In this fourth installment of Blue Tea Games' darkly dramatic adventure hybrid series, you join a band of femme fatales, once victims in other fairytales, to fight against a power-warped villainess and her plague of mist wolves. Fragmented object search scenes, side quests for cursed items, and a nice offering of gently-challenging puzzles add to your immersion in this action-filled, and oft times violent, adventure.

In a world filled with people who want to live forever, a Watermelon headed person concocts the elixir of life. Much to his frustration a cross-eyed witch comes along and steals it! In this point-and-click game it's up to you to guide the Watermelon man and take back his claim to fame!

Gateways, an exploration-based platform game from Smudget Cat Games, can be quickly summarized by saying it's like Portal, but in 2D. That's leaving a lot out of the equation, though, as Gateways goes to great lengths to provide a different kind of experience, one more akin to a metroidvania-type game than that other portal-making adventure. You'll realize that as soon as you start to explore the chunky pixel laboratory, smashing the glass domes over monkey's heads and wondering how on Earth you're supposed to climb over the next ledge.

Your life was just a simple one. But this morning, you've found this sparking mechanical creature in your front yard. Is it friendly? Is it hostile? Or, perhaps scariest of all... are you teaching it what to do? A Ludum Dare 24 entry by Paul Greasley, Soul Jar is adventure platformer that tasks you with directing the evolution of a robot companion, for good or for bad. Visually stunning, with a killer premise, Soul Jar is hampered by clunky controls, but demonstrates the creativity the Ludum Dare format can inspire.

Being a detective for the Agency of Anomalies must require a good deal of patience and nerve. Patience because every door you encounter tends to be locked, and nerve because who would want to deal with secret Brotherhoods, strange powers, and unfamiliar terrain that could possibly be hiding a fiendish monster or two. In the third installment of the Agency of Anomalies series, Orneon sends its favorite detective to a theater filled with performers suffering the effects of special powers that are slowly turning them into creatures. Help find the leader of this rag tag band and reverse the transformation while avoiding the capture of the Seekers.

You are wanted, you are obsessed over. Thus you are trapped in a room on the threat of death should you leave. Makes you feel kind of, um, icky all over, right? In this series of escape-the-room games for your mobile device, you must use lateral thinking, deduction and some general savviness to outwit your capture and find freedom.

Combining elements of exploration, puzzle solving, and some good old fashioned robot building, Mobiloid from Montrezina plays like the best parts of Metroid and Q.U.B.E. blended to perfection. It's a game that allows you to use almost two dozen accessories to create functional (or, you know, not so functional) contraptions that help you stick your nose in every corner of the world, uncovering new items, new parts, and new puzzles along the way.

Auria Edith died, but for her it was just the beginning. When she finds herself resurrected and stranded on the other side of the world following a bargain she may regret making, things go from bad to worse. In this short but polished first installment of the free modern fantasy RPG by Project BC, Auria sets out to find her way home, but she might not be prepared for what comes looking for her instead.

Angelica "Dream" Weaver is used to being called in to use her "gift" to help the police when they're stuck, but even she isn't prepared for the bizarre chase this latest case will lead her on. A killer who seems to be dragging her back through time and enjoys his game of cat-and-mouse far too much to ever stop murdering will prove to be a challenge... and hopefully not one she can't overcome, since failure might be fatal in this gorgeous, cinematic hidden-object mystery adventure.

Like the classic adventuring PC games of old, here is the type of game you could easily lose chunks of time on as you switch between two characters, gathering anything not nailed down and working your way through hours of conversational threads, all in pursuit of Edna's freedom and sanity. Using the touch screen commands, your first job is to find you way out of a padded cell. Edna and her talking plush companion, Harvey, will win you over with their irreverent observations on life, sanity and the mundane world around us even as you sympathize with her situation. You, like Edna, might soon find yourself going in circles, vacillating between the joy of discovery and the frustration of confusion.

Help a little old lady boggie-woogie her way around town, searching for her kitty in this point-and-click adventure from OK Interactive. Use the map to explore the town, finding objects and helping out the citizens to reach the lost cat. The odd blending of the macabre into whimsy will lightly jiggle your appreciation for dark humor while providing a fun, easy way to fill a coffee break.

Flight to Freedom is the second in the series of Mission US educational point-and-click adventure game titles focusing on American History, created by Electric Funstuff under the auspices of New York PBS Station Channel 13. The year is 1848. The tenuous balance that had been struck concerning the issue of slavery wavers in the face of a nation expanding by conquest and treaty. Living in these tumultuous times is Lucy, a 14 year old slave of Kentucky's King Plantation. Lucy must balance her wishes for freedom with the risk of recapture, but an incident on the farm will force the issue sooner than she'd ever thought. What can a slave do? An intelligent and thought-provoking game that should appeal to both its student audience, and anyone with a passing interest in history.

