Line Game: Orange Edition - A stylish mouse avoider with a delicious orange flavor. Zip around each level avoiding walls, bouncing things and spinny things (which the game explicitly warns about). Best of all, at the end of each level you are rewarded with a screen full of juice!
• Spinning Bubbles - A bubble-matching puzzle game that takes place in a circular arena. Slide around the orb firing colored balls at the cluster of bubbles in the center. You can play the game the normal way, or you can just sit on the side and see how long you can spin the middle structure before you get bored and go back to writing the Link Dump Friday you started half an hour ago!

Look! Off in the horizon! Ships with flags with skulls and crossbones! And tons of peg-legged men hobbling right this way! Why are we under attack? Oh, you say you left our chests full of booty out for easy viewing by off-shore invaders? Well then, I suppose we've got pirates on our hands, and the need to defend against them!

Enter Pirate Defense, a new take on the tower defense genre, made by the good people of Hero Interactive (Storm Winds, Bubble Tanks 2). The pirates may be ascending the hill to nab your booty, but you've got the power of homemade traps to stop them. While some traps allow you to deal out damage to your attackers (stinging bee hives and explosives), others can be used to divert their paths and send them flying into other traps (swinging logs and lures). Just set up a trap, attach a trigger (if necessary), then watch the pirate mayhem ensue. Excellent! Those rough-and-tumble sailors will never know what sent them roughly tumbling.

While we're still working on a proper review for this shiny new game, please give it a try and let us know what you think by leaving us a comment. Bear in mind that since the gameplay here isn't exactly like your average TD game, it might take a little bit of experimentation to see how each trap works. Try the pre-set Sample level first to get a quick feel for the overall objective, then experiment a bit by tackling the Fun Modes (Fixed and 100k Gold) to get your sea legs. Next, try your hand at the Regular and Challenge Modes when you think you're ready to tackle the crashing waves (of pirates).

Play Pirate Defense

This is just the kind of unique thing I like to stumble across. Snake Ball is a little gem from the back catalog of John Nesky, author of the adorable Planet of the Forklift Kid.

True to the title, you play a snake beset by balls. Your job is to score a certain number of points within a certain time limit, by corralling the balls into a pit with your sinuous body. Green balls score a few points, and they have a calming effect on you. Red balls score twice as many points, but contact with them slowly drives you insane.

An insane snake is a disturbing sight, I'll tell you what. It twitches like it's being strangled.

Control your snake's head with the mouse, and the rest of you will follow. At the beginning, your tail will likely be a liability, flailing around and batting valuable prizes into the distance. With just a little practice, though, you can learn to encircle your targets with tight movements and drag them into the pit. Butting them with your head at just the right angle works, too, and random flailing is always an option if you get frustrated.

There are 23 levels, and they get pretty difficult. This is probably not a good game to play with a laptop track pad, or if you like to keep open beverages near the computer. Don't let me tell you what to do, though. Live on the edge.

Analysis: Snake Ball reminds me of Gregory Weir's Sugarcore, with its simple but readable graphics and creative approach to level design. Each challenge has a different twist, whether it be a new type of ball or an unusual limitation. One level gives you a short little snake body, forcing you to make all your points via head-bump. One takes away the time limit, but gradually sucks away your score as well. One type of ball instantly drives you insane if it falls into the pit, while another completely heals your troubled snake mind and awards you points for teetering close to the brink.

These are welcome variations, but the core gameplay is already well designed. You have to flirt with insanity to make points quickly enough, but if you gather one too many red balls, your spasming body will make you nearly useless. That creates constant tension, and the tricks each individual level plays mostly mix up the pace. I just wish there were some way of representing your score, time limit, and insanity level other than an unassuming set of gauges in the corner of the screen.

New elements enter the mix right to the end, and by the last level, the screen is chock full of different threats and scoring opportunities. It's about dancing with chaos. This game is a challenge for sure, but you're not afraid of a little craziness, right?

Play Snake Ball

Can you feel it? That buzzing in the air? That's the feeling of the excitement of a new Nitrome tingling at your senses. Or someone just stuck a fork in the microwave, but it's more likely the former. Power Up is a physics-based puzzler with a high-voltage bolt of challenging fun that lasts for up to 32 levels.

On each level, you'll find two robot heads. One's surging with luscious electric beauty, while the other could use a bit of a charge. Your goal is to create a path of metal blocks to transport some of that electric power from the first robot head to the second. This is done by grabbing blocks with the mouse and carrying them where you want them to go. When your path reaches the goal, you've still got to hold your breath for another few seconds for the robot to charge, so you'd better hope your building isn't too precariously made!

To help you build your paths and towers of teetering blocks, you'll find some levels have magnetic blocks that can hold metal blocks together, honey-covered blocks that can stick to any surface, coffin blocks that help you cross treacherous grounds, tesla coils that can pass electric current between non-adjacent locations, chests that store and move unused blocks, and other tricks to help you get from Bot A to Bot B. Keep in mind though, you've got to keep your current out of water and other dangerous situations, and the current has to pass through electricity-conducting objects to count (so those wood blocks and honey blocks are great for support, but they can also become obstacles if you're not careful).

Analysis: While Nitrome's take on the A-to-B puzzle game is unique, there are unfortunately some notable bugs that may make playing this game a bit frustrating. Aside from some glitches with visual and audio elements (sound effects looping after the associated action has already ended, "collision" clouds appearing where there isn't anything happening at all, etc.), there are also some gameplay glitches to deal with. The physics engine used here gives the objects a bit of "bounce," but perhaps a bit too much bounce. Occasionally, the tiniest collision can send pieces flying in an almost exaggerated flurry of motion. Some players have also noted that the current may flow from one robot to the other, but the second robot does not charge.

The controls for this game can be problematic to get used to as well. When you grab a block, you're essentially holding on to it by the specific point your cursor is on. This means that it can rotate on your cursor's axis, due to gravity. This is useful for flipping blocks to different orientations, but a pain if you just want to lay a block flatly on top of a tower. This, in conjunction with the collision exaggeration mentioned above, means that a very patient and steady hand is useful in completing most levels.

Despite the numerous bugs (which may hopefully be fixed in the future), credit must be given for what could be considered a bit of a change of pace from some of Nitrome's other products. Rather than a time-pressured rush to the finish line where three hits means you have to start a level over, Power Up is a game that relaxes the pace a bit. You have all the time in the world to finish a level (although there is a scoring bonus for speedy runs), and you don't have to worry about losing lives. Drop a piece in the water? No problem, you can either fish it out or pull it out of the chest again, depending on the level. Power Up doesn't force you to play any certain way at all. In fact, each level is practically a sandbox for experimentation by itself. Sometimes, taking a few extra minutes to plan out a level makes the victory charge all the more energizing.

Play Power Up

It can't be easy to always be on the road. The constant back and forth between locations, the many nights away from home, the endless string of bland hotel rooms; after a while, even the smallest bit of extra hospitality might be enough to make your day. It's nice when hotels go the extra mile, right? A fruit basket, super-fluffy towels, maybe a glass of complimentary champagne…lovely. In all seriousness, though, I think that the good folks over at G-Sensor, the new escape game from Japanese developer HILG, have gone just a wee bit overboard in their eagerness to please their patrons.

As the game begins, you, an unnamed business-person, have just checked into your room at Uncle Boo's Hotel. You see a questionnaire on the desk; it thanks you for your stay and asks if you have any demands. Cheekily, you write that you wish to be placed into a "safe room" (an odd request, to be sure) and, exhausted, promptly fall into bed. Just as you drift off to sleep, a strange voice echoes in your head: "Certainly, Sir." The next morning, you wake in a different place altogether! It certainly is "safe"; locked up tight, you'll need to solve puzzles and figure out the mechanisms of the room in order to escape. It was nice of the hotel to honor your request so thoroughly…but really, couldn't they have left you the key?

G-Sensor has many of the qualities of a great escape game. It's clear that, especially in regards to the game's puzzles, HILG had some really creative ideas; the last major puzzle in particular I found to be innovative and exciting. That being said, it seems that at times the game does not possess the necessary clues to make the logical leap from problem to solution (this is despite an in-game hint system, which I found to be nearly useless). There are many intelligent and interesting puzzle elements embedded into G-Sensor, but this lack of logical fluidity makes it harder to fully appreciate them. Happily, however, while the game can sometimes be unnecessarily frustrating, it never becomes unplayable and always remains entertaining.

The game's graphics are pretty good, if a bit bland in color, and I'm not sure that they explain G-Sensor's surprisingly long load time. The interface is simple, classic point-and-click, and the inventory system is easy to use. The game does have a bit of pixel-hunting, but nothing terribly excessive; make sure to click all the obvious angles and you should be fine. There's a save feature, which is nice, and the background music can be toggled on and off. As I mentioned earlier, the game does have a hint system; it seems sporadic at best, however, and the Japanese-to-English translation (specifically in the hint system, the rest of the game is okay) isn't great. On a related note, although some of G-Sensor's loading text is in English, make sure to press the language selection button before beginning the game. The button will say "Japanese" when you first see the loading screen; pressing it will change it to "English."

Despite not having quite the professional polish of some other high-quality room escape games, G-Sensor is nonetheless solid, well-plotted and very enjoyable; what deficiencies may exist are mainly made up for by the game's excellent puzzles. So, let's help this hapless traveler:

Play G-Sensor

Puzzle Defence, from Dibblez, is a charming mash-up of the SameGame play mechanic with RPG elements. It's not quite on the same level as Knightfall, but it gives you 20 levels of relaxed, undemanding gameplay, and the graphics are cute.

Scary, adorable monsters are attacking your castle, and the only way to defend yourself is to match them together, puzzle/strategy-style. Your goal is to defeat enough enemies to advance to the next level. To maneuver them together, you have to destroy blocks of landscape. Click on any group of three or more tiles to make them disappear, allowing more mountains, grassland, crops, gold, and creatures to fall in from the top. Once you have a group of two or more monsters, click on it to eliminate them.

If a bad guy reaches the bottom of the screen, it damages your castle and leaves. If a pile of gold reaches the bottom, it adds to your wealth, which you can spend between levels on upgrades.

On later levels, the monsters get stronger and tougher. They arrive in greater numbers, do more damage to your castle, and must form larger groups before they are vulnerable. This gradual evolution of threat and the light customization (I like the upgrade that converts crops to gold) gives Puzzle Defence a little strategic oomph, but really it's just a pleasant way to spend 20 or 30 minutes. The sound design passes the Crunch Thump Crunch Thump likability test, and I generally just want to hug the game and tousle its hair. I'd love to see a fleshed-out sequel.

Play Puzzle Defence

In 1988, Mike McManaway invented a board game using red and black cardboard tiles, which he called "The Mind Game." Since then, the board has been eliminated, the tiles have become more colorful and made of Bakelite, and the game now known as Tantrix has fully evolved. This online solitaire version is designed to introduce some of the basic strategies of Tantrix, a game that falls in the category of "simple to learn, yet difficult to master."

For the Discovery and Xtreme modes, there's only one simple rule to follow: All of the touching sides of your hexagonal tiles must match in color. Using this rule, your challenge is to create a loop of one color, using all of the given tiles. Each tile contains three segments of a colored path, which can twist and turn in many directions. In Discovery mode, you're told which color to use to make your path; in Xtreme mode, you must figure it out on your own. To move a tile, click and drag it to a location on the grid. To rotate a tile, click on it. Your goal is to make each loop in as little time as possible.

