DungeonDiary by Windbell is an RPG mixed with a programming game. It sounds like an unusual combination, but the minute you get your hands on it you'll see the enormous potential it has. After your family suffered through a natural disaster, you're left with a massive debt and no way to pay it off. Except by going on adventures! Not a bad way to survive, until you realize that in order to get paid you'll collect more grasses and mushrooms than you knew existed, fight off hordes of bees and "sexy cats", and escort helpless citizens through the wilderness.

Puzzle and Dragons is a fusion of puzzle gameplay and Pokemon-like monster hunting, training and collecting. From the safety of your mobile device you get to manage a team of tiny elemental creatures who can be fused and evolved to become more powerful fighting machines. When your crew is ready to roll, head into the dungeon where you'll battle enemies by swapping gems on a Bejeweled-like grid. It's an almost perfect blend of puzzle matching and role playing, streamlined to be casual friendly without removing too much of the team management bits we love to obsess over.

Exposition... story... who needs it anyway? In just one month, Craze created a free indie RPG with extremely little narrative but extremely deep challenge and strategy. Over thirty difficult battles await you as you venture into a sprawling fortress with three young women as your guardians, where success depends not on grinding levels or items, but on carefully thinking out every turn in combat and swapping out the various skills and spells you'll learn to make the most out of bonuses, strengths, and weaknesses. Get ready to die a whole bunch!

ParanormalDev offers up their take on the now iconic Slenderman mythos with a free gorgeous first-person horror adventure made in just two weeks. When you wake up alone and disoriented in a vast park in the middle of a downpour, you have no choice but to seek out help. Unfortunately for you, you might find a big, malevolent mystery instead as you seek out more story and clues than before.

Short and sweet, Very Pink Game is an adventure game created by sheepherds using RPG Maker 2003. It stars a lonely little girl named Ivy who receives a letter from a friend asking her to meet outside of town. In order to make it out of the pink village, though, Ivy has to solve a series of puzzles, helping the townsfolk go about their day by finding lost items, answering riddles, and solving problems. Just like (a very pink-colored) real life!

Speedy delivery! Or, no delivery, it seems. Static Quest: The Delivery from CookieBit is a survival-based arcade game packed with enemies, spells, weapons and items, all of which can be upgraded as you continue to punch baddies that get in your way. It's a little bit like Earn to Die, a little bit like Punch-Out!!, and a little bit like being glued to the floor while your older brother punches you in the arm and keeps asking why you're hitting yourself. But, you know, in an entertaining, good kind of way!

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!

Eskkapee is a room escape game pared down to its most basic elements: you've got a TV, a computer, a couch, a handful of items to collect and four white walls. You won't find any blindingly brilliant puzzles in Eskkapee, or be dazzled by the room's beauty, but the game will nonetheless provide a few minutes of satisfying room escape fun.

In Red White Yellow, the objective is to create groups of the same color in quantities of 6 or more by dropping the falling blocks into place. However, like its name suggests, Red White Yellow is also the order in which you must clear groups from play. It's a unique new twist to the new generation of falling block puzzle games popularized by Lumines. The selectable soundtracks make this game really special.

In this gorgeously detailed Flash-based driving game, the developers combine highly stylized computer motion graphics and 3D cut scenes to create a unique experience you won't soon forget. Players travel to (and through) destinations such as Lisbon, Paris, Berlin and Prague, all the while competing to earn credits for upgrades and to purchase new vehicles.

Playing with blocks is a universal experience, being not only fun for all ages but also an essential tool in development. Students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology have taken that basic structure and created a marvelous strategy game that involves not only stacking blocks but, in a stroke that some would call brilliant but I call mandatory, knocking your opponent's structures down.

Oshidama is an simple and elegant flash game by Game-Pure, the creators of Speed Cluster. The goal is to nudge a white orb to the exit point on each screen. Walls, pits and other obstacles stand in your way, forcing you plan your path and be ready for a last-second save at any moment. It's an interesting mix of strategy and fast-paced cursor shifting delivered in an astounding audio and visual atmosphere.

