August 2015 Archives

You blacked out while hiking and woke up in a lab-slash-prison of some sort, and those men guarding the exit probably won't let you by peacefully. As the introductions of Gatamari escapes go, this isn't one of the more elaborate ones, but it certainly serves the purpose of setting up Gatamari Escape 25. The song and dance is a familiar one: click the direction arrows to move around, click on things to examine and interact with them, solve puzzles and crack codes, and hope you'll see the light of day at the end. If you get stuck, use the handy save feature and come back later. Oh, but don't worry: just because the dialogue and descriptions are in Japanese doesn't mean you'll need to learn the language to make any progress. Gatamari is good about that.

[8/31/15: The Terrible Old Man is now available to play online!]

Cloak and Dagger Games have served up some supremely creepy point-and-click adventures before, but now they're paying homage to one of the masters with spooky short The Terrible Old Man, also available as a free indie download, is an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale made in just 30 days. A group of shady characters are getting ready to leave town and take their gang elsewhere, when they hear about an old man living alone in town who's supposedly sitting on a fortune. They aren't put off by the strangeness surrounding the stories the townsfolk tell about him... all they know is he's frail, isolated, and apparently packing gold dubloons in a time where most people can't even scrape together the money for a drink or three. Are they about to bite off more trouble they can handle? Well, let's just say Lovecraft isn't known for stories where everything turns out sunny and all parties are merely involved in harmless misunderstandings. To play, just click to interact with something or someone, and right-click to merely look. Move your cursor way, way up to the top of the screen to have your inventory drop down, and click an item to pick it up so you can try to use it somewhere. You can also save your game from the inventory drop down, in case you need to take a break... you know, in case the ten minutes this game should take is too much.Everything about The Terrible Old Man's atmosphere drips unease and subtle wrongness, much like the work of the iconic writer it was adapted from, and the big reveal is executed cringingly creepily. Don't expect any real answers, as The Terrible Old Man sticks to the original's plot like glue, and most of the puzzles are a simple matter of talking to the only people available and then giving them or saying what they want. While it isn't particularly long or challenging, however, it's still a fine interactive adaptation that's a nice fit for an eerie evening when you want to give yourself the shivers without devoting too much time to it.

Play The Terrible Old Man

Windows:
Get the free full version

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

In the year of 20XX, a super compilation named the Mega Man Legacy Collection was released. CAPCOM and Digital Eclipse created the Mega Man Legacy Collection to compile the first six games of the Mega Man series in tribute to their favorite robot-son. Well, truthfully, one couldn't blame fans of the Rock Man for being a bit skeptical of this release. After the troubled development and even more troubled cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, very little has been seen in the way of full releases for the Blue Bomber. Sure there have been fun fan-games like Mega Man: Day In The Limelight 2, and intruiging semi-official curiosities like Street Fighter X Mega Man, but when it comes to celebrating the character's history, you'd have to look to a different company and a work much more focusing on smashing and brotherliness, rather than the platforming and Robot Masters that the series is known for. And, of course, as a casual gaming site, we would be bereft not to mention series co-creator Keiji Inafune and the production of his strangely familiar-seeming Mighty No 9. Still, as the series is legally brought to the PC for the first time, the Mega Man Legacy Collection doesn't feel like the mercenary retro-cash-grab it could have. It feels like a true attempt at preserving of gaming history (let alone some really fun games) and, for the most part, the mechanical-heart powering its production appears to be in the right place.

Life as an agent of H.E.L.P. (Hidden Expedition League of Preservation) is never dull. Why, just today you and your sidekick Sam are jetting off to the wilds of Montana to investigate both a strange radio signal and recent seismic activity in the area. All you need is your trusty H.E.L.P. box and some brain power and you'll have the whole thing solved by tea time. Never mind the suspicious scientific installation just down the road and the mysteriously missing child genius, you've got a job to do! Yes, the Hidden Expedition team is at it again with their latest hidden object adventure, Hidden Expedition: Dawn of Prosperity, the ninth in the series. Eipix interactive and Big Fish Games have once again gifted us with with top of the line adventuring and hidden object finding along with a soupcon of trivia learning.

Warning:This game deals with a theme that some may find triggering. Please look to my comment for more information.

Lost and alone in the dark woods, our heroine must find her way to sanctuary. With the strength to pull herself up onto the muddy cliffs and the will to descend into the dark caverns, finding a way out seems to be a feat feasible until she runs into mysterious goo-like monsters who are seeking her out to devour her very soul. GUILT by Ylzor is a chilling free indie horror game of stealth where you must find a way to pass the monsters without gaining their attention, or at least be quick enough to escape once you are spotted. The woods seem almost endless, and the caves so vast it will take all she has to keep moving even as she is being haunted. This dark tale will have you in goosebumps, as well as breaking your heart when the real story unfolds. While the difficulty is a tad frustrating and so is not for those with slow reflexes, GUILT is worth all the time you put into it and all the restarts you'll have to take. But in the end while you'll be happy the terror is over you'll find yourself wishing there was more.

Waking up you find yourself not only in a new land, but almost seemingly a new world. A world with very little in it. The few people there do only one thing... dig holes, refill them, and start again, all in the relentless heat of the desert sun. The only real answer you can receive from these nameless emotionless diggers is "We live to dig. And we dig to live.". Sisyphus Reborn is a free indie existential point-and-click adventure game that explores what it means to live. Heavy with atmosphere, Myshkin Entertainment's narrative driven game is short but powerful with its use of art, as well as the beautiful music that accompanies every scene. Simple to play, all you need is a mouse. Click to move or examine items that have a name when the cursor is over it, and right-click to examine closer and gain more detail. On occasion, you must re-examine or "re-speak" with people to gain vital clues to help you on your mission... that mission being, of course, to live. And to live is to dig.

Note: Please be warned that players with a sensitivity to flashing lights or flickering images may wish to avoid this game. Dai Araiguma's just your average teenage raccoon. He's studying mechanical engineering at NLA-U, learning Nipponese on the side, and enjoys anime, americanime, and a bit of massively multiplayer online gaming on his cyberdeck until the power in his tenement goes out during a particularly intense heatwave. Things being what they are in his low-rent California neighborhood in a cyberpunk future, all the doors are on a network and he'd better come up with a way to cool off and get out unless he wants to spend the next day or two living as a pan-fried sardine. Heatwave, a short and endearing point-and-click furry adventure from Scavenger, takes place in the same anthropomorphic future as his Death Wore Endless Feathers. With the aid of Mujina, an adorable holographically-projected AI personality, help Dai find a way to survive the heatwave, and maybe learn a thing or two about friendship, community and self-reliance in the process in this brief tale that's just as unique and touching as it is imaginative.

Late one night by the side of a dark road, you come across a sobbing little girl who you decide to escort home. The girl's name is Cat, and she doesn't seem to speak much, but when you chase after her to retrieve the scarf you leant her on the walk home, you discover that's the least strange thing about her. In Fridge Games' surreal indie horror adventure game Stray Cat Crossing, things take a turn for the weird when you find yourself trapped inside Cat's house. Doll-faced gentlemen. Baby-faced dogs. Winding hallways, disturbing nurseries, chattering nutcrackers, bandaged children... and that's just for starters. Use the [arrow] keys to move, hold left [shift] to run, and [ESC] or [X] to open the menu, with the [spacebar] or [Z] to interact. To save your game, find the little child wearing bandages and they'll snap your photo. The more you explore, the stranger things become, and you'll have to think outside the box if you want to find a way out. With gorgeous hand-drawn pixel-art, and a stellar moody soundtrack, Stray Cat Crossing is as unnerving as it is captivating, and delivers a gorgeously otherworldly adventure with a bittersweet story, though perhaps one a little heavily reliant on style and symbolism, and possessed of some annoying repetitive puzzles.