Your best friend Mary has gone missing for a few days and you take it upon yourself to search for her. Your hunt for her leads to a mysterious floating island inhabited by the remnants of an extraterrestrial race that needs your help to get back home. In this visually decadent casual adventure game, solve puzzles and piece together fragments in hidden object scenes in order to help not only your friend, but the earth bound aliens who want to finally go home.

Maybe you should have suspected the school was evil when you saw all the eyeball-filled green vines growing out of it, but hey! Mistakes were made. Now your daughter has been kidnapped by the spirit of a vengeful witch who plans on using her as the last piece in a dark ritual that has claimed the souls of other young girls. Set out to stop the witch and bring your daughter home safely in this easy but gorgeous and creatively stylish adventure with a flair for cheesy drama and charm.

The world is over. We lost. But you're not down and out just yet. In Con Artist Games' latest real-time simulation, build a compound in the middle of a zombie-infested city and scrape out an existence alongside other survivors. Gather supplies, build and tweak your defenses, and go on dangerous missions into hives of undead activity. Though currently only in Beta and still repetitive, this is one of the best looking and surprisingly addictive social games around.

Short but incredibly stylish, this first installment in a new dark fantasy point-and-click series from Hyptosis puts you, a green recruit into the guardsmen of the charmingly titled "City of Rats", right into a deadly mystery. More cleanly designed that the developer's previous titles and boasting some gorgeous artwork, it's shorter than a coffee break but fascinating nonetheless.

Never, ever gossip about a witch. Especially if they're the "suck your vitality to maintain their youth" variety. Top Evidence Studios provides a somewhat by-the-numbers hidden-object adventure that delivers gorgeous visuals and a few clever twists on your quest to put an end to the evil reign of a witch who has stolen your youth and spent centuries trapping and tormenting others.

Vogat Interactive, creator of Guardians of Beyond: Witchville and the Reincarnations series, knows how to make a stunning casual adventure game. The Theatre of Shadows: As You Wish is another excellent example of this, combining a rich story with serious puzzles, creative mini-games, and gameplay that gives you surprising freedom to roam. It's a challenging and well-illustrated steampunk-style adventure, and it's a journey you're not going to forget anytime soon (hint: living shadows and evil puppets!).

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a princess named Sophia who was having a horrible, very bad, not good day. Poor Princess Sophia woke up in an abandoned castle to discover that (a) she'd overslept by about 100 years, (b) all the humans including her family had booked for places unknown, and (c) there was no local wi-fi. Being the intrepid Princess that she is, Sophia immediately set out to find the rest of humanity along with a decent half-caf mocha latte. Yes, our favorite non-magical princess is back in Awakening: The Skyward Castle, the fourth and final installment of Boomzap's popular adventure hybrid Awakening series.

Enjoy the story of a boy and his magic acorn in Acorn Story, an atmospheric puzzle platforming game with lots of style. It's up to you to recover the acorn when it suddenly disappears. Manipulate crates and levers to move obstacles out of your way until you find it and return it to its proper place.

It's always seemed inefficient to trap mammals inside robots. It didn't work for Dr. Robotnik, which should have been a lesson to everyone. Nevertheless, in Horn, an epic third person RPG adventure from Phosphor Games, the robots themselves decided to start converting humans into their own kind. While its a bit unclear why that happened, its up to you, an amnesiac blacksmith's apprentice, to sort it all out.

Twisted Lands: Origins starts with a bang, and it never lets up. The third game in the Twisted Lands series, the story goes back to the beginning and tells the tale of the terror that stormed the island of Tormente. It's an intense casual adventure whose focus is strongly centered on story and hidden object scenes, creating an interesting sort of action/puzzle duality that keeps you moving along at a rapid pace.

The fatal flaw of many adventure games is that they are too complicated, or seem to think you have days and countless Friday nights to spare in the completion of unintuitive or unfair puzzles. Well, at least Ori Brusilvsky understands your pain and created Route 401 Motel, a fun little point-and-clicker that most of us mere mortals can finish and enjoy in the span of a couple of coffee breaks.

Stable Boy is a charming little retro throwback to the good old days of adventure gaming, featuring some great pixel art and humor that's more Monty Python than King's Quest. The controls are simple, as is the premise: get out there and explore, try out different endings, and try to help out villagers, and don't forget to chuckle at all the Ren Faire tropes.

The end of the world is nigh, and it wants your brains! In this quirky, darkly humorous mobile edition of the zombie simulation based on the classic game Oregon Trail, saddle up with fellow survivors and strike out across the country with the promise of safety hanging in the distance. Manage your supplies, trade with people you meet along the way, deal with boss battles, and above all else hope Lady Luck decides to smile on you. That is, if you don't want to come down with dysentery while someone else has a broken leg and the others have all been bitten by zombies.

