June 2015 Archives

In JB Gaming's RPG adventure Beast Bound, free for iOS and Android, you and your sassy floating cat-panion Cappi have been struggling to get by as monster hunters on the island of Manaden, but you don't exactly have the best reputation, so the bills (and pizza boxes) have been piling up, not to mention you're constantly being shown up by the rude (and incompetent) local hero Sky and his "friends". You manage to pick up some work clearing low level beasties for a local farmer when you stumble across a strange contraption that seems to be pumping mana straight out of the earth, and a strange folder inside it you can't manage to open. What are the chances you've just stumbled across a threat to the world that you'll have to stop, d'you suppose? You'll explore the island finding treasure and duking it out with monsters in a vaguely Super Mario RPG-esque turn-based battle system. Back at your cramped and dirty headquarters, you can decorate, clean up, craft potions and more. With simple to master gameplay and a beautiful style housing wonderfully funny dialogue, Beast Bound is a light-hearted and nostalgic RPG adventure for just about anyone, despite some rough edges.

If Gibton's Blocks was perfectly pleasant, simple, match-3 puzzling, then it should cheer you to know that Blocks 2 is more of the same. Your goal? Remove all your googly-eyed blocks from the screen by clicking and dragging them around to make matches of identical colours either horizontally or vertically, which removes them from the screen, and do so in as few moves as possible for a perfect score. Complicated? Not really. Bells and whistles? Not even a little. Blocks 2 plays it straight and focuses on making its levels as neatly constructed as possible, so figuring out how to complete them in as few moves as you can is pretty darned satisfying. If you already played the first game, then Blocks 2 is either going to be a welcome pack of puzzles for you to kick back with, or too far into "more of the same" territory if you weren't already wooed by its pleasantly simple gameplay. Blocks 2 knows what it does, and it does it well, with a cute presentation and a ton of levels to keep you puzzling all afternoon.

Play Blocks 2

While on vacation in sunny Morocco, Joeseph is looking to have a little fun after an eleven hour flight, and the hotel owner recommends the Marrakesh Club. (Or the more accurate "Marrakech", as it's referred to some places in game but not others, but I digress... ) Unfortunately, the bouncer isn't about to let Joeseph in unless he can make a proper cup of tea, and since this is a Carmel Games point-and-click adventure game, that means you're going to have to hunt around the city for ingredients, solve puzzles, and help the locals out. Just use your map to travel to different locations, and click on items when your cursor changes to show you can interact with them. Don't forget to try combining items in your inventory if you get stuck! Unlike Skip Around the World: Finland, Marrakesh Club doesn't really do much to showcase any sort of local culture or history, which is a shame since it would be such a great location for it. There are only a few real puzzles, and on the whole it's a lot more logical than some of Carmel Games' previous titles have been, making it a simple and appealingly silly little game to break up your day.

Play Marrakesh Club

[Warning: Players should be aware this game deals with themes some may find upsetting.]

Hyptosis puts a more macabre spin on the classic tale of ruby slippers and witch murder with Red Oz Episode 1, the first installment of a new point-and-click adventure series. As the game opens, you're awoken by a crash in your dark house, and set out to investigate, though it quickly becomes apparent that something is seriously wrong. Things are missing, cryptic messages scrawled on the walls and pieces of paper means you don't think you're alone, and, well, have you looked outside the windows lately? Click to interact with objects, watching for any text displayed in the box above your inventory at the bottom of the screen, and use the red arrows to move around the area. Click an item in your inventory to "equip" it for use. Oh, and it is possible to meet an untimely end in this game if you aren't fast enough when a threat appears, but choosing "load game" will just allow you to keep playing. Ready? Set?... JUMPSCARE!

PixælSoft's free indie visual novel Café Memoria stars a young man named Ryne, who heads out for a bite to eat one day and is surprised to see one of his good friends working there as a waitress. Which one? Well, in the beginning, only nervous and shy Anna, but as you play, you'll unlock more routes with other characters. For romance? Well, possibly, but more than anything, Café Memoria is a lighthearted, sweet and simple slice-of-life game that's a good fit for anyone looking for a visual novel without any drama. To play, just click to select the choice you like when given options. Most of your decisions here are simply choosing what you want from the menu whenever prompted, and then deciding how your waitress did at the end. Like most restaurants, Café Memoria slips you a comment card at the end, and the way you choose to rate your service will leave an impression on your waitress. Though largely linear and not as full of branching choices as it seems, and some spicy profanity from a few characters means it might not be for everyone, Café Memoria is still a cheerful visual novel with a lot of polish that'll bring some sunshine to your day.

You know that old saying, "What gets built up, must be smashed down again with a series of projectiles designed to inflict as much carnage as possible"? That's what WarSpark's physics puzzle series Sieger is all about, and with Sieger: Rebuilt to Destroy, you're taking the destruction to ancient history as you lay waste to 32 castles from the past 2500 years. In each level, just click to lob one of your limited projectiles where your mouse is pointing... try to hit structural points that will make the castle collapse with fewer shots, and take out all the enemy soldiers, who are pretty content to stand around placidly while you lob cannonballs at their wobbly structures. Sieger as a series has been around for above five years now, proving that people love a good violent castle toppling, and with each level using different building materials so every shot counts, you'll need to think instead of just blasting away willy-nilly. Sieger: Rebuilt to Destroy doesn't really reinvent the wheel it's been riding around on, but it serves up all the destructive carnage fans have come to expect, with a level editor to boot.

Play Sieger: Rebuilt to Destroy

This is not a review for a game. ...Oh, uh are you still reading this? I'm telling you THERE IS NO GAME. And Kamizoto didn't make this point-and-click puzzle game. I mean, he would have if it were a game. And he would have probably made it for the Deceptionjam too. But it's not. A game that is. If it was, it would be a great twist on gaming by breaking the forth wall like in the highly rated game Humbug. It would also have you chuckling at the humor and scratching your head as to how to actually find the game, as well as appreciating the innovation for this fresh, unique play. But according to the narrator, THERE IS NO GAME, isn't a game. So go away. Oh and it isn't anything to enjoy so don't even try. But I can see a rebel like you is going to want to prove the all-empowering voice wrong and fight against the machine, like you did in The Stanley Parable, then I guess you could read my next paragraph. You know, if there actually was a next paragraph.