[Note: Please be warned that this game contains scenes of intense violence and gore, and deals with subject matter that may be upsetting to some.]

Little Fran Bow, the star of Killmonday Games' indie horror point-and-click adventure title, can barely remember happier times, even though she's still just a child. Following the brutal murder of her parents, she's locked away inside the Oswald Asylum mental institution for children, where therapists and new medicines try to help her unlock the secrets of her past so she can heal... though Fran insists she's fine. All Fran wants is to figure out who (or what) killed her parents, and find her beloved cat, Mr. Midnight, though she's not allowed to leave. But since when have the rules (and a foreboding dream or two) ever gotten in the way of anything? You quickly discover that there's something very wrong in the Asylum... through the use of her pills, Fran can see the monstrous shadows that loom over everyone, and it seems like the other kids are aware of them too, though they can't escape them. Fran stages a daring escape, but the world is dark and full of danger, and while horrific visions and creatures plague her every step, including the horned beast that taunts her dreams, Fran pushes onward. But is she ready for what she may find even if she survives? Nightmarish, darkly whimsical, and creatively perverse, Fran Bow is an engaging game with an inventive story and characters... if you can stomach it.

In booblyc's Keeper of the Grove 3, the latest installment in the bright tower defense strategy series, everyone wants to go green, but some, like the evil sorcerer sending his minions to swarm your magical grove and steal its protons, have a weird idea of what that entails. Naturally, this cannot stand! You need your protons for... stuff!... and thangs... so you'll have to enlist the help of the land's protectors to drive the evil forces away. In each level, use gold gained from defeating enemies to place defensive critters along the paths to protect your protons from being carried off. It's a little like Cursed Treasure in that you're trying to protect your jewel-like protons from being carted off, but here at least if you slay an enemy trying to abscond with one, you can pass your cursor over it to send it back to your cache. Need a little boost? Then activate the single-use powerups when you find them from slain foes to activate helpful spells like flames! Each defensive unit has different abilities, and while they can be upgraded during battle to be more powerful, you'll want to spend any gems you earn to permanently boost your skills between stages. If you really want to make your defenders powerful, however, you'll seek out the Stones of Knowledge in levels and pay them to unlock new defender upgrade types. You'll know them when they see them... they look like such big, strong hands, don't they?

After leaving players emotionally reeling in the aftermath of his Papers, Please, Lucas Pope lives up to the theme of the Ludum Dare competition 'You are the Monster' by putting you in the unenviable position of trying to become the premiere provider of heaps of unwanted junk mail select mass-marketing mail services. Corporations are struggling determinedly to improve the entire planet with fabulous timeshare offers, strictly 100% legitimate charity projects, lines of credit to extend to the economically disadvantaged and much much more, but they're frustrated because people are calmly going about their private lives and have never heard of these phenomenal opportunities! That's where you come in. In Pope's time management simulation Unsolicited you're there to get these world-changing corporate messages out to the People.

ProtonStudio's Time Clickers, also free for iOS and Android as well as ye olde Steam, is billed as "an incremental game with guns and time travel", though sadly Taco Bell is nowhere to be found. Instead, it's just you and your pistol against red biospheres, cubes that can be destroyed by aiming and firing on them with the mouse, and grant cash when destroyed to spend on either upgrading your weapon, or buying other automatic "team" weapons that fire and gather cash on their own. Every few levels you'll face a miniboss that needs to be destroyed before time runs out, while at other times bonus objects like rainbow orbs may appear to be shot and grant big cash bonuses. If you can't pass a boss level, just click one of the lesser levels at the top of the screen to go back and grind for cash. With tons of upgrades, achievements, and more to find, Time Clickers is a simple formula, but rendered weirdly addictive thanks to fast-paced gameplay and a snappy style and soundtrack. Though eventually the damage your "team" does far outstrips your pistol without piling on the upgrades, and some players will be disappointed that it lacks the weirdo charm and humour of other idle games like Candy Box! or Cookie Clicker, Time Clickers will appeal to fans of bombastic arcade-style shooter games. You can eventually unlock special abilities, and as you move from location to location, the game only gets, well, prettier. It's sort of like the gaming equivalent of a lava lamp crossed with a Michael Bay movie, if you get my drift. And even if you don't, Time Clickers is a solid, satisfyingly stylish addition to the incremental genre.

Play Time Clickers

Time Clickers (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

Android:
Time Clickers

Windows:
Get the free full version (Steam)

Mac OS X:
Get the free full version (Steam)

Linux:
Get the free full version (Steam)

Created in just three days for Ludum Dare 33's "You Are The Monster" theme, this retro puzzle platformer by Team Oni is devilishly cute. In Oni Yu Can Scare Them, you play, well, Oni Yu, a demon who's been chosen to terrify the local populace to get them ready for the arrival of his dark lord, who's been forgotten in the last thousand years or so. Using the [arrow] keys to move and [A] to jump, your goal in each level is to scare all the people by possessing certain things with [S], which allows you to move the object around. Hopping well? Horrifying! Shuffling vase? Unspeakable! The thing is, some characters are dangerous. Shamans, for example, don't fear you and can in fact destroy you, since they can see you unless you're possessing something and not moving, necessitating the need to sneak by, while brave samurai fear nothing!... except the undead, of course. While games about possessing things to scare people aren't really that scarce, Oni Yu Can Scare Them is still executed very well considering its minuscule development time, with some neat ideas regarding the ways you have to scare different "enemies". Though dismounting ladders is fiddly (hit [A] at the top when not moving to jump off), and the unpredictable character movement can mean a lot of waiting and fiddling around at times, Oni Yu Can Scare Them is still fun, and an idea we'd love to see further polished and developed from its team one day.

Play Oni Yu Can Scare Them

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means! Fish tacos, ladies, gentles, and assorted other gentlefolk! Aw, yeah. First you get yourself some canola oil or whatever, and you heat that up. Then you slice up some tilapia (it's cheap!), lightly dredge it in flour seasoned with garlic salt, pepper, onion power, and sweet paprika. Then you fry it in the hot oil for, eh, say seven minutes or so, drop it in the tortilla-thinger of your choice, and garnish it with toppings! I recommend spicy mayo, lettuce, and maybe some cheddar cheese. ... oh, very well. And I guess you could also play some free online escape games while you eat them. Are you happy now, you savages?! Did you get what you came for? I only wanted to try to make you dinner, but you didn't appreciate it, did you? No, don't talk to me. It's too late. Go hang out with Primera, no1game, and Esklavos, since they're not sharing recipes.

Ah, the old west. Lawless bandits, tumbleweeds, open sky. Kind of makes you want to practice your typing, doesn't it? That's the idea behind Khromatique's Jack MacQwerty, an arcade game-meets-typing tutor set during a gunslinger's last stand. You play as the titular Jack MacQwerty, fastest typer in the west, squaring off against an oncoming horde of bandits and marauders, each with a name goofier than the last. You must type each name as it comes towards you to blast the bad guy away, while also making sure to type "reload" when your chambers run dry. Innocent hostages will start to mix in with the baddies, so you need keen eyes and fast fingers if you want to last as long as possible. Give the game a few tries and you'll be chewing through the alphabet like a pro.

Life is full of obstacles. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing but walls in our way. Don't you wish you didn't have to go around? Don't you wish you could just go... Through? Well, that's just how the pixely little protagonist of goshki's new retro puzzle platform game rolls. Use the [arrow] keys to traipse your way through each of the twelve levels, moving from block to block towards the gateway to worlds beyond. Of course, once in a while you'll find yourself unable to platform further. In such instances, it's best to ram your face into a wall. Seriously. Push against a vertical wall and the little reality-bender will pass right on...through, causing the level to reshuffle in the process. Empty spaces become platforms and platforms become empty spaces. It's all mindbending goodness in Through.