Forget bundles, the real good stuff now comes in batches! Summerbatch: Volume One is a collection of indie adventure games from developers who have a habit of creating and releasing free games. Name your own price for this nice collection, scoring five adventure games for yourself (four and an action game, technically) and sending some monetary thanks to these very fine developers. And for every £500 raised, £50 goes to charity! As if you needed another excuse to grab the batch.

In the year 20XX, Dr. Wily has been defeated by Mega Man (again). He escaped capture and life returned to normal, his eight robot masters returning to storage until the day their circuits may be modified to aid society. As it turns out, that day is today! Dr. Wily wasted no time attacking once again, unleashing a super virus that has disrupted Mega Man's systems and turned computers across the globe into enemies of humanity. With no other options at his disposal, Dr. Light releases the eight robot masters, hoping their virus-free circuits can defeat Wily once and for all. So begins Mega Man: Day in the Limelight 2 by Fusion Team, a retro platforming action adventure that's sure to bring a twinkle to the eye of any child of the 8-bit generation.

We all love metroidvanias! But would we still love them if, instead of controlling a scifi bounty hunter, or a badass vampire slayer, we played as the alphabet? Answer: Yes! And ASCIIvania, an exploration platformer by Gharding3, is the proof! ASCIIvania is clearer documentation, a map screen and a mute button away from excellence, but its still a fun time.

Siela's family restaurant is having trouble staying afloat, and her sister is considering selling the whole thing to someone else. With no choice but to seize management herself in a last-ditch effort to turn the business into a success, Siela and her friends must cook and serve food made using ingredients they hunt for in the wild in this simple but addictive blend of RPG and simulation for iOS and Android.

This subtly terrifying indie horror adventure game doesn't have a soundtrack, but if it did, it would just be our reviewers mewling "No no no no no" over and over again. Search for eight missing pages deep in the woods at night with a flashlight as your only guide. But are you as alone as you think? And how long can you last when you can't even risk a look over your shoulder?

You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but otherworldly powers intervene when your would-be murderers pick the wrong cemetery to bury you alive in. Unfortunately for you, the island you're on is cursed, and the only way out is to appease the ferryman and tortured souls... perhaps saving yourself and another innocent in the process. A lengthy, campy, fun hidden-object adventure from ERS Game Studio.

When your beloved pet rock is stolen by the jealous Mr B and you prove no match for his hat tricks and mighty fisticuffs, you have no choice but to saddle up your trusty giraffe and set out on an adventure! A platforming action adventure packed with charm, silliness, and a gorgeous design

If video games are any indication, the world we live in is filled with dungeons stocked with progressively more difficult enemies and convenient puzzles designed to help us descend further into darkness. Tequibo's Fog and Thunder doesn't try to hide the fact that it's built around the feeling of being lost in a roguelike RPG, but the action-oriented gameplay is different than what you might expect, as it employs light-based mechanics that affect everything from enemies to exits to your own special abilities. Where's a good pair of night vision goggles when you need them?

Don't you just hate it when you're sleeping soundly and a lost soul enters your body and politely requests you help it get back to the afterlife? In Cory Martin's lovely little action RPG Reaching Finality, you're one such lucky person, helping out a spirit by fighting your way through forest and dungeon armed with little more than a pitchfork and a fancy straw hat. Not that the hat does anything other than make you look cool, of course.

When living shadows devour the globe and all you have left to keep you company until your inevitable end are your disjointed memories and hallucinations, what's the point in going on? Placeable's eerie horror adventure about the end of the world and one man's struggle to stay alive needs polish, but packs some surprisingly substantial atmosphere and clever concepts.

Little Red Riding Hood has brought wine and cake to her ailing grandmother. But then Grandma went outside, locking the door behind her, and hasn't returned. In this mobile escape-the-room adventure game from IDAC, explore the seemingly serene environment searching for clues and solving puzzles to find the best of the two ways out: one brings Little Red to safety, one brings a tasty dinner to Mr. wolf. Well, so much for an innocent outing to Grandma's house in the woods.

Originally released in 1983 by Tim and Chris Stamper's Ultimate Play The Game, Atic Atac was one of the most heralded games for the ZX Spectrum. A top-down action-adventure game, it was the deceptively simple looking tale of an adventurer trapped in a haunted house, who must battle his way from basement to "atic" to find the keys that would let him escape. Now remade by Retrospec, it is now available to frustrate and addict a whole new generation of gamers.

