A sweet mango smoothie. Turning the pages of a favorite book. Dashing bare feet on the hot summer ground. The cool side of the pillow. The stretch after a nap. Smooth wrapping paper. A single piece of chocolate. A touch of fur. Starlit breezes. Sitting on the edge of a pool. The last drop of ice cream. Enjoy!

It's the weekend, Mothers Day even, and everyone here at Casual Gameplay has taken the weekend off to spend with our families. But we also realize you may be looking for something new to play, and so we'll leave you with a few choice selections of the latest casual games making the rounds on the download circuit. Be sure to let us know which of them deserves a full review.

It's Friday, and that means we pile on the links to games we think you might enjoy, but without giving them a full review. If the response to a game contained in here is exceptionally good, you just might see it featured in an upcoming review. So please share with us what you think about these choice selections from your suggestions and beyond.

Once again we've scoured the internet from top to bottom (you wouldn't believe the things we've seen...) to find the best casual games you can "download" onto your "computing machine" and play with an input device such as a "lettered slab with keys" and/or a "mouse".

I've been getting thousands of emails from loyal JIG-goers asking me, "why the lengthy, random Link Dump Friday introductions?" Well actually, most of the emails are proposals and rich Nigerians offering cheap meds from Canada, but that's beside the point. Anyway, due to the imaginary backlash, I will now vow to keep things short, concise, and free of redundancy.

Busy! Busy busy! Get it done now! Why have I dilly dallied so much with these intros? Time is money! Less talk, more action! Places to go! Places to be! Why say "hello" when I can just say "hi"? Schedule! Plan! Don't write, just type! Don't type, just text! Mail is too slow! Use e-mail!

Just a quick update to give a big warm shout-out to Matt Hammill, designer of the recently reviewed Gesundheit game, for the outstanding job he did on the new banners and graphics for the site! Cheers, Matt!

Friday, Friday, Friday. It's generally acknowledged to be the best day of the week other than Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Most people know that Friday gets its name from the fact that Medieval England forbade the consumption of boiled or roasted foods on this day (a tradition still followed in parts of Rutlandshire). But did you know that in Norway, there are TWO Fridays every week and no Mondays?

After a long hiatus and due to popular request, comment preview has returned to help in your quest to create nicely formatted comments and walkthroughs. Just click the "Preview" button below the text input field in the comment form to see a preview of how your comment will appear when posted, spoiler tags and all!

Now that I have your attention, I'd like to mention a couple of things we've been working on to make your experience here just a little bit better. Hopefully you have noticed that the site tags have been optimized and are now working better than ever. We've also been venturing deep into the archives to give all those long lost games and reviews the tags they deserve, so the tag listings should be looking more complete than ever as well. And yet we still have about 400 more games to tag(!)

I have grown tired of your silly games and forgotten names. You have tried to outsmart me, thinking that you were the master of baking blueberry muffins and delectable pancakes. But wait, there's more! These games follow the awesome theme of music, well at least until I got tired. Hopefully you will have forgotten what I said by the time you—oh look at that, a pirate cactus (yarr)!

But what about dessert? Well, we're glad you asked. We'd like to present you with a glorious menu of special Friday gaming dishes ready for sampling. Enjoy, and remember to select your favorite dish of the bunch! Bon Appetite!

We are very pleased to announce that JIG has made it onto the tangible printed page of WIRED magazine in the April issue (shown). You can find us mentioned in the Playlist feature, an article that lists 10 things the WIRED folks think are cool (or "wired") for the month.

This week's Link Dump Friday is brought to you by the letters H, R, Z, and by the number 642. Look for references to those letters in each game featured below. Then multiply by the square root of pie (cherry). Once you find the solution, let us know by sending smoke signals from your backyard. We'll arrive shortly with a bouquet of beautiful flowers commemorating your efforts.

It's the weekend. You can also download games. But you cannot download the weekend itself. Weekend Download contains less than 8% of the recommended daily allowance of niacin. Weekend Download knows what you did last summer. Do not taunt Weekend Download.

With voting now over, it is my pleasure to announce the recipient of the Audience Prize for the CasualGameplay Design Competition #2: Sprout!! With 41.6% of the popular vote, Jeff Nusz' Sprout proves beyond a doubt to be the favorite among the JIG community as well.

When we first announced the competition and its "GROW" theme in January, the response was warm and welcoming. There seemed to be a popular expectation that the competition would yield games similar to the Grow series from On of Eyezmaze. Instead, we received more than a dozen different "GROW" interpretations, each one creative and original in its own way, and not a single Grow clone. And still the games exceeded our expectations.