In Solitaire mode, your challenge is to shoot for a high score using all 14 tiles. While you're not required to form a complete loop of one color, the length of the longest chain of a single color determines your score, and forming a loop doubles the score of that chain. Thus, the highest score possible is 28 points. To play, click the "Next Tile" button on the right to get a randomly-selected tile. Place it on the board where you'd like, but remember that once the next tile is revealed, you can't change its location. In addition, one more rule is added to the mix: If there's an open area on the grid surrounded by three tiles, the first playable tile that fits must be played there. This can hurt your strategy, as it can keep you from playing a needed tile elsewhere on the board. If you think you've had a high-scoring run, you can submit the total of your last five games to a high scores board.

Analysis: This friendly solitaire version is an excellent introduction into the world of Tantrix. Although it might not have the renown of other board games like Scrabble, international tournaments are held annually for the multiplayer version of the game. With a 20-plus year history, Tantrix continues to attract new players.

One problem with this particular implementation is that the Discovery and Xtreme modes are in fact nearly identical. While the point is that one guides you gently by helping you decide which colors to match, and the other leaves you on your own, both introduce tiles in the same order. This follows the suggested rules of the physical version of the game, but doesn't translate well to digital.

The real gold is the Solitaire mode, which poses a unique challenge every time you play. The random selection of tiles almost feels like you're playing an opponent, since you can't determine how the game will change next. The tricky part is getting five high-scoring rounds in a row to submit to the high scores table. With persistence and planning, anything is possible.

If this mini-version of the game tickles your fancy, be sure to check out the official Tantrix website for more about the game and tournament information. If you want a "easy-yet-hard" puzzler to snack on, give Tantrix a shot.

Play Tantrix

Upon first look, Bad Viking's (Popopop) new title Planet Basher looks like some simplistic ballistics-y physics-y star collecting toy. Take your slowly rotating cannon at the top of the screen, line it up with some stars, and fire. The rocket you launch collects any stars that it touches before it drops off the bottom of the screen. Woohoo. But that was before I bought my first planet.

Once you fire all your shots and collect as many stars as you can, you go to an upgrade shop where you can, among other things, buy planets. So I bought one, placed it on the screen, and went to the next level. I fired my first rocket directly at the planet, and it bounced off! It was then that I realized the true fun of this game. It's about building bounce trails with enough planets to keep your rocket in the air long enough to collect the 200-stars-in-one-level necessary to win the game.

When it comes to spending star dust, there are a number of other opportunities, such as upgrading your rocket's star magnet and the fuel for said magnet. This gadget pulls in stars from all around you in a mass of magnetic attraction, for as long as the fuel holds out. The star shower allows you to make the stars fall faster and more frequently for a limited time. You can also increase the size of any planet on the playing field. All of these objects and upgrades are crucial to completing the mission.

Analysis: Planet Basher is a strong game, the kind that comes out of nowhere and kicks you in the butt. Fortunately, it sticks around to give you a pleasing gaming experience. Planet Basher's game style isn't easy to categorize, but the closest I can come are the pachinko simulators in Japan or PopCap's recent hit Peggle. [Ed. - You might also try John Cooney's Hedgehog Launch for a game with a similar structure.] Bouncy-bounce off of the planets that you've set up, collect as many stars as possible, and upgrade yourself into a position to collect all 200.

Game execution is pretty much flawless. I didn't come across any weird glitches or pockets of questionable game-physics while playing. The ability to shuffle around planets in between rounds is very nice, giving you a chance to close up holes in your rocket shots. Graphics are appropriately bright and bouncy. The music is nice, especially the rock riff used for the main game. Extremely cool, Bad Viking. Keep up the good work!

I've been able to complete the game in 18 rounds. Apparently, good players are completing it in around 10 rounds, while some have even managed it in 5. I guess with a couple of well placed planets, some excellent shots, and a cool hand on the star magnet, it could be possible. Either way, Planet Basher is a blast to play.

Play Planet Basher

What's that you say? You've got the making oppositely charged balls annihilate each other in a physicsy sort of way fever? Yeah, that bug has been making the rounds ever since we reviewed Collider last week. Don't worry, although it's very contagious, our doctor tells us that the only adverse effects are deep cravings for hot cross buns and a new-found appreciation for Paula Abdul.

Luckily, there is a new, cutting-edge treatment that is gaining popularity among sufferers. From the labs of Spil Games comes Bipole, a physics-heavy spin-cycle of a puzzler, conceived as part of the recent Global Game Jam. The goal is simple: annihilate all particles by colliding them with particles of the opposite charge — denoted here by color. Use the [left] and [right] arrow keys to rotate the level, taking advantage of gravity and electrostatic attraction/repulsion to gain momentum and drive particles towards annihilation. As with real-life charged particles, like colors repel while opposites attract.

An additional feature that will surely drive physics purists absolutely bonkers: pressing [space] locks the particles in position, completely erasing any momentum they had built up. During this time, other movable objects in the game will continue their motion, and you may still rotate the level. Pressing [space] again unfreezes the particles.

The Spil team also seems to have discovered the secret behind magnetic monopoles, for sprinkled throughout the 35 levels are dots of magnetic charge, which attract and repel according to the same rules as the particles. However, if a particle gets too close to one of these monopoles, its charge is reversed! The ability to switch particle polarity is a double-edged sword, hindering as often as helping, so be very careful how you use it. The monopoles can sometimes be toggled on and off by hitting a switch with a particle, which again can be both helpful and harmful. Finally, I probably don't need to even say this, but don't let the particles touch the evil-looking flashing material marked with a skull!

Analysis: Bipole plays like a bizarre hybrid between Sola Rola and Magnetism, capturing the addiction and frustration factors of both. Although there are certainly puzzle-solving elements to the game, success depends more on execution than planning, and that [r]estart button will come in quite handy after many a mistimed maneuver. The learning curve is perfectly executed through the first ten or so levels, after which the difficulty fluctuates like a slinky trying to yo-yo on a trampoline. Some levels are pretty straightforward and some are quite involved. There are two or three that rely heavily on luck (with the low point being the level that requires you to be holding down the arrow key from the very beginning), but for the most part the level design is solid.

With its chill soundtrack and sleek graphics, Bipole is almost as much fun to see and hear as it is to play. In fact, the authors have released not one, but two versions of the game, which I will call Noir and Cute. It appears to make absolutely no difference which you play, and you can even switch halfway through and your times will be loaded automatically.

So fear not, feverish fans of physics fun, for a prescription of particle projectiles will cure what ails ya.*

Play Bipole

Thanks for the suggestion, Bryan!

*Side effects may include dizziness, visions of anteaters, and a startling wonderment at just where all that time got off to.

If you're a fan of strategy games, we've got a real treat for you this Monday. Both KDice Trainer and UniWar tackle the genre from different angles, the former adopting a casual-friendly stance while the latter isn't afraid to get serious with unit management and tactics.

We're still giving away iTunes gift certificates to cover the cost of every game featured in the current Mobile Monday article. Simply sign-in with a Casual Gameplay account, leave a comment giving feedback about one of the games, then check back the week after to see if you've won. Simple! Congratulations to last week's winner, Saltone!

KDice Trainer - A single-player version of Ryan Dewsbury's addictive multiplayer classic, KDice, is now available to take with you on your iPhone. Gameplay is like Risk, only with dice instead of army units. Attack adjacent territories as you battle other colors for control over the map. At the end of your turn you get bonus dice based on the largest number of contiguous territories that you control. In other words, the larger your land, the stronger you are. Simple, but highly engaging. KDice was inspired by the single-player game, Dice Wars, by Taro Ito.

UniWar - What if Advance Wars and StarCraft got together and baked a cake? And what if that cake weren't a cake, but a game? UniWar would probably be the result, as this turn-based strategy game plays like a combination of both popular mainstream titles. Buy, build and control your army of units as you fight your opponent for control of the precious bases. Many units have special abilities that betray their low attack/defense scores, so sometimes muscling your way to the end isn't always the best road to victory.

Totomi - A portable version of the Flash game of the same name, Totomi is an animal-filled stacking-based puzzle game. Animals and food all have relationships with each other, which makes stacking a bit more complex. You can pile zebras on top of each other all day long, for example, but as soon as you put a lion in the mix, he'll gobble them right up. Putting a leaf on the zebras is a different matter. It's a unique puzzle experience that's made a smooth transition to the iTunes App Store. A free Totomi Lite version is also available.

Cosmic Nitro - From the creator of Galcon comes a frantic tap-to-shoot arcade game that doubles as an "I'm afraid I'm going to tap my iPod to pieces" simulator. Asteroids, toxic waste, meteors, UFOs and other space debris are hurtling towards the city. Simply tap the screen to blast the baddies, making sure to fry any pieces they throw off as a result of being destroyed. Stay alive as long as you can and earn massive points. Things take a minute or so to warm up, but when you're huddled over the screen, iPhone clutched in two hands tapping with as many fingers as you can manage, you'll see why it's a great game.

NOTE: Games listed may not be available outside of North America. Prices are subject to change and are therefore unlisted. Please see the individual game pages for purchasing info.

What happens when "happily ever after" is over? The business of the kingdom, of course. At least, that's what happens in Cindy's Travels: Flooded Kingdom. Cindy, known to the rest of the world as the glass shoe-wearing maiden before midnight, Cinderella, is now in charge of the affairs of the kingdom. When huge piles of junk begin to overtake the land, turning the countryside into a fairyland landfill, Cindy takes it upon herself to figure out what is causing the pile-up, and she gives the kingdom a good cleaning along the way.

Using a match-3 system similar to games like Cradle of Rome and 4 Elements, make long chains of matches to clear a path for Cindy to her next destination. Each path in clearly defined, and that makes it easy to concentrate on the locations most in need of cleaning. You are not completely at the mercy of the chains, though. You do have your magic mirror, which will slowly charge as you clear chains of objects from the field. Once it is charged, a large chain will set off the magic, clearing all the objects in your vicinity, allowing you to move ahead along the path.

There are even more magical items that will help in your journey down your path. These power-ups will charge as you make matches on the board, just like the mirror. One of the most useful is the hammer, which destroys a single block in your path. Other power-ups include a magical spell that auto-selects any chain of 3 or more and destroys it, allowing you to find chains that you might not see. Yet another will allow Cindy to move two spaces along her path without clearing anything out of the way. These power-ups charge in a top-down order first. The further down the list, the stronger the power-up, and the longer it takes to charge between uses. So use them wisely.

The match-3 levels are interspersed with a few different mini-games that Cindy will encounter on her journey. You will help Cindy move logs off of her path, Rush Hour style; as well as find hidden objects using an overhead view. These serve to add a bit of variety to the game to keep things feeling fresh and compelling. Make it down the path through the levels and solve the mystery of the growing garbage in the kingdom.

Analysis: There seems to be a growing trend in the match-3 genre toward gameplay that uses the matching mechanic for a greater purpose. It's not just about clearing the entire board of tiles anymore, but about creating paths through the play field, for example. These new sub-genres, if executed well, may breathe new life into an otherwise over-saturated genre.