Eternal Journey: New Atlantis is an amazing science fiction adventure wrapped up in an exquisite bow. Time to forgo the ghosties, ghoulies, and long-legged beasties and set off for a kick-butt adventure to the stars! Or the bottom of the ocean. Whatever. This unique game from Alawar is a hidden object hybrid with a phenomenal story and a lot of extras, and you certainly won't mind taking a dive deep below the sea just to, well, see what you can see... in the sea.

Peru, 1950. Strange signs have appeared in the misty mountains. You, a famous spelunker, head to the area to investigate them.. Such is the humble premise of Cavenaut, an exploration-based action-adventure game by Bruno Marcos. Don't think that the ruins of Machu Picchu will reveal their secrets so easily, however. Snake, Bat, Spike, and Spear stand in your path, and if you hope for mysteries to be unraveled, you must be quick of both mind and fingers.

Found unconscious and unresponsive on the side of a road, unhurt despite the bloody knife lying beside her, Jane Doe has been lying silently in a hospital bed ever since. It's up to you to enter her mind in this creepy, surreal hidden-object adventure, and find out the truth about who she is and where she comes from, but with her mind and a sinister presence working against you, neither of you may survive the effort.

Help Dipper and his sister Mabel escape the Mystery Shack Mystery in this point-and-click adventure game by Disney. Based on the popular animated television show Gravity Falls, players must collect items and solve puzzles to break through all three rooms of Grunkle Stan's Mystery Shack. Fans of the show can enjoy exploring familiar scenes and discovering hidden easter eggs, while newcomers will find plenty of laughs and kid-friendly fun.

The Reisen series catalogues the tale of a small red-headed girl named Jitter, who recently lost her parents to the war (World War II, I think) and wants to go see her grandmother. This is easier said than done, as she is confined to a bunker far away from where her grandma lives. If she wants to make the journey, she'll have to be cunning and resourceful, doing everything from trekking through dark forests to pole-vaulting over deep water to getting guards drunk. This is a series with good points and bad points, like many others. The visuals are relatively unimpressive, the puzzles are okay in the logic department, and pixel-hunting can get annoying, although it gets much more tolerable later in the series. What really makes it worth playing, though, is the story.

Costis doesn't remember how he got here. He doesn't know why the world keeps changing around him. And he certainly doesn't know the man in black who seems to be following him. But every little boy knows when it is time to explore, and so he will. For better or worse... Blackwood prologue is a platforming piece of interactive art by Blake Mann, that takes you inside the mind of a kid who just might find his future in his dreams. Marvelously atmospheric, even evocative, the dream logic nature of the game means, inevitably, more questions will be raised than answered. But as the title says, it's just the prologue...

Claret Spenser doesn't care much for the outside world. She's happiest working in her airship repair shop, where machines are much easier to deal with than the aristocracy of her floating city, or the winged Skyborn race that conquered the humans generations ago. But her life is about to change... A gorgeous retro RPG from Dancing Dragon Games, Skyborn takes place in an engaging and fully-realized fantasy-steampunk world that begs to be explored. Highly recommend for fans with even the slightest love of the genre.

Night after night, you dream of her. Anna. But... they're not dreams, they're nightmares. And now, you find yourself staring at the very house you see each night in your sleep. This isn't a dream, but it isn't quite real, either. Welcome to the haunting world of Anna, a first person horror adventure game by Dreampainters that will leave you too frightened to turn your back on a dark corner for the rest of the night.

You can't keep a bad witch down, and the shadowy old crone in Orneon's hidden-object adventure series is back for another round. This time, she's used her spells to ensnare an entire kingdom with her shadowy minions, rendering the court magician helpless and turning inanimate objects against you. Together with your sassy talking magic mirror, you'll need to search for ten magical MacGuffins to power an ancient staff before it's too late.

Beaten and left unconscious, you awake to discover all your gear has been stolen... which is kind of a big deal, since that gear is what allows you to survive in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. In this latest installment of the Fog Fall point-and-click adventure series from Pastel Games, you'll have to scour the crumbling remains of society and do more than a few favours if you want to proceed and not end up like the rest of the shambling, disheartened survivors barely eking out a living.

Back in 2005, Takumi Naramura released a retro-styled exploration game called La-Mulana. Starring an archaeologist professor named Lemeza, it introduced modern players to an aesthetic not seen since the days of the MSX home computer, bringing with it all the convoluted puzzles, items, and high level of difficulty retro gamers love. Fast forward to 2012 for the worldwide release of a graphically enhanced update to La-Mulana that carefully reworks the look and feel of the old game to spruce it up for a new audience. Nigoro has done a fantastic job with the new La-Mulana, and the translation to the slightly-less-retro modern version is almost flawless!