How many integers does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer is an integer. For an explanation of this, and for more insight into other unexplained phenomena, be sure to check out this week's Link Dump Friday.

There are a lot of awards being handed out this week, in addition to tomorrow's announcement of the results from our 2nd Flash game design competition(!) The Game Developers Conference is in full swing out in San Francisco this week and the results of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar faces that we need to give a nod to.

Total from voting... $428.40Outstanding!! The JIG community comes together and donates over four-hundred dollars to the designers of the games from our latest competition! You folks are the best! Thanks go out to everyone that voted.

It's Saturday and that means another JIG Poker Night event is coming your way! We'll be taking just a short break from the competition action this afternoon and setting up the poker tables in our own Triplejack poker lounge, as we do every week. The tournaments will get underway this evening beginning at 12 Noon EST (GMT-5). Be sure to join us for some fun and good times, and you just might win yourself a prize or two!

What do you get when you combine an owl, three quarts of mango juice, a teaspoon of sugar, eight pounds of pounds and stir it all with a wooden spoon made out of love? A brand new Link Dump Friday, of course.

It's Saturday and that means another JIG Poker Night event coming your way! We'll be setting up the poker tables in our own Triplejack poker lounge, as we do every week, and the tournaments will get underway this evening beginning at 9PM EST (GMT-5). Be sure to join us for some fun and good times, and you just might win yourself a prize or two. And do we ever have some nice prizes to give away this week!

It's announcements time! A lot is going on in our casual gaming world and the creative talent behind the games we love is really blossoming. Is it the crisp February air? The freshness of a new year? Either way, here's an update on a few recent events you should know about. Consider yourself... informed!

More than just a doughnut, the cruller is a symbol of mankind's struggle to evolve. Often topped with sugar or icing, crullers represent the twisted yet delicious journey that life as an upright mammal can be. We have to pay taxes, we have to stand in line at the DMV, sometimes we even have to watch American Idol. But at the end of the day, nothing says "good job existing" like a delicious cruller in hand. Let's join hands and thank the games in this week's Weekend Download for being just as delicious.

We've got spirit, yes we do! We've got spirit, how about you?! Oh, plus we've got a new Link Dump, which in many ways is better than that sports-related spirit stuff. Can you sprinkle spirit on your breakfast bagel? I think not. Link Dump Friday, on the other hand...

After receiving over 60 entries to the voice-over competition for Exmortis 3, and after much deliberation over the short list of 10 that was subsequently made, Ben has finally come to a decision on who the lucky person will be...

If you're seeing this, then the DNS has propagated in your area and you are now reaching the new JIG server. We're running upgraded versions of several Web server applications, and so besides being a bit faster, there may also be a few hiccups along the way until we get things optimized. For example, some of the most recent comments posted since the switch over might have been lost if they were posted to the old server. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

Look ma, a new feature on Casual Gameplay! Gather the children, call the neighbors, wave to the government satellites spying on your home. It's time to settle down for a few downloadable games. Each weekend we'll show off a few of the latest must-try games from the internets, only the best of the best (of the best).

It's Saturday and that means another JIG Poker Night event coming your way! We'll be setting up the poker tables in our own Triplejack poker lounge, as we do every week, and the tournaments will get underway this evening beginning at 6PM EST (GMT-5). Be sure to join us for some fun and good times, and you just might win yourself a prize or two. And do we ever have some nice prizes to give away this week!

Just a quick update to announce that we have rolled out a new feature that will help with loading game review pages that contain hundreds of comments. We now present each page with the 100 most recent comments only. If you prefer to view older comments, just click the "Older" link located at the top or bottom of the comment listing.

It's another Link Dump Friday! Give these tasty morsels a try and tell us which of these games deserves a JIG review, and why didn't Susie tie her shoe? Feel free to answer these questions in the comments below!

It's here! Finally the next chapter in the captivating virtual island village sim is available to download. The follow-up to the monumentally successful Virtual Villagers game keeps the same formula as the original but adds all new puzzles, events, collectibles and more. Download it today and then join our active community sharing hints and tips for getting the most out of every puzzle.

Whether you're so ensconced in a relationship that your friends refer to you by a portmanteau nickname like "Bennifer" or clocking up so many years of singledom that you have to check to see whether there's anything in your pants, anywhere you surf on the net today is going to have hearts, lollies, cherubs and teddy bears all over it. We here at JIG are more than happy to add to your misery with a roundup of romance, dating and candy-related games.