You know, if you ignore all the murdering, razing, and defiling, vikings weren't so bad. In fact, they were downright cuddly, or at least they looked that way in Frozen Islands as they rescued their crew from frost giants across the sea. In Deqaf Studios' action-centric strategy-lite game Frozen Islands: New Horizons, however, just because they all escaped certain death doesn't mean they'll be resting on their laurels, as they sail around the ocean in search of treasure, conquering islands along the way. As before, you create your army before each island siege by selecting the appropriate types of warriors for whatever you'll be facing. Though your army fights automatically, you can trigger special-attacks to help them out. If they win, the island is under your control, allowing you to tax it for gold to spend on upgrading your forces, while every two islands claimed allows you to increase the maximum size of the army you can take into battle. Like the original game, Frozen Islands: New Horizons is both simple and addictive, thanks to its eye-catching, cute and colourful style, though you may find yourself cringing at the dark-skinned, mask-wearing, spear-throwing tribesmen often accompanied by monkey soldiers. (Yikes.) The biggest new addition to the game, apart from all soldier types being available from the get-go, is being able to sail manually around the map, which occasionally leads to random encounters... you have to defend your ship from attack, but unlike island sieges, you don't get a chance to shuffle your army around beforehand, so it's a good idea to make sure your formation is always tweaked. If you enjoyed the original game, Frozen Islands: New Horizons is more of the same with minor tweaks, with tons of islands to battle on, and upgrades to be had.

Play Frozen Islands: New Horizons

I thought we'd all agreed by now (and by "we" I mean "every piece of pop culture under the sun") that exploring ancient tombs is a bad idea. Too bad Carmel Games' heroine didn't get the message, because in Katja's Escape: The Pharaoh's Tomb, the titular intrepid explorer is now trapped inside the dark ruins, and to escape, WE NEED TO GO DEEPER... sorry. To play, just click on things to interact when the cursor changes colour or shape, and pay close attention to your surroundings for clues or secret mechanisms, of which the place is lousy with. Katja's Escape: The Pharaoh's Tomb is still on the really short side, best for players who have literally five minutes or so to spare, but its handful of puzzles are all pleasantly logical without being particularly demanding. Personally, if I were going to go to the trouble of booby-trapping my resting place to keep people out, I wouldn't leave ciphers and deactivation items strewn around... nah, just a good ol' boulder for head crushing balanced above the entryway, but I guess I'm just a purist.

Play Katja's Escape: The Pharaoh's Tomb

Max Glockling thinks all you need is ten puzzle platforming levels to teach you How to be a Gent, and you may be surprised that this involves losing your legs and the ability to make yourself explode, violently. The short game follows Henry, who's trying to help his beloved Henryetta reach her goals by figuring out how to help her reach the portal in each level. Use the [arrow] keys to move and jump, but don't tap the down [arrow] until you've got Henry where you want him, since that causes him to toss aside his hat and turn into a stationary block. Once you do so, Henryetta appears, and can use Henry to help her reach new heights... especially since tapping the down [arrow] a second time, even if you're in control of Henryetta, will make Henry explode, launching his beloved (and anything else nearby) violently away, which is helpful for reaching places that are really out of the way. Tap [R] to reload if you get stuck. At less than a dozen levels, How to be a Gent likely won't last longer than your average coffee break, and most of the difficulty will probably come from the fact that the controls are a little too zippy and slippery, most likely to allow for the momentum of Henry's explosions. Still, it's desperately cute, with its curiously funky soundtrack, and while it would have been nice to see a relationship that was a bit more reciprocal rather than one person constantly putting themselves out for another, the message of caring about someone else to be willing to help them reach their goals is still a sweet one. Despite some fiddly movement, How to be a Gent is an appealing little bite of a puzzle platformer, and we hope we see more from the creator soon.

Play How to be a Gent

Just because you're a hero doesn't mean your heroics always pay off. In fact, you fell in the final battle against a dark sorceror, and though he was struck down as well, centuries later he's decided death is for suckers and he's risen again... and that means you need to do so, too. In Iconic Games' action RPG Specter Knight, your old bones have been animated once more, and you'll need to hack and slash your way through randomly generated dungeon floors, leveling up and upgrading your equipment along the way. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move, hold the [spacebar] to defend, and click to interact, though you'll automatically attack any enemy within range. Just watch your health bar, since while enemies not only drop experience for leveling up and gems to spend on upgrades, they can pack a mean punch. You can activate any spells or special abilities by clicking their icons at the top of the screen, too. Since the dungeon layout is random, you'll find lots of secrets, treasure, and even the odd boss fight or three, though many doors will require you to find keys to unlock them. Die, and you'll reanimate back on the first floor, with your equipment, levels, and gems intact. All of which sounds like very legitimate hero-ing business, but I have to question the authenticity of any so-called hero who doesn't speak entirely in HYAAs and HUTs. Just sayin'.

[Note: As of 8/23/2015 the level bug has been fixed. If you had issues playing, please try again!]

There's nothing wrong with being bad now and again... in fact, Keybol and Izzy Aminocv have proven it can actually be very good. With Kill the Plumber 2, the sequel to the original popular puzzle platforming parody, that infuriating, overall'd, would-be hero is headed to rescue the princess, and we can't have that. In each stage, use the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to move around and try to stop the hero from reaching the princess or the flag, but be quick about it since you don't have much time. As a video game "bad guy", each of whom you'll play as with their own abilities and weaknesses, you'll need to work within the rules of the game to get rid of him, so don't let him jump on your head! Figure out how to use the scenery to put the kibosh on his rescue mission, which is easier said than done since there's a lot of split-second timing involved. It does, in fact, feel a little more focused on fast feet than puzzling this time around, though once the game starts going and allows you to play with different goons, things get a lot more creative... especially with the little twist partway through. Kill the Plumber 2 is just as beautifully designed and quirky as the original, and fans who always felt like maybe those little baddies were more huggable than the so-called hero will appreciate another chance to win the day.

Play Kill the Plumber 2

Long before sharks took to the skies with tornadoes and questionable primetime CGI, Mausland was making these be-fin'd behemoths rampage in games like Miami Shark, Medieval Shark, and even Prehistoric Shark. And as the saying goes, "You can't keep a good thirty foot long great white capable of launching itself out of the water to latch onto aircrafts down", and so now we have more bite-y, scream-y arcade action with Los Angeles Shark. Your goal? Cause as much carnage and combos as possible by diving down through the water and blasting yourself up out to chew on everything you can. Use the [arrow] keys to swim, [CTRL] or [A] to bite, and skip to the end with [E] or restart with [R] if you're not having a good run. While Los Angeles Shark might feel a little simplistic with its focus on high-scores within a short playing time, the game is packed with pop-culture and other goofy references, not to mention achievements to unlock, and if you love a good bit of carnage and have a morbid sense of humour, then like the rest of the series, Los Angeles Shark is your sharky soulmate.

Play Los Angeles Shark

They say love is blind, but even the most classic tales (excluding certain animated features) will tell you that frogs are typically ill-suited to marital bliss, at least when one half is human. In cute puzzle game Save the Princess: Love Triangle, the princess has been turned into a frog, and the prince needs to bring her a magic potion to turn her back to normal... though he's a bit dense. He's only motivated by cake, you see, so you'll need to click on the ground to place cake arrows to lure him forward. Click an arrow to rotate it to direct where the prince will head next when he encounters it, and think carefully about where it goes, since you have a limited number, and the prince will gobble it down when he touches it. Not only do you need to contend with steering the prince away from spikes, but you'll also need to either use some of your limited cake supply to steer away rival princes... or, well, lure yours to a sword to finish them off. Throw in some buttons and doors to activate to change the path, and things aren't as straight-forward as they initially appear. Though pretty dated when it comes to gender roles and on the whole very gentle with difficulty, Save the Princess: Love Triangle, is a cute, bright little puzzle game in a simpler vein of titles like Talesworth Adventure, making it cheery fun to kick back with... without breaking your brain.