Billed as an interactive narrative, indie mystery sim Her Story, also available for iPad and iPhone, by Sam Barlow, stars actress and musician Viva Seifert as a woman whose husband has gone missing. She was interviewed on tape seven times about his disappearance, and you have it all at your fingertips in clips cataloged in a searchable police database. Just type in your search terms, hit enter, and the computer will pull up all the relevant clips that contain the words you've chosen, or those that have been tagged by you. The directions are minimal, instructions on how to operate the machine in front of you, and the clips you'll pull up are mostly out of order, leaving you to figure out what to search for, in any combination, as you watch clips and piece together the truth. As you search through clips and listen, you'll want to take notes of your own (yes, children, actual, physical notes) of everything from relevant or suspicious dates, peoples, events, and places. But what's relevant and what isn't? Is her casual admission of where she went one evening worth digging into or just a red herring? Does the slight smirk she gives when she mentions someone's name mean something? Her Story unfolds in front of you as you dig deeper, and if you love a good mystery and appreciate a finely crafted tale, you won't want to put it down.

Find the Escape-Men Part 157: At the Wedding re-enacts that scene from that old movie. Which old movie? Practically any romantic comedy made prior to the 2000's. You know the one... the bride is stepping up to the altar, but someone is racing to try to stop the wedding? Well, in this escape game from no1game, that someone is you... but are you really there to bring the ceremony to a halt? Or do you just wanna, y'know, find ten little green dudes scattered around the room? Yeah, that's what I thought. Click to interact with items, occasionally multiple times, but whatever you do, don't blink, because this is a short one, with more of an emphasis on gathering up our little lime coloured bros than anything else. The ending is actually... perplexingly moody, but if you want an escape that's fast and dramatic, toss some rice around, or smash a glass, or whatever gets you in the mood, and fire this one up.

Play Find the Escape-Men Part 157: At the Wedding

Friend, you look a little stressed. The week has been unkind to you, or perhaps merely long, and nothing cures a case of the "Urrrrrrrrrrghs" quite like a pile of free online games with no connected themes, concepts, or genres whatsoever. Or at least, that's what I've been telling people so I can introduce myself as Doctor Dora. This week! A feline-tastic simulation designed to help you unwind, a date that goes nowhere near as well as it initially seems, a slow walk through the woods and your memories, and an elemental puzzle game where a unicorn is just a click away.

The year is 1969, and you don't know where you are... well, apart from being in a box with a fish, an egg, and a bunch of other random items in Rusty Lake's Cube Escape: Harvey's Box, also free for iOS and Android, and you'd better believe it's as surreal as Seasons, The Lake, and Arles. As usual, click on things to interact with them, and use the small arrows at the edges of the screen to move around. The cursor won't change even if it passes over something you can use, so make sure you investigate everything, and, well, think outside the box a little. Or maybe a lot. The Cube Escape series has never so much been known for holding the player's hand as shoving them bodily in, and Harvey's Box is no different. Not only are items and secrets strewn everywhere, but their uses and solutions will need some creative thought... and perhaps a bit of musical inclination.

After trying to put up with insomnia for most of the night, you decide to go on a late night walk to hopefully help you sleep better. Instead, you are sucked into a different alien world and have to find the parts of the machine that brought you there so you can get back... and hopefully get some more shut-eye before having to work the next day. AlPixel's free indie puzzle adventure game Missing Translation is a unique game, as not only are you figuring out the logic puzzles that will help reunite you with your bed, but also see if you can't figure out the native dialect. There are plenty of friendly people to attempt to talk to, and even a school that keeps its front door unlocked, but there are no stepping stones here to help you get a leg up. No cheat sheet, no easy cryptogram, just bizarre symbols you have to figure out the meaning of. If learning new languages isn't your thing, then the game can be completed without bothering with it, but if you want a challenge and a unique play, then you should also be aware that this game is also for Android devices as well (though not free), so you won't have to miss out, even on the go.

Look, I don't need a camel to tell me that it's Wednesday, because that's when all the good little boys, girls, and others are visited by the Weekday Escape fairy in the middle of the night! If you've been clever, and you know what to do when faced with a locked door, a screwdriver, and a cupcake fan, the fairy leaves you a trio of free escape games to make the middle of the week that much more bearable. This week, no1game's intrepid boy-child is apparently a lot closer to his kindergarten teacher than I was to mine (in her defense, I was a weird kid), Hottategoya takes you to a place that maybe needs to revisit the definition of "cafeteria", and Kumako wants you to make sure you're dressed up the way you like before you go outside.

In Alberto A. Braga's puzzle platformer Tiny Treasure, teamwork makes the dream work, especially when you're two little heroes who the world literally changes around. By using the [spacebar] to swap between each character, who are controlled identically with [WASD] or the [arrow] keys, certain parts of the landscape, specifically the coloured blocks that match whatever character you're controlling, will turn solid and allow you to walk on or climb them, while those corresponding to the other character are intangible. To get around, they'll need to work together, even standing on each other's shoulders to reach high places. It's a simple concept that's executed well here, if not necessarily with a significant amount of variety. Playing leapfrog/piggybacking makes up the bulk of the gameplay, and your progress is not saved, so even though the game is on the short side, you'll still need to finish it in one sitting. The latter half is actually a clever twist, if more stressful than the initial happy-go-lucky gameplay because you're working under a timer and need to re-think what are essentially double-sided puzzles in some places. The end result is a cute game that will quite literally fit into a coffee break, and while friendship might be magic, apparently it's also someone who's willing to let you stand on their head.

Play Tiny Treasure

In Deqaf Studio's Strike Force Kitty and its sequel, the fox kingdom has been trying really really hard to overthrow the kitten kingdom, but all they've gotten is a sound beating for their trouble. Cats rule and dogs drool, after all. But in Strikeforce Kitty: Last Stand, which puts a defense-centric twist on things, the raccoons have been hired by the foxes, and things are getting serious... or at least as serious as a game about cuddly animals waging war while dressed as popular characters from anime, video games, and more can be. To play, click the attack button rapidly to have your cats hurl themselves at the enemy. Your cats' health is displayed above their heads, and if it runs out, they'll be escorted off the field by the paramedics and unable to fight for a while. Beat down a racoon, however, and you'll have a chance to earn whatever costume they were wearing, which you can in turn equip your kittens with, and often grants unique abilities and bonuses, such as a chance to block enemy attacks or heal your whole army. You'll need to defeat all waves of enemies in order to win, and on your side you also have special cats who will use their unique skills to help you when their timer bars are full. Use the fish dropped by enemies to upgrade them, or to enhance your castle!