Flipping through my Latin dictionary, I came across a fun new word: fulgidus. It means flashing or shining. That entertained me for a moment, then I decided I might be hungry and considered making a sandwich. I didn't, though. Too bad. Sandwiches are good. Now that you've learned a Latin word and have contemplated what kind of sandwich I wanted to make, you've earned a few good games to ease your troubled mind.

Another quick update to mention that Kim JongHwa's captivating new puzzle game, Rooms, has just been updated again with the final, debugged version (v1.2) with all 14 levels playable. All links contained in our review from a couple of days ago point to the latest version.

We had another great poker night on Saturday, and I have another set of winners to report. The tournaments were a lot smoother this week thanks to the handy registration form I threw together for our weekly event. Players sign-up by entering their Triplejack username and a special code we give out just before the tournaments begin, and then a table number is assigned. We'll do it just like this again on Saturday, and this week's tournaments will begin promptly at 3PM Eastern (GMT-5:00).

A quick update to mention that the Experimental Gameplay Project has announced the theme of their new competition running now through February 19th. And the theme is "attraction" in honor of Valentine's Day, coming soon to a sweetheart near you.

One of the most innovative casual games of 2006, flOw, is breathtaking both as a game and as a work of art. The concept, the environment, the gameplay, and of course the music all come together to create an atmosphere that feels immeasurably deep to the senses. I recently caught up with Austin Wintory, the composer for the music in flOw, and got to take a behind-the-scenes peek at the creative process behind the sounds in the game.

The poker tables in our private Triplejack lounge will open up early today with tournaments beginning at Noon Eastern time. In addition to the usual prizes we have Virtual Villagers games, and a grand prize drawing to be held in May for a brand new Nintendo DS!

What's that? A totally new version of Eets for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade? You may now celebrate. With enough extras and bonuses to almost consider it a sequel, Eets: Chowdown has been molded to fit the Xbox 360 interface like a glove. Expect tons of new items, puzzles and features such as single-system multiplayer, all enshrined by gorgeous HD graphics. Swoon!

The recent news that Capcom's critically acclaimed hit, Okami, would be ineligible for awards this year from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, because of Capcom's refusal to pay membership fees to the organization, has been met with harsh criticism from the developer calling into question the credibility or value of awards that require developers to pay a fee to be considered.

Wow! Another amazing poker night last night, but not without a few bumps as we experienced more interest than ever before. Although I was too busy for frequent head counts, I estimate we had close to 100 simultaneous players in our private Triplejack lounge(!)

Just a reminder that today (Saturday) is JIG Poker Night! And just as we have been doing for the past few weeks, we'll be running a series of tournaments this evening in our own private Triplejack lounge for chances to win fabulous prizes! Up for grabs again this week: Eets games, one month of Triplejack Power Player, one deck of Triplejack playing cards, and one JIG Casual Gameplay t-shirt. But that's not all. The champion of tournaments will be entered into a drawing for a ginormous, as-of-yet undisclosed grand prize.

A plate of gaming; Waits for your select tasting; Is it sweet or sour? The best of the best; Will be treated to review; And the rest will rest. And without any further ado, we bring you another Link Dump Friday!

Yahoo! Mail Ultimate Championship Games is a series of four short mini-games created to promote the improved Yahoo! webmail service in the UK. Each one has a distinct e-mail theme and is incorporated in a slick, nighttime gameshow-like style complete with videos and a futuristic neon-purple interface. Master the surprisingly entertaining mini-games while accidentally learning about Yahoo! Mail's new features.

Another successful Poker Night saw lots of people here on hand for our weekly tournament of tournaments. There were just a couple minor hiccups in the very beginning with the initial mad rush to enter the first couple of tourneys, but after that it was smooth sailing through to the final table.

The poker tables in our private Triplejack lounge will again open up today at 3PM (GMT-5:00). Please come join us for some Texas Hold'em poker fun, have a few laughs with us and friends, perhaps win some prizes, and enjoy lots and lots of pies!

JIG Poker Night keeps getting bigger and better. Yesterday saw a record number of simultaneous players in our private JIG Triplejack poker lounge, and we even awarded some of the lucky ones with prizes to take away from the event.

It's that time again... JIG Poker Night! (RWAR!) Fun was had by all last week at our first poker night with (at its peak) 50 simultaneous players logged into our private Triplejack lounge playing across five separate tables and tournaments. And today there will likely be even more players, so come join in the fun!