Play Save the Princess: Love Triangle

[Mac user? Try freeware tool RPG Hub]

[Warning: Please be aware that this game deals closely with themes some players may find upsetting. Refer to the first comment by me with spoilers if you wish to know more to make an informed decision before playing.]

In free indie horror adventure Blank Dream by Teriyaki Tomato, and translated by vgperson, Mishiro Usui's left a suicide note detailing how much she hates her boring life before she throws herself into a lake... but of course, that's not the end of the story. She wakes up somewhere dark and wet, unable to remember her name or anything about herself, but in short order discovers that the way to regaining her past, and maybe grant her wish, is to hunt for all the mirrors in this world and break them by ending her life in front of them all over again. Mishiru is faced with either wandering The Mirror World like other listless spirits, who all are struggling to regain their memories and make their wishes come true, or braving the darkness within it. Use the [arrow] keys to move around, holding left [shift] to run (and you'll need to), the [spacebar] to interact, and [ESC] to open the menu, which allows you to use items or load your game. While sometimes the game will prompt you to use items, at other times you may need to use them manually from the menu. You can only save at certain points by using a blue flame, so make use of it when you see it! There are a lot of traps and ways for Mishiro to meet (another) untimely end, so think, but think quickly. If you see a mirror that doesn't reflect Mishiro, well, maybe there's someone else who might like to take a peek inside... ?

[Mac user? Try freeware tool RPG Hub]

Ever played the improv game where you and your friends create a story by having each person say a few sentences? Usually it ends with a overly dramatic climax of a story with no real plot and lots of giggles. Well, what if you did the same thing, but with a game? The Seventh Door shows us what can happen when great serious minds come together to build an adventure game we've never seen the likes before. Sriden, Creation, Trotter, Amalrich Von Monesser, Roi of the Suisse, Criket, Mapache, and AlterEgo, members of the Famas community, each created a section of this free mystery noir game and created a pretty chilling supernatural thriller. This indie game may not flow as smoothly as other story driven games, but its unique gameplay has got them all beat. While the [arrow] keys and [spacebar] will get you through most of the scenes, each one seems to have extra controls to it. Thankfully it's good with letting you know how to control things, but know you're going to be all over the keyboard. You see this story from two different sides... Julian, a man who wakes up on a rooftop only knowing a name, and Detective Zikas, who is investigating a murder unknowing it will throw him right in the middle of a grand scale conspiracy. With each section a bit different than the one before, it will have you fully locked in until the end.

[Mac user? Try freeware tool RPG Hub]

'Come on, big money, no whammies!' An entry in the 2015 Indie Game Maker Contest for a shot at more than $25,000.00USD, Sapiboong's new combat-free chibi adventure game Stock Trader Hiyo! looks every bit the part. Responding to wave after wave of human heroes looting and pillaging the Japanese monster world, these mythological creatures have taken a page from the human realm's playbook and established their own fantasy corporate empires in what must be the most extreme example of 'the weird turn pro' ever. Enter Hiyo, a plucky storybook chickadee who's out to make his fortune playing the monster stock market, but who's also utterly clueless about what stock markets even are or the intricacies of the corporate financial world. Fortunately his friends provide him — and you! — with a handy tutorial and it's up to Hiyo to dig around three different — and boy howdy, do we ever mean different! — otherworldly corporations in the hopes of gleaning some rare and valuable insider stock trading information.

PencilKids' monkeys never stay happy for long, no matter what point-and-click puzzle capering you get up to with them, and with Monkey GO Happy Samurai, the only thing that'll cheer them up aside from finding all the lost mini-monkeys is seeing a samurai, so you'd best figure out how to summon one. You know, unless you're the sort of heartless monster who can sleep and go about their daily business to the wet sobbing and snuffling of weepy primates. (I suggest ear plugs.) To play, just click yellow arrows to move to different areas, and watch the cursor for any changes to indicate an interactive area. Drag any items you're carrying from your inventory at the top of the screen to where you'd like to try using them, and of course, keep your eyes open for the 70 mini-monkeys (where do these keep coming from?!) disguised as ninjas in every possible hiding place. Like most Monkey GO Happy games, this one blends turning over literally every rock and bush, as well as some traditional "bring item X to person Y" style item useage and fetch quests, with some more cerebral puzzle solving that requires you to crack codes... though Monkey GO Happy Samurai still rests more gently on the difficulty spectrum than not. Monkey GO Happy Samurai is as cute and breezily fun as you'd hope, with a surprising amount of areas to explore and a lot of charming attention to detail. Who knows... you might just find this makes you GO happy too.

Play Monkey GO Happy Samurai

As a human, I'd be too scared to sneak around an abandoned mansion, especially on a rainy night. But as a spider? Sure, I could do that, especially if there's no people around to crush me under their shoes. Tiger Style Games, makers of Waking Mars, lets you explore the mysteries of the estate in Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon on your iOS device or PC. Tap and hold to make your spider walk, or swipe to make it jump. Tap on the spider to make it crouch. When you jump starting from a crouch, a strand of silk will follow your trail. If you land on a surface close enough, you'll anchor the strand and create the side of a web. When you create any geometric shape the web will be filled in, ready for bug catching.

In this fantastically retro explorer platform game created in PICO-8, you play as our pink haired hero who was drawn to this strange cavern filled with spikes and mystery. Sophie Houlden's Dusk Child is a short adventure game where you find alluring orbs, holey buckets, and strange statues that either have a puzzle to be solved or are trying to kill you. One thing's for sure you're in for a pixelated treat as Sophie brought us Linear RPG, BOXGAME, Sarah's Run and a few others we all loved. While Dusk Child isn't as polished as some of the other titles it's still one to be enjoyed. Just be careful, because while there are save points for when you die there isn't any save for when you close out of the game. However, this game isn't that long and can be finished in one sitting. It also does some things differently than other platformer games, one being that you don't have to worry about the ceiling when you jump as your head goes right through it, so no unexpected sharp descents to your frustrating death. And while spikes are deadly when falling from above, you can easily walk through them without giving up the ghost. With some other great and clever devices, Dusk Child is sure to have its place among Houlden's wonderful games.

You guys. You guys. We're only four months away from Christmas, which means that whether you celebrate it or not, you have, oh, about two weeks before all the stores start playing the music nonstop. Time flies! It's a crushing realization. So why not ignore the passing of your own mortality and play some free escape games with Weekday Escape? This week! Vitamin Hana has heard you've been getting out of their escapes easy, so they're taking drastic measures. Self Defiant presents a terrifying dystopian future where naps are apparently illegal, which is way scarier than some chick with a bow. And Esklavos wants you to just, like, chillllll, man, with the birds and the bees for a while.

OZDY's physics puzzle game Chromatic Seals, with art by Ah-Tan and music by Incompetech, is a little weird, because the premise involves leaching colours from vibrant cartoon seals and turning them gray, which is somehow a good thing, so I suppose we all owe Discord an apology. In each level, you slice through ice and bits of scenery to try to match seals to coloured ice... if a seal touches matching ice, it turns gray, but that piece of ice is no longer useable, so you'll want to figure out how to make use of the physics in each level to make all seals happy and gray, in as few slices as possible. Just click and drag through ice or other material, then release to make your cut. Though things start out painfully easy for the first handful of levels, the difficulty begins to creep up, and the lack of instructions beyond the very basic means you're often left to figure out how things work on your own. Chromatic Seals' slicing mechanic isn't really anything new, but its bolstered here with clean level design that makes use of hinges, ropes, and other simple elements to make you think without getting overly extravagant. While completing a level is usually easy, doing so within the maximum number of slices for a three-star rating is more challenging... though still not likely to be anything to really make you break a sweat. If you like physics puzzles, Chromatic Seals is a fun, well put together little game with a lovely presentation that kids will be able to pick up and master in no time, without feeling too kid-centric as to alienate the young at heart.

