When the head of the Weardd Academy's School for Responsible Reanimation mysteriously dies in a fire, the students blame each other and take up sides. They summon up the undead and dispatch them into battle. Welcome to Corpse Craft: Incident at Weardd Academy, a new zombie game from the makers of Whirled that mixes real time strategy with block clearing to create a unique new game experience.
Puzzle Farter is a fun little platformer with a unique twist on the usual mechanic. Armed with only natural gas, make your way to the exit of each level. The physics in Puzzle Farter are elegant, yet difficult to master. One fart will only get you so far or so high, and it takes a moment for his gas to recharge. What the game lacks in music or plot, it makes up for with simple charm and giggles.
Ah, human drama. The trials and tribulations of star-crossed lovers, the agonizing decisions made on the battlefield, the ...supreme annoyance of having some rotten kid try to steal your favorite toy? And so unfolds the very entertaining yet surprisingly complex scenario of baby vs. baby in this unique one-room themed piece of interactive fiction.
Bird's Eye View Escape is a unique, well-made room escape game that offers a new perspective (literally) on the genre; it also happens to be really tough. If you're willing to take on a challenge and have the stamina to crack open some seriously enigmatic puzzles, we heartily recommend this game.
Curse you, Kable Monck, and the no-good game you rode in on. Evito Ball. PAH! There's a treacherous name if I ever heard one. Did you realize that it anagrams into A VILE BLOT? This evil little game comes with 80 treacherous levels that will have you climbing the walls before long. Trust me.
An adventure puzzler with a "choose your own" path style. This unique and animated game uses a comic book motif to present the various paths the player may take when choosing what to do. Very stylish and fun, the comic stills mixed with the animation is a nice touch. Fun, quirky puzzles, a surreal premise and a fantastic score make this game enjoyable to play.
Inquisitive Dave is one of those "breaking-the-fourth-wall" sidescrolling adventure games wherein you're aware that you're playing a game. You know, the ones with the witty dialogue where you press "Talk" because the game suggests an interaction with a chair, only to be told "This is a chair...You could sit in the chair, but you have a world to save."
In Endgame: Singularity, you take up the role of a newly born AI in this "take over the world" simulation game. A typical game usually starts with acquiring additional server access, as you're born on an inferior university computer with very little power. Different continents offer different parameters that should dictate your decisions. Some offer more efficient units, but they may also come with a higher risk of detection. Unexperienced in life, you're not necessarily aware of the exact risks yet.
Gish is a 12 pound ball of tar. Gish is also a cult-classic indie platformer released by Cryptic Sea. In this game you control of a heavy, squishy, sticky glob of goo. Balls of tar would normally be rather inert, but this particular one has had his girlfriend taken away, thus inspiring him to get up off his lazy sack of goop and slosh into action. By becoming sticky, slippery, heavy, or using tar-like ball physics to bounce high in the air, its your job to squeeze through each level and solve puzzles with little more than your own gooey body.
Games Featured:
- • a game about bouncing
- • Atomic Worm
- • Boondog
- • G:plus
Along with our usual smattering of games, this week we're featuring one of the games from the recent Toronto Independent Game Development Jam (TOJam), a three day gathering of game makers held every year to inspire creative ideas. Be sure to check out all of the TOJam entries for more experimental gaming goodness!
In a city overrun by photo-snapping tourists, Mateusz had to hunt, not for gnomes, but for a quiet secluded setting, far from the maddening crowds, where he could begin his work. Then he remembered a little known place, just around the corner from the sightseers, in the center of his old town. A quiet, relaxing and peaceful place. And the gnomes were there.
Final Ninja is a side-scrolling action/adventure with plenty of ninja-goodness like wall-jumping, stealth mode and rope grappling. The stealth mode is a pretty fun tactic, as you'll be met with lots of security systems and enemies that will require a delicate touch to overcome. But the grapple is definitely the key mechanic that makes this game shine.