The mini-games in Cindy's Travels are fun and well-implemented. They feel more like they are a part of the game as a whole rather than tacked on at the end in an attempt to add variety. The presentation is tightly integrated and there is no shift in perspective, graphic style, or control mechanics. The transitions from match-3 to mini-game and back again is flawless, and pulls you right into the story.

The graphics in Cindy's kingdom are lush and colorful, with detailed objects and easy-to-recognize bits and bobbles that must be located in the hidden-object levels. The character designs can look a bit odd when viewed from the top, especially with the females. Nothing that's not family friendly, but just kind of odd in appearance. I especially like the levels that take place at night, with items that glow, giving the whole scene a nice, almost magical feeling.

With a solid story and hours of gameplay, Cindy's Travels: Flooded Kingdom is a welcome addition to the match-3 genre. While character perspective may take a bit to get used to, it certainly doesn't detract from the fun packed into this title. Take up Cindy's mirror, clear the land of refuse, and get back to the business of "happily every after."

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

This new game by developer Hyohyohyo (green giant) is a short 3D action adventure about personal growth and wanton destruction. Sentokun in Kamakura is the story of a monk with antlers on his head, on a quest to defeat a giant, antlered cowboy. I don't know the fine details of the plot, but I assume their conflict is antler-related.

At the beginning, the monk is too weak to prevail, so to build up his strength, he must ransack a peaceful coastal town and raze it to the ground. If you wish there were more browser games that let you throw houses at people, you may enjoy this.

The number in the upper-left is your strength. It increases whenever you collect coins, pick up objects, destroy things, or defeat enemies. The bad guys basically operate as gateways; initially, they outclass you, but once you work out your issues on the local scenery, you'll be strong enough to trounce them.

Steer your hero with the [Arrow Keys]. He moves like a tank with treads made of banana peels, but you'll adjust. The [Z] and the [X] keys are context-sensitive. When nothing special is going on, [Z] triggers a forward leap, which is a great way to get around quickly. [X] makes you do a somersault straight into the air, and while you're there, [Z] smashes you into the ground. That butt-stomp is useless for combat, but it's the perfect way to collect nearby coins.

Nearly every object in the game, including mountains and buildings, has a weight, which you can see by walking right up to it. Press [Z] to pick the item up, and then you can rotate around and press [X] to throw it. You can pick up things that are a little too heavy by jamming on the [Z] button a few times, but if you try that with something way too heavy, you'll hurt yourself. Just like in real life, exercise caution when uprooting a tree with your bare hands.

Combat works nearly the same as picking things up. Just walk into the bad guy, and hammer on [Z]. For extra antler monk wrestlemania fun, press [left] and [right] while you've got them in the air. If you get beaten, you probably need to whale on the landscape some more to power up. You can also weaken or crush your enemies by heaving a large enough object at them.

Analysis: Sentokun in Kamakura is a happy, carefree game. You can't hurt yourself very easily, except by blundering repeatedly into the same powerful enemy, and the main character feels heavy but nimble. The chorus of sugar-accelerated voices in the music suggest that the best way to play is with reckless abandon, leaving fragments of architecture and dramatic clouds of dust in your wake.

There's obviously some Katamari Damacy influence, in the sense that you start out helpless and grow strong by destroying everything you see, starting with the smallest objects and working your way up to the hugest. One important part of the formula is missing, however—the only sign that you're getting stronger is the emotionless number in the corner. Your character doesn't grow fatter or more muscular or anything, which detracts a bit from the joy of evolving into an unstoppable creature who can literally move mountains.

It's too bad there's only one level and not much challenge. Sentokun is almost like a tech demo, a colorful, flat-shaded playground for you to smash into shenanigans. If it ends too quickly, try combing the area for every last destructible object, in an effort to maximize your strength before the big showdown. You don't get anything special for doing that, of course, but this is the kind of game where you make your own moments. Like watching a once-mighty tree sail out over the horizon where you've thrown it, or beaning a humongous cowboy with a volcano. Those kinds of moments.

Play Sentokun in Kamakura

[Note: Press [Z] to pass the opening screen. The plot is probably nothing like what I described. It doesn't even look like a cowboy. More like a garbanzo bean with a temple on its head and antlers on the temple. It was easier to say "cowboy".]

[Update! More information on the actual source of the conflict between these two antlered behemoths can be found here. Thanks, JoseHeno!]

Are you ready for adventure? Are you ready for mayhem? Are you... feeling a bit peckish? Then grab your favourite brand of cheese and get comfy in your favourite sweater vest. Telltale Games, developers of the equally tasty Sam and Max games, has just released the first adventure in a new series plucked straight from the popular British cartoon and movie. Wallace & Gromit: Fright of the Bumblebees is the first in a series of episodic adventure games, and it's point-and-click gaming at its finest with everyone's favourite cheese-loving inventor and his beleaguered pooch.

Wallace & Gromit are entrepeneurs, of a sort. Wallace is continually applying his abstract inventions to new business ideas, and his latest is honey — "From Bee to You". After breakfast one morning, Wallace is commissioned to produce fifty gallons of the stuff for an event to be held that night — a tight deadline even if he had more than one hive of angry bees. Wallace being Wallace, he comes up with a scheme to produce an enormous amount of honey in a short amount of time, but he's neglected to take into consideration that science and nature don't normally mix.

Depending on where in the story you are, you'll have control of either Wallace himself or his long-suffering canine companion, Gromit, both of which can walk around using the [WASD] keys. Move your mouse over an object and if white brackets appear around it, you can click to interact. Using an item is as easy as holding shift to open your inventory, clicking on the item, and then clicking again on who — or what — you want to use it with. Make sure you come back and check on items when you switch characters, too, as Wallace & Gromit interact with things in different ways.

The hints and walkthrough on the official site definitely come in handy from time to time. A lot of the puzzles are abstract to say the least, unless you're one of those people who instantly knows what to do with a badger, a tennis racket, and a stick of butter. Since the game generally tries to provide items to you when you would need them, however, it scales back on the frustration of other adventure games which have you trying to use an item over and over throughout the course of an entire game. In general, the puzzles are more diverse than the standard bring-this-item-to-this-character variety; when was the last time you had to use advertisements to craft a suitably scathing insult?

Analysis: Fright of the Bumblebees is just beautiful. Let's get that out of the way right now. I spent a great deal of gameplay just marveling at how gorgeous everything was and how near-flawless the animation is, shot from every angle. The titular characters are lovingly rendered so close to the original series that their designs even incorporate little fingerprints and cracks to make them resemble the clay sculptures. The game is packed with the show's signature style and unique appeal, down to the so British voice acting (Wallace himself is voiced by the official backup actor, Ben Whitehead) and the roly-poly orchestral soundtrack. The spoken dialogue is only in English, but subtitles are available in several languages. Gromit's expressions, of course, need no translation. The downside is that this means older computers might have trouble running it smoothly, so make sure to check yours against the specifications.

Wallace & Gromit is one of those things that you either get or you don't, and the appeal of the series' goggle-eyed characters and their implausible adventures is largely dependent upon your appreciation for unabashed silliness. If you can accept that a dog can grow a prize-winning giant cucumber, or that a man can have his brain swapped with a rabbit, then you'll do just fine. If reading that sentence caused your brow to furrow, you might encounter difficulties. The game is a lot of things, but serious isn't one of them, and the very British humour is much more dry than everyone might be used to. The jokes are kid-friendly, but not so watered down that adults won't get a giggle or four out of them.

As the first in a planned series of four adventures to be released monthly, Fright of the Bumblebees is, in my opinion, worth every penny so far. The price of which includes, incidentally, the three upcoming adventures as well. Often games that are based off of established shows tend to feel very commercial, or just consist of a basic gameplay system with token nods to the source material. By contrast, this game feels like a real labour of love. If you've ever wondered what butter has to do with catching squirrels, or where Strongium comes from, you owe it to yourself to check out this game. And even if you haven't, it's still worth a look.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

This week, three of the four games featured come from the development group Free Lunch Design. Why? Because one of their games turned this writer onto the world of free games and further to that, in all its history JIG has featured just one of their games. What better way to say, thanks for all the lost time spent playing, then to shine a bit of light on their highlights.

Icy Tower (Windows, 4.4MB, free) - One of the most classic free games where the object is unceasingly repetitive and never, ever changes but somehow remains continuously enjoyable. Simply gain enough speed in the small tower's base to hurl Harold the Homeboy against the walls of the infinitely tall tower. As you do, you then ricochet off the wall, then combo higher and higher into the stratosphere while jumping off increasingly smaller platforms in your quest for every homeboy's desire: a really big score.

Frog Hunt (Windows, 3.55MB, free) - Hoorah for games which can't be played according to their rules! In stark contrast to Icy Tower which only has one rule (jump) and can't be disobeyed, Frog Hunt has one rule (catch frogs) which can't be followed. Simply attempt to not get squashed by giant hopping elephants while a God-like figure randomly gives you points for no reason. It's bizarre, it's fun and best of all, no frogs are harmed during the game play period.

Zombiepox (Windows, 2.56MB, free) - What's more fun than jumping and frogs? Zombies? You betcha! Especially when you're hopelessly outnumbered and also weaponless. How to defeat the zombie horde without a weapon? Supply them with the one thing they don't have - that's right, hurl brains at the zombies to turn them human. Return all the zombies to their former, upright and breathing status and viola, instant hero.

Gate (Mac/Windows, 2.8MB, free) - Not a Free Lunch Design game, but something you'll get a kick out of nonetheless. Gate is a "programming" game where you must wire the innards of a robot trying to navigate the Martian landscape. Connect thrusters to sensors so when the latter is activated the former kicks in, allowing the 'bot to move and change direction. Before long you'll be adding NOT gates and wrapping your head aroud increasingly complex logic circuits. There's no tutorial, so you should have a working understanding of what's going on before you take the plunge. Similar to KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People, but with a much different goal in mind.

A little-known sequel to an even lesser-known original, UfoPilot 2: The Phadt Menace is a fun little action shooter that pays homage to the classic Defender, with gravity-based elements reminiscent of all those "moon lander" games that you've probably played throughout the last decade. You're tasked with leading rescue missions to save your fellow pilots, who are being held as prisoners-of-war by the Phadt Armada, a hostile alien enemy. Developed by Spell of Play, the game features an original soundtrack and physics-based graphics presentation, leaning heavily towards the arcade motif, but less cartoon-like than most shooters. This may be, in part, because of the physics/gravity engine (it's difficult to articulate without being a developer, but the game looks like it feels and plays, with debris from explosions affecting the environment in small, pixel-sized amounts).

Like most action games, the story takes a backseat to the gameplay, which is pretty fulfilling if you're a fan of gravity-influenced flying and blowing things out of the sky. However, this isn't your typical run-and-gun shooter, which might appeal to fans that have been yearning for something a little different. There's a lot of unique environments like underground caverns and above-ground ruins to fly around in; a stark contrast from most shooters that just throw you in deep space with some asteroids to crash into. The goal of each level is to rescue a certain number of captured pilots that are being held in little bunkers scattered throughout the map. There are always five prisoners in each bunker, and you've got to fire a single shot at the bunker to destroy it and free them. (Yea, the irony of blowing up the building your buddies are being held in seemed a little odd to me, too.) Once a bunker is destroyed, they'll run out screaming like lunatics. To rescue them, you've got to land somewhere close to them, and they'll automatically start running to your ship. Once aboard, you can either fly to another bunker or unload them at the mothership, depending on how much cargo room you have left. Conceptually, it seems simple enough—until you factor in the dozens of things trying to blast you out of the sky.