Play Chromatic Seals

Hey there, friend. Feeling a little overburdened from your day? Life, or just gravity, weighing you down? Then it sounds like you need the dulcet tones and soothing pastel atmosphere of a TomaTea escape game to pick you up... and, why, here's one right now! Blossom Time is all pink hues and meditative (though oddly melancholic) piano music as you explore your surroundings and try to find a way out... which, naturally, involves solving a whole lot of puzzles. To do so, just click on the transparent bars that appear when your cursor passes over the edges of the screen to move around the room, and also watch the tip of your cursor in case it lights up to show you something that can be interacted with. Click the little "i" that appears when you mouse over an item you're carrying to view it up close for more information. As usual for a TomaTea title, if you click on a coded lock or puzzle and get the message "I have no clue how to solve this!", it means you haven't yet viewed the relevant hint hidden in the room, so give your surroundings another scour before tackling it again.

Flashchaz's new physics-based action game, Bubble Boy, is dreamy in every sense of the word. You play as a small boy exploring the machinations of his unconscious mind one week at a time. After being crooned at by some silky storyteller's voice-over, you must guide your bubble'd hero through each level with the [WASD] or [arrow] keys, collecting floating triangular nodules of dream-matter as you go. The walls will pop your erstwhile hero and send him back to the start, as will spikes, lasers, and moving wall sections, so speed and accuracy are key. You can also grab each level's winged eye triangle to gain bonus points. Trust us, this all makes sense if you're asleep.

Warning: This game contains flashing elements which may trigger photosensitive seizures in people with epilepsy. Fond of dungeon crawls? How about classic RPG themes with plenty of races and classes? Feeling a nostalgic for the days where you had to switch out floppy disks to continue on to the next chapter of a game? Then 68k Studios is here for you with their mobile game Mazes of Karradash for Android and iOS! This retro adventure game stays true to its inspiration of ye old days with its pixel art and even the sounds of floppy discs being read. Your goal is to build up your town with the money gained by adventurers diving into the Maze. While they don't come back alive, their gold makes it out intact, which lets you build more houses for new races to come and join, or more academies for learning new classes, as well as other buildings that help improve your next hero. Every level of the cave contains a boss guarding the exit somewhere in the level, but with a small mini map and a screen that only shows you one square in front of you, you'll soon understand why it's called a maze instead of dungeon. But searching the area (whether by actually exploring or just being lost) you'll find chests containing gold, potions or relics of weapons or armor which then unlock better equipment. As you travel, however, your chances of being attacked by some stereotypical dungeon monsters increases. This is indicated in the corner by an orb that slowly turns red with each movement. Expect to die plenty of times, but each death is another step forward for the generations to come, and soon your little humble village will be a blooming city of heroes.

All I wanna do, is fight some soldiers wearing blue, with a giant army! (A giant army!) All I wanna do, is upgrade my units too, in a giant army! (A giant army!) Aleksy Severinov and Kirill Koshurnikov's Invasion is a real-time strategy defense game where you drag and drop your teeny-teeny planetary defenders around the grid-like battlefield on each level to contend with the incoming waves of enemy soldiers. Just click and drag any unit anywhere on the field to put them to work, though of course different units are more useful in some situations than others. The Archer, for instance, whose motto according to the army management screen is "deadly arrows from the sky" (also weirdly enough my accountant's motto... I worry about that guy) is best suited to pluck away at an enemy's health at a distance, with units like the swordsman acting as meat shields up front. Survive a level, and you'll earn skill points you can use to upgrade each unit's skills and abilities, though you can only take four unit types into battle, so choose carefully... especially since once a unit is wiped out in battle, it's gone for good until you restart!

There are a lot of weird creatures in the world. The goblin shark. The platypus. The star-nosed mole. People who put ranch dressing on pizza. But have you heard of the one that lives in the alps, with legs of all different lengths? In Carmel Games' point-and-click adventure The Search for the Dahu, one intrepid reporter with the world's longest microphone cord has set out to track this reclusive beast down. To play, just click on things to interact when the cursor highlights green as you move around the area, and use the items you find to get past obstacles, either on their own or by clicking first one and then another in your inventory to try to combine them. Like most Carmel Games titles, The Search for the Dahu is pleasantly goofy in a very cartoonish way, with over-the-top characters, and puzzles that require some abstract thinking to solve... some more than others. The Search for Dahu actually follows a reasonably logical progression initially, though at some point you'll find yourself thinking, "... yeah, okay, I guess that sort of makes sense," but on the whole, it's a short and cheerfully silly little game that's good for a grin and a short break from your day.

Play The Search for the Dahu

Funkyland serves up another sweet escape game Fruit Kitchens No. 25: Melon Green, where, should you wish to leave the cheery green scene, you'll need to find the seven melons hidden throughout the room. Presumably before the music and setting makes you put on an apron and some sixties hairdo and spin around the room like a maniac. Some of the fruits will just be sitting out for the taking, but others are hidden behind puzzles and locks, so make sure you click everywhere to find them! As you'd expect from Funkyland, Melon Green is bright and happy, with a fantastic whimsical design, though perhaps a little easier than some others in the series. So get to hunting those melons up, because it's the only way you're ever going to escape to some better fruit!... what? Melons are lame!

Play Fruit Kitchens No. 25: Melon Green

In Dagdargon Games and Avalon Alliance's action puzzle physics game Jump Out! The Box, a bug that goes astray finds itself trapped in a deadly, nightmarish construction of such fiendish imagination that... oh. No. Wait. It's just a box with some rotating bottle caps, fans, spikes, and stars inside. My bad. Nevertheless, to escape, you need to guide the bug to the exit in each level by clicking and dragging on it to set its trajectory, and then releasing it to launch it forward, grabbing all the level stars you can along the way. Those bottle caps I mentioned? You'll need to know when to stop them to aim your bug true, and of course, should you have more than one bug in a level, they all need to make it out safely to win. Just be careful, since a bug can only jump while on the red caps, because of... reasons. In the grand scheme of things, Jump Out! The Box takes a familiar mechanic and presents it with a high coat of polish, though maybe not a whole lot of innovation, even with the new elements introduced throughout. The game's 20 levels are solid, both in their construction, which often requires juuust enough aiming and timing to succeed, and their lovely, sleek cartoony graphics. Jump Out! The Box is, simply put, a pleasantly tidy little game with a great presentation, and we hope future installments experiment with its mechanics even further.

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There is a story behind the old mill, where the drunken skeleton awaits. A terrible story that may have been better lost with time. But this young girl is searching for the truth, letting herself be blown by the east winds farther into her past that she should have never entered. Shademare's The Old Mill is a free indie platform game with a deep story that you can only gain by collecting the jugs of alcohol and giving it to the worn out looking skeleton who appears on your path. You use the wind and your trusty white blanket to travel across the odd barren landscape. While you automatically use your blanket as a parachute of sorts by running off the edge with the [arrow] keys, pressing and holding [A] gives you a extra boost. Be careful, as you can only use this once each time your feet leave the ground and it won't recharge until you're safely back on solid ground. But not everything here is as solid as they look... branches will snap and dirt will crumble so you must always keep moving forward. And that's the only way to remember what happened at the old mill, if you want to remember at all.