Merendam: Escape from Seram Isle Chapter 1, also available (though not free) for iOS and Android, is an appealingly freaky horror action adventure where you play a young girl stranded in the middle of nowhere after an apparition attacks the car she's in and causes it to turn over. Considering the ominous words of the man driving the car, our heroine might have avoided a nasty situation, but is being lost with a bunch of vicious spectres much better? Merendam might be a little weird to pick up at first. On the PC, [A] and [D] are to move left and right, while the [spacebar] can be used to interact, though the touchscreen buttons work just as well. Most action buttons must be held down for a few seconds until they're confirmed, such as holding down the blue eye button for several seconds while the camera pans in. You'll want to keep an eye out for those contextual icons when they appear, as they'll let you know when there's something you want to take a closer look at. Your inventory is limited to two items at a time, so you can drop an item you're carrying on the floor by dragging its icon out of your inventory on the left until it turns from green to blue. You can save your game at a few select locations, which is something you shouldn't neglect since there are murderous spirits about that need to be defeated by following onscreen prompts. Quick time events may be scary enough on their own, but with a creepy atmosphere and tons of jump scares, Merendam is an appealingly freaky adventure that echoes some classic survival horror titles... though not without a few rough patches.

Dirty Room Escape 3 might not sound like the most glamorous setting for an escape game, but if Detarame Factory is involved, you know it's got to be cute. As you may have guessed from the title (after clicking English to change the language if you can't read Japanese), the only way out of this room is to clean it up, which is easier said than done given that it both looks like a bomb went off, and has a smattering of puzzles as well. The cursor will change when it passes over something you can interact with, so click your way to cleanliness! Don't forget the little arrow in the upper-right corner of the screen that will let you see the rest of the mess in the room. Some items will simply pop back into their proper tidy space when you click them, but others will need a little more thought... though putting a combination lock on a spray bottle seems like extreme measures to find an excuse to procrastinate cleaning up. While not aggressively challenging, Dirty Room Escape 3 offers some light-hearted puzzles that will wake your brain up gently, all rendered in Detarame Factory's signature cuddly style. And hey, you can say you already did your chores for the day!

Play Dirty Room Escape 3

Thanks to Lisa for sending this one in, who says, "I enjoyed this very much. In this game you are challenged to clean up your apartment before you can escape! The puzzles were just challenging enough to be fun but not too hard. Many had more than one step to complete. The puzzles also made sense, for example, you couldn't put something away until you had solved the puzzle to make a space for it. And the whole game had a good sense of humour. I definitely recommend you take a look at this game."

The world was being invaded for years by creatures from a far off land. These monstrosities grew in number, but yet the humans turned a blind eye to their existence. So a new hero arose to protect its homeland. This squirrel may be small and adorably fluffy, but this tiny hero packs a punch, or, well, a rocket gun if you pick up the right ammo. Call of Spring is an action platform shooter made by Bit of Game that you play with the keyboard ([WASD] or the [arrow] keys) and the mouse to fire at the incoming enemies. But Call of Spring is a bit different from most shooters as it's not waves that you have to fight against, but fight through to find the exit that lets you advance to the next level to reach your end goal, which is eliminating the Leader of this alien evasion and saving earth, of course. With three bosses and a gaggle of creative enemies, this is a task this small vermin is burdened with since the humans are just too lazy.

Watch out! Earth is being invaded by...green bunnies? And flying pumpkins? And bees? Okay, actually the last one sounds a little threatening. Luckily the world's biggest baddest smart aleck bear is here to protect us in the arcade shooter Bear in Super Action Adventure by Entertainment Forge. Your gun will shoot automatically as you control the bear with your mouse. The green bar at the top of the screen represents your health, and you can click to activate your super shot when the yellow bar a is full. Collect coins as you go to spend on a variety of upgrades, and maybe if you can make it to the end alive, you'll get to the bottom of why Earth is being invaded in the first place.

In no1game's latest escape game Find the Escape-Men Part 156: Aquarium, the newly opened local aquarium is holding a fantastic contest... if you can find the ten "green pieces" hidden throughout the building, you'll be awarded a fabulous treasure! Man, this better not be some garbage '80s teen movie pap where "the treasure was inside you all along". To play, move around the building using the map, and click on things to interact, making sure to check everywhere since you don't have a changing cursor to rely on to see if there's something you should click. As you may be expecting by now in a no1game title, you'll need to root around in odd places, wait a little in others, and even have to fall back on trying certain actions multiple times before you get what you want. The setting is cute, with the right mix of goofiness and puzzles that won't tax you too much, though of course in real life you should never tap on the aquarium glass. While some parts are more intuitive than others, Find the Escape-Men Part 156: Aquarium is still a nice, light bit of escapery for anyone's day, with a priceless treasure at the end... maybe!

Play Find the Escape-Men Part 156: Aquarium

Every Friday morning I wake up, and before I put on my makeup... I make a little Link Dump Friday for yoooooou... Okay, so maybe it's not quite going to replace the classic, especially since my "makeup" typically consists of eyeliner I've probably stabbed myself in the eye six times with trying to put on. But this week, like any other week honestly, it doesn't matter what you've got on your face, because you can enjoy these games from the dungeon-like confines of your curtained lair! We've got a game where world domination via the undead is just a click away, a temple where a mirror is your only defense, a restaurant that would make Gordon Ramsay shout himself hoarse, and the world's worst impromptu camping trip!

Bethesda's Fallout Shelter, free for iOS and coming soon to Android, is sort of weird. Created to promote the upcoming time-devouring beast we all live in fear and anticipation of that is Fallout 4, it's a simplified management simulation in which you try to keep your growing community of eternally grinning "Vault Dwellers" alive and well for as long as possible in a growing underground vault after the end of the world. Doing so means keeping them supplied with food, energy, and water, so you'll need to put your peeps to work by dragging them around to the various rooms until you find something they're good at... each Vault Dweller has their own set of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. statistics (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) that makes them better at some jobs than others, though later on these statistics can be improved or trained. It takes time to generate each resource, however, so it's important not to stretch yourself too thin, since "Rushing" to finish work ahead of time can lead to catastrophic failure instead of an early delivered bounty. You'll earn Caps, of course, from completing tasks and achievements, which can be used to build new things, and Lunchboxes (granted rarely through gameplay or via in-app purchases) offer random cards with a chance at anything from powerful equipment to special Dwellers with high skills. You'll build a radio to draw in other survivors, though also potentially attract the attention of raiders, send explorers out into the Wasteland to find new equipment, and more. Though perhaps not complex enough to keep everyone hooked for long, Fallout Shelter's appealingly simplified approach to post-apocalyptic simulation is worth fans checking out... no hands on experience with radroaches required.