Help save these innocent poker players from certain banana doom! We've checked them for color but who knows if the inside is truly delicious? Check out these selections from our quite frequent submissions to select which ones, if any, deserve an authentic JIG Review!

Have you ever thought it would be fun to do some voice acting for a game and have your voice heard by millions of people? Well here is your chance! Ben Leffler is hard at work on the third installment of his famously good horror genre point-and-click game, Exmortis, and he needs your help.

Come join us for some Jayisgames Texas Hold'em Poker fun in our own private Triple Jack lounge this Saturday evening (tonight) beginning at 7:00PM EST (GMT-5:00). All you need is a Triple Jack account (it's absolutely FREE) to play with us. Depending on how well these go we are likely to have a weekly poker night, and perhaps even have special tournaments for fabulous prizes. So grab your virtual chips and a chair and come have fun with us at JIG Poker Night!

Wooty tooty flip-bam-booty! We hosted our 2nd Flash Game Design Competition! Yes, the type of entry we were looking for was the same as what we called for during our first competition. The simple puzzle idea proved to be an excellent choice, and we have over a dozen excellent games now to choose from. Congratulations to Sprout and Gateway II for taking home the prizes valued at over $2000!!

After much deliberation and talking amongst ourselves, the JIG collective has come up with its picks for the Best of Casual Gameplay 2006 and published the results, along with the voting results from you. It wasn't easy, and we did the best we could considering there were more games reviewed here last year than any one person could have played.

The nominations for this year's Best of 2006 awards are now up and the virtual voting booths have officially opened! We'll be taking your votes for the next several days up until the dawning of the new year when we present the very best in casual gameplay that we enjoyed throughout 2006. Play along or just browse through the nominations and relive those cherished moments from the year.

Winter is here Family coming into town The snow keeps falling not making a sound That's not really true This is all a lie I live in Florida I'm going out of town This link dump is quite short So please, Don't frown

The irresistible webtoy Line Rider has returned, now in a delicious "beta 2" flavor! The update fixes a few rough spots in the interface and adds some much-needed tools to the mix. Those of you already hooked on Line Rider will appreciate how much easier it is to create a masterpiece with the new additions, and first-time players will see just what all the fuss is about.

BrainBall is a collection of ten smart-making puzzle games that give your gray matter a workout every day of the month. Featuring logic, number, memory, spatial orientation and many more, BrainBall keeps the same types of games for one month but changes the content every day. Not only is your score kept and compared to other BrainBallers, but you can uh... what's that called? Learn! You can learn, too!

SissyFight 2000 is a free online multiplayer shockwave game that lets you take part in a good old fashion schoolyard tease-fest. Take your slandering skills to the playground and whittle down the self-esteem of the other girls by using scratches, grabs, teases, tattles and more. The game plays out in a series of rounds and works a lot like a complex version of rock-paper-scissors. The only difference is the loser of this game runs off crying.

Introducing the HELP SQUAD! You'll find a new menu option on every page titled "Help Squad" that when clicked will slide open a portion of the page where the 20 most recent comments posted to the site will be displayed. My hope is that people will enlist themselves and offer to help those strugging with a game by checking the comments posted to the Help Squad frequently. Now with LIVE update!

Welcome, to the end of another week and the beginning of a sweet, sweet weekend. Here at the JIG Studios you may know us for our handy game submission suggestion form. It's easy, it's convenient, and it doesn't work with Netscape (and who does?). What you may not know is how we sort through all your nasty little submissions to find the shining gems of casual gameplay goodness.

Perfect for the impending holiday season, It's a Wonderful Internet is an interactive narrated storybook. Take in some soothing music as you listen to a classic holiday tale (tongue-in-cheek style) about a geek whose life is a little too dependant on the internet. Flip through the pages and interact with the scenery, and when the narration ends move your cursor around the pictures for some nice surprises.

If you've been sitting on the fence wondering if you should buy Eets, this should push you right over the top. Klei Entertainment has announced they're cutting the price of the refreshingly unique puzzle game Eets in half. How does $9.95 sound for a game that was named "Casual Game of the Year" by GameTunnel? There's no shortage of praise for the g...

Remember that amazingly good platformer, Mission in Snowdriftland, we mentioned last week? The one that was organized like an advent calendar and sponsored by Nintendo? (If you didn't you should play it immediately after reading this) Well, Casual Gameplay contributing author, Thomas, had a chance to catch up with the developers, extra toxic, as both he and the company are located in Germany. Here is a translation of what Christiane had to say of the company and their work...