Living in the old wild west is hard enough without a money grubbing bad guy calling the shots. With no sheriff in town to keep things in line, our unlikely hero Incendio decides enough is enough after becoming inspired while reading Robin Hood. If he doesn't stand up to Boss Grimshaw, nobody will in Gunpowder, a unique puzzle game by Rogue Rocket Games for PC or your iOS device. Armed with a few good kegs of gunpowder, fire, and maybe some TNT for good measure, it's up to you to explode, burn, blow up and demolish your way to the hoarded treasure so you can redistribute it back where it belongs. Being armed is the easy part. The hard part is getting to the gold.

Warm, soft pastel colours. Detailed, cute, cartoony environments. Piles and piles of puzzles. Yep, it's gotta be a Yonashi escape game! In Kitchen in Summer, you're locked cozy but busy little kitchen, full of rattling pots and half-started mise en place, not to mention a fair amount of culinary implements scattered hither and thither. To play, just use the transparent bars that appear when you mouse over the left and right sides of the screen to move around the kitchen, and click on things to zoom in or interact with them. Don't forget to examine items you're carrying up close by clicking the little magnifying glass icon, because you never know if you'll be able to manipulate them into something new or reveal a clue. Kitchen in Summer is very heavy on locks with codes to be deciphered, and you'll spend a lot of your time first scouring the room for the clues you need to do so, then figuring out how to implement them. There's a mild whiff of "adventure game logic" going on, with some items not being able to accomplish tasks that they should, and cracking puzzle solutions can mean some convoluted thinking... though it's just as possible to over think a few of them, too. But while Kitchen in Summer still isn't the longest or most complicated escape game around, it's still extremely clever and creative, working with its setting and theme to deliver some satisfyingly smart puzzles you'll need to think your way through. Yonashi knows how to make games that are cute but no slouch in the difficulty department, either, making Kitchen in Summer a very welcome escape for your time.

Play Kitchen in Summer

Pizzamakesgames delivers a thoroughly unsettling and surreal text adventure in The Third Kind, where a nightmare of a cliff and a void shocks you awake in the middle of the night, but your house isn't as you remember it. Played as if via an old glitching monitor, you read the s-l-o-w-l-y scrolling text, then click the action buttons at the bottom of the screen to try looking around, taking things, and so forth. People behaving ways that they shouldn't, familiar surroundings suddenly made unfamiliar, these things can be profoundly creepy in a way beyond more in-your face horror, and through the use of flickering imagery and light sound, The Third Kind reels you in. Sadly, there's no way to speed up that crawling text speed, and for some, any atmospheric shine that puts on the proverbial apple may dull quickly once you realize how long it takes to get anywhere or do anything. Its plodding presentation almost seems to discourage experimentation and repeated plays from all but the most patient, since you'll need to repeat a lot of actions and potentially entire sections of the game to get to the end... though it's actually on the short side. It was originally created in one month for the Write a Game Challenge, and for fans of creepy, experimental storytelling, The Third Kind is worth a look, even if it may leave you hungry for more.

Play The Third Kind

It's been some time in the making, but fans of dark fantasy, point-and-click adventure games, and Black Olive Games's signature sketchy, hand-drawn style can finally dive into Tainted Olive: Chapter 2, the second installment in their Tainted Olive series. (And if you haven't played the first one yet, now's a good time to catch up.) In a world of magic and war, he who controls the olive oil controls the universe, as it's one of the most useful magical substances in the world. The series follows the adventures of Silvian, a magic-crystal-wielding accidental adventurer who, like many adventurers, is caught up in a conflict greater than he is. A lot bigger. Tainted Olive is a very text-heavy series that focuses strongly on worldbuilding, and it crafts a surprisingly large fantasy universe with its own history, culture, and brand of magic. Thankfully, it also brings a handful of tricky puzzles to go with it.

wooood's Rob and Aliens is an adorable little platformer about a precocious pup whose bark is the only thing that can repel the truly terrifying green aliens trundling about. In each of the game's eight levels, use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move and jump as you head towards the end of each stage, grabbing all the... crackers? buttons?... along the way, with the down [arrow] or [S] to bark and destroy any aliens nearby, but only if you have at least one bone in the meter at the top of the screen, which depletes one bone by half with each mighty woof, making proper use of the limited bones in each stage important. Just watch your step around aliens and other hazards, since the doghouses that function as respawn points mean you're never sent back far if you take a hit, but three strikes and you'll need to restart the whole level. Rob and Aliens' old-school pixel style works with its simple but classic gameplay perfectly, especially with its oddly catchy soundtrack, and it all functions surprisingly well as both a nostalgia trip and a purely enjoyable little platformer. Enemies being able to fire when they're offscreen can be frustrating, since you can be bounding along only to take a blast to the face from something you couldn't even see, but Rob and Aliens makes up for it by being an otherwise engaging game that's juuuust long enough for the handful of elements it introduces. Rob and Aliens is old-school platforming fun without a lot of bells and whistles to make your day a little brighter.

Play Rob and Aliens

As you read this, cherished reader, I'm sleeping off a Weird Al concert. But don't think of me facedown on my hotel room pillow, snoring inelegantly, covered in confetti, accordions, and cheese sandwiches. Think of me instead as bravely slaving away, scouring the internet tirelessly, working hard to bring you your Weekday Escape... or at least, as hard work as writing smarmy comments about someone else's hard work can be. This week! Vitamin Hana has a problem with keeping track of their airplanes and you need to sort it out. Funkyland's hair is a mess and nobody is going anywhere until we fix it. And Andersam's second-ever game is just you, a few boxes, a locked door, and a key right in front of you... or is it?!

[Mac user? Try freeware tool RPG Hub]

[Note: While this game is technically complete, there is a very sizable update with additional content coming for Part 2 somewhere in the future, potentially a long way off. Part 1 is complete and offers approximately 25 hours of content.

In free indie RPG Faraway Story, crafted by Fantasy Factory and translated by vgperson, you're plucky Pia, a young girl who's striking out on her own to open up her own shop. Sure, she's just had a weird dream about a living doll hurling herself off a floating island, but Pia's not about to let that stop her. She wants to be a pharmacist, and more importantly, she's determined to cure the disease plaguing Port Fina. Except... what's with that floating continent in the sky nobody else really seems to care about? Faraway Continent has floated above Port Fina for so long everyone just accepts it as natural as the sun and the moon, but Pia is enraptured. Still, she's got a fledgling business to set up, mixing medicines, forging new items, running her store and more. But, say... what are the chances you think Pia's screwy dream has something to do with that land mass floating above everyone, and the disease ravaging the town?... naaaaah! And besides, Pia's adventure is just getting started! Fantasy Factory serves up a lovely, perky action RPG adventure with light-hearted charm and plenty of items to craft and secrets to uncover that will make the hours fly by despite what can be at times a frustratingly clunky combat system.

Hands up those of you who would love to take a vacation in an "Escape Hotel", especially one designed by Tesshi-e? Well, as luck would have it, that's exactly the premise of The Happy Escape 9, and if you can find all the coins hidden around the room, well, who knows what wonderful things might happen? To play, after first switching the language to English on the main menu unless you can read Japanese, just click to move around the room, use items, or zoom in on things... don't forget to be diligent, since no changing cursor means you'll want to click everywhere so you don't miss something you can interact with! Oh, and whatever you do, no matter how relaxing everything is, and how comfy that bed looks, do not lay down and go to sleep... we've got Happy Coins to find!