Blink and you'll miss it, but Inush Escape 3, an escape game by, as you might have guessed, Inush, is still seriously adorable. In it, you play a tag-team of pup and owner... both want to get out of the house, but they'll need to work together to do so, starting with getting the dog out of its crate. While the text is in Japanese, you don't need to be able to understand it to play. The game is split into two views, with the dog on the bottom and the human on top, and you have to know when to use each character to proceed. The human obviously can pick up and use items, while the pup can dig, mess with things with its paws, and so on according to the action icons on the right side of the screen. While short and definitely on the easy side, Inush Escape 3 is such a great idea and executed so cutely that it brightens your day, and hopefully one day dog and human bestie will reunite for an even bigger, bolder escape... though we wouldn't say no to more of these bite-sized delights either. Can you find both endings?

Play Inush Escape 3

[6/18/2015: GemCraft: Chasing Shadows is now available to play on JayisGames.]

What are you doing with your free time? No, shut up! You're wrong, and a liar, because you're about to have every single scrap of your life taken over by the newest installment in Game in a Bottle's smash-hit tower defense GemCraft games, GemCraft: Chasing Shadows. (Also available on Steam if you would like to support the developer with a purchase!) What makes a GemCraft game so much more special than your garden variety tower defense? Glad you ask, person about to have their life enriched. While you use towers to defend against incoming waves of monsters as usual, the core of the game comes from the unique ability to create and fuse gems. Different colours have different powers, and even the size of the gem matters, but combining them is where it gets interesting. Take a poison gem and drop it into a tower with an electric gem, and suddenly you've got a defense that shots out bolts that paralyze and poison foes. Not only that, but if you place gems in traps on the ground, they have different effects than they would plopped in a tower. Pretty swanky powers, huh? Well, you're gonna need 'em, since the forces of darkness are nipping at your heels, and you'll need to think strategically to hold them off, learn new skills, and level up to gain access to bigger, badder jewels.

After a long day of slaving away in the mines, these gnomes just want to get back to their little homey cottages to rest their tired little bodies. Their bodies are so tired in fact that their brains are on snooze while their feet just follow the bumpy little paths. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the vile witch who twisted and falsified some of the paths. And being the opportunist they are, a large gathering of monsters have found their perches at the dead ends of the roads so they can gobble up any tiny gnome who ventures their way. Thankfully the paths are covered with 'switches' that alter the pathway so you can make sure the Gnomes have a safe travel in this cheerful puzzle game, for browser and Android, brought to us by Art4Game, Gnomes Go Home. Every level you need a certain number of gnomes to reach the house while scooping up stars along the way. Things aren't going to be as easy as it sounds with the witch still around, and throw in a few trap houses and you'll find yourself tightening on your thinking caps to win this charming little game.

Sun's out, Weekday Escape fun's out! That's how that goes, right? Well, it is if you're into free escape games, which I've got an inkling that you are! I mean, the way you started tossing my furniture around looking for "clues" and tried to tape a screwdriver to that rubber duck when you walked in speaks volumes about the type of gamer you are... which is to say, totally my kind. This week! Funky Land serves up a raspberry-coated kitchen escape, no1game makes you go d'awww while rifling through random doo-dads, and SelfDefiant gets all dingy in the spooky asylum du jour.

Sometimes a story doesn't need to be a long, detailed adventure to convey the message they want to the reader. Nor does a game have to be filled with puzzles and chapters to have meaning. MARY WOKE UP TODAY is just that, short and sweet. And by sweet I mean dark and edging on an existential crisis. This free indie game may not take you the majority of an hour to play through, but for a small package is certainly has more than you'd really think could fit in something so simplistic. This point and click adventure game, made in just under two weeks by Sarah Hiebl, is great for those who are looking for a short story that gets them questioning things about themselves and their world. Mary is probably one who never asked to look deeper, but she's found herself stuck in endless loops of dreams where very little changes. But those small changes reveal much about her if she's willing to listen, and then just maybe she can find a way to wake up.

Space is called the "Final Frontier" for a pretty good reason. Turns out it's scary up there. Kind of lonely, not exactly a vacation destination. And guess what? You're stuck there. Box Rocket Games' new title, Alone in the Cosmos, is a somber and short little interactive art game following an astronaut who's been living in isolation among the stars for some time now. It's your job to explore your moody space station by clicking with the [mouse], discovering a bit about how and why you've become trapped in orbit for so long, and what you left behind back on earth. Bring some tissues. Things are about to get existential.

Four Squared Room is a pretty accurate title for this little escape game from Vitamin Hana, where you find yourself locked in a room labeled with the compass directions, "decorated" with some furniture, and not a whole lot else... aside from some puzzle locks, that is! Click around to explore, though there's no changing cursor so you'll need to figure out what's interactive and what isn't by some old fashioned investigative clickery. Unfortunately, some hotspots can be very fiddly, and a lack of feedback and initially very few clues may have you spinning in (very small) circles trying to figure out what to do. It's a little frustrating since the game is otherwise perfectly pleasant, with puzzles that are smart enough that the game doesn't need to rely on clumsy click trickery. (If you're colour-blind, you may wish to be forewarned that this game does feature a colour puzzle.) Just remember to scour every surface and keep your thinking cap on straight, and you'll be out in time for tea.

Play Four Squared Room

Far away in a year unheard of, Korski is about to finish his last transport and then he will be released. Years of punishment have been worked off in labor camp on cold lonely Mars haven't been easy for Korski, and they aren't going to be in easing up any time soon in Waxwing Games' free, indie, sci-fi point-and-click game. In fact, things are about to get much, much worse. At first, Korski just needs to finish the job, but then he needs everything he has, and of course anything and everything he can pick up along the way, to keep himself alive. Camp 1 is a classic retro style puzzle adventure with a small color palette. Yet this slower paced but still captivating game will probably be one of the most beautiful adventures you'll play this month, even if it takes place on a frozen barren planet, and its dark story will keep you locked in even if the art doesn't.

It's not easy being green. Especially when you've been captured by ninjas craving frog legs. Well this time, they've messed with the wrong amphibian in Nitrome's puzzle game Green Ninja: Year of the Frog, free with ads for iOS and Android. Swipe in the way you want the green ninja to go and you will ninja kick in that direction until you hit a wall, taking down all the evil ninjas in your path, all while croaking your fearsome ninja call. Not all walls are created equal. Your frog will grab on to basic red walls, but golden ones are too slippery. There are one way walls, and green sticky walls. There are also blocks and barrels that will move when you hit them, as well as hazards for you to avoid. It's possible to get stuck, so use the handy reset level button in the corner if that happens. Can you out ninja the ninjas?

