Ready... set... KABOOM! KragSoft delivers a lovely and engaging little chain-reaction arcade game that involves placing bombs to clear the screen. The catch? All those little icons you see drifting around explode in different ways, and figuring that out AND how best to use them is part of the strategy. A simple idea with a clean presentation that makes for an engaging little snack of a game rather than a main course.

There has been a crucial time fault. But you can escape the cycle. The Freewill Cycle: Volume II is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape", and our community of judges awarded it with the 3rd place prize. It is the kind of innovative game we at JiG hope for when running these competitions, and it well deserves its place near the top of the rankings.

You are a private eye investigating a rival P.I. when you are conked over the head from behind with a blunt object. Now you're trapped inside his office and must use your wits and detective skills to escape the room. Smooth navigation, a sleuthy ambiance and light parody of the genre make this a good, quick dose of noir whenever the mood grabs you.

Explore a world of tiny gardens, shady parks, and secret glades. Grow gardens and enjoy soothing sounds as you travel through this happy little block-fitting puzzle game from Michael Todd. Just click to pick up pieces, use space to rotate, and drag into place. Enchanting and sweet, Little Gardens has that bit of magic and heart that makes a good game a true delight to play.

Tick tock on the clock, but the party won't stop, because Ozzie Mercado has just released Twelve O, another wonderful, simple idea puzzle game! Thinking rotationally can be mind twisting, and while the mouse controls can take a little getting used to, Twelve O makes for a great time-waster.

Binga, Binga, ready your fingas! Ninja Doodle has just struck from the shadows with another in his awesome series of rapid-fire mouse-driven puzzle games. But just because these games are mini, don't expect them to be pushovers, especially since you're racinga the clock.

This Is Not An Escape approaches CGDC 10's "Escape" theme in a way both novel and familiar, and it makes for a mind-twist of an experience. Clearly this entry was a labor of love for its creator, and the result is something well worth watching, and well worth playing. This is Not an Escape is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape", and our community of judges awarded it with the 2nd place prize.

Nitrome sends you on a tiny, puzzling adventure in this 50x50 turnbased game. Plot a course through a dangerous dungeon filled with tricks, traps, and baddies, nabbing coins along the way. It's a small (literally!) and thoughtful little game that will deliver a clever, bite-sized dose of puzzle action.

Ready for a puzzle that will run you rug-ged? Farsh, from the Persian word for carpet, is a tile-walking puzzler where you've got to roll and unroll your carpet to reach the exit. If you roll up just right, you can rotate the tiles around you to build a path. Just don't let your mind get frayed in the process!

The continuing horrors from the casual adventure developer ERS Game Studios have returned, and this time it's more horrorey than ever. Haunted Halls: Revenge of Doctor Blackmore is the third game in the Haunted Halls series, picking up where the previous games left off and not stopping to let you gather your wits. It's a psychologically intense game for a point and click puzzle adventure, but it's carried out with the usual grace and flair we've come to expect from ERS. Ready to descend