Get Hostile is an abstract strategy game based on the board game Acquire. Like most great strategy games of its kind, Get Hostile packs an enormous amount of possibilities into surprisingly few rules. The object is simple: finish with the most money. However, there are many ways to do this, and not every strategy fits every game.

As the US prepares for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I have my own chores to do in preparation for a house full tomorrow with family and friends. Therefore, unless one of the other contributing authors comes through with a review to post, things will likely be quiet around here until Friday. But be sure to check back just in case.

As those of us that played the original await the coming of Virtual Villagers 2 (sometime this Winter), you can get your fill of some news about what's in store for your little islanders by visiting Gamezebo and reading the Developer's Diary they have up about it.

VH1 Game Break currently has a promotional contest running, Digging for DS, in which you can win yourself a DS (yes, the DS is still cool even with the imminent release of the Wii). Just head on over there and do yourself a little digging through the archives for your chance to win!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the BBC has just 'opened the flood gates' to CDX for a limited time to iron-out and debug issues with its technology that restricts access to UK IP addresses only. Therefore, this may be your last chance to play the game if you live outside the UK.

You know the feeling when you return from the restroom and all your co-workers' brains have exploded, and they have all been transformed into blood-thirsty zombies, infected by an intergalactic computer virus disguised as check-this-out mail attachment? This is it.

Good news for point-and-click fans and for those that missed it the first go-round, all four episodes to CDX are once again online and available to play, even if you live outside the UK! Be sure not to miss this fantastic adventure that includes full-motion video of live actors, selectable dialog, and top-notch production values.

Adobe made available a beta version of FP9 for Linux systems a few days ago. It works pretty well with most of the flash games reviewed at your site (which often did not work with the highest version available for Linux - 7). I don't know how many of your visitors are using Linux OS but even if it is 1 out of 100 it could be nice to give them that info.

I've been playing a lot of games lately trying to find something to sink my teeth into enough to write a review for. And while some games definitely look promising, the time required to play through each one enough to write a decent review is the bottleneck for me right now. So, here are links to a couple of games I'm currently evaluating; please help me by indicating in the comments which one(s) deserve(s) a review more than the others, and why.

Alick over at Mousebreaker in the UK sends word of a Flash game development contest they are running now through the end of November. They are offering substantial cash prizes for the three (3) best games submitted. See their contest page for complete details.

We've just launched our own IRC channel, which you can get to by clicking "Chat" in the menu above. That will take you to an open source Java client and automatically log you onto the chat server being hosted at Casual Gameplay. If you prefer to use your own IRC client, then point it to irc.jayisgames.com and join channel #casualgameplay. See ya there!

The results are in from the recent Flash Forward Film Festival held in Austin, Texas, last week, and there are some exceptional items that simply should not be missed. In particular, be sure to check out the Bendito Machine, a stunning piece of work by producer, animator, and illustrator, Jossie Malis.

Just wanted to let you know that the entries are all in for Experimental Gameplay's second competition. The first competition was to create games with a "consume" theme, and the theme of this one (which is sponsored by Red Octane) is to create games that use a dance pad, but that are not dance games.

Today the wraps were taken off the remaining details regarding the launch of Nintendo's next console, Wii (pronounced "we"). Besides being available November 19th for a retail price of $249, what was even more interesting (at least to me) was word confirming that the Wii Opera Web browser would indeed support Adobe Flash(!)

Dutch website Planet Internet just published a feature article about this site including an interview that author and JIG visitor, Wouter, conducted with me over email a few weeks ago. It is all in Dutch, so reading it may be tough if English is your only language. Still, it's very flattering to see my very first interview in 'print', and I wish to thank Wouter for the exposure and for the very kind consideration of requesting the interview to begin with.

<rant>Dreamhost, why can't you give me even one complete week of uninterrupted service? And why, once you verify that one of your servers is down, does it take an hour to bring it back online again?</rant>

I took time out from playing and reviewing games today to give the Favorites feature a long overdue update. I switched the underlying technology from DHTML to Flash (8), which made cross-browser support a lot easier on me. Sorry Linux users; you will still have to use the old interface until Flash Player 9 comes out early next year.

Those wild and muy loco hombres over at VH1 Game Break are running a contest in celebration of the US release of Sony's LocoRoco for the Playstation Portable (PSP).

Judging this competition has truly been a bittersweet experience for all of us here at JIG Casual Gameplay. Sweet because we have been graced with so many wonderfully creative and original puzzle games to play. Every last one of them deserves the usual treatment we like to give around here, so look forward to seeing each game highlighted and reviewed in the days and weeks ahead.