Ian Snyder's Valo requires the same painstakingly delicate touch as removing a funny bone or charley horse from the classic game Operation, albeit with a much gentler, more abstract style. Use your expert pointing and clicking skills to navigate dangerous fields of red squares while clicking on or dragging the mouse over all the blue squares to earn points and advance to the next level.

An online puzzle game in the same vein as God Tower, Dumb: The Game and Not Pr0n. These lateral thinking Web games are the work of one apparently psychotic mind, Mark Lautman. In the first 16 puzzles alone, you'll come across binary code, a crossword puzzle, a word scramble, and a quote from... nevermind, that would give the answer away. What they lack in polish they more than make up in deviousness.

Colour Connect has many qualities of a classic casual game: it is easy to understand, simple to pick-up and play, and the randomly generated puzzles present a challenge that is difficult to master. Created by Matthew Dirks of British Columbia, Canada, for our recent game design competition, this puzzle game not only plays great it could also pass as an abstract work of art.

Manuel Fallmann's latest offering on his MINDistortion site is a turn-based strategy game against the CPU, or a human opponent at the same computer. The object of Quarkz is to be the first player to reach the number of points designated as the victory condition by adding particles to the...

Super Mini-Games are bite-sized Flash games to challenge your hand-eye coordination and problem solving skillz. Created by Pop, a New York City based game design firm, these mini-games were commissioned by Cartoon Network and appeared on their website. Each game offers something different, and all are packaged in a cute little box that opens when clicked to reveal its game.

This must be a day for German pinball games. Rapid Motion is another very clever entry in the pinball game genre, this one uses a circular playing field and a virtual magnetized surface as part of the gameplay mechanics. The object, besides of course racking up as many points as you can, is to complete the ring of ball bearings by triggering a pit ...

A lot of thought and design went into developing the Anti-Bush Online VideoGame. It's a mix of SouthPark brashness with old-school 2D side-scrolling fun. Everyone should play it, if for no other reason than to see just how George Bush has failed us as our president. The Emperor has no clothes! We must get rid of him before it's too late.

From the BBC show featuring the same Blobs comes this cute little Flash game that is actually a bit of a challenge. Similar to the classic Lunar Lander game, the objective of Blob Lander is to fly and land your spaceship gracefully.

Also available on mobile devices, OZDY takes you under da sea for an adorable physics puzzle game where you need to reunite baby sea creatures with their parents, though with moving platforms, wrecking balls, switches, buttons that make you shrink or grow and more, it's trickier than you think!

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 should have never been entered in this free indie platformer.

If you're going to read this you better do it quick because you're running out of time. In roughly 20 minutes a subway train is going to crash, and you're the only one on board this charging death sentence. It's up to you to solve the puzzles to restart the train's system before your time is up in this free indie point-and-click puzzle game.

Serafina's spent her entire life isolated in the jungle with only her father for company, but when he's kidnapped and she sets out to rescue him, she discovers more than she ever thought possible about the world and people outside, and herself, in this pay-what-you-want (including free!) indie otome visual novel, also available for Android.

In one night, Jacqueline Brown's life was flipped upside down. A murder needs to be solved as well as finding out who tried to kill her. Things would be much smoother for her in this free visual novel, if it wasn't for the fact that in result of the car accident she is left blind, mute, and paralyzed. All her friends and family members think she is in a coma, but she can still see light and hear every guilty word her visitors say.

Yuri, FunkyLand, and Esklavos share the Weekday Escape spotlight this week, well qualified to bust your boredom and satisfy your need for escape with cuteness, whimsy and artistic flare.

Though hampered by a lot of grinding, Dragon Coins is still a fun, free, simple, and surprisingly addictive hybrid of Pokemon-style monster catching and battling... and one of those old coin pusher machines your granny likes to put pennies into in Vegas.

Your fight may be futile, but that's no reason not to give it all you have! In this dystopian sci-fi shooter, you're the last man standing against the alien invaders, and you won't go out peacefully... how many can you take with you before you go down in flames?