Developed by Dark Realm Studios, Pandemic 2 is the sequel to the morbidly fun original Pandemic, a game in which your goal is to eradicate the human race with the perfect disease. While the original game didn't go on to become hugely popular, Pandemic II is more an improvement upon its predecessor than a sequel, with an improved interface and more features.
Robot Room is a fun, cute, sometimes baffling room escape featuring—you guessed it—robots! Don't worry, though, they aren't scary, mean robots, and their sole purpose, it seems, is to stand around with their hands in the air. Yay!
Pencil Rebel is not by any means a challenging game, but what it lacks in difficulty it more than makes up for in wonderful, amazingly creative artistry. You play Bert, an escapee from the Elf Kingdom. Bert must rescue his friend Dr. Escalup, another escapee who was recaptured by the Emperor of Elfland's agents.
Room W&R places you into what seems to be a girl's bedroom, complete with vanity mirror, photographs of animals and cheerful retro-ish couch. It's a well-made, if fairly standard room escape game.
There's something satisfying about destroying things. Knowing that someone spent time and energy building something up, only to have you rush in and smash it to bits? Deeply, deeply satisfying. But unless we specialize in demolition, warfare, or catty schoolhouse comments, this desire to destroy goes unfulfilled. So for us normal people, there's physics-based destroyer games like DUI.
This is Sand is a lovely little web toy, a nice, gentle way to ease your brain back to life after the weekend. It could hardly be simpler or more elegant: the program converts pixels into digital sand that falls, stacks and layers just like the real thing, providing an endless array of possible designs, landscapes and pictures.
Bubbles are neat things. Stop and think about them for a second. You get some soap, some water, and you can make little floating orbs. I remember many a day in my youth where we'd whip up a batch, make some bubble wands, and start firing artillery at each other. Thanks to the makers of Bubble Tanks 2, we all can revisit a more innocent, vaguely dysfunctional time.
Fantastic Contraption is a physics puzzle game in which the objective in each level is to move all red objects into a rectangular goal area. To do this, you are given a blue rectangular building area and a few different materials in which you can build your device. Standing in your way, however, are a variety of obstacles, ranging from gaping gaps to a sea of circles bent on destroying your red-object-mover-apparatus.
Games Featured:
- • Frozen Depths
- • Hydro Hydra
- • Mondo Medicals
- • Mondo Agency
Good day and welcome to Weekend Download! For your comfort and ease of existence, we promise that Weekend Download will never say it's going to call you after work and never do so. Weekend Download will also keep its promise and get you that extra cash when it does your taxes. Weekend Download is also low in calories, low fat, and high in FUN.
Ninja Kiwi have a sense for a great concept, and the courage to follow through on their own silly impulses. "Monkey Pops Balloons with Darts" is a fantastic tag line, and so is "Robot Smashes Pianos with Shovel". While most game-makers bend over backwards to create a consistent, recognizable environment (even when that environment is completely abstract), it's refreshing to play a game fueled by pure whimsy as you will see in Robomaro.
Escape Day is absolutely adorable. You star as some kind of... cat/fox/puppy guy who has, as the game's intro nicely explains, been lured into, then trapped inside, a kitchen! A really cute kitchen, but still. If you're willing and able to be patient, you'll be rewarded with a very well-crafted, smart, entertaining escape game.
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.
Escape 02-Who Am I? is really a rather nice-looking game, with well-created graphics in muted colors. Your task is straightforward: examine everything, solve the puzzles, escape the room. There is one twist, however...
Gigolo Assassin is a new point-and-click adventure from Mediatonic and created for Adult Swim. In this first installment of a three part series, you must guide your gigolo (I named mine Bruce Digelow) through an isolated tropical island in order to put a stop to the sinister goings on of one Alana Lamia. In so doing you will meet an assortment of unique (and decidedly non-unique) characters as well as solve item based puzzles much along the same vein as the old Sierra and Lucas Arts point-and-click adventures.