Today we are proud to announce the Audience Prize, to be awarded to the game designer of the competition entry that receives the most votes from the JIG community. This award will be a cash prize of at least $100(!)

The next batch of entries submitted to our competition are up and available to play! Thank you kindly for leaving your comments and constructive criticisms for each of the puzzles. There are just a few left that are giving me some trouble getting them to play well with my API. Hopefully the rest will be up before the end of the day so we can concentrate on figuring out who to award these prizes to. =)

The first batch of eight (8) entries submitted are up and available to play! I think I have all the bugs worked out of the UI. I've rushed to get this up, though, so please be kind with your bug reports.

Our first ever game design competition deadline is upon us, just a little less than 12 hours away, and already I am inundated with unbelievably good, fantastic puzzle designs to sort through and choose from. Picking the best of them will certainly not be easy. I am working feverishly hard to make sure that you are able to play each and every one of the finalists, and depending upon the quantity of any last minute submissions received, I will (hopefully) have something up and playable for you over the weekend, so be sure to check back if you are as excited as I am about it! =D

Welcome to Jayisgames' Casual Gameplay, simply the best selection of (mostly) free casual games you will find on the Web today. We have been here reviewing casual games most likely longer than any other site on the Web, since 2003. We could probably claim that we were the world's first site dedicated to reviewing casual games. But I loathe to make such a self-serving statement as that.

Seems like the summer of game design competition announcements, but if you're a game designer/developer, especially one interested in Web games, there are plenty of opportunities available to earn recognition and win fabulous prizes for your efforts. The first deadline to submit entries for next year's competition is coming up: September 8th, and among the various categories offered is a Best Web Game prize of $2,500 that is up for grabs.

I just finished making a JIG Google Gadget using Google's Gadget API. The gadget displays a random selection of game icons on your Google home page, similar to what shows up in the recommended section on every page of this site. If you would like this gadget added to your Google home page, just click.

We hosted our first Flash game design competition, and what an amazing event it was! 21 creative and original puzzle games were submitted from all over the world, and just about any one of them could have walked away with one of the prizes. You simply must play every one of these games and experience the amazing quality present in each of the entries. Cheers to everyone that participated, either by submitting an entry or by playing the games submitted!

The Eets Caption Contest has come and gone and we received a deluge of great lines over the past week. Thanks to everyone for sending their creative ideas! After some serious voting and rounds of rock-paper-scissors, we finally determined the winners of the Eets Caption Contest.

A fellow graduate of RIT, John Resig, has developed an awesome little Javascript library, called jQuery, that takes much of the chore out of client-side programming and makes it fun. Learning to use jQuery took just a couple of hours and I have already rolled out the first site features that make use of it.

Today is the last day for our Eets Caption Contest! Get your entries in before 11:59 PM (GMT-4:00) tonight to be eligible for free Eets swag, including copies of the game for you and your casual gaming pals. To enter, just take a look at this image and e-mail a funny, serious or otherwise unwordly caption to EetsContest{at}jayisgames.com. One entr...

The Experimental Gameplay Project has just announced their second game design competition, and this one is going to be RED HOT! The folks at Red Octane, makers of Guitar Hero, are sponsoring this latest competition and they are looking for innovative game ideas that make use of their company's Ignition Dance Pad. Competitors are being asked to design a non-dance game that uses the pad.

Klei Entertainment, the creators of the fantabulous indie game, Eets, just turned one year old. To celebrate their anniversary we thought it would be a good idea to partner with those emotional chaps and give you a chance to show off your creativity. You just might snag a few awesome prizes if you hurry: deadline for entries is this Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 11:59 PM (GMT-4:00).

In the Calucci game you play the role of a Mr. van der Berg, a key witness in the prosecution of a ficticious mob organization, the Calucci family. In return for identifying the family's boss, Paul Calucci, you are granted protection with a new identity and residence in a community far away. Unfortunately, you no sooner get inside your new home and someone comes a knocking on the door. What will you do?

Getty Images has enlisted five artists and designers to produce 10 interactive Flash or Shockwave pieces, collectively known as 10 Ways. Each uses Getty's extensive collection of stock photography and is based around a related concept, such as light, space or transformation.

As it is a holiday today here in the US, all of the JIG reviewers are outside barbecuing and having quaint little get-togethers with friends and/or family. We'll resume things on Tuesday. Cheers! =)