It's easy to occasionally indulge in some less than cheery thoughts but what if you're in a job you hate, you're lonely, and you have no confidence? What if you're in a life you hate? Meet Evan Winter, a man that has reached his limit and you're along for the devastating ride that shows the reality of how quickly depression can turn to suicidal. How long can Evan resist the whispers that encourage him to go to the roof?

A free first-person horror action adventure made by Utah students, Erie drops you into an abandoned nuclear generator that's suffered a partial meltdown, searching for survivors and trying to uncover the reason why people have been disappearing from the nearby town. Naturally, no good can come of this. Heavy on jump scares and simple in gameplay, Erie is nevertheless a fun, free, and freaky little horror game that will get your heart racing.

Retro shmup? More like Bullet Candy! An avalanche of colour and sound assaults you like a continuous rain of fireworks, but there's no time to stop and watch as 8 bosses, plus minions, are out to destroy your little spaceship. Or maybe you're out to destroy them. Score Rush requires registration before you can play, but shooter fans will find that behind the dazzling spectacle of the graphics there's a smooth, solid, and very playable game as well.

Mountain Bike is a charming little 2D stunt biking game from Miniclip. Doing tricks will boost your score, but also make you crash a lot. Thankfully a trick tutorial is provided for those of us (myself included) who don't already know the difference between a toothpick grind and an icepick grind.

Overhead Consistence is another mouse maze game, but please bear with me... this one's good, even if you don't normally go for manual dexterity games. If you don't believe me, go check out Overhead Persistence, reviewed here in March. Has JohnB ever steered you wrong? This one is well worth the effort.

With the latest Pokemon game consuming much of my idle time lately—and this coming from someone that is definitely not a fan of most RPG games—it has been difficult at best finding something new and compelling to post. However, here are a couple of tidbits to keep you occupied for now (and to buy me a little time for more Pokemon...)

With the latest Pokemon game consuming much of my idle time lately—and this coming from someone that is definitely not a fan of most RPG games—it has been difficult at best finding something new and compelling to post. However, here are a couple of tidbits to keep you occupied for now (and to buy me a little time for more Pokemon...)

In Game With a Kitty, you play a heroic Kitty on a quest to investigate a mysterious tower that has appeared in the south. You must progress in typical platformer fashion through a series of challenging and exciting levels. You have a bit of non-linear freedom in between levels, as you can choose your next challenge via a Super Mario World-styled map view.

At first glance, the latest offering from Taro Ito's GameDesign appears to be just another Tetris clone, but closer inspection reveals gameplay dependent upon color rather than shape. In Porolith Flash, the objective is to stack and group shapes of the same color together to remove them from play.

Often I think to myself what I would do if I was ever in a futuristic jet on a futuristic highway chasing tanker trucks, launching missiles at them, and all the while avoiding sentry and assault drones. With Damien Clarke's new game, Jet Speed, I no longer have to ponder this theoretical scenario in my head—I actually get to give it a try!

Here are a couple of devious puzzle games by Alessandro Cima and available on the CandleLightStories website. The first was created as a Halloween treat, and now a second puzzle game in the series has been released. So far, according to the website, not a single person has solved it. This sounds like a challenge the JIG community can come together on and crack in no time.

Some of the reviews on this site are tagged as "kidsafe", but a few months ago, when my 2-and-a-half-year-old was begging me to find him some fun games to play on the Internet, I couldn't really find very much at jayisgames that he would enjoy. So, I had to scour kids' sites to find stuff, and here is what I discovered...

Horse Racing is the latest gameSheep effort, a Flash racing game that puts the player in control of one of three (3) different horses on a race to the finish line. Use the mouse for control in this easy-to-play game, running and jumping over hurdles and catching power-ups for some crazy horse shenanigans.

A recent addition to David Thorburn's Teagames.com website, Zombie Romp is a 2D side-scrolling melee shooter the likes of which are beyond this world. The object of this simple shooter is to stay alive by shooting zillions of zombies and battling a battalion of bats.