From the first few levels you'll be met with laser and missile turrets, tanks, falling rocks and even other alien pilots (that amusingly cruise around in ships that look almost exactly like the ones from Tron). But perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome is your own flying skill, which will probably lead to your destruction more often than enemies, at least until you get the hang of it. Your thrusters are controlled by pushing the right mouse button, allowing you to fight gravity and follow the direction your mouse is pointing. The left mouse button fires your lasers, so it takes a bit of practice to use both these abilities in harmony, yet independently of one another. You also have three special weapons (gathered as power-ups): bombs, heat-seeking missiles and a unique "bounce" weapon that ricochets of surfaces a few times. These weapons are deployed using [Z], [X] and [C], as displayed on your in-game HUD. Additional power-ups include invulnerability shields, extra lives, anti-gravity boosters and armor replenishment.

The game features three modes; Classic, Time Attack and Arcade. You'll probably want to start with Classic, since it allows you to play in whatever style you like, at your own pace. At the start of each level, you're presented with an upgrade screen that lets you tweak six different aspects of your ship; weapons, armor, engine, payload, spin and target. Weapons and armor are pretty self-explanatory. Upgrading your engine gives you stronger thrust, while payload dictates how many rescued pilots you can carry at once. Lastly, "spin" refers to how fast you're able to turn—or pivot—your ship (which is more important that it sounds), and upgrading "target" lengthens the distance between your aiming reticule and your ship, helping you to shoot more accurately. The catch with upgrading is that you're only given 12 points to spend, regardless of progression. While this allows a strong start, it also discounts the possibility of becoming "stronger" in later levels. It might seem like a dumb move on the developers part, but therein lies the real challenge at the heart of the game; dynamically adapting both your ship and play style to overcome different obstacles, depending on the level. Sometimes you'll need brute force to defend yourself from heavy alien resistance, while other times the level design will call for greater finesse and control of your ship, or even stealthy tactics to avoid confrontation altogether.

Analysis: For a small indie arcade game, the music and graphics in UfoPilot 2: The Phadt Menace are surprisingly good. The backgrounds are a far stretch from breathtaking, but the animation and explosion/particle effects are pretty cool and uniquely stylized for this game. It really fits the theme of a physics-based arcade shooter, although there's obvious room for improvement (max resolution is a paltry 640x480). Presentation aside, gameplay can be frustrating because of what a cruel, unforgiving mistress gravity plays in this game. You might find yourself banging into things left and right, which drains a hefty bit of armor. Landing is also a challenge, since anything but a delicate touchdown will damage your ship a little (and you'll be trying to land a lot, since rescuing pilots is half the game). Fending off attacking aliens and zeroing in on turrets also takes a bit of practice, but becomes really rewarding once you get the hang of it. Additional options would have been a great feature, such as the ability to tone down the gravity, or turn it off completely. The Arcade mode offers a different flavor of gameplay, automatically upgrading aspects of your ship as you progress, among a few other variations from Classic.

You don't have to be a glutton for punishment to enjoy this game, but it's not going to be the easiest arcade shooter you've ever played. The rough action doesn't overshadow the strategic elements so much as to ruin the game, although you might disagree if you just spent the last half hour blowing up into the side of a wall. Thankfully, you can try it before you buy it by downloading the demo, available through the hUb distribution client (similar to Steam). It's a commendable effort that adds a unique dimension to the Defender and Asteroids era of games that many arcade fans still love to this day.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

In mid-2008, we featured a game called GemCraft, which immediately went on to become one of the most well-received tower defense games of all time. Now, strategy fans can rejoice, because GameInABottle has released Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity, and it's even bigger and badder than the original.

Acting as a prequel to the original, GemCraft Chapter Zero tells the story of a wizard who has become so entangled in his search for the fabled Gem of Eternity that his colleagues have cast him out. If the story doesn't compel you, that's to be expected, because GemCraft's muscle lies in it's incredibly addictive gameplay.

Prior experience with GemCraft isn't necessary, since the game provides you with tips and explanations throughout. At its core, the gameplay is deceptively simple; place magical gems atop towers to attack the monsters that arrive in waves and head towards your base. Enemies arrive in waves, and you can see when the next one is coming by keeping an eye on the bar at the left side of the screen. If an enemy reaches your base, it does damage to your mana, which you use to create your defenses, and if your mana reaches zero, you lose the level.

But there's a lot more to GemCraft this time around, as your first encounter with the map screen should tell you. Now winning a battle grants you experience which increases your level. Gaining a level allows you to purchase a wide variety of skills to help in the next fight, and even unlocks new battle modes for each area. For achievement fans, there are also an enormous number of amulets to try for, awarded for everything from defeating a particular number of monsters to using an ability to win a battle. GemCraft Zero is here to pull you in for the long haul.

Analysis: I was a little overwhelmed the first time I opened up the game and saw the sheer number of options available for everything, which makes the game appear much more difficult to pick up than it really is; Gemcraft Zero is as difficult as you want it to be. At first glance it appears a virtual hydra of a game, with so many spells, battle options, and tactics that it may scare off people expecting a strictly casual gaming experience that fits neatly into a coffee break.

The truth is, however, that GemCraft Chapter Zero manages to be one of those games where you can sit and play a few rounds when you have time, thanks to the save feature, but it will also cheerfully suck out your brain for hours at a time if you let it. The addition of levels and skills to buy means there's something more to strive for beyond simply staying alive, and customisation freaks will be able to tweak their army to their heart's content. There's something immensely satisfying in seeing the serpentine enemy advancement vaporised by your carefully laid plans, and since each level has multiple battle modes that can be unlocked the stronger you get, it lets the difficulty scale with your skill. It is possible to finish the game by powering through on the vanilla setting, but being able to test your mettle against other difficulties keeps the game from becoming tired as you go along.

GemCraft Chapter Zero is impressive for a variety of reasons, but the simplest is how it manages to take such a simple objective as the tower defense genre usually presents and make it so darned appealing. And this is coming from someone who can't usually play these games without zoning out after five minutes and wondering what's on Discovery Channel. One of my only real complaints is how largely silent the game is aside from its sound effects. A few simple music tracks in the background of the battle screen—where you spend the lion's share of your time—would have been nice, but honestly, I got so absorbed in what I was doing that I forgot all about it before long. Any fan of tower defense games shouldn't miss this one, but even those who may not normally be interested in them should at least give it a try. It's made me a convert, and should sit comfortably as king of the hill for a long time to come.

Play Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity

UPDATE: GameInABottle has released an update to GemCraft Zero, 1.01, which fixes several issues with the gameplay and addresses the difficulty in some levels.

The following text was taken directly from the pages of my super-secret diary. Less of a diary, more of a journal. Not so much a journal, now that I think about it, sort of a captain's log. Complete with stardates!

• Robo Riot - IT'S 18 GAMES IN ONE AND THERE ARE ROBOTS!!! Actually, that first bit isn't true, it's just two games in one: a puzzle game and a reflex-based arcade game. But there are robots. Lots of 'em. And they're different colors, too. In Crowd Control you're trying to clear 'bots by drawing squares with like-colored machines in each corner. In Assassination, you shoot stuff. Wee!
• Best Friends Forever - A simple platform/puzzle game in the vein of The Lost Vikings. Control a set of BFFs (which stands for, obviously, Banana-Flavored Fruit) who work together to make it through a handful of levels. For example: plop one friend on a button to keep spikes down so the others can pass safely. That's what friends are for, right?
• Volcano - Ok ok, so a volcano has erupted, right? And this really big wall of lava is chasing you, ok? How do you escape? By turning into a panther to run, a monkey to climb, and a mouse to scurry through tight corridors! Use the [z], [x] and [c] keys to switch animals, and try to keep a respectful distance between yourself and the liquid hot magma.
• Mighty Red Orb of Eternal Power (with three little white balls gravitating around it) - With a title like that, what more can I say? A mouse-avoder game with some unique power-ups and the ability to shoot and destroy the walls. Then there's the hoarse guy who yells at you when you mess up.
• Jump 'n' Rolla - An action/skill game that bears some resemblance to titles such as Dolphin Olympics and Monkey Kick Off. The goal is to make it as far down the mountain as you can. Tog jumps on his own, it's your job to make sure he lands on his feet, not his head.

How cute can you take it? If your answer is merely "pretty darn cute", that won't be enough, because the latest game from Picaso Games is adorable enough to make Scottish-Fold kittens on the other side of the world jealous. Even your cursor becomes pudgy and extra cuddly as you set out to help the little Euwins return home. It seems a massive tidal wave has scattered them across the land, but fortunately for them, they have a steady supply of building materials, even if they don't quite know how to use them. That's where you and one very clever physics engine come in with Bridgecraft.

The gameplay feels similar to Armadillo Run or Pontifex. You start each level with a budget that you can use to purchase building materials, like the standard deck, and add either steel or the weaker rope for support.

Start by clicking on the anchor points, denoted by little green circles, and draw a line to direct where your bridge will go. Clicking on a green circle again will delete anything attached to it, returning the cost to your budget. You'll need to work in segments, and since some obstacles are bigger than others, you're going to have to strengthen your bridge with the appropriate material. Rope may be cheaper, but it's more than a little unforgiving when it comes to bearing weight. For the most part, each material behaves like it should, so you should feel more comfortable with a reinforced steel bridge than, oh, a swaying bridge made of water-logged macrame.

When you're ready, you can click the green Start button to send your little critter tottering trustingly out onto your bridge. If the bridge snaps, you'll have to try again. You can choose to Undo a single move, Reset the whole level, or add more support to the existing design, if you have any funds left. There's no real penalty for failing, so you can try over and over again as often as you like. In fact, you'll probably want to make use of the "Show Stress" button at the top of the screen, which will highlight areas that are under particular strain when the Euwin tries to cross and help you figure out where the problem lies. That the levels take place on a grid makes it that much easier to really fine-tune your measurements.

For those of us with less than a passing interest in architecture, Bridgecraft can prove frustratingly challenging at times, as you watch construct after construct surrender to the elements and send your unhappy looking Euwins tumbling into the watery depths. You may not need a degree in engineering for this one, but it helps to have a basic understanding of structure and support. 70 levels is plenty of time to become a building master, but I'm still not sure whether the physics engine is unforgiving, or I'm just inept at engineering. I'm sorry, little Euwins. Your trusting eyes will haunt me in my dreams!

Analysis: Don't be fooled by that happy smiling sun. It's a good thing this game is so unrelentingly cheerful, since the soothing colours and shapes can help when you'd rather throw your keyboard out the window, after yet another bridge falls apart like a soggy pretzel. That's what I get for passing notes during science class. It takes a lot of experimentation and patience to figure out exactly what each level requires, since working within a budget means there is rarely more than one solution for any given puzzle. Adding to your stress, the Undo button only lets you undo a single move, which forces you to reset the entire structure if your mistake happened early on in the building process.