When a magic sphere is stolen, the king sends Ayo the Hero to get it back in this very cute, very purple physics puzzle platform game by Crabroid. Using [WASD] or the [arrow] keys, Ayo rolls and jumps around the screen, and while a single hit from a hazard or enemy will kick you back to the level's beginning, each stage has boxes to push, switches to press, and platforms to swing to help you get around. Though it could do with a little clarity (the first level is not bugged, there are two locked doors!), Ayo the Hero is largely a very cuddly little game with a focus on simple, light-hearted gameplay. Levels are small, and tend to be at their best when they're puzzle-focused, since movement is a little too slow to make the more precise platforming or reactions as quick as they should be. As a result, Ayo the Hero is a cute game that could use a bit of polish and puffing out to really make it appeal to more people, though its dedication to trying new things, such as its increasingly elaborate levels with new elements like the gravity switches, make us hope we keep seeing more from the developer in the future.

Play Ayo the Hero

They say an army marches on its stomach, but that was before incremental idle games got so popular. Now world domination is just a click or two (... million...) away, baby, in Deqaf Studio's Immense Army, where all you do is click yourself silly, both to generate more troops and gold, as well as help your army out against enemies. See, each building you buy generates a certain type of warrior, who can be made stronger if you've got the cash, and when you send them out to fight, their strength determines how well they clout enemy forces... who can be captured to toil in your mine for mo' money, incidentally. If you're not a fan of the "clicker" genre of games, chances are you might find Massive Army a bit too simple for you, though Deqaf Studio's vibrant, colourful art and characters does a lot to charm. You'll unlock more dangerous areas, discover artifacts with passive bonuses, and click your way through vampires, knights, and more. With a little more development, Immense Army might really hook an immense amount of players, but as it stands, it's still a cute, satisfying clicker for fans of itty-bitty deadly combat.

Play Immense Army

Yearning for that next tough-to-put-down tap game for your mobile device? Game of Loot is a free iOS and Android match-3 style game that's themed like a sweet dungeon crawling RPG from the days of yore with a healthy dollop of modern-day crafting thrown in for good measure. Combining the best gameplay elements from each of these genres, Super Ultra Hyper have given the whole thing a crisp, visually-pleasing and 'action hero comic book' graphical format and buttery-smooth feel, making for an environment that's eminently comfortable to interact in. Tap to remove groups of three or more tiles, which also sends your conveniently color-coded questing heroes on the attack and recovers their stamina. Fight unique dungeon creatures with gameplay-altering special abilities, earn recipes and crafting materials, and upgrade your party's equipment for even better hauls! Rows of colored tiles will advance from the bottom of the screen, and if they're push all the way off the top your corresponding heroes will take hits! You'll need to be quick to spot and collapse groups of three or more, which will alter the grouping of the remaining tiles. Dungeon critters will often have their own special abilities, such as increasing or decreasing the tile spawn rate while they live, or turning various tiles to stone or bombs. You can revert them by matching adjacent tiles, but eventually remaining bombs will explode and your party will take damage.

Ishara's tale is one of tragedy... a family betrayal, a lover brought to violence, and finally ending with Ishara's death in the icy waters which are haunted and cursed to this day by her weeping. So why would anyone take on the name of the legendary sea witch? In Happy Backwards' free indie visual novel, Ishara: Bane of the Sea, you play as a former noblewoman who has been tossed aside by her family. She decides to start her life anew as a pirate, christening herself as Ishara. But first she must go back to the family that discarded her and take what they had promised her long ago... a vessel fine enough to call her own. But things are never easy for Ishara and after a confrontation with real pirates Ishara must save her ship along side her twin sister Cendre or her sister's fiance Felix. With four endings and two main branches of storyline you decide... is there is romance blooming, if a broken family can be repaired, or if Ishara has a different adventure drawn out for her. You know, in between fighting for your life in this action adventure narrative.

Providence by Eight Bit Skyline is a free indie interactive story where you watch two men's destinies intertwine, and while usually that is a line in a romance novel, this is anything but romantic. This dark tale may seem confusing at first as you jump around a timeline with few references to where it falls into place, but there will be a certain point where it all clicks. This drama that plays out before you will leave you with chills as you watch the morning, evening, and night of a life. Using the [arrow] keys to move, you can interact with objects with the [spacebar] when their name pops up on the bottom of the screen. When you have items to use, you press their corresponding number when their picture also appears at the bottom on the screen. When any new action comes along, instructions come along with it, so you can always just enjoy the story and not fumble around with the controls. And when it comes to gameplay, it is all about this dark adventure and the story that forms from it.

Dominoes is probably pretty darn close to the original tile matching game. With a genre that's been around since before computers, it's hard to keep related games feeling fresh. But now you can play dominoes by dropping tiles rather than placing them in Domino Drop, a strategic puzzle game for your iOS device (Android version coming soon!) by Vitalii Zlotskii. Touch and swipe to align your tile, and release to let it go. Reminiscent of Dr. Mario, when two or more matching pieces touch, they disappear, leaving the other half of the domino to drop down. Unlike Dr. Mario, however, you can't rotate your tiles. The game keeps track of both your score and how many dominoes you've dropped, and when the board fills, it's game over.

In this creepy and unsettling world known as The Womb, where you find yourself performing a series of dangerous tests for unseen watchers, it's interesting that you're called a 'weapon' when all you can really do is run and change gravity in the beginning. Lacking the very important ability to jump, you must pass the tests by changing the pull of gravity in Gabriel Robertson's platform puzzler adventure. Inversia is a high difficulty action filled game where you must dodge enemies, fly over spikes and find the way out of the level only to face a new and harder challenge. Things are ever changing with every room having a new twist, a new trick, and a new challenge for you to try and overcome. You can play with whatever feels more comfortable, with your choice of the [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move and either [Z] or [M] to switch gravitational pulls... but only when your feet are touching the ground. You'll need the security of these keys, because this game is going to test your reflexes and your stress meter even with the more comfortable hand position. Nothing comes easy in Inversia.

It's been a while since we last saw Gam.eBBjp's beloved point-and-click puzzle Dismantlement games, and since then, they seem to have taken one thing to heart... go big, or go home. Like, really, really big. In Dismantlement: Earth, you are literally taking apart the world like some passive-aggressive Galactus, but with a noble goal... to disarm the bombs inside! To play, just click to interact, using the small arrows at the top, bottom, and sides of the planet to move around, and the button in the upper-right corner to back out of something you've zoomed in on. You'll quickly discover that the game is largely all about cracking codes, as you open various panels with strange puzzle locks inside them, and I hope you're not expecting too much help from the game, since it takes a decided "sink or swim" approach and demands you to figure things out on your own. For most players, this is exactly what they've come to expect and love about Dismantlement games, and Dismantlement: Earth is great at appearing to be completely mystifying, but often holding solutions that don't need to be overthought... even if you wind up doing so anyway. Most of the solutions you'll need to unravel come down to perspective in a clever way, though two will need you to look somewhere for inspiration that you may not immediately think of, and the finale comes with a ticking clock. Dismantlement: Earth is a solid chunk of gameplay, though not as whimsical or weird as some other entries in the series, and puzzle fans will be happy to crack open each and every layer it provides.

Play Dismantlement: Earth

[Editor's note: This game's violence is largely cartoony, but be aware that some enemies leave behind red sauce on defeat which may be resemble blood.]

Shirley Temple's animal crackers never had to deal with this. There's a Rumble in the Soup going on, instigated by one The Shpufa, and it's every prawn, crouton, and ghost pepper for themself in this all-out brawl! You're the lone rubber duck tasked with bringing order to this mad appetizer in a shooter game fashion. Guide your squeaky Rambo around with either the mouse or the [arrow] keys, and he'll take care of all the tricky aiming and shooting for you. Rescue your fellow duckies, take down tyrannical bosses, and serve up a four-course meal of liberation! Rumble in the Soup's arcade action is stylish, humorous, and surprisingly filling given how simple it is. Not unlike a good soup itself, no?