Iso-Infected is an action arcade Flash game created by Thorsten Diessner of Germany. With gameplay similar to the classic arcade sensation, Marble Madness, the object of the game is roll a ball around to collect all 15 blue gems hidden throughout the many areas of the game 'world'.

Here is a simple one-button mouse game that is easy to understand, and yet difficult to do. In fact, it's likely that it will be downright frustrating for those without the sharpest of reflexes or mousing precision. ClickRed is an action game in which you must click on the moving red...

Rumble Ball is a strategy game of sorts. The object is to score the most points you can by hitting colored items on the play field with a large ball. I was immediately drawn to this game due to its very pretty presentation. The appealing graphics and top-down, pseudo-3D appearance make this game compelling for most anyone to pick up and play.

This time a Flash shmup from Uminin of the Flash Game Zone in Japan. Moment Zero is a mostly grayscale shooter of exceptional design. Noteworthy features include a lock-on targeting mechanism and multiple paths through the game. From the initial enemy wave you can tell this isn't any ordinary shooter. The...

Flash Game Zone offers a series of Flash games designed by Uminin of Japan. Each of the games exhibit high production values with a solid design that offers compelling and rewarding gameplay. One of my favorites is Cube, an action strategy game of skill similar to a Shuffleboard game. The objective is to propel colored cubes across the play field so that they come to rest within designated rectangles.

Halloween is just around the corner, and Gold Yard is a great little Flash adventure game to help get in the spirit of the season. Sporting an isometric view that simulates a 3D perspective, this game puts you in the character of a large-footed Hobbit trying to escape alive from a graveyard.

Audiogame est musique interactive by Frenchman marc Em. This Flash ‘game' is a collection of works incorporating feats of multimedia genius. Combining audio and video elements with interactivity and motion graphics, marc Em draws you into each of his creations as conductor, director, performer, and player. The entire project has evolved over the last 2 years, and Audiogame continues to be a work in progress. As dynamic as the compositions it contains.

A game that's more difficult than it might seem, this one is based on clicking sequentially numbered circles to clear each level. For example, when the game begins, click on the circle with 1, then 2, then 3... not too difficult, eh? You try it.

Alice seems aptly named for a blonde little girl who finds herself in a strange wonderland. Except there is a lot less wonder and a lot more terror in this free indie horror adventure But our brave little heroine is a lot more confident as she strives to find a way out of this nightmare.

Slide across the world collecting your character's favorite items in the fast-paced action game for iOS. Avoid enemies and obstacles in order to grab all the items you can to gain the highest score possible. Unlock characters and play as a bowling ball, a vampire, or pretty much anything in between in this addictive silly game.

Waking up in the woods with little memory is the least of your concerns as you begin to venture deeper to find your way out. Get ready for some jumpscares and some good old fashion horror as you try to find out what happened to you so you can make sure you leave it all far far behind in this free indie horror adventure.

This week on your Weekday Escape! A terrifying world where the police are out to arrest unlawful nappers! A developer who's had it with you escaping their games and wants you to bust your way out this time! And a relaxing game of the birds and the bees... no, not that kind, weirdo.

Mary is stuck in endless loops of dreams where very little changes. But those small changes reveal much about her if she's willing to listen. And maybe she can find a way to wake up in this short but powerful free indie adventure game.

Fancy yourself a good skier? Fancy yourself a yeti chaser? Experience both in this fun action mobile game. Meet a cast of quirky characters as you ski the toughest slalom courses on the mountain, all while searching for the elusive beast.

Your daughter Suzanne is having a house party for her "artsy" friends, and she insists that you, her mother, don't need to help. In this short but very sweet free indie game, you'll wander the house and get to know your daughter and her friends a little better... often just by watching quietly from the sidelines.