When one wakes up in a featureless white room, apparently at the whims of a malevolent steam-punk computer, the first instinct is to escape. But... why? What's your argument? Can you justify your actions? Such is the question posed by ir/rational Redux, a puzzle adventure game by Tom Jubert, of Penumbra story-telling fame. Propositional logic has never felt so intense!

What happened, Marina? If it's a primary power failure, they're going to enact Protocol 13. If you don't make it to the shelter before that happens... well, it's best not to think about that. Or those sounds of wet slithering you hear from the corner... Wages of Darkness is a horror adventure game developed by Baron that got top prize in Aprils Month of AGS competition. It's pixel-hunting premise probably couldn't be sustained in a longer game, but at just ten minutes, it's perfect for a little stomach punch of dread.

Grim Tales: The Wishes is the third in the series of Grim Tales hidden object adventure releases from Elephant Games. Featuring an absolutely chilling storyline, Grim Tales 3 plays like an epic tale filled with puzzles that are sprawled out across the detailed landscape. Items and points of interest are practically in every corner, and while you search for the pieces you need to continue through the game, a surprisingly terrifying plot is unfolding right before your eyes.

Connor Ullmann fires up the Wayback Machine for those gorgeous little retro action adventure inspired by classic 2D games like Zelda. As a little boy who was apparently born from a breath of wind, your quest for self-discovery and the wishes of your maker will take you across a huge world teeming with enemies, secrets, treasure, puzzles, and more. A beautiful little gem with classic gameplay and a satisfying adventure that is well worth checking out even if you weren't born when games like this were in their heyday.

Completely refurbished and revised, this redux of the first installment of William Buchanan's two-volume adventure game series is meant to supersede the original. You wake up alone...where? Someplace unearthly. Ominously void of life. Imbued with insinuations of wrong doings. Point-and-click to explore your surroundings, gather tools and solve contextual puzzles. As you read the narratives found within each room, not only will you find clues to help you successfully "escape," you'll collect pieces to a story that leaves you with as many questions as answers. There's two possible endings, also. Recommended: play the "Director's Intent" mode in a dark room with the volume up for the maximized experience.

Born is a mindless creature of the Void. At least, that's how it was supposed to be. When Born dares to escape into a world that seems to have no place for it, however, you'll need to utilize all the puzzle platforming abilities at your disposal and learn to master colour in order to find Born a place to belong and help it escape from the Void once and for all. A challenging but evocative platforming adventure that's heavy on narrative and atmosphere for your iOS.

Use your Mouse to point & click on the rooms. Find objects and use them to help you escape this scary subway! Risk Subway Escape is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape".

Escape from a treasure island as fast as you can! Click the hand pointers to move around the island locations and use the mouse to interact with objects, gather items and assemble a few of them to make useful tools. Treasure Island Escape is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape".

Alone in a library, you find a mysterious book that quite literally draws you in. You'll have to learn every lesson it contains if you ever want to be seen again. The Grimoire is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape".

Follow an ancient myth inside this pyramid, solve the puzzles and get free of this sand tomb!. Euridissey is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape".

The CGDC turns 10 this year with this competition and we are very excited that this promises to be one of our most unique and exciting competitions ever! We are pleased to announce the next theme is: ESCAPE, and you may use any browser-based technology platform you are comfortable with (Flash, Unity, Javascript/HTML5, etc.). Please read the official competition announcement for all the rules and details.

Howlville: The Dark Past is a lightly-flavored science fiction-themed hidden object adventure game from N-Tri Studio. Featuring a balanced mix of puzzle solving, item hunting, and adventuring, Howlville manages to be a hidden object game without feeling like a rehash of the games that came before it, touching on common elements found in the genre but focusing intently on smart puzzles that really challenge the player. The result is something light and casual, recognizable but still different enough to offer mounds of enjoyment.

Just when you thought secret societies were a thing of the past (literally, ha!), World-Loom brings them back to you in full force in their hidden-object/adventure hybrid, Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope. With some unique visuals and a good puzzle-to-hidden-object-scene ratio, Dark Heritage will have you feeling like Tom Hanks as you chase down a mysterious killer. You know, if Tom Hanks were a woman.

The Flux Family Secrets series started back in 2009 with Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect, followed by Flux Family Secrets: The Rabbit Hole just over a year later. Now, after a longer than usual wait, the third game in the series has arrived: Flux Family Secrets: The Book of Oracles. Skunk Studios has produced an equally high caliber game with Flux number three, continuing the story precisely where it left off and telling a hidden object-laden tale with a side of lush visuals.

There's a murder on the prowl in the Italian countryside. When the maid of a wealthy family finds a notebook that appears to detail the gruesome murder of three young women, she turns to you, a local detective, in fear. But when you arrive on the scene it soon becomes abundantly clear that someone doesn't appreciate you trying to solve the case, and you'll have to keep your wits about you to survive to the end in this cheesy but beautifully packaged hidden-object adventure mystery from ERS Game Studio.