Ever stop and think about how hard the life of a video game character really must be? And not just the manuevering through death traps parts, or the always having to save princes and princesses parts. The part where some faceless, omnipotent entity with a keyboard has control over your entire life, and it's all you can do to jump through hoops and please them. Game.init(), by Keybol, is a platform game that puts you in the shoes of one such AI, bound to ceaselessly perform increasingly difficult jumping tasks for a maybe-malevolent, maybe-benign programmer. But although the preponderance of spikes and sawblades might lead you to believe that Game.init() is one of THOSE high-difficulty games, Game.init() has far more puzzle game in its DNA than you might expect. Although you can move and jump with the [WASD] keys, you can only perform the platform-classic double jump while within certain spheres of light. Game.init() tests more than just your reflexes... It also forces you to carefully utilize your limited jumps to reach the exit in each stage.

In no1game's puzzling escape game Find the Escape-Men Part 155: EM Temple, a bullet train ride to a new tourist temple strands you there, and as usual, you'll need to find the ten little (or sometimes not so little) green men hidden around the area if you want to get home. Easier said than done with obnoxious selfie-stick wielding tourists, kitschy souvenir shops, and unsettling statuary everywhere! The cursor won't change whether something is interactive or not, so you'll need to click around on your own and explore everywhere. Like most games in the series, EM Temple is decidedly snack-sized, with puzzles that tend to lean a little more towards whimsy than logic, and at least a few instances where pixel hunting might become an annoyance. Despite this, the game is cute, even occasionally clever, and a welcome bit of lighthearted escapery to anyone's day.

Play Find the Escape-Men Part 155: EM Temple

It's Friday, dearest readers, and that means I've got my game face on, which according to relatives is this concentrated sort of snarling grimace I'd make when I was little that in my mind totally made Sonic jump higher. (As did wildly jerking the controller around while I played, of course.) This week we've got a dreamy bit of interactive art that'll only cost you a few minutes of your time, a crosswalk that's home to some truly ridiculous carnage, a ship stranded in space where you're the AI and the only thing you can do is potentially psychologically damage the inhabitants, and a little boy who has some strange theories about the application of fire extinguishers and axes to cheese.

Though the developer warns its unfinished and in places even unfair, Grand Adventure!, by Grent with writing by EmptyGoddess and art by Jhomar Soriano, is nevertheless a compellingly creepy action adventure with a retro style. As it begins, you wake with a pounding head and a sense of deja vu, memories of a smiling girl dancing in your head, and it quickly becomes apparent something is seriously wrong here. Use the [arrow] keys to move, and the [spacebar] to interact, with [Z] to swing your sword once you find it, but keep your wits about you... there are puzzles and traps everywhere, but if you die, you'll just be set back a short ways. Grand Adventure! has a great blend of classic pixel graphics that are intercut with more "realistic" artwork that serve to tell the story, building foreboding as you go, with a surprising amount of tension for such a simple presentation. You might not want to play this if you get easily grossed out or disturbed by gore, or if, oh, say, you have an aversion to bugs. Unfortunately, the game is missing what the developer intended to be its "true" ending, but what exists is still a great morbid fairytale style adventure that's well worth playing, and we hope we see even more and bigger adventures from its talented team down the line.

Play Grand Adventure!

Also free for iOS and Android, Pine Studio's Escape from the Catacombs has locked you up and (presumably) thrown away the key, stranding you with a bunch of skeletons, cryptic clues, and... your fist. Okay, so the icon in your inventory is to allow you to "use force" on things, but I think we know what the funnier descriptor is. Most items that display text when you mouse over them can be clicked on to interact, and you can try combining any items you're carrying by clicking first one, then the other. Some objects really blend into the background due to the game's ominous atmosphere, so if you're stuck, you may want to double-check and make sure there's nothing useful lurking in the shadows. Escape from the Catacombs strikes a nice balance between logic puzzles and simply using the correct items where they need to be, though not every solution is instinctively logical. Despite that, this escape is pretty short, leaving you free to escape your faceless captors into the night... until next time!

Play Escape from the Catacombs

Escape from the Catacombs (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

Android:
Escape from the Catacombs

Ish Games is back with a brand new awesome quest! An Awesome Seaquest to be exact. Coming in hot on the heels of their previous entry, Awesome Seaquest is a maritime strategy game with a little incremental sprinkled on top. It's your job to lead your armada of blue ships, subs, and choppers against the hated reds in a series of fast-paced skirmishes on the high seas, and then return to base to shore up funds, make repairs, and research upgrades. The combat is fun to watch but it's largely hands-off. Your units do most of the fighting on their own, leaving you free to retreat units that are too badly damaged or to deploy special weapons, such as air strikes or EMPs, with the [mouse]. Your base is where the real challenge happens. You've got oil rig workers and researchers that provide valuable resources, and it's up to you to carefully weigh cost and benefit as you upgrade them, heal them, or overwork them to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the poor guys so you can more efficiently do battle. All of your units are upgradeable but when they die they're gone for good, so be sure to keep an eye on the retreat button if things start to go south.

Klei Entertainment gets swanky, stealthy, and strategic with Invisible, Inc, a turn-based indie game of espionage and skullduggery with tons of customisation and randomized maps. As the game opens, your headquarters came under attack, slaying several of your top secret agents and scattering most of the others, with you barely managing to escape with Incognita, your advanced AI, but she won't last long on backup power, and the corporations that did this to you are still looking, and would love to get you inside one of their deprogramming rooms. You've only got a few days to do what you can to amass allies, supplies, and defenses before you need to bring the fight to them, and the clock is ticking with every mission you undertake. Don't like any of the difficulties available? Create your own! Invisible, Inc comes with a remarkably complex set of options that allows you to change everything from the way the alarms work, to guard patrols, and much, much more, allowing you to make the game as easy, or as brutally difficult, as you like. Now, assign yourself a proper spy codename. May I suggest... Duchess?

Please note that this game features short, static ads between game days to advertise the developer's other games. These are placed there by Flipline Studios.

Flipline Studios' enterprising Papa has run a lot of businesses over the years... or, rather, he's conned you into running them, from donut shops and wing joints all the way to the classic pizzeria and beyond. But you know what people love? People love cheese, and Papa's Cheeseria is all about that oooey-gooey deliciousness in the form of fancified grilled cheese sandwiches. You find yourself working for Papa when your gear gets stolen... see, you're a musician, and you were actually supposed to play at the place, but with all your equipment gone, the only want to earn the cash for new stuff is to get to work. Papa's Cheeseria follows the same format as all the rest of the games... each day, you serve customers until closing, where you're cashed out with any tips you earned to spend on upgrades for the store. You'll take a customer's order, prepare and serve it up the way they ask, as fast and accurate as you can before they get impatient and leave. Not only is every sandwich made up of different breads, meats, cheese and condiments, but it needs to be cooked to each customer's desired doneness, and of course, served with whatever fries and fry toppings they like. Sadly, no key binding exists for "press to demand to know what sort of monster puts ranch dressing and ketchup on their fries".