Love playing challenging yet simple games on your iOS or Android device? Akkad's game of fast-paced arcade action has you covered. To play, all you need to do is tap the screen to make the square rotate to the right, and try to catch coloured balls on the matching side. It's harder than it sounds, and beating your own high score is almost as fun as beating the ones your friends set!

Mysterious incidents occur on a cruise ship half a century apart, and it's up to you to discover the truth in The Misadventures of Detective Butler, a mystery visual novel by Goldbar Games. While two-dimensional characters hold the story from reaching its full potential, it is an entertaining yarn with a classic Golden Age Whodunnit feel and polished visuals and sound.

Your sister has gotten lost in a staged haunted house. Is this some elaborate game of hide and seek or is something holding her against her will? One thing is for certain, something is amiss in this fake haunted house. For one thing, it doesn't seem that "fake" any more.

It's animal rescue time! Satisfy your inner roughhousing Good Samaritan by slamming animals around to get all them safely home, while getting knocked around the screen by them yourself.

Bottle Rockets is a sci-fi platform game by James Earl Cox III set to the song "Alberto Balsam" by Aphex Twin. A short artistic work about mothers, daughters, and space, it integrates a glitchy aesthetic quite well into the plot and gameplay, and will generally succeed in making those who play it feel all the feels.

Gotta reprogram 'em all! '80s cyberpunk meets addictive turn-based RPG battling as you play a digital assassin able to capture and reprogram enemy defenses to use for your own devices.

Ooga-booga? No, the Neanderthals of BonusXP's mobile match-3/strategy hybrid have a bit more than that stereotype going for them in Cavemania. Like hunting and gathering, and wrangling prehistoric beasts... Okay, maybe not. But the fun graphics and clever level design will certainly have you scratching your head and grunting. No, this game's not so easy a caveman... well, you know.

The results of the "10 Seconds"-themed Ludum Dare 27 72-Hour are in, and top prize goes to NXTWPN10: a quirky Unity shooter by Graebor. An explosive combination of color and creativity, if a little disorienting, but a worthy winner and a perfect candidate for expansion.

Yes yes YES. The Kagi Nochi Tobira series is back! The iOS and Android escape game Kagi Nochi Tobira 2013 from Daisuke Suzuki is one of the more polished "100-style" escape games out there (move over, 100 Floors), adopting a simple art style and puzzles that are both creative and challenging. Time to grab your mobile device and binge play.

Pet Rescue Saga is a cute and captivating puzzle game that made its way from the world of Facebook to the mobile marketplaces. Created by King, the developer behind Candy Crush Saga, expect a well-tuned matching experience punctuated by a number of useful power-ups, all told through a shoestring story about rescuing adorable pets!

The winner of the minimalism-themed Ludum Dare 26 game jam, Mono, a Java game by Timtip Games, is a uniquely artistic top-down mix of puzzles and skill. In it, you must guide an eye through a series of eight levels. It's over far too fast, but it's densely packed with interesting ideas and a well deserved victor.

A king has been murdered, and his heart, which holds the power of all creation, stolen by a being known as Final. Take control of one of six bizarre, unique characters and battle your way to get it for your own means in this incredibly dark and violent free indie fighting game.

Stranded on an island, alone, with only a flickering campfire and a mysterious teddy-bear... what could go wrong? DeanForge delivers the first installment in a flawed but freaky free indie horror adventure that will have you running (or, uh, walking) for your life from a seemingly unstoppable menace and a hidden legacy of violence.

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.

Captain Skyro is a classic "pull back and fling" game similar to the old browser series Sling, only instead of tossing around squishy gross things, now you get to control a pirate! Grappling up through the clouds, you'll encounter cargo holds full of crazy obstacles, clouds that you'll swear are out to get you, and score-based gameplay that will inspire you to go back and play again, just so you can nab that last coin!

Contour is a clever re-imagining of Marble Madness by Sean Hawkes, creator of several games entered into previous competitions such as Orbit and Clack. An isometric grid is placed over the playing field that holds a ball and a white exit square. Click on individual tiles to raise the ground from that point, causing the marble to roll downhill. The goal is to move the marble to the exit tile by raising and lowering the floor, a feat that requires both intelligent planning and fast clicking.