If any game could be described as appealing to a niche group, then this is probably it. The challenge of building a sturdy bridge under monetary constraints isn't going to be everyone's cuppa, and with nary a bloodthirsty alien or magical sword to be found, those craving fast-paced action had better look elsewhere. What's surprising, however, is how this one grew on me. The satisfaction in completing a level and seeing your design stand tall is pretty addictive, to say nothing of the increasing challenge as the levels go on.

Bridgecraft is an exercise in patience, common-sense, and ingenuity. If the trial-and-error doesn't discourage you, and I encourage you not to let it for this one, the experience can be rewarding. For me it also serves as a reminder of why I got that F in shop class.

Play Bridgecraft

Thanks for the suggestion, Scott, Mat, and David!

Hey look, it's Dream Chronicles 3: The Chosen Child! The latest installment in the Dream Chronicles series has arrived, and it's as breathtakingly brilliant as everyone would expect. A little bit of hidden object finding, a little bit of puzzle solving, and a whole lot of adventuring can be found in this superb sequel, along with some of the most gorgeous scenery you've seen since looking out your own window (assuming you live in a fantasy world with fairies, fountains, and vibrant gardens). It's an excellent follow-up to the previous Dream Chronicles games and a fantastic game in its own right.

In Dream Chronicles 3 you reprise the role of Faye who is in search of her missing husband and daughter, kidnapped by Lilith, the Queen of Fairies. Unfortunately it seems her memory has some, er, "gaps", as she lives in a tree house and remembers practically nothing of her former life. Not even her name! A helpful voice soon appears to help guide you on your quest, and before you know it the adventure begins, those trickster fairies pulling pranks on you at every turn.

Dream Chronicles 3 is structured much like Dream Chronicles 2. Each area, which consists of half a dozen or more unique locations, has a set of puzzles to solve using items you find strewn about the landscape. Finding these objects is a straightforward affair, all you have to do is travel back and forth, scrutinizing the scenery for pieces of a machine, colored stones, keys, parts of a windmill, or whatever it is you're looking for. Often you'll pick up objects that don't seem to have a use just yet, and then again, sometimes you'll need to get your hands on something you just can't find! Carrying items between scenes is an important part of solving the intricate puzzles.

Don't miss our reviews and walkthroughs for the entire Dream Chronicles series!

Mini-puzzles are strewn about Dream Chronicles 3, ranging from word unscrambling to potion mixing and other logic-type games. Nothing that breaks the atmosphere, of course, and they're a welcome (but subtle) shift of pace from the game's hidden object/adventure theme. Dream Chronicles 3 is also filled with flavor-text, little bits of information that pop up when your cursor passes over many of the items. Clicking these objects produces a short description at the bottom of the screen. Entirely optional in most cases, but clicking and exploring are all part of the adventure game experience, and it's nice to have this aspect fleshed out to such an extent.

New in The Chosen Child is the nexus, a hub-world of sorts that allows you to travel between areas by pulling levers to rotate a massive set of gears and portals. Instead of being confined to a linear path, Dream Chronicles 3 opens the door for wider exploration, creating the epic feel the series needed to move to the next level.

Analysis: If Myst were a casual game, it would be Dream Chronicles. That's a tall order to fill, but the two series share a lot in common, from the top-notch visuals (Myst was gorgeous in 1993!) to the silent worlds filled with fantasy content. Dream Chronicles 3 has a decidedly more modern slant to it, obviously, and its focus on object finding and mini-games certainly sets it apart from the classic Myst masterpiece.

Even though Dream Chronicles 3 can be categorized as a hidden object, the type of item hunting you do in this game is quite different from most. Objects are hidden very naturally, no over/undersized partially-opaque camouflage cop-outs here. Instead, the things you need to find are small and can usually be found in logical (or at least semi-logical) places. There's no penalty for going on a mad click-fest, but Dream Chronicles 3 encourages you to take a breath and just look at the scenery, a mechanic made even more powerful by the impeccable visuals you'll want to stare at regardless of what's hidden there. Soon, items will pop out at you, and I never had a frustratingly difficult time finding what I needed.

Dream Chronicles 3: The Chosen Child is a breathtaking follow-up to the first two games in the series. These titles just keep getting better and better. It's a perfect blend of object finding and adventure gameplay, and the puzzles are constructed so cleverly you might even giggle when you think of the solution. And I swear you'll melt from the combination of the gorgeous visuals and enchanting music. In short: Dream Chronicles 3. Play it now!

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Download the demo Get the full version

We've just finished a complete walkthrough (with images) for Dream Chronicles 3: The Chosen Child!! Be warned: contains major spoilers, so proceed only as a last resort.

• Download Dream Chronicles 3 here.
• Read our review of Dream Chronicles 3 here.
• Complete Dream Chronicles 3 walkthrough is here.

New from Pastel Games and Mateusz Skutnik, creator of Covert Front, the Submachine series, and The Great Escape series, comes a sequel to last year's desolate adventure, The Fog Fall. After escaping the shelter in the previous game, The Fog Fall 2 begins right where you left off, standing victorious on the grassy ground above. Apocalyptic war zones are never a place to hang around and celebrate, however, and so your quest continues with a broken-down truck, a few well-dressed soldiers, and some mutants hiding in the fields.

Item and inventory puzzles are the name of the game in The Fog Fall 2, so prepare to click every corner and examine every object you see. Items you collect are stored at the bottom of the screen, and to use them simply click on an item followed by the area you wish to use it on. It's also a good idea to think of logical uses for objects you gather, then aim your cursor at spots you think they could be used, just in case you can take a closer look at things...

As you investigate the town you'll find a number of items useful to your quest. A townsfolk or two provide a helping hand, though if you ask me, they'd be a lot more helpful if they'd just give up their items without asking me to rummage through every house on the block. But that's not much of a game, is it?

Play the entire Fog Fall series:

Analysis: The artwork in all of Pastel Games' titles has this smooth, graphic novel feel to it, and the look fits perfectly into the world of browser gaming. The Fog Fall 2, much like Covert Front and Submachine, conveys a desolate world using pastel colors, dull tones, and sparse but chilling ambient sound effects. It's the sort of bleakness that's palpable, but not overwhelming, which pulls you into the game world without burying you in it. In other words, the exact level of investment you want in a casual browser game.

The Fog Fall 2 seemed a bit easier than its predecessor, and you can probably charge through in half an hour or so, depending on your adventuring skills. It was interesting to be able to roam freely in the shelter where the first Fog Fall game took place. Not only did this heighten the story's sense of progression, it also gave you a little ego boost right from the start. "Remember this place? Yeah, you broke out of there! Good job!"

The Fog Fall 2 is a great game to get tangled up with for half an hour. Let's hope we don't have to wait another year for the next installment!

Play The Fog Fall 2

John Cooney (Achievement Unlocked, Grid16) brings us a cheerfully nihilistic look at traffic, in the form of a fast-paced, fun little reflex-tester. Click on the stop-lights to switch them on or off, allowing cars, buses, and semi-trailers to pass through intersections safely. Each level asks you to pass a certain number of vehicles within a certain amount of time. As the game moves forward, you'll have to deal with more lanes of traffic, more complex traffic patterns, and stricter time limits. Can you beat all 20 levels, oh Invisible Sky-bound Weaver of the Woof and Warp of Interlocking Automobiles? Or will the jabbering banjo music drive you insane first?

Analysis: I Love Traffic is not a game about people. It's a game about cars. It says so right on the main menu screen, and it's utterly true. The drivers of these vehicles have no control over themselves — they just drive right into the middle of the intersection when they see the green light, as though you threw a big bag of automobile catnip out there.

"You caused an accident!" the game tells you, as the cars collide, leaving entertaining skid tracks all over the highway. And you did. The second these tiny, digital drivers got in front of their virtual dashboards, they were doomed, their decision-making skills silenced by the purr of the engine, their fate entirely in the hands of the traffic gods. That's you. And you murdered them.

The message? Don't be like them, when you're behind the wheel. As my openly hostile driving instructor once told me about intersections, "Always look both ways! First you get hit from the left! Then you get hit from the right! You're a punk, and you're gonna get killed." Then he got me in a choke-hold and demanded to know the location of the emergency flares. Mr. Shipler would have loved this game.

Play I Love Traffic

[Warning: You may need to disable your browser's pop-up blocker to play Shichi Narabe.]

Shichi Narabe is the Japanese version of Sevens, a card game played all over the world with minor regional variations. This single-player Flash implementation of the game has no English translation, but the rules are very simple.

There are four players. At the beginning of a round, all the cards in a regular 52-card deck plus the joker are dealt out. The four 7s, whoever has them in hand, go immediately into the center of the table.

Your goal is to play all the cards in your hand. Taking turns, each player can lay a card on the table if it is in sequence with an already-played card of the same suit. The sequence can ascend or descend, and Aces are considered adjacent to Kings. If you can't make a play, you'll have to use one of your three passes and hope things have opened up by your next turn.

The joker can take the place of any card in the deck, so long as you can immediately play the next card in sequence. For example, if the 6 of spades is on the board, and you have the 4 of spades and the joker in hand, you can play the joker in the place of the 5, and then you will automatically play the 4 in the same turn. The joker is unplayable if it is your only remaining card.

Scoring is even simpler: you get more points the earlier you go out. Don't be the last player to shed your cards, though, because a giant claw will pick you up by the head and carry you away.

Analysis: Wait, claw? What? Yeah, no kidding. While my Japanese is rusty and non-existent, there seems to be a storyline, revolving around a room full of stone cactus-people locked in an endless Deer Hunter-esque card game death-match. You play a green cactus battling for its very survival. Your doom is certain, your only hope to prolong the sweet breath of life for a few more rounds of Sevens before The Claw hauls you off to the Great Gravel-Maker in the Sky.

Or something like that. A translation would be most welcome.

This implementation of Shichi Narabe leaves a few things to be desired. There's no visual cue when you're out of plays, so I spent many turns clicking through each one of my cards, in case I missed a possibility. I'm also not sure why my cards have to appear in my hand in random order. I wasted a lot of time scanning over my hand to make sure I don't have any more hearts, when they could just as easily have been grouped together.

The game itself depends partly on luck, which makes it an odd choice for this one-strike-and-you're-out bloodsport framework. You will pick up a few strategies, but sometimes everyone else will have the sevens and the joker, and you'll be stuck staring at a rainbow of kings and aces. You're claw food, buddy. Back to zero.

The addictive appeal comes from the same place as solitaire—maybe you'll get lucky the next time, and there are many ways to increase your chances. You may find yourself playing a lot more rounds of Shichi Narabe than you planned. Even if you're not into card games, it's worth playing at least once, to see the vacant, curious look the cacti give their loser friends as they are carried away to be mulched.

Play Shichi Narabe

Loom Above is a new release from Place of Light, one of our very favorite escape game developers! Without doubt a cause for celebration.

Why the title Loom Above? I can't really say, as the game seems to involve neither weaving nor malevolent figures towering menacingly above the player. That's all right, though... such logical inconsistencies aside, the scenario is the usual escape game setup: you find yourself in a locked room and must solve puzzles and collect strange objects in order to break out.