LucidShadowDreamer's Playing With Letters is a text-based puzzle game where you find yourself a detective in pursuit of a devious mastermind who has left behind a series of boxes, each secured with a mechanical lock that will only open if you can solve the riddles in front of you. Unlock them all, your unseen adversary promises, and you can perhaps meet face to face. Hit [enter] to speed up the text, or [backspace] to display the entire level's text at once. Type in your answer to the riddle posed to you, and hit [enter]... if it's correct, you'll move on, but if not, well, look at the clues and try again. The concept behind Playing With Letters is a solid one, and one we'd love to see expand even more beyond the game's handful of levels, especially since it sort of feels like it's just getting started when it comes to an end, though there is a "secret ending" if you can figure out how to get it. A sequel that wove more of a narrative into its stages would be a great idea, especially since Playing With Letters feels almost more conceptual than anything else, but if you like word puzzles with a morbid twist, it's definitely worth a play.

Play Playing With Letters

Upgrades and big eyes and pixels, oh, my! Shonen Idle is, as you might surmise from its title, an idle incremental game that pays loving homage to classic shonen manga of all sorts, by casting you in the role of the plucky hero/ine out to save the world from evil forces, one screaming ki attack at a time. Each map location has a set of enemies that, when you click the crossed swords icon next to them under the Combat tab, automatically dukes it out with them over and over. How fast you defeat them depends on your characters statistics, which can be improved by spending ki earned from defeating enemies on all sorts of upgrades in the Training section. As you defeat bosses and move to different locations, you'll unlock new outfits for your character, and pets to help you out, in addition to skills that can be activated for a temporary boost. The game looks fantastic, and is peppered with all sorts of subtle (and otherwise) references to tons of classic properties like Dragon Ball, with tons of achievements and bonuses to earn. On the downside, like most incremental games, it is largely a game of waiting and turning small numbers into bigger ones over and over, so if the shonen theme doesn't appeal to you, Shonen Idle might wear out its welcome sooner rather than later. If you do love the genre, however, Shonen Idle's wonderfully rendered style and shoutouts to beloved shonen titles across the board make it worth checking out.

Play Shonen Idle

The Wheel of Time turns, and Wednesdays come and pass, which is fancy why-doesn't-this-have-its-own-TV-show speak for Weekday Escape! This week, elle is tied to some railroad tracks. Or maybe she's stuck in a burning building. ... trapped in a well? In hindsight, leaving our office communications up to a border collie was probably a bad idea, no matter how cute he looks in this novelty tie, yes he does. Regardless, elle's not here, so you got me, suckers. This week! Get Lost Games traps you in a tower, no1game threatens you with disappointing all your fans, and Flash512 gets very, very... pink.

Ocean breezes, gorgeous beaches, and a shiny new ship, it's time for some adventure! Indie action adventure RPG Windward, by Tasharen Entertainment, is a wide open sailing simulation game that lets you explore, plunder, and trade on the open sea alone or with friends. You can see the inspiration the developer got from Sid Meier's Pirates!, though Windward is not set in the real world, but one that can be different every time you play. Strike fear in the hearts of your enemies as you sail by, or command respect by collecting great piles of treasure; the world is yours for the taking. Choose a faction and start sailing! Find tasks or goods to ferry at friendly towns. At first, this is a breeze, but as you move further from home, pirates become a problem. Completing quests or capturing towns for your faction ups your reputation, which lowers the cost of items and lets you overhear better rumors in town. You also level up, which allows you to better your fighting skills. Towns themselves also level up, offering for sale better items and upgrades for your ship, or even a new ship altogether.

When you want something that's stylish and smart, Bart Bonte is always someone to have on speed dial no matter what game you're in the mood for, and his Sugar Sugar physics puzzle games are literally as sweet as you can get. So aren't you glad Sugar, Sugar 3 is finally here? The goal, as before, is still simply to fill up each container in a level with the sugar falling onscreen by drawing paths to get it where you want it to go. Since you can't erase any lines you've drawn, with restarting the level your only option, you need to plan ahead and figure out how to make the level work for you. Here, for example, in many levels where sugar falls off the bottom of the screen, it reappears falling out of the top, allowing you to reach different places. Toss (or sprinkle) in elements like coloured "gates" that dye any sugar that passes through so you can fill matching cups, buttons that change gravity, teleporters, and more, and suddenly making the perfectly sweet cuppa is a lot more challenging than it seems.

Rusty Lake's dark and surreal escape series continues with Cube Escape: Arles, also free for iOS and Android. This time, you find yourself in a tiny apartment, surrounded by unfinished paintings and empty bottles, with only your own reflection to keep you company. To play, just tap on things to interact or pick them up, and tap the tiny black arrows at the edges of the screen to move around. You can use an item in your inventory by tapping it once to select it, and then tapping again anywhere you'd like to try to use it. As in Cube Escape: Seasons and Cube Escape: The Lake, things seem tranquil enough, but there are some disturbing themes lurking beneath the surface, which you'll probably clue into as soon as you realize where and who you are. Just keep calm, pay attention to your surroundings for clues, and try not to lose your head... or anything else attached to it.

It may be in Japanese, but you don't need to grok the lingo to play Sanpoman's Hermit Crab Room, where you're locked in a room with a creatively crustacean flair, and if you want to escape, you'll need to crack a code or several to open the door. The cursor will change when it passes over something you can click on to interact with, and the transparent bars that pop up when you mouse over some edges of the screen can be used to move around the room or back away from certain things. Click on an item in your inventory to highlight it, then on the question mark icon to view it up close... some objects need to be activated by clicking around with them in this way before you can use them! Hermit Crab Room is decidedly bite-sized in a good way, and while it falls back on some classic escape game tropes (I may faint if I ever find a remote with batteries in it in one of these games), it's also satisfyingly clever and logical apart from a few sneaky hot spots. Whether you're passionate about cuddly little crabs too, or you just want a solid and cute escape to make your day a little brighter, Sanpoman has you covered with Hermit Crab Room.