In Asteroids Revenge III, play the role of a blue-tinted asteroid up against all sorts of human enemies&8212;shooting ships, repelling fields, space mines, and many others. Your goal is to wipe out the treacherous human fleet by crashing into all the ships while avoiding getting hit by their fire. Apart from being a tad easy, this game is really fun to play!

Another simple idea executed almost perfectly, Andrew VanHeuklon's Rerun is a unique mouseplay game of collection and avoidance. And though we have seen this core gameplay mechanic in other games before, it is the creative implementations of the "replay" theme that elevate this title above others of its type.

Game-Pure continues to amaze us with the rate at which they can release new games. Bound Bear is a simple action projectile game that combines elements from Breakout and Bloons to create something wholly unique and enjoyable to play.The objective is to reunite baby bear with mama bear, and to do so you'll have to avoid the black bears that can block your path.

Aqui Griffin delivered a visually stunning entry to our recent game design competition that is as easy to pick-up and play as it is to look at. enQbate is a simple puzzle game in which the objective is to highlight all cells in play by mousing over them with the cursor and then clicking.

Bacteria Salad is the latest entry in Persuasive Games' Arcade Wire series. Another attempt at "persuasion, instruction, and activism," Bacteria Salad is a light, humorous depiction of the complexity of the agricultural business.

Floatpoint is a sci-fi themed interactive fiction game by Emily Short that walked away with first prize in the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition. You play the role of an ambassador on a mission to a cold, icy planet called Alehart. Humans colonized the world ages ago, but an advancing glacier threatens to overtake the city and eradicate its inhabitants. As you try to negotiate a deal to bring the colonists back to Earth, a web of mysteries begins to unfold itself. This might not be an easy job after all.

Spheres of Chaos is gorgeous in motion, with extremely smooth animation amid literally hundreds of enemies and explosions (and up to 8 simultaneous players!). Far more than just a nostalgic tribute to Asteroids, SoC is a fascinating, unique and memorable classic in its own right.

Ryan Dewsbury of Toronto has created this multiplayer no-limit Texas Hold'em game, called gpokr, in Java using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which is a software development framework for Java developers to create AJAX applications. The latest version even has a Jayisgames table where many fun folks from here have been playing and carrying on. Come join in the fun! =)

Bicycle Texas Hold'em is a free-to-play tournament-style card game for eight (8) players and is a fairly standard game for its kind. It features rounds of increasing blinds and classic all-in, no-limit betting. The buy-in is $100, though no actual money is ever won or lost in the game.

Invader360 is a great little Flash based tube shooter, similar to arcade classics Tempest, Gyruss or, more recently, ABA Games' downloadable Torus Trooper. Developer f1ash brings this exotic branch of the shmup tree to life with frantic action and a minimal, well defined style.

Hot on the heels of our Massively Multiplayer Pong review, Plasma Pong, a downloadable Windows game, takes the old favorite table tennis formula and fills it with liquid plasma. Using fluid dynamics you can push the ball around the screen or charge for a cannon shot. The game ends up playing more like a visual experiment than a serious Pong clone, but it's worth a few minutes of playtime nonetheless.

Bola is a casual and enjoyable puzzle game created by the developers at Gamesheep.com, the same folks who brought us Manole and Makos. The goal of the developers who host the site is to eventually populate it with all their own games, and Bola is not a bad step in that direction.

Remember the typing game, Letters, that was reviewed here in November? Well, the author, Hannu Pelkonen, has released a very significant addition to the series: Words! Though lacking the power-ups of Letters, Words uses the same slick interface and addictive dynamic high score display that updates your rank in real-time while you play.

Makos is a game that is somewhat similar to so many other games in the very crowded genre of sliding block puzzle games, and yet it managed to grab my attention with its adorable little forest creatures and addictive gameplay. The graphics and sound effects are all nicely polished and give the game an attractive charm that will likely have you coming back to play often.