Any avid Jay is Games reader will have, at one point or another, paid a visit to game hosting site Kongregate. The site features hundreds of developers, and has a veritable smorgasbord of games. But until now, the folks behind Kongregate had not created a game of their own. Finally, after months of development and a lengthy private beta, the site has thrown its proverbial hat into the ring with Kongai.
A marble placement, turn-based strategy game. The goal is to be the first player to place five marbles in a row. The rows can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The game is a bit like Connect Four, but with a twist. Pentago is an award-winning board game from Sweden, and this Flash version allows you to play in a browser.
Cannons have a unique place in human history. Throughout the ages, they have served as an offensive weapon to knock down fortifications, an accentuation in pieces of classical music, and a rudimentary yet entertaining transport for clowns. Continuing in this rich tradition, let's launch stickmen at bricks to dignified tunes!
Upon first playing Escape Artist, a new room escape game, you may be surprised that this is a creation of the same designers who produced such dark, brooding classics as the Submachine and Covert Front series. You'll soon find out, however, that Mateusz Skutnik & company do sweet, serene and light very well indeed; Escape Artist is lovely, cute without crossing the line into saccharine, and a real pleasure to play.
Play Texas Hold 'Em against skillful computer opponents in Governor of Poker. Build your reputation and wealth in a dusty western town by winning at poker and buying up property. You start out in a small Texas town with some money in your pocket and ambition to climb up in the world. As you win at poker, you are able to buy property and increase your reputation. The higher your reputation, the more poker games you get invited to, and so on, until you own the whole town. You can even make headlines in the town's newspaper!
Even if you think Boomshine is fine just as it is, you'll want to check out Linkaball from UK developer OMGames. Rather than attempt the futile task of beating Boomshine at its own game, Linkaball takes the gameplay in a new direction, with a new collision mechanic as well as activating power-ups and a repellent force-field.
Totem Destroyer is, to say the least, an ironic name for this little jewel of a puzzler, considering that the very last thing you want to do is destroy the totem. The goal of each level is to instead retrieve the tiny golden little idol unharmed. Keeping you from your prize is the precariously stacked structure upon which its perched. Your goal is to selectively destroy the required number of blocks for each stage without letting the totem touch the ground.
This just in! Gotmail, creator of numerous esteemed escape games, has just released Free Falling for our escaping pleasure. I haven't yet played through the entire game, but so far it conforms to the usual high Gotmail standard: beautiful, lifelike graphics, ingenious puzzles, and....a pachinko machine? Interesting.
T2B Escape is a good-looking, clever and impressively well-designed escape-the-room game, easily a cut or two above most others of its kind even if the premise isn't anything spectacularly new or creative. T2B has two or three puzzles that genuinely made me chuckle with delight upon solving them, which to me is a significant part of the pleasure in playing such games.
Yet again, Mercedes-Benze gives us another serving of what we all love best, aside or beside games. Free music. Good free music. And there's a lot of "nu" music on the newest Mixed Tape, available now.
Land lubbers best be cowerin' below the decks, thar be a Mutiny going on! Some sea dog called Nitrome has riled up the crew with tales of booty and adventure, so grab yer peg leg and cutlass and prepare for a fight, Worms style!
Blobink is a unique and original new game in which you have the power to restore colour and rescue the girlfriend you never knew you had and who doesn't appear in the game(!) Simply race around these levels, touching each item as you go, and the world will once again be saturated in beautiful R, G & B. Don't fall into the water! You're an ink blob!
Games Featured:
- • Tropico Jong: Butterfly Expedition
- • BlockOn!
- • INNO-vation 2007
- • Phyta
A few short, experimental-type games this week, including one from prolific Game Maker designer cactus, a two color game where you are a wild boar, and a game where you control a dark sun to capture golden butterfly/angel-type things. And just to make sure you don't go mad with weirdness, there's a nice relaxing mahjong game to tame the inner beasts.