Loom Above is not nearly as long or challenging as Place of Light's previous releases (which may come to some as a relief) and there are far fewer items to find. The puzzles are all fairly straightforward and the game, all in all, will probably take veteran escapers no longer than 10 minutes or so. Despite this, Loom Above is a joy to play because of how well everything fits together. The logical trajectory of the game flows nicely, the transitions from puzzle to puzzle feel seamless and everything just generally makes sense. Place of Light obviously took a lot of time and care to make the game into a well-oiled machine, and it shows.

While not as aesthetically pleasing as their last release, Room Marine (it doesn't help that this game's predominant color scheme is shades of brown, while Room Marine was decorated in gorgeous greens and blues), Loom Above is nevertheless rendered in a professional and attractive style. The room is cozy, if impersonal; a guest bedroom, maybe? The game's interface is clean and intuitive (and simple; you are at no point even required to take a close-up look at any item in your inventory) and a save feature is present, though you probably won't need it. Some music to add atmosphere would have been nice, though not essential.

Despite being what could be described as "Place of Light Lite," Loom Above is nevertheless an unusually inventive and well-created room escape game, with a number of tricks up its metaphorical sleeves. And really, considering how hard Place of Light's games can be, an easier and more forgiving release from the developer is not a bad thing whatsoever; I do wish it had been a bit longer to compensate for the reduction in difficulty, but you can't have everything. I did notice on Place of Light's website that a new escape game, entitled Loom Blend, is coming soon... perhaps, like the equally wonderful developer Neutral, Place of Light is choosing for now to focus on creating easier, shorter games at a faster pace? Time will tell.

Play Loom Above

Scarygirl is a huge (hours long) and absolutely stunning platform game just released today by a collaboration of companies, including art direction by concept creator, Nathan Jurevicius, an Australian-born artist now living in Toronto, Ontario.

Update: We have decided to hold off on publishing a review at this time due to the myriad bugs and control issues the game suffers from at present. It's disappointing to see a game so beautiful be marred by so many gameplay issues. We are hopeful that Touch My Pixel takes all the constructive criticism they are receiving in the comments and give the game several iterations of quality-control and refinement. We would be pleased to give this game a follow-up review should that happen.

Be sure to read our full review of Scarygirl.

Also worth noting is the servers the game is being hosted on were unprepared for the onslaught of traffic the game is receiving, no doubt due to its visual appeal. So, Touch My Pixel is asking people to be patient until they can address the traffic overload, which is compounding the frustration players are experiencing.

Play Scarygirl

The unanticipated delay in firing up the ol' Large Hadron Collider has given people across the world a shot at being the first to observe the elusive Higgs Boson. Stepping up to the plate for the casual gaming crowd is Dan Russell-Pinson (Block Drop, Tipping Point), with his new game, aptly named Collider.

Using proprietary physics simulation technology, Collider lets you in on the particle-smashing action! Simply annihilate all charged particles by crashing the positive ones into the negative ones. Each of the 25 levels contains a number of positionable particles, which you must place above the eerie green overlay, as well as particles which cannot be moved directly. Once you've placed all the particles, click Play (or hit [Space]) to start them in motion, then just wait and watch. Hit [Space] again to reset if, like the LHC, your mission of collision is a vision of derision and you're wishin' for remission!

Watching particles drop may not exactly sound like a killer game waiting to happen, but Dan throws in a few quirks that quickly turn the game into a puzzle-solving endeavor along the lines of Color Infection. Rolling particles across colored switches activates various levers, platforms, pinwheels, and other moving elements, and colliding particles of different sizes will leave some leftovers after annihilation for you to clean up. Most levels are designed such that many solutions are possible, but there's one "intended" solution that's more elegant than the rest, which is exactly how physics puzzlers should be designed. Only a handful of levels require copious fine-tuning of particle positions, but that doesn't mean that the rest will be a breeze. Some thinking required, although no level should require a Ph.D. in high energy physics. However, in case you do get stuck there are links to the solutions available right in the game.

The spacey music and sound effects clash against the rusty patina of the pipes and the various dingy backgrounds, suggesting a post-apocalyptic environment in which all this colliding is perpetrated. The music is actually quasi-random and is regenerated at the beginning of each level, so it should never weary your ears.

Apparently, Dan never got the message that particles need to collide at velocities pretty durn close to the speed of light in order to be of any use. Often the particles just crawl along, and while it might be nice to have a magic button that speeds things up, such a feature — like the notorious Boson — remains elusive. Aside from that, there's really little to complain about with Collider, and a whole lot to like. So while he may not be out there finding a unified theory of everything, Dan does a pretty good job at making a superb casual game.

Play Collider

Thanks for the suggestion, David and Dan!

Prizma Puzzle is a new tile-based puzzler by Silengames, strong on aesthetics and brimming with potential. Using your mouse, your job is to form a path of light beams from a source of your choice to all of the pyramid-shaped goals. You only have a limited number of moves to do this, though, and once one of the prisms on the board is used, you can't re-use it.

As a puzzle concept, Prizma Puzzle is most definitely familiar, and the primary challenge lies in choosing the correct path. But while the basic concept isn't new, a variety of different prisms flesh it out. They allow you to refill your available remaining moves, increase your maximum number of moves, or launch you across empty expanses. What results is a rather neat little experience where you have the freedom to choose between multiple solutions, while also striving to illuminate the best path to success.

This is wrapped up in a very snazzy-looking package. The 3-D rendered objects and lighting effects establish a nice sci-fi setting, where it's not a stretch to imagine you are working on some super-futuristic motherboard or something. Unfortunately, the story is left entirely up to your own imagination, as there is no actual "fi" established in the game, in regards to the "sci-fi."

But Prizma Puzzle suffers from a very serious drawback, in that it's just not all that challenging. Maybe I'm just cynical, but if I manage to finish a game without scrambling for a walkthough I get the feeling that it's just too easy, and Prizma Puzzle doesn't even really become challenging until the last five to ten levels. The speed-based award system partly makes up for the difficulty level, but Silen Games could have done this title a world of good by throwing in a level editor.

Regardless, Prizma Puzzle is definitely fun and should keep you entertained nicely through a lunch break or so. You might try eating a sandwich with your non-mouse hand, or if you're really up for a challenge, some yoghurt.

Play Prizma Puzzle

Ah, the classic tale. Humans meet monsters. Humans enslave monsters. Monsters rise up and strike down the human heir in an act of bloody vengeance. Really takes me back, you know? The story behind The Leon Wars isn't its driving force. This is turn-based strategy gaming at its best, putting you in charge of one of two factions, vying for control of the land.

You can play as either the humans or the maligned monster race, and although the difference is largely cosmetic as both sides have access to many of the same abilities, it's still nice to have the option. After all, some days you want to liberate some towns, other days you want to crush some innocents beneath your taloned foot. Whichever side you pick, you'll start the game with access to only a few types of units. As the game progresses, you can research new types of technology and beasts, expanding your arsenal. There are only two additional tiers to research, but the units you can create are diverse enough to satisfy most any of your combat needs, whether you want someone to hang back and cast support magic, or a big juggernaut on the front lines for tossing back your opponents like tic-tacs. If you've ever wanted to order a giant flaming sentient orb or a griffon rider into battle, this is the game for you.

You construct your armies with gold and iron, and each unit (up to six in an army) has its own unique abilities and requirements. Create an army by first choosing a hero, and then fleshing out the rest with whatever units you feel are most appropriate. You have to choose where to place each unit in your army too, which is important since some units can only attack enemies directly adjacent to them, while others can bring the pain from wherever they are. When you encounter an enemy army, battle plays out like the turn-based RPGs of yore. In between battles, you'll need to heal your armies and bolster your defenses.

A save feature is included that lets you pick up wherever you left off if you need a break. Warning: There is no auto-save. You have to select the Save button manually.

Analysis: The Leon Wars really feels a lot like SNES classic Ogre Battle. You'll spend most of your time on the overland map, directing your troops to capture the nearby towns and mines that generate the gold and iron you need, while your opponent tries to do the same. It forces you to be more aggressive in your play-style than you might want, which sort of hampers some of the potential for real strategy. As you gain access to more research and technology, however, putting you on more of an equal footing with your enemy, things loosen up a little. And while the battles are straightforward, you're often left hand-holding your armies against even weaker opponents, which slows down the pace of the game. The option to have your armies automatically fight some battles would have been a welcome addition.

Still, for all that, the game manages to be a solid gem. It's surprisingly long and can be pleasantly challenging at times, and the tidy, gore-free presentation is easy on the eyes. This shouldn't be missed by any fan of turn-based global domination. And monsters. Feel free to put on your viking helmet for this one. I know you've got one.

Play The Leon Wars

[Note: The Leon Wars was released early last year, but if you missed it, now is a good chance to catch up with an unusually good strategy title. If you like The Leon Wars, you might also enjoy Brute Wars or Monster's Den.]

Zerosum is an intense variation on match-3 puzzles. Easy to learn, hard to master. Some day far in the future, math will be taught entirely through computer games, and something a lot like Zerosum will be the professor. It will be a caring but cruel mentor, who passes out high-energy protein snacks for correct answers, and when you get them wrong, tasers you. That's quality learnin'. Since I'm not in school any more, it's too bad we're not there yet.

You play Zerosum on a grid of blocks with numbers on them. Your goal is to make matches, by lining up at least three of the same number in either a row or column. Everything is done with the mouse. Select one of the numbers on the grid, and move it into an adjacent number. The two digits will add together. If the sum is greater than 9, the tens digit will be dropped, so 7 + 8 results in 5, for example. A block with a zero is a powerful wildcard—it matches with anything.

On the right is a list of the upcoming digits, which appear in the vacant space whenever you make a move. When you run out of these, your game is over. To prevent this you have to keep making matches, reducing the Extend meter on the left. Each time that meter reaches zero, your stock of digits increases. As you advance in levels, the Extend meter grows, making it harder and harder to stay in the game.

Making matches also gradually fills the Burst meter at the top, which sets off a kind of bonus round. During Burst Mode, matches can form with any combination of connected blocks, not just ones in a straight line. This is your chance to rack up a few extra blocks for your stock, if you can form a few large chains.

If you survive long enough, you may encounter some special blocks. Metal blocks keep the same digit no matter what, ice blocks must be thawed out by making a nearby match, and blocks with a circle of surrounding arrows will increment every turn.

Analysis: Let me address the timer issue, because I know that time limits are a real bummer for many of you. Yes, there is a strict time limit on each move, and logically, that will prevent you from playing the ideal strategy, thus stressing you out. In the timer's defense, you can't deny that it gets the blood pumping, and it also ensures that the game will end reasonably quickly. Without it, you could spend the rest of your life hunting for the best move every turn, and frankly, you've got other stuff you should be doing.

Zerosum is a great example of how to train a human brain to work in new ways. Initially, there seem to be limitless choices for every move, but you will begin to recognize patterns and opportunities. Out of necessity, you'll develop more and more sophisticated strategies; setting up future combos, sprinkling the board with zeros, planning three moves in advance. It's brain candy, once you get into it. Like defusing a bomb constructed by a six-year-old arch-villain.

This also demonstrates how Match-3 games like Bejeweled and Tetris Attack aren't a design dead end. They can be transformed from a casual and relaxing past-time to an intense and intellectual past-time, just by adding some adding. If you like this, you might also enjoy Chain Factor.