Ah, young love. You know how it is. You're enjoying some time on a lily pad with your favourite green beau, daydreaming about your future tadpoles... and then some stork comes along and ruins it all. Every. TIME. In this short and cute point-and-click puzzle from Begamer, help bring our warty hero safely back home to reunite with his lady.

As the new girl transferring for her final year of school, you've got a lot on your plate, especially if you want to get into a top-tier university. But in Roxanne Chen's gorgeous, funny, and charming visual novel simulation, you've also got the potential to make friends that will last you forever... and maybe even find love, too. Packed with colour, energy, and tons of replay value, this is well worth checking out. You've only got one year... make it count!

Penny Arcade and Zeboyd Games combine to deliver this turn-based RPG with a distinctly retro feel that both fits with and stands apart from the previous two installments. Join Tycho and Gabe of the Startling Developments Detective Agency as they attempt to learn the secrets of the mysterious Necrowombicon... while dodging time-traveling dinosaur spies, murderous caterpillars, ancient cults and more in the process. Exceptionally heavy on combat but more than a little funny, it's a surprisingly engrossing little title with a lot to offer in the way of humour and charm if you don't mind a lot of strategy with your gameplay.

Theresa and her twin sister were the first victims of a plague spreading through the city of Oxford, but not the last. Now, with many dead and dying, and the city evacuated and under quarantined, it's up to you to venture inside the limits searching for the lost little girl who may hold the key to a cure... but with the disease already spreading to the wildlife, will you be too late to contain the problem? A somewhat short but top-notch thriller hidden-object adventure with a plot full of twists and turns that will appeal to fans of more serious stories.

The Story of Red Cloud is a massive adventure-style mod for the sandbox building game Terraria. Citing inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls, the mod takes a massive step away from its source, knocking out most of the creative aspects in favor of traditional combat and exploration. This isn't the Terraria you've grown to love, nor is it a happy romp through a flower-filled land of bunnies (though there are bunnies). The Story of Red Cloud is a challenging game filled with secrets to find, items to hoard, dungeons to explore, and gruesome deaths to narrowly avoid.

What makes a hero? Is it someone who keeps fighting, even when everyone around them insists there's no point? Or is it someone who is willing to give the most precious thing they can just for the promise of a better tomorrow? Made in just under a month as a half hour lunch break game, Sailerius and Hirei have crafted a short but remarkably atmospheric action adventure release with Finding Eden, a thoughtful game about friendship, the end of the world, and sacrifice. The story follows two young girls struggling to stay alive after an unspecified disaster befell the world and left it stripped of Mana, with virtually everyone left sleeping husks littering the street... except for the sinister Harvesters who are always on the girls' heels. With their own Mana, their life force, constantly dwindling and scraps being harder and harder to come across, is it worth carving out an existence in this bleak world... or can they find something worth giving everything they have for?

One of the main tropes present in hidden object hybrids these days is that someone gets kidnapped by mysterious forces and you must rescue them, be it a prince, a princess, children, a whole town, or some random guy off the street. However, Fierce Tales: The Dog's Heart by Blam! Games goes in a completely different direction. You see, your cute little puppy is kidnapped by mysterious forces, and you must rescue him before it's too late. It may not reinvent the hidden object wheel, but it's still a pretty darned good adventure waiting to be played!

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

Deep within the spaceship, a lowly garbage worker tosses clumps of trash into the incinerator. Outside, asteroids begin pelting the hull, eventually causing the ship to crash on an uncharted planet filled with strange creatures. And now you, lone survivor, must explore and fight your way through an intricate maze-like world as you gather power-ups, fight bosses, and collect every little green square you see. In Wade McGillis's downloadable and mobile game Astronot, you get a good strong dose of pure retro metroidvania-style platform adventuring, and you'll love every minute of stranded torture it brings you.

Offering up something unique and creative, this point-and-click puzzle adventure follows a young shepherd and his pet goat on their quest to rescue his stolen flock. The gorgeous watercolor artwork and nearly wordless narration makes this a poignant, meditative experience. While a few rough edges might repel those who are not as charmed by the artistic qualities, those looking for challenging puzzles and fragmented object searches set in a surreal landscape will be instantly won over. Which group are you in? Give Shaban a demo to find out.

From the world's favorite developer of quirky indie games, bentosmile, the Easy Quest series is a set of three tiny action RPG-style games that take place in the same setting with the same creatures and the same basic goal: save the world! You do this by defeating enemies that are weaker than you, running them over until they bite the dust. With each hit, you suffer damage, too, so you have to balance your attacks and seek healing potions only when they're absolutely necessary. It's a game of watching the numbers and being aggressive when it's a smart thing to do, and despite each game's short length, they're still a set of quests you'll love to undertake!