Neon has a certain glitz to it. Whether it's glittering in the lights of Las Vegas, shining in the sign of a convenience store, or just brightening up the periodic table, neon always adds a little extra to everything it touches. It was only a matter of time, then, before someone mixed the brilliance of neon with the brilliance of puzzles.
If you've played the original, or the even better update to that one, then you probably will be thrilled to know that Tony has just released a third game in this fantastic series that takes the concept of negative space and turns it upside-down. Shift 3 extends the familiar jump and run, puzzle-platformer formula by adding a few surprises.
Boat House is the latest in a series of excellent room escape games from Gump, in which the player must navigate a chamber filled with initially-puzzling gadgetry, codes and machines in an effort to escape, this time all the way home from some distant location in space. And it's extremely well done.
Ruins of Pantheon, the fifth and latest chapter of the Jinja Series, Aztec's ongoing, epic point-and-click saga, has just been released. Take one part Indiana Jones, mixing in a few heaping spoonfuls of mysterious alien technology. Add a nice dash of interstellar warfare, a sprinkling of impending doom, and plunk it all down into a tranquil, traditionally Japanese setting. Voila!
When I heard the newest Nitrome game since Sky Wire 2 was called Small Fry, I turned to my own "Small Fry", seven-year-old Roland to help me out with the review. Roland says this one is special because you get four different characters, and you have to get them all to the tree house at the end of the level.
Hot on the heels of a mention in a G4TV feature, Mateusz Skutnik unleashes more gnome-mania onto the world. This latest installment, 10 Gnomes (#6), is a hidden object game like the others to come before it. Your task, as per the usual, is to find 10 gnomes within 10 minutes.
After successfully defeating the ginormous Gi8000 in the first mission, Bowja the Ninja is back again and this time it's Bigman's Compound that is the target of ninja stealth and fortitude. Help Bowja defeat Bigman and save innocent people before it's too late in this charming point-and-click adventure.
Hedgehog Launch puts you at the helm of a national space program with a singular goal: get off the planet! Unfortunately, you're expected to accomplish spaceflight with $50, a slingshot, and an infinite supply of hedgehogs. Luckily, Minovia Cay is the kind of place where money falls from the sky! Or at least hovers in the atmosphere just waiting for you to snatch it.
A new room escape game has just been launched by Neutral, creator of some of the most highly rated games here at JIG! Switch confines you again within a stunningly rendered room and dares you to escape from it. Use your point-and-clicking fingers and your logical puzzle-solving skills to unlock the mysteries that await you in this fresh new game.
In this piece of interactive fiction, the premise is quite simple: you are the prime candidate for the position of Director of the Museum and Institute for Puzzles and Problem Solving. In order to prove your aptitude in this field, you must solve one "simple" puzzle yourself. Explore a single room, gathering clues and solving puzzles, until you finally reach the unknown problem's answer.
Immediately upon opening Ferry Halim's latest, Sunny Day Sky, you feel as if the sun has just come out, the birds are singing and all is right with the world. Grab your trusty umbrella and embark on a journey cross-country. Take a leap (by clicking the mouse) and sail as far as the winds (and your umbrella) will take you. But be sure not to land in traffic, land ON it! If you land between vehicles your journey is over, and so is the game.
Seek Ver. 0 tasks you with protecting your column of hearts from a stampede of letters sliding in from the right. As letters appear on the conveyor belt, you must quickly find and click the matching letter in the grid below. But if you are too slow, or if you click the wrong letter, one of your hearts will be wiped out.
PMOG aims to capture the social dynamic of an MMORPG while remaining accessible to your everyday Joe Gamer. However, it wouldn't be much fun if you could just up and create a top-level character – there has to be some sort of dirty work, some progression by which you earn your stripes. This is the part of the game that usually keeps MMORPGs from staying casual. PMOG solves this problem by tying the leveling process directly to your web surfing.