Play Zerosum

Instead of trying to summarize Party Tencho's Kissma with a regular review full of sentences—which would be kind of like trying to extinguish a grease fire with a pail full of mackerel—we're going to share an excerpt from our original e-mail conversation about it. These were our comments to our reviewer mailing list when we first played the game. We hope this peek into the inner workings of Jay is Games will be helpful and enlightening. And heeeeere we go:

Psychotronic - I just don't know how to describe this.

Kero - words fail me.

Jay - It's KISSTASTIC!

Dora - Oh my stars and garters.

Jay - I thought I was doing GREAT, but got "lowest kiss class" :(

Marcus - It sort of reminds me of the Parodius games on the old Turbo Duo. Just... odd... And, yes, "lowest kiss class" for me, as well :(

JohnB - I thought of Parodius, too! This thing is too crazy for words. Favorite kisspower: THE CLAW GRABBY MASHEEN! I love the "music" for this game, btw.

Jay - It looks like something Alien Melon (Blue Suburbia/Haxed by Megahurtz/Alexis) would do.

Dora - How can I be lowest kiss class?! I had a kiss cannon! AND KISS SHURIKEN.

JohnB - I didn't see EITHER of those. What, are there several dozen kiss powers?!

Jay - I had spidey's Kiss Web and the Kiss HAMMER

Art Begotti - Yeah, keep playing, it just gets crazier. I think I'm on my eighth game, and I'm still seeing new ones (although I've had repeats already as well). 82,600... still lowest kiss class. I'm hoping 100k isn't the next milestone?

Kero - 92.2k and lowest kiss class

Dora - This game is out of control. Someone needs to regulate the funk here, 'cause it is cra-zay!

Art Begotti- OOH! If you get the pongy-breakouty power-up (rolling kiss?), you get TWO THOOOOOUSAND!!! points per kiss. It's harder though, since you don't have as much control where the face goes.

Art Begotti - Oh... Eeugh... so if I'm interpreting the high scores right, your kiss grade is merely determined by whether or not you make the top 30. That's... disappointing.

Still riotously fun, although a pain if you get the wrong power-ups.

Dora - If only this were available for Gameboy. Then I could take Kissma wherever I go! :'(

Art Begotti - Who says you can't take Kissma wherever you go? (You're at least a girl, you can get away with running around and kissing random strangers in bizarre ways more easily than any of us guys could.)

Kero - If you press K you kiss everyone on screen. takes a few seconds before it activates though

Dora - Maybe if I ripped out the soundtrack so I could play it from the speakers on my MP3 Player . . . oh, if only . . .

StaceyG - :()

JohnB - I can just see one of us walking into a room, seeing 15 or so people meandering around, going about their business, all the while we're sizing up potential KISSMA scores. "Ok, I can hit the scruffy homeless guy twice before he wakes up, that's 300 points total, then I grab the bottle he's clutching which is obviously a super KISSMA power, allowing me to perform an AEROBIC KISSMA on a bunch of the others..."

Art Begotti - AAAAUGH!!! I tied for last place (98.1k) but I didn't get in!

Dora - Guys, guys! You're cheapening the Kissma Experience(tm) by focusing so much on the scores! Stop the fussin' and th' feudin'! Remember what Kissma is about -- fabulous hair and forcing your drunken affections on total strangers!

Ms. 45 - But Dora, I can do that anywhere!

SonicLover - If I ever end up in the same room as you, Dora, do me a favor and pretend I don't exist.

Dora - Since you ask so sweetly.

Play Kissma

Several major casual gaming franchises are still making their way to the iTunes App Store, including the fan-favorite Virtual Villagers series! I'm pleased to report the miniaturization has gone surprisingly well, so if you had a hard time tearing yourself away from Virtual Villagers before, good luck resisting the temptation to pull your iPhone out of your pocket...

We're still giving away iTunes gift certificates to cover the cost of every game featured in the current Mobile Monday article. Simply sign-in with a Casual Gameplay account, leave a comment giving feedback about one of the games, then check back the week after to see if you've won. Simple! Congratulations to last week's winner, jupchurch!

Flight Control - Ever wanted to be in charge of routing flights safely from the air to the ground? Me neither, but somehow Flight Control makes it fun. Tap and drag an airplane to set its path to the runway. Make the trail as long and windey as you like, as long as the plane makes it to the ground and doesn't smash into another plane, you're good to go. See how many vehicles you can safely land in one sitting!

Virtual Villagers 2: The Lost Children - Yup, it's Virtual Villagers on your iPhone! The same village managing, puzzles-solving, science-researching, fishing and gathering fun from the PC/Mac versions has been miniaturized for the touch screen platform. Everything has been preserved and made portable, including the "always on" gameplay that continues while you're away. Also available is the free Virtual Villagers 2 Lite! The original Virtual Villagers - A New Home is also available. Unlike Virtual Villagers 2, this one isn't a direct port of its big-screened cousin, so don't be shocked when you see the new visual style!

WordJong - It's like mahjong, but, you know, with words! Tiles with letters are piled on the screen, and in order to remove them you must spell words. A new puzzle is added every day and you can compete for the biggest score with other WordJong players. Clear the screen with the longest words you can to score big points. Also available in a free lite version.

Flood-It! - A very simple puzzle game where the object is to flood the entire screen with one color. Tap one of the colored circles at the bottom of the screen and that color will be flood-filled from the top-left corner of the grid. Continue tapping colors until you've taken over the entire screen! You have a limited number of moves, though, so be efficient. Best of all, Flood-It! happens to be free!

NOTE: Games listed may not be available outside of North America. Prices are subject to change and are therefore unlisted. Please see the individual game pages for purchasing info.

It's been quite a while since I've been genuinely excited about a hidden object game. They usually look fantastic with immense effort put into the artwork, but the hidden object aspect of things suffers from a lack of diversity along with a handful of poor mini-games thrown in because, well, that's the done thing these days, isn't it? So I'm very happy to say that Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect is a quality addition to the hidden object genre. And I like it!

Flux Family Secrets builds on the hidden object genre with a well-integrated adventure/mystery story, challenging tasks and fun trivia. You are Jesse Bennett, a woman seeking the answers to her mysterious past. Out of the blue, you receive a letter from Veronica Flux who claims she can help you. You accept the proffered plane ticket and go to meet Veronica, who suspects you may be a member of the Flux clan. Veronica then reveals the existence of "ripples" which affect great historical achievements, displacing treasures and spreading them around the world and through history.

The Fluxes are time travellers, moving through space and time to correct the effects of these ripples...

...or are they?

Ripples work by theme, apparently. Your first task is to sort out the mess caused in the world of Art, with objects spread around the dwellings of Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci and Hatshepsut. Where Flux Family Secrets gets interesting is that the objects are parts of an identified whole — you'll be finding pieces of the Mona Lisa in Shakespeare's room to put together and place in Leonardo's studio, thus allowing you to find that last bit of the golden cat statue for Hatshepsut's tomb, generating a mini-game, which you need to win to find the key to a chest in Shakespeare's room... Some objects are helper items that allow you to find the main items (keys, knives, scissors etc), others trigger interesting snippets of trivia about the person whose room you're rifling through.

Analysis: I really enjoyed the linkage between the different themes — the fact that Mozart appears in the Music section and the Wright Brothers in literature exposed me to new information (I didn't know the Wright Brothers ran newspapers before getting into the transport business) and is creative and thoughtful. Conversely, though, you meet the same six or so characters throughout the game, which made me think wonder why the developer put so much effort into different scenes but didn't bother to introduce new characters. You could have had Leif Ericsson in Travel, Jane Austen in Literature, maybe Nikola Tesla in Invention, all ready for their close-ups in the time it would have taken Hatshepsut's sarcophagus to render. Maybe the development team is more into artwork than history.

I clearly am a bit of a sucker for great artwork, but part of the charm of Flux Family Secrets is the care that has clearly been put in to the scenery. For instance, when you return to Amelia Earhart's office, you can see the hangar outside from your previous search. Similarly, the Abbey Road studios can be seen from different views. The objects to be found are all relevant to the theme and setting — you're looking for a fire hydrant in a 17th century studio because it's essential for restoring Amelia Earhart's hangar, not just because you're looking for a random bunch of stuff.

The mini-games really shine. Although there are one too many incidents of Mastermind for my liking, I really like the Einstein game (you have to cause atomic reactions to clear the board of coloured dots), and some of the other games, while familiar (there's a Simon tone game, a Tic-Tac-Toe, a couple of sliding puzzles and jigsaws), are well executed and fit appropriately into the scenery (the Simon game takes place in the Abbey Road studios, for instance). I've played hidden object games where I've skipped through every mini-game — this is not one of those!

There's no penalty for hints, but you have to wait for them to refill. Wrong clicks add to your time penalty, and the game has a bit of a sarcastic touch — if you use an object somewhere it's not supposed to be, you'll trigger snarky little comments like "Just trying anything in the inventory, huh?" (YES I AM YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE MAN). The only reservations I had were a couple of weird little glitches where I managed to "win" a mini-game without actually doing anything, and where I passed through the final search part of one of the themes without having found the final object. Other than that, I can highly recommend Flux Family Secrets.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Download the demo Get the full version

Whether they are little fur balls with eyes or animals with big heads, everybody likes things that are cute. Tell me to rescue a batch of baby bunnies from someone's sinister clutches, and I'll go through hail and high wind to make sure it gets done. Bumps, the latest physics puzzler from Utopian Games, has cute coming out of its ears. It's a charming combination of games like Eets and Loco Roco-esque Tau-ri Bedrock or Rolando.

You see, the Bumps are a peaceful race of creatures who like nothing more than to roll around, bumping into each other. But, one day, a fleet of alien space craft came and captured many of the bumps, looking them away in energy bubbles until they could figure out what to do with them next. The remaining Bumps realized that if they could find all of the keys to unlock the energy bubbles, they could set their friends free. And thus your quest is set.

Like most physics puzzlers, you don't have direct control over any of the characters on screen. You instead are allowed to place small Bumps (the number varies per level) at strategic points around the screen. Press the Start button, and let gravity, velocity, and Newton's laws take over. The goal is to collect all of the keys to free the imprisoned bumps.

It's not all happy-cute rolling around and key collecting, of course. Power-ups come along that can make the bumps grow, shrink, dash and more, adding another layer of strategy to the game. Sometimes you'll have to start a bump on its journey far away from the destination so it can grab a power-up or two to collect keys along the way.

Analysis: Fact: it's nigh impossible to resist the cute exterior presented by the Bumps. Seriously, I challenge you to look at those screenshots and not say "DAWWWWW!!!". Bubbly eyes aside, the gameplay is simple and sweet with a good mix of experimentation and strategy.

Challenge-wise, Bumps hits about the middle of the road, offering some levels that are a real puzzler, with others that you can breeze through without a second thought. Most of the difficulty comes from finding just the right places to drop your bumps so they get the job done. It's trial-and-error most of the way, which provides a great casual gaming experience.

Bumps is something a little different, which is always welcome in my book. A little bit of strategy, a little bit of experimentation, and a lot of bubbly-eyed cuteness. Bumps is a great diversion for any afternoon!