ERS makes their first foray into pure adventure gameplay with this shlocky, over-the-top horror game. When the little girl you're supposed to be babysitting vanishes, you find yourself drawn into a murder mystery that's corrupted an entire area and left the place teeming with vicious ghosts and secrets. More kooky and creative than scary, it's still a polished game with loads of puzzles and creepiness worth checking out.

Enter The Suspense II, a platform adventure game by Black Square where you can switch between life and death to possibly escape your own fate. The subtle difference between the worlds is pleasing to the eye and manages to be dark without feeling as if you entered a haunted house. Honestly, death never looked so good or seemed so fun.

On a planet that seems straight out of a Disney digital world, there is a war going on that can only be won with some mech fighting expertise. Sortie in ten missions of varying objectives from simple reconnaissance to an all-out fire fight for survival.The war seems to be a losing struggle, but you can turn it around with a little cash and a lot upgraded parts. Can you handle the strain of an entire war on the metal shoulders of your robot piloting skills?

When a physicist researching a world-changing project ends up dead, it's up to you to figure out what happened. In Resonance, a stellar point-and-click adventure by Wadjet Eye Games, you control four strangers who are forced to trust each other to help you solve the mystery. Use the unique long and short term memory system to explore the world around you and uncover clues. Can you recover the research before someone else ends up dead?

From movies to books to video games, the "creepy" seems all-pervasive. Put an individual or group in some deserted, out of the way place with lots of shadows and eerie sounds and you've got the recipe going strong! Luckily for you, assuming you're the type that likes creepy things, Specialbit Studio has quite the joyride for you! In the hidden object puzzle adventure game Haunted Hotel: Charles Dexter Ward, you get rewarded with the creepiest of creepy: a deserted hotel in a bayou out in good ol' Louisiana. I wouldn't stick around for any jambalaya if I were you.

Here's the good news: you get to go to a small European village for free. The bad news? Well... there's this tiny issue of horrific and angry statues randomly coming to life and carting off the villagers for who knows what reason. Also, you have the good fortune of being the most prominent detective around! That means you get to go deal with those statues and puzzle out what in the heck is happening. Elephant Games has returned to us with a wonderful new hidden object puzzle adventure game Royal Detective: The Lord of Statues, so put on your bowler hat and get ready to do some mystery solvin'!

No one likes being stuck inside city walls when all they want is the sweet freedom of open land. Problem is, getting out is quite tricky when there's a war raging outside the city walls and the guards are under strict order to not let anyone in or out. In Shifter, you have a trick or two up your sleeves, but in order to make use of that trick you need to get to know people. In this point and click escape adventure use your charm to help shift into a new point of view, literally.

When your plane goes down following a ghostly apparition and strands you on a deserted unmarked island, that's bad enough without throwing a centuries old fatal love triangle and one seriously malevolent ghost into the mix. Fuzzy Bug Interactive delivers a short and easy but effortlessly enjoyable hidden-object adventure that doesn't bog its subject matter down in heavy doom and gloom.

Continue your journey with Rick as he explores the chambers of the mysterious hotel to save his true love, Lily. Point and click your way to explore a chain of rooms, each containing a puzzle that unlocks the next room and at least one esoteric clue to help you solve it. Between the mocking messages that await you in every room, the gauntlet of dastardly puzzles, or the exhausting journey of traveling through buried memories, Myosotis 2 asks how far a defeated and self-hating man is willing to go for love.

Cute adventure game get! Robo Quest is an adorable point and click adventure created by Glauzer and Adm244 using Adventure Game Studio. One could easily compare it to Machinarium in general layout and style, but the story, setting, and artwork are something else entirely. It's a short experience but an uncommonly engaging one, and you'll fall in love with the little robo's plight from the moment you see him napping

Originally released on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace, Nostatic Software has recently brought its thoughtful little puzzle adventure game Quiet, Please! to Android devices, allowing you to explore (and shut people up!) on the go. It's a great fit for the small touch screen and will remind you of old school adventure games like Maniac Mansion, both in terms of gameplay and overall puzzle design.

Decades ago, Nikola Tesla's experiment ruined mankind's ability to see colour and enjoy music before he vanished, and nobody can agree whether he did it on purpose. Marie Tesla, his great-great-granddaughter, has been working to fix things without much success, but a phone call from beyond space and time might put her on the right track to solving a mystery and travelling into the past. An easy but stellar hidden-object adventure that combines intrigue, light-hearted storytelling, memorable characters, and gorgeous visuals.