Little Hostage preserves the finer points of developer Zibumi's previous effort, The Final Spell, while adding complexity and cleverness. While still not excessively challenging, Little Hostage is a fun, satisfying game perfect for a coffee break or random escape-the-room craving. Those new to the genre will find it to be a relatively accessible introduction to the beautiful world of point-and-click.
New from Tonypa comes Floribular, yet another simple yet highly engaging puzzle game. A 6x6 grid of tiles fills the screen, some of which are covered by colored flowers. The goal is to place a flower on the grid to eliminate as many like-colored flowers as possible. The catch is that matches don't have to be made by adjacent tiles, they can be three or more flowers in that row or column. Difficult to describe, but easy to play, Floribular has the uncanny ability to steal your interest and hold on for quite some time.
More an interactive piece of fiction than a traditional game, Inanimate Alice: Episode 4 continues the story of the young game animator as she leaves her home in Russia and travels abroad. Inanimate Alice serves as both entertainment and a peek into the future of literature as a fusion of multimedia technologies. The haunting images and accompanying music and text weave a remarkably gripping tale that must be experienced to be believed.
Swinging Ball is a new, fun little flash title developed by Gimme5games. It's a fairly simple ball-physics game, much as we've seen before in which your goal is to guide the ball through a series of obstacles to the exit. What makes Swinging Ball noteworthy is the implementation of a grapple-like rope that you can use to latch onto surfaces and swing around like Tarzan.
The Phantom Mansion: Spectrum of Souls series puts you in control of Hector, a little spiky-haired dude whose mission is to rescue the many spirits trapped in a giant, foreboding mansion.You must guide Hector through rooms of increasing difficulty in order to save all the souls, collecting keys, dodging spooky-yet-adorable monsters and solving puzzles in order to make it through unscathed.
Rollercoaster Rush puts you behind the "wheel" of a rollercoaster brake operator. Essentially, it's your job to ensure that passengers have the thrill of their life, while at the same time making sure it's not their last. Just as any seasoned operator will tell you, the first rule in rollercoaster school is to avoid sending your passengers flying off the track to the pavement a hundred feet below.
Eschalon: Book 1, the debut title from Basilisk Games, will take you back to the nostalgic days of Ultima and Might and Magic. It's a turn-based, tile-designed RPG, a system that many fans of the genre are familiar with. Eschalon offers a rich, engaging and open-ended world to explore, with a similarly deep storyline. It's a modern-day tribute to the old CRPG's that fans grew up on, at a time when storytelling, adventuring and honing your character's skill took precedence over shiny graphics and cutting-edge mechanics.
Games Featured:
- • Overgod
- • Ancient Ants Adventure
- • Caveman Craig
- • Space Game: Mujakwi
- • Laser Bunny - Adventures in the Alien Death Mines!
What do you get when you cross prehistoric man with a group of combative ants and drop them in a few procedurally generated areas? I have no clue, but this edition of Weekend Download will probably be the closest thing to an answer you'll ever find.
Gemcraft brings a lot of innovation to the tower defense genre, quite an accomplishment considering how crowded it already is. The new gameplay mechanics create a lot of strategic depth, and the game adds replay value by keeping track of your high score for each level, allowing you to go back and replay them for much higher scores once your wizard has leveled up and is more powerful.
These fun, quirky little point-and-click diversions star a large-headed, unusually plucky baby who must traverse land, sea and even across the street to rescue his beloved bamba snacks from the clutches of an evil squirrel (and then, when things take a turn for the weird, from a giant mosquito). So...adorable...excuse me while I go suck on a lemon to balance the sweetness.
9:05, by Adam Cadre, is another snack-sized text adventure that is just right for a casual audience. Even if you're new to the genre and are looking for something short and simple as a primer, do give this one a try. You've screwed up on the job before, but never like this. You've overslept in a major way, and you're in for a world of trouble if you don't act fast.