Created in just 72 hours for #CloneJamLord, Andrew C. Wang's Wanderment is a simple yet also simply lovely little pleasant-sigh-inducing platformer set in a 3D space about a blind kitten exploring its surroundings as it travels across town to find its friend. Though you can't see, you can sense objects around you by the sounds they make, as well as your own proximity to them, and they're represented by cascades of abstract particle effects. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to explore everywhere (remember, the space is 3D, so don't just go left and right!), and tap the [spacebar] to jump. The goal isn't to barrel around and try to find your friend as fast as possible, but rather to take your time and explore, making Wanderment most successful as an interactive art piece. Despite its relative simplicity, Wanderment manages to live up to its name, a combination of "wander" and "wonderment", by making you delight in your surroundings as they're revealed in artful, stylized particle representations, though this can sometimes be a little chaotic to interpret when you're trying to figure out where you are in relation to certain objects for platforming... understandable for a blind kitten, but potentially frustrating for a two-legged human. For all its short development time and simplicity, however, Wanderment still manages to deliver a charming and creative little experience that, with some polish and expansion, would make a gem of a full-fledged game.

Play Wanderment

Windows:
Get the free full version

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Congratulations! You survived another week. Or... maybe you didn't? In which case, still congratulations! Your dedication to escape games has caused you to rise from your tomb like an unholy abomination that must sustain itself on locked doors and puzzles, and that's still pretty rad! Regardless, celebrate another week gone by with your one and only Weekday Escape. This week! MayMay makes you serve up something sweet before you can leave. no1game would like you to take care of these repairs, please and thank you. And Zigurous knows what you like, little darlin', and that's 30 locked doors.

Okay. So maybe this looks a little bad. You come to in a dark, strange place, stumbling down a hallway that doesn't seem to have an end, only to find yourself trapped in a room where a little girl's voice tells you that you've been chosen to prove your worth to join her "sanctuary". And maybe this place is filled with cryptic symbols, vanishing doorways, mutilated dolls, and tripwires. But things could be worse!... right? In Mad Head Games' creepy new hidden-object adventure Maze: Subject 360, things are sincerely weird as you find yourself trapped and apparently at the whims of one twisted little girl who has no problem testing her "subject" against deadly traps. The last thing you remember is driving down a rainy road at night, before spinning out after narrowly avoiding a deer, and the more you stumble onward, the more you remember, but you'll need to keep playing your disturbing little host's games if you want to make it out alive. As you explore, you'll solve a plethora of puzzles, gather items from hidden-object scenes, find secret symbols and morphing objects, and, theoretically, find out the truth about where you are and why. With a flair for the extreme and the weird, Maze: Subject 360 delivers an over-the-top horror experience with gorgeous visuals and high production values, though not without a heaping helping of camp and tasty, tasty cheese. Though it might pile on a bit much for people who like their horror truly dark, fans of casual hidden-object adventures who have been craving something with a bit of teeth and some truly creative design will want to clear a dark and stormy night for this one. Captain Jumpscare... awaaaaaay!

Also free for Android and iOS, Pine Studio's Vineyard Escape traps you inside a work room that would be perfectly pleasant if not for all that glorious sunlight and those rolling hills you can see outside. I mean, sure, you've got tools and a wine press lying around, so you could do some actual work, but... outsiiiiiiiiiiiiide. And hey, who says opening the door is your only objective... ? Click around to interact with things, keeping an eye out for a changing cursor and a pop up text, and click items at the bottom of the screen in your inventory as you gather them, to use or combine with one another. The fist in your inventory doesn't actually represent some heinous murder trophy you've been locked away for, it's used for "force", so try it on things you think might need a little muscle to get by. Vineyard Escape might be one of Pine Studio's loveliest games, with lovely golden light pouring in the windows and a warm, cozy design, though the soundtrack is a little too obnoxiously loud and "regal" for the setting. Like a lot of games from Pine Studio, you may find yourself occasionally butting up against odd logical leaps, if only because some of the ways you need to use or combine items aren't going to be your instinctive reaction, and there really should be a way to reset one or two of the puzzles back to their original state. Still, though it isn't a particularly long game, it's definitely a pleasant and relaxing one, making Vineyard Escape a beautiful, sunlit break no matter where you are.

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Vineyard Escape (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

Vineyard Escape (Android, Android Tablet)

If a constant barrage of mainstream films and television shows has taught us anything, it's that knowledge is power and that hacking is the great equalizer. Remember the heady rush of the mid-nineties when teens everywhere were going to 'hack the planet!' and 'stick it to the man!'? Yeaaahhhh! We didn't have the slightest clue how to go about it of course, and when it came to actually buckling down and learning how to code, well, confound it if something more interesting didn't always seem to come up. Now Fabien Devos and Joaquim Verges have slipped you a Hackpad, a snazzy little device that can hack into any computer system in the world... if only you can learn to operate it. Hacked is a learn-to-code puzzle game free for Android, currently in a rough-and-ready early release stage that makes learning how to code fun and engaging. In Puzzle mode, each level presents you with three examples of Input and their required Outputs. It's up to you to place basic elements of code to process the examples correctly, and passing each level will grant you access to new coding functions. You'll learn as you progress even if you're new to coding, and by the time you're through you'll be able to write apps and games shareable with your friends playing Hacked, or with the Hacked community in general. Showing just what's possible, there are player-created mini-implementations of Flappy Bird, 2048 and even Cookie Clicker freely downloadable and playable from within Hacked's virtual computer. All of it's proof that when you learn to code you can do all that, and even more! Viva la revolucion información!

no1game's little green men lead such interesting, active lives! Sure, sometimes they're just getting their driver's licenses renewed, or squeezing onto a train, but then you've also got the time they were trapped outside their bodies, or went to a baseball game. In Find the Escape-Men 160: Swimming Pool, as you might guess, they're going swimming, and you'll need to find all ten green men before you can escape. I mean, not for long... you do work at the local pool, after all, so you're going to be back dealing with more trouble-makers before you know it, but hey, let's just try to get through the day. Click around to hunt for things to interact with... or, in this case, to find new areas to move to, since this game can be particularly obnoxious about hiding new perspectives and areas in places you'll just have to click about until you stumble across. Find the Escape-Men 160 is definitely more silly than not, with puzzles that require thinking outside the box, or just creatively messing with things. While this means that players who crave, say, the cunning logic of a Tesshi-e game may find this one a little too clicky and weird, those of us who are looking for a fun and whimsically odd way to escape from the heat ourselves will find it worth a dip in.

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On the gritty, rain-soaked cobbles of Victorian London all is not well. Scotland Yard is preparing to activate a staggering and monstrous breakthrough in artificial intelligence codenamed the Basilisk. With nothing beyond its total surveillance capabilities, crime will become a thing of thing of the past — and so will your career as a master catburglar. Your only chance is to steal the Basilisk itself before it can become active, stealthily amassing a small fortune with which to augment your capabilities in daring midnight raids. But you only have a hundred days until the Basilisk goes active... and this is not your grandfather's Victorian England. Steam-powered uniformed security automatons clank as they trundle their masses of tarnished brass along punchcard-coded patrol routes. Whirling gyrocopter surveillance drones hover unsteadily about, searching for any trace of intruders and prepared to electrocute them without compunction. Centrally-networked panopticon lenses swivel their gaze across the room, and lethal 'hacker mines' lace the floor. Size Five Games' unique and eagerly-awaited indie stealth action steampunk-meets-cyberpunk hybrid The Swindle, the stakes couldn't be any higher and danger lurks around every corner. This compelling dystopian wonderland features the artistic talents of Michael Firman, the suspenseful musical stylings of Tobey Evans, and coding by Louise James, Tom Boot and Sophie Humphries of Clockwork Cuckoo.