Children are disappearing from the quiet little town of Everlake; police and parents are their wits end but you're not about to give up. Enter a surreal world that is rather like a David Lynch version of the Drawn series. Superior graphics and added interactivity make the hidden object searches a delight, a diverse and plentiful assortment of minigames will keep you thinking, and the immense number of settings and locales to explore will make this feel like an epic journey. Forget about pragmatic realism and let yourself be won over by the strange magic of Rite of Passage: The Perfect Show.

One of the most surreal RPGs you'll ever encounter has finally been translated into English. Play as the mysterious companion to the even more enigmatic Batter, who has arrived to rid the world of spectres through violent purification. Packed with memorable characters, strange locations, and a seriously engrossing storyline that at times manages to be a bit unsettling too, it's one of the strangest, swankiest free titles around that won't be for everyone, but is definitely worth a look.

You wake in the middle of a night during a thunderstorm with your head and your body aching... but you're not in your bed. In fact, you're not even in your house. And when you discover the body on the floor, you begin to realise that you might just have woken up in a very personal nightmare. A short but engrossing horror adventure mystery packed with atmosphere, replayability, and chills galore.

In Sagittarian 4: Berger by Hyptosis, you rejoin your old friends, Sage, Dusty, and Anna, in their quest to find safety after the zombie apocalypse. The small band of survivors are no longer strangers, but friends. Some are even lovers. Can you protect these people you've grown so close to over the last four games, or will you have to send them to their certain deaths for the good of the group? Combining great artwork, funny and well-developed dialogue, and even a dynamic soundtrack, it's an experience that really sticks with you.

When you woke up this morning, what was your biggest problem? Bedhead? That homework you forgot to do? Or what about that bomb someone surgically implanted in your chest after kidnapping you while you slept to force you to play "a game" with them? Gameday Inc delivers a flawed but incredibly slick little Android title that mixes fantastically cheesy thriller storytelling with some solid puzzles to make a memorable free escape title well worth checking out.

It's dangerous in the primordial soup, a place where infected organisms roam hungrily looking to consume or destroy anything that crosses their path. At least, that's the scenario behind the fantastic Amoebattle by Grab Games, a real-time strategy gem created for iOS devices. Inside, at the microscopic level, it's a constant state of warfare, and war is heck.

Tiny world, tiny problems, right? More like "not right". Er, yeah. Anyway, Mini Quests is a pint-sized adventure/puzzle game by dishmoth available for Android devices and as a Java Applet for browsers. The chunky-pixeled isometric game puts you in control of a little guy out on an adventure, trudging through the fantasy lands as he hunts for treasure and fights/puzzles his way out of various scrapes, like you do!

Wentworth is an enchanting point-and-click adventure from ClickShake about a space kitty on a mission: plant new life on an unexplored planet. But all goes awry when our feline hero uses too much magic fairy dust! Interact with gnomes, trolls, and leprechauns to help Wentworth on his mission to bring balance back to the forest.

Winter Wolves serves up a huge visual novel adventure RPG with deep tactical combat. As a slave to the Amazon empire, you're sent out with your princess, Loren, in search of a missing queen. In short order, you discover Loren's problems are only a tiny symptom of a greater evil plaguing the world... but will she be able to overcome her own shallow world view and limited life experience to become the hero everyone needs her to be? And does she even want to?

In a city where the wicked never sleep a brave hero shall rise. Jeff the Sanitation Worker has come to save the day. Er...well, he's come to clean things up so that people can at least walk around without catching the plague from the rats that seem to be everywhere. That's heroic right? Still, prepare yourself for the high energy thrill ride of cleaning the streets as Jeff.

Lend us a hand? The dock workers down in Boston are missing two... or at least, the corpse they found is. The police department suspects it may be the work of a prolific serial killer who's been in hiding for years, and it's up to you to track down the evidence and the suspect in this gorgeous but finicky point-and-click adventure from PastelGames.

Continue the adventure across the Plains of the Endless Grass in search of the Wiseman who knows every story ever told. Play as Myosotis and embark on a journey filled with fantastic creatures, breathtaking scenery and, of course, captivating stories. A Grain of Truth picks up (and leaves us) where The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart left us: wanting more.

Continue the adventure across the Plains of the Endless Grass in search of the Wiseman who knows every story ever told. Play as Myosotis and embark on a journey filled with fantastic creatures, breathtaking scenery and, of course, captivating stories. A Grain of Truth picks up (and leaves us) where The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart left us: wanting more.

A series of five point-and-click mystery adventure games from Norm and Company, Stickman Murder Mysteries are oldies but goodies. As a homocide detective in Stickville, you must investigate each of the five crimes, and bring the culprits to justice. Those who can stand the MS Paint graphics and crude HTML programming will find a set of involving cases with serious crimes and twisty plotting that every lover of mystery games will enjoy.