At first, Mr. Bounce seems like a simple Breakout-inspired game with a slight twist – you can control the height of your bounce by using the [up] and [down] arrows. But right about the your brain starts going on auto-pilot, Mr. Bounce delivers a hefty wake-up smack upside the head. From out of nowhere come walls, moving walls, disappearing walls, movable blocks, tracers, wind, lions, tigers and bears, oh my!
In Ginormo Sword, you play a pink, ninja-looking hero equipped with a sword that you must upgrade, making it bigger, longer and more powerful. A fantasy action game with subtle RPG elements drawn from the golden age of Atari and Intellivision games, packs a satisfying punch for such a pixelated style, like most other games from Japanese designer Babarageo.
Games Featured:
- • On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
- • Bridge Building Game
- • Foldit
- • The Jackyard
Old and new, artistic and scientific breakthroughs, and a little bit of wacky fruit-loving robots, too. It's the most widely varied Weekend Download in the history of the universe, as verified by independent laboratory experiments!
A sequel to Skywire by Nitrome is here and it exceeds the original in many ways, including 3 bosses across 30 all-new levels. Now with lots more enemies, enough for a new one in every level, and new track elements such as gaps, breakable track and areas where your cable car goes under water.
Deep Chalk: Second Phase is the continuation of the journey of the crystal, the player character introduced in Zack's black and white world of the original Deep Chalk. The objective is the same: discover the secrets hiding beneath the surface and escape. While you're there, enjoy the quest; be inspired.
Enlightenment is a snack-sized text adventure set in the general neighborhood of the Zork universe, with Infocom-esque humor, sly quotes and footnotes, and a wealth of entertaining but unnecessary actions. It doesn't play like an 80s game, though: it is short, polished, and focused, with lots of clues and guidance, and probably won't take more than an hour to play.
A casual portal-physics game that's a well-polished piece with concepts paralleling the Flash version of Portal, as well as other titles like Shift 2 and Cursor*10. But instead of being a simple portal manipulation game, Epsilon explores two other physical properties aside from spatial relativity; time and gravity!
Nonoba, a Flash game community headed by game creators and developers, hopes to ride the incoming wave of multiplayer Flash games by making its own multiplayer game API available to Flash game developers. One of the more popular games showcasing this new technology is Nonoba Racer, a multiplayer, top-down racing game that focuses heavily on community play and advancement via upgrades.
This edition of weekend download highlights a few notable IF titles. All you need is a computer and the ability to read and you're good to go!
Daymare Town 2 returns you to the daytime nightmare of a place complete with new puzzles to solve, new characters to meet, more creepy creatures peering at you around corners, and more items to find. You can't help but enter this freaky town, but can you escape from it?
On has just released a brand new game over at his Eyezmaze blog, and it's a sign that he's feeling well and back to his usual self. Applicate Vol. 0 is a unique and original puzzle game with unusual rules. I won't spoil it by explaining it here since there are, at present, only 5 levels and the thrill of discovery is part of the fun with it. Thank you, On! Please give us more levels as soon as you can.
For room escape fans, Jan Albartus, the grand-daddy of all room escape games, has added an all-new level to his continuing series, Mystery of Time and Space (MOTAS). For the uninitiated, MOTAS is the original, the blueprint from which so many (too many?) others have tried to follow. What sets MOTAS apart from most, however, is that its puzzles are generally original, rooted in logic and not in exasperating pixel-hunts.
Robokill is an extremely well-polished shooter game that's as fun to play as it is easy to learn. You play the role of a mercenary robot hired to investigate and eradicate the hostile forces that have taken over Titan Prime, a space station orbiting Mars. On the order of Crimsonland, and if you've never heard of Crimsonland or the RIP series (top-down [WASD] shooters), you're in for a treat.