Play Hermit Crab Room

Also available for iOS, Neutronized's Drop Wizard is a classic arcade-style action game with gorgeous graphics about a premise we can all get behind... cute wizards tumbling off ledges to turn cuddly, dazed enemies into fruit. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move left and right, and walk off an edge of a platform to fall to the next. The drop won't hurt you, and upon landing, your wizard will fire off a magical blast in the direction they're facing, which will temporarily stun enemies, allowing you to walk into them and boot them off the screen. Your wizard is otherwise defenseless and can only attack when falling, so avoid getting touched by foes, since a few hits and you'll need to restart the level! Each stage brings new enemies in, and while the browser version only has eighteen levels, the mobile version packs a whopping 60-plus, including boss battles, and a seeeecret game mode. Drop Wizard's simple concept harkens back to a coin-operated golden age, if such a thing can be said to exist, but its vibrant design and gameplay that can get surprisingly frantic makes it a great authentic old-school arcade game that brings a lot to the table.

Play Drop Wizard

Drop Wizard (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

Nobody knows why, but everyone seems to agree: You Must Build A Boat, and who are we to argue with commands issued by a nameless disembodied voice? In EightyEight Games' sequel (available for PC, Mac and Linux in addition to iOS and Android) to the smash hit 10000000 you set off with nary a sextant or textbook on admiralty law to build and upgrade a boat, capture creatures for your crew and adventure for fun, riches and better equipment in this frantic match-3 upgrade-packed indie action arcade game. Clearly this can only end well! As with the original you'll be sliding rows and columns of tiles to match three or more, gather resources, place hits and unlock treasures and traps! But this three-years-in-the-making sequel brings a much cleaner look to the familiar tile-swapping interface. Instead of gathering wood and stone for your castle, players gather Thought and Power needed to assemble formations of collected creatures on your ship, each providing permanent buffs. This time there's no pausing once you've made a match either; tiles refresh instantaneously, and you can even slide them around while the new tiles are being placed. Like the original, dungeon runs will come with quests you can satisfy for resources, but instead of mere riches you'll get items, creatures, and new crewmembers for your ship! Each new crewmember added to your roster has a room of their own and provides a new function, like offering weapon upgrades or a transdimensional sphere with a portal to other dimensions who will find buyers for the assorted items you pull from dungeon chests. Your ship is powered by your crewmembers, so it will sail to new regions and then stop until you complete enough dungeon quests to gain the crewmembers necessary to power it further. This one also features a very smooth in-game tutorial so you can get started immediately and learn as you play.

When Alice fell down rabbit hole, she fell into a world of madness. When you fall into psyAlera's free indie fantasy visual novel, Zayay, most of the madness seems contained in a strange bunny man. Zayo is what you would get if the white rabbit was less worried about arriving at his destination on time, and much more easily distracted. Odd, random, and sometimes too sickeningly sweet, Zayo seems like the perfect candidate for a romantic simulation, but there is something very off about this whole thing. Not only are you unsure why you are there and can't remember your purpose, but Zayo, your guide whether you want him to be or not, keeps dropping little hints that he is not what he seems. He will offer five different places to go and explore with him, each with their own choices. Besides that, the only options you really have is how to respond to such a weird fellow. With five different endings and secret extras, can you figure out what the mystery is behind this just a little too adorable bunny?

It's Saturday! Who needs footie pajamas, cartoons, and sugar-flavoured cereal when you have free indie games to start the weekend off right? This week: a cosmic car ride on a trippy alien planet, a Gameboy Color-styled survival horror adventure from a first time developer, and an eerie but brief tale about a man who finds himself stranded in a village that really doesn't like outsiders. So sit back, relax, and play on! (... and if you want to wear your footie jammies, well, I won't tell anyone... as long as you hit me up with some of those Frooty Puffs!)

Friends! Readers! Do not let your life be constrained by arbitrary dates on a calendar! Whether its October or not, we should all be free to enjoy the ghoulish delights of a haunted house or three, and Grey Alien Games' match-3 arcade game Spooky Bonus (also available directly from the developer) is just the ticket if you're looking for a thoroughly casual and thoroughly enjoyable bit of addictive token matching gameplay. Strange things are happening in Old Town!... that's it. That's the whole story. You'll move across a map filled with goblins, ghosts, witches and other things that go bump in the night, but most importantly, the map is also packed to the brim with levels! Match three or more of the same token by swapping adjacent tiles to make a match, with special tiles charging your power-ups or creating bombs that clear the board, and others clearing golden tiles to let you buy more upgrades. Each level (which you can choose to with or without a timer) has its own conditions to meet, such as matching a certain number of a particular type of item, and different levels have different types of items. It's a simple premise done right, packaged up in a sweetly spooky (though not scary!) aesthetic that will keep fans of the genre happy for hours.

It's murder most foul in Carmel Games' point-and-click adventure Sherlock Holmes 2, but who the cops think dunnit insists he's innocent, even though his cane was found at the scene of the crime! Who would want to frame a fire alarm salesman for murder, and why? Your cursor will change when it passes over something you can interact with, and as you explore the few areas around London you have access to, you'll find a lot of things to click on. Remember that you can occasionally combine items in your inventory by clicking first one, then the other if you're stuck! As you might expect from Carmel Games, Sherlock Holmes 2 is more silly than serious, with plenty of strange moments and odd puzzles to contend with, despite not being particularly long or difficult. Kick back, relax, grab your candy cane, and crack a code or two!

Play Sherlock Holmes 2

As I write this, I am in the cold, unfeeling clutches of the middle of the week. But for you? It's glorious, glorious Friday, and that means a ton of totally sweet, totally free, totally indie online games for you to herald in the weekend. (Or the Glow Cloud. I don't judge.) This week: a point-and-click adventure that revels in killing you again and again, a race to rescue your kidnapped love for a diabolical mechanical maniac, some guilty drinking and avoidance (retro platforming style), and, of course, a funky party full of dancing witches, skeletons, and the knights coming to slay you.

No One Was Here by jeremyaburns is a puzzle platformer with a bit of action in it, as you control a little fellow trying to help your sick friend, which naturally involves recovering artifacts from caves where giant beasts sleep, as home remedies often do. The catch is that each artifact you pick up begins rewinding time, and you need to follow your past-self's steps closely to reach the exit of the cave, or you'll get caught outside of time and be erased, forcing you to try again. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move and jump, and press up in front of caves to go inside. Each cave is more complex than the last, adding moving platforms and other hazards, and successfully making it in and out requires good reflexes and timing, as well as a bit of foresight... you don't necessarily want to move as fast as you can on the way in, to give yourself time to catch up with your mirror on platforms and other obstacles on the way back out. It's a simple little game that toys with time in an interesting way, well worth checking out for the time it'll take you, and a concept that would do great to be expanded in the future.