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

Bumps is also available from Big Fish Games:

Paradoxion is a classic logic puzzle game from VSBgames. Not the head-pounding hurts-your-brain kind of logic, this one's a sit and stare, look and compare sort of game. Using gems, orbs and other materials from your inventory, arrange everything on the grid to set off chain reactions that clear the board. It's a relaxing game that manages to stay challenging without resorting to timed rounds or combo systems.

A grid holding an assortment of orbs fills most of the screen, with your inventory occupying the right-hand side. Study the arrangement on the board, then click an item to grab it and place it on the grid. When three or more orbs of the same color are together (later you'll encounter more complex matching requirements), they vanish in a flash of light, pushing free orbs at the end of the chain one square away. Use this pushing effect to your advantage, creating matches that shove other orbs into their proper place to create another match that continues the trend. Step four: profit!

The order in which you place orbs is significant, however, as the pushing doesn't radiate to all sides. So, for example, if you place a green orb on the left side of two adjacent green orbs, an orb to the right would get shoved, but not on the left. It sounds awkward in writing, but in practice it's as simple as calculus. I mean, pie. Simple as pie. In later levels you'll come across orbs that need four or five in a row to create a match, gems that must be arranged in squares, teleporters, disintegrators, and of course, the titular paradox. Scary!

There are three level packs in Paradoxion, each containing 30 puzzles to complete. After the first dozen or so, the challenge really sets in, so you'll have plenty of content to keep you coming back day after day. There's also a custom level editor that allows you to play user-made levels or create and play your very own puzzles!

Analysis: Most puzzle games rely on a timer, scores or some sort of combo system to crank up the challenge. If you slip-up, you lose, so there's a constant pressure in the back of your mind to keep performing at your best. After all, it's you versus the game, right? Sometimes you just want to relax, however, and Paradoxion is the perfect game for that. No timers, high score tables, bonus multipliers, dancing panda bears, flying raccoons, smiling ice cream cones or combo meters to keep track of. Just look at the grid and work out how to clear it on your own schedule.

Even though the game is a few years old, the visuals in Paradoxion have held up quite well. Everything has a smooth, polished look to it, from the shining gems on the grid to the planets sitting quietly in the background. The music provides the perfect ambience for the thoughtful game, and after each level you'll be treated to a quote from a famous historical figure.

Paradoxion's interface can be entirely mouse-controlled, but there are a few keyboard shortcuts that make things a lot easier. Use the 0-9 keys to quick-select inventory items, the tilde button to re-select the last used slot, and the [U] key to undo your last move. Alternately you can use the mouse wheel to scroll through the inventory and choose the last-used item, but you have to visit the options screen and enable this.

If racing against the clock or forcing yourself to reach for a high score isn't your thing, Paradoxion will make your day. Its brand of logic puzzles manage to present a hefty challenge without turning on the pressure, allowing you to kick back, arrange some orbs, and achieve that satisfying zen-like sensation you get when a big chain reaction clears the grid.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

This week, word skills and paint skills will go head to head in a dazzling array of visual and wordy deliciousness. In the left corner we have the book smarts, with knowledge of words and quick thinking. In the other corner, painting, featuring brushes, stamps and a burning desire to see a creative vision realized. It's the author vs. the auteur in this weeks... Weekend Download.

Cuba Letra (Windows, 11.4MB, free) - Athough its not the most visually appealing game ever made, this highly addictive word game rests comfortably on the attributes it does have, namely the ability to encourage you to create longer words. Imagine Bookworm meets Bust-a-Move, where letters snake around a path heading towards the game-ending black hole at the other side. Use those letters to spell words and you'll stay in the game. The creation of extended words such as "meanwhile" "creation" and "extended" will earn you extra lives, bonus points, multipliers and special letters. Attempting to use simple words like "use" "words" and "like" will gain you points, but they also create glowing red letters that drop more letters onto the track, forcing everything along at a faster pace.

Tux Paint (Mac/Win/Linux, 9.3MB, free) - And speaking of visual appeal, here is a paint program for children, allowing them to create visual masterpieces without the hassle of actual paint, paint stains, wash rinse cycles or high-quality carpet cleaners! Children are always clambering at the computer wanting to 'help out'. With a couple of tweaks in the handy configuration tool, this program can be set to run full screen and without any easy way to quit the program (Alt+F4 still works) allowing the child to create freely without accidentally clicking through to a sensitive part of your computer's files. The drawback, it seems, is that using the keyboard has little effect. Your child will have to be of an age where mouse-skills are already present in order to take full advantage of the program. Of course, the hardest part is sharing the game, and not just playing with it by yourself because its that fun.

Is your current job getting you down? Does it feel like you need a microscope to look at your paycheck, or like your boss doesn't truly appreciate your creativity, knack for finding hidden objects, and aptitude at matching three or more objects of the same color? Are you at a dead end in your career? Cheer up! An exciting field is open and waiting for you as an Alchemist's Apprentice!

Here at our fine campus we will teach you how to use the mystical alchemy machine where you can reap tons of gold from matching up rows or columns of the same tiles. We'll sharpen that eye of yours so you can pick out a scrap of archaic paper in the midst of a cluttered desk. We'll even teach you to build towns using the gold you earn from your real-world matching skills!

But, you might ask, what kind of future is in store for you as an Alchemist's Apprentice? Well, let's take a look at the most famous Alchemist's Apprentice in history! If you'll recall the now time-honored tale, this young lad, not much different from yourself, had discovered that his eccentric uncle had abandoned the province he ruled in search of the Philosopher's Stone. In his absence the province faltered and it was this young Alchemist Apprentice that came to save the day.

Using the very same skills we teach at our fine campus, this apprentice used the gold he created from the machine to rebuild his uncle's province and follow in the footsteps of the famed alchemist himself. And now we offer that same path to you! So come, enroll in our fully accredited* facilities and turn your future into GOLD!

Analysis: The first thing that needs to be said is that Alchemist's Apprentice is most definitely not a match-3/hidden object game hybrid. Not in the strictest sense anyway. In true hybrids, the elements of differing game types are blended to create a single game play experience. With Alchemist's Apprentice, what you have is a fairly standard match-3 game with a few fairly standard hidden object levels to mix things up a bit.

As the match-3 aspect of the game goes, there isn't a whole lot of new to talk about. Various buildings will grant you the ability to accumulate and cast several spells, such as the explosive fireball or the lightning bolt which can take out a whole column or row of tiles, which is pretty impressive. There are two other things that are notable about this match-3. First, it's beautiful with backgrounds that look like they come straight out of a story book and tiles that appear to have been carved with loving detail. Second, it's not easy. At least it probably won't be easy for those of you who are not avid match-3 addicts.

There is also a town building portion that is very reminiscent of Dreamsdwell Stories. It's considerably stripped down but offers you the opportunity to build and improve upon various different structures from time to time, each of which offers little bonuses in the match-3 levels.

The main challenge is derived from attempting to gain a set amount of gold within a time limit, and there are plenty of things to help you meet your goal. From a host of spells and a straightforward combo system to a mini-game where you take control of a leprechaun and try and catch gold that actually grows on trees. Still, with these things to aid you, passing a level on your first try can quickly become a challenge. Luckily you can use your previous score to buy more time, allowing subsequent attempts to be a little easier.

The match-3 aspect of the game really hits its stride once you have constructed all of the buildings in the town and leveled them up a bit. That's when all of the special effects really start to take hold and the manic combos that follow will have any match-3 enthusiast giggling with glee. As for the hidden object aspect, there are few levels to play (one for every ten match-3 levels), but they are rather nicely done, and at least the objects you are sent to find make some sort of sense (as opposed to looking for a hotdog in a medieval castle).

No, Alchemist's Apprentice doesn't exactly rock the gaming world, but it quickly becomes highly addictive and, if you're a fan of match-3 and hidden object games, this is definitely a fun entry that provides both.

Windows:
Download the demo Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

* Note: Accreditation at our facilities is currently only recognized on campus grounds.

Face front, true believers, for another installment of wonder and mayhem from your super friends at Jay is Games! Today we're going to reach into the vault of yesteryear — providing, of course, your definition of yesteryear is a 2005 point-and-click adventure game about supervillains, from the author of A Case of the Crabs and The Goat in the Grey Fedora. Some of you will be familiar with this strange gem of a title, but others may have been too wrapped up in their consoles to notice when it snuck onto the scene. And if you've never checked into the Brain Hotel before, there's no time like the present to make your reservation.

Meet Ed. He's a bit of a schlub, but don't hold that against him. Ed would seem an unlikely candidate to save the city… mostly because he is. You won't find a utility belt or a freeze ray or even a cleft chin anywhere on him. What he does have, aside from a disgruntled outlook on life and a rapidly receding hairline, is work. Namely, Stuff Bringers, a delivery service that winds up getting drafted one day to deliver a package to a guest at the cozily named Brain Hotel, right around the time the annual supervillain convention is taking place. He thinks actually getting his package into the hands of his customer is the difficult part. He's wrong.

The game lets you play online in your browser window, but you can also download the game for free — for both Windows and Mac — which will eliminate some potentially frustrating load times at certain scenes for those of you with slower connections. At just over 31 MB, it will barely make a dent on most hard drives, and you'll get the added benefit of being able to play in almost-full screen — which, unfortunately, doesn't do a whole lot for Ed's ugly mug. Sorry, Ed.

Analysis: Brain Hotel doesn't look bad, per se, and the big, simple interface gets the job done, even if it's not exactly pretty enough to take home to mother. But the heavily painted and saturated characters and environments, interspersed with real objects, looks more than a little messy at times, rather than the inked, comic-book feel the designers seemed to be trying for. What you will notice immediately, however, is how strikingly professional it all is. Brain Hotel boasts not only smooth animations that make every character look and feel distinct, but some of the best voice acting you'll likely have heard in a game in a long time, free or otherwise. Each character's personality comes through in his or her voice, and you can tell the actors were having a fantastic time with it all.

Along with the characters, Brain Hotel's biggest gold star comes from it's humour and ability to take itself less than seriously. It's hard to poke fun at how flamboyant or outrageous some of the characters are because they're already doing it to themselves. There were times when I honestly laughed out loud at some of the dialogue, which, while occasionally mildly risque, never resorts to crudeness to elicit laughs.

Of course, not every line is solid gold. There are times when it feels like the writers are reaching too far to come up with "zany" dialogue, rather than letting the game's own weirdness speak for itself. As a result, some of it just sounds silly instead of being honestly funny, like a stand-up routine by Fozzie Bear, or the sort of nonsense joke a five-year-old might tell that just leaves you smiling politely.

As you might expect from a science-fiction themed comedy point-and-click adventure, some of the puzzle solutions are, shall we say, less than obvious. You're not usually given a whole lot of direction as to what you need to do to accomplish your goals, so you'll find yourself advancing more easily if you exhaust every dialogue option and examine everything around you. I was rarely actually frustrated because exploring the game and experiencing all the weirdness is as much a reward as the end of the game itself.

So what are you waiting for? Get comfortable on your pink bearskin rug. Strap on your spandex, straight your mask, tell your young ward to hold all your calls, and get ready to save the world, one supervillain at a time.

UPDATE: This game is no longer available to play completely on the Web (all known versions get stuck at the first cut scene triggered when accessing the front desk computer). Previously tagged as: adventure, browser, download, flash, free, game, linux, mac, nbounty, pinheadgames, pointandclick, rating-o, scifi, windows