Music Catch is a game with a very simple mechanic set to a transcendent classical piano piece that could hold your attention single-handedly. The shapes appear in ebb and swell to the accompaniment, diving from foreground to background in a shifting aquamarine rainbow. You'll never catch them all; the most you can hope for is to ride the wave, soaking up as much as possible, darting for extra substance where it appears. In other words, the gameplay is much like listening to a enriching piece of music.
In Falling Forever, you control an unlucky black silhouette of a fellow who gets dropped through a trap door into a tall empty room. Empty, that is, except for the DEADLY LASER stretching across the floor. Your job is to stay alive as long as possible by launching yourself off the convenient but fragile bubbles rising through the room.
The photography of Mateusz Skutnik appears again in this latest installment of 10 Gnomes (#5), a hidden object, point-and-click game series from the Submachine creator himself. This time we adventure in the shipyard, which has been an inspiration for him when creating the Submachine series since the very first installment.
Games Featured:
- • Janitor Dan The Spaceman
- • Zep's Dreamland
- • Worminator III
- • Keith Goes Painting
As you well know, new games are released everyday. So many, in fact, that it's impossible for anyone to play them all. This week we present a selection of downloadable platform games, one of the most popular genres of all-time. These aren't new games, however—they're just four nice games you may have missed before there was a Weekend Download.
The Several Journeys of Reemus is a point-and-click game with a medieval fantasy setting from talented flash artist Zeebarf. Wanna-be hero Reemus must put a stop to a local infestation of giant ants, armed with only his dubious wits, a kickin' handlebar mustache, and his faithful purple bear sidekick Liam. By applying your skill at pointing, clicking, and problem solving, you must guide Reemus unscathed to the final confrontation with the towering ant queen.
Fans might remember TBA as the ultra-fast-paced, eye-popping, ball-shooting game with an insane techno soundtrack, all of which blended together quite nicely to create a surprisingly simple and fun game. "TBA Two" grows from the same roots as its predecessor and surpasses it in many ways. If you're a fan of the original, it's a safe bet you're going to love this sequel. If you've never played the original, it's a game that's definitely worth checking out.
SteerWheels is a fun little physics-based action puzzle in which the objective is to move the little yellow ball to the yellow goal of each level by pushing it with a set of wheels. If you're like me, you love physics-based puzzle games like this. We've seen more and more of them lately as Flash has matured, and I never tire of playing them.
The latest from Case, creator of Red and the original 5 Differences previously mentioned here, 6 Differences is another spot the differences game that incorporates gorgeous and surreal, animated graphics and images. Just click on a difference when you spot it, either side will work, to change the difference into a matching set.
Knuckleheads is the latest pixel-licious platforming fiesta from Nitrome. This time, you guide a pair of grimacing heads wearing Mexican wrestling masks as they bash their way through 25 levels of bats, spikes, and deadly lava. Why are they so angry? Maybe it's because their only method of locomotion involves constant trauma to the skull. Why are they wearing Mexican wrestling masks? I ...don't know.
Monsters' Den: The Book of Dread is Flash RPG of extraordinary depth. It is essentially a turn-based, tactical dungeon crawl, and it understands your insatiable clawing lust for magical super-trinkets. If the promise of powerful enchanted do-dads gets your blood pumping even a little bit, then Monsters' Den will have its generous claws in you for quite a while.
Arachnophilia is an arcade-style simulation of a night in the life of a spider. Your goal is to survive as long as possible, your venue is the empty midnight space between tree branches, and your method is to trap and devour the hapless insects who blunder into your web. It's a simple but sophisticated game, made with a deep love for both arachnids and early 80s arcade games like Tempest.
A simple jump-and-run platformer with style, Space Walker shows that a very simple concept paired with simple graphics can be made into an enjoyable and very pretty casual game experience. Variety in enemy type, enemy movement, and gravity for each level provides an increase in challenge, while a randomized color scheme provides something new to look forward to. Nothing earth-shattering or all that innovative here, just a well-designed package from tip to tail.