Play No One Was Here

Looking for a little drive-time diversion? Well tune yourself in to WJIG! Gamin' 94.7! Home of the Cazh! We've got Aries Escape coming up with their latest hit, Aries Escape: Episode No. 16. Word has it that you came to the radio station thinking that your boyfriend would be there. But while looking around, presumably thrilled by the equipment, stacks of CDs, and unending piles of promotional bumper stickers, you somehow managed to get yourself lost. ("Somehow" being the operative word for me. Personally most of my on-air experience has been of the "room tucked away in some corner of the student union" variety) And, son of a gun, as seems to so often be the case in your life, the door to the room you're in doesn't seem to want to open. Being the 12th caller won't help now. It's time to start pointing, clicking and solving all manner of puzzles to have even a chance of escape before the afternoon all-music rock block. So don't even think of touching that dial!

I don't think anyone who had access to a computer or a mobile phone hasn't played some version of snake, like Rattle Racer or Nibbler or even Snakes on a Cartesian Plane. Every spin off has been greater than the last and we always are left wanting more. But Snake Rewind is not just another copy. How so? Well, all credit to the game goes to Rumilus Design and Taneli Armanto. Yes, that's the Taneli Armanto, the original creator of Snake for the Nokia phones. He has once again graced us with a free snake game for the iOS and Android. It keeps to its old roots with simple, but beautiful, graphic, and the simple idea for the gameplay; eat "fruit", get bigger and faster, avoid your growing bod and repeat until you either fill the screen with your snake or die trying. But with upgrades, items to nab to help you on your way, and achievements to gain unlocking new level designs things are fresh enough for you to be sucked right in again.

In Extrication your life is filled with beer, drugs, and sex. The only thing missing is rock and roll... oh and that large sum of money you owe Fat Tony. It's never a good thing to owe Fat Tony, because he always makes sure you pay him, one way or another. In Mattias Gustavsson's free indie point-and-click adventure, you only have twenty-four hours to find a way to get out of the city. You need to find your partner and collect your investment back, get some fake papers and new name for you new life, get your bike back, and, the most dangerous, break it off with your girl. It's a lot to do when you only have 24 hours and the time is ticking down. Every click on the arrows on the screen to go to a new place subtracts time, and every question you ask people, even if it's about the weather, wears it down as well. To make things worse, some cops show up, but perhaps they might be another way to not finding yourself at the bottom of the river wearing a new pair of concrete shoes. Whatever your decision is, remember that Fat Tony's men always show when they say they will.

If you love games, then you really love a bundle of games. We here at JayIsGames love games. It's pretty much right there in the name. Thusly, bundles of games are make us squee. Like this bundle of fun free online escape games from FunkyLand, No1Game, and Vitamin Hana. Yeah, it's sort of otherwise known as a Weekday Escape trio in some parts of the jigasphere. Our trio this week takes us on tour through a lovely yellow room filled with mysterious little devices, followed by lunch at a brand new sushi-boat-style restaurant, and finally ending by letting the dogs loose for giggles and awwwws...

It's time to ski in Featherweight's action sports game Skiing Yeti Mountain, free for your mobile device. After training with the Pathmaster, learning the art of good slalom, you find he has been attacked and killed by...something. And since you were on the slopes to track down a yeti anyway, you just assume the yeti got him. Simple and intuitive one touch control will have you competitively gliding down the mountain in no time. Simply touch, hold, and swipe to control your skier. If you're on a phone, it can all be easily done with your thumb. The goal is to make it down each course by passing by markers either on the left or right, depending on the direction the arrow points. If you hit a tree, or pass a marker on the wrong side, you have to start the level over. Keep an eye out for icy patches, cliffs, and deep snow, as these affect your control in different ways.

Kids these days! When I was little, we chased hoops with sticks down the street or tricked someone into painting our fence, and we liked it! But young people these days are actually pretty talented, and Apple's new App store 20 Under 20 promotion proves it, highlighting 20 apps and games made by developers from around the world who are, as you might have guessed, all under 20 years old. If you need a moment to go lay down and contemplate what you've accomplished before you turn/ed 20, we understand. Happily, Akkad's iOS arcade game Impossible Rush also made the cut, and to say the developers are tickled pink by the honour is an understatement. Check out all the other apps and games in the promotion, but make sure you check out our review of Impossible Rush too!

Impossible Rush (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)


Android:
Get Impossible Rush

[The Enchanted Cave 2 is now available for iOS and Android! Please note that while the browser version remains free, the mobile versions cost money.]

[Please note that unfortunately this game displays ads while loading the interior of the cave at the very beginning of each reentry. This is not something we can control as it is a decision of the developers. The ads are short and automatically vanish when the cave loads, usually after a few seconds. These ads support the developer who created the game.]

In Dustin Auxier's The Enchanted Cave 2, the RPG roguelike sequel to the original 2010 game, you arrive in a village like everyone else to take advantage of the titular cave, a mysterious opening into the earth filled with monsters, treasure, and more that randomizes every time you go into it. The deeper you go, the more dangerous it is, though powerful equipment and riches can be found further in, and the only way out is to find and use the Escape Wings before you die. The catch? Whenever you leave, every item except gold-bordered artifacts and your coins are destroyed, though you'll keep any levels you've earned as long as you don't die. The locals view the cave as a valuable source of income, and adventurers come from miles around to seek its treasures. But more people go missing inside it every month. And who created it anyway? With crafting, secrets, monsters, and treasure galore, The Enchanted Cave 2 is simple to pick up, but seriously hard to put down.

Monkeys, monkeys, everywhere, and not a drop to drink!... wait, that's not how that quote goes. That better not be how that quote goes. In Pencil Kids' point-and-click game Monkey GO Happy Ninjas 2, the land is, as it happens, practically heaving with little monkeys (70 of them, in fact!), and all of them are dressed like tiny ninjas. You'll need to solve puzzles and help people to find them all, so get clicking! The cursor will change when it passes over something you can interact with, and the big yellow arrows will take you to different areas. Like all Monkey GO Happy games, this one is bright, colourful, and designed to be the sort of thing you can relax with for a coffee break rather than crack open your gray matter for a long time. While finding 70 monkeys sounds like a lot, each screen is packed with them, and most of their hiding places are fairly obvious, and the inclusion of a few light puzzles makes this another game just right for young nerds-to-be (or the young at heart) to cut their teeth on.

Play Monkey GO Happy Ninjas 2