Two fighters stand side-by-side. You play Tori, the red fighter, and your opponent is Uke, the blue fighter. By manipulating eight different joints (shoulders, elbows, hips and knees) target attacks toward your opponent to score as many points as possible. Just as in Toribash, the characters are subject to rag doll physics; the goal being to contract or extend various joints in order to spring your warrior into action.
A rather unusual escape game that allows the player to temporarily detach from in-the-box thinking; in order to escape you must find and follow a new sort of logic, one that is strange yet intuitive. That quality, along with the game's simple and colorful appearance, made me feel like a little kid. When I finally finished I had a huge, silly grin on my face.
If you've been itching for a new, fun side-scrolling shooter, Postal Panic is a game you don't want to pass up. It takes the side-scrolling action of an arcade shooter and throws in some upgrading, a wacky story line and an even wackier set of enemies. Instead of the typical outer space setting, you play the role of a postal worker (in some crazy alternate dimension) who pilots a fully-armed, mail delivery ship.
A game that combines wordplay with Sokoban-style block pushing? Are they mad?!? Arrange blocks with letters to form words by sliding them into place. Luckily, Alphabox recognizes solutions apart from the one intended, so sometimes you can get creative and mix the letters around, saving a few moves. A level editor extends the replay value of this innovative puzzler.
Sometimes, when it's raining, I go outside and sit where I'm sure to get wet. Aside from the free shower, sitting in the rain is a great way to de-stress if Yoga just isn't your thing. Unfortunately, unless you live in Seattle, it doesn't rain every day; but rain or shine you can always find something to help you relax in the latest Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape, available as a free download and updated every 8 weeks.
A fast-paced, single-player mouse avoidance game where your only goal is to survive as long as possible. Dodge angry red buggles and collect mysterious blue boxes to obtain a high score. Catch the little green buggles to become the mighty devourer, destroyer of red buggles! Eat them all! Muhahaha!
If you've ever longed for a game to bring it on with animal-on-animal warfare, as in the tradition of Red Wall, you've come to the right place. Brute Wars is a turn-based RPG tactical strategy game where you pit your team of six creatures against opposing squads. The placement and order of their attacks adds up to a highly nuanced and rapid game of tactics that you won't want to miss.
The Flash-based Pararalyzer from Japanese developer, Heriet, is an adrenaline-based manic shooter if ever there was one. From the opening screen, there is action galore and soon enough amazing bullet patterns criss-cross the screen in a dazzling kaleidoscope of colour. Unleash a seemingly endless stream of bullets toward the equally endless droves of enemies who are bent on destroying you.
Alan Probe: Amateur Surgeon is a cartoonish and casually offensive entry into the simon-says-surgery genre made famous(ish) by Atlus' Trauma Center. Your job is to follow the exact requirements of each surgery as quickly and as accurately as possible. The game is blessed with the finest production values a second-tier television network can buy, with bright, detailed environments and an ever-present sense of self-conscious irony. The violence is so over-the-top that it's not really gross, but there's still plenty of comically intense moments to go around.
Chronotron is a platform-puzzle game with a really innovative (and addictive) twist. If you're a fan of time travel theory or if you enjoyed any of the amazing time-based games (Timebot, Time Raider, and Super Earth Defense, in particular) from our replay-themed game competition last summer, then you'll love Chronotron.
M.I.L.O. stands for Mildly Intelligent Living Organism, the robotic main character of this puzzling game. You play as M.I.L.O., who wanders through the sixteen levels of this game pushing buttons, carrying items, and avoiding the deathtraps set for him. Keep a sharp eye on what the notes you find say, because there's more to this game than fits in a single browser window.
Music Bounce is a bit like Breakout, but with an unlikely musical twist. Each level presents you with a different layout of colored bricks. Your job is to wipe them all out by striking them with ammunition from an array of gates on the left side of the screen. And if everything is running properly, Music Bounce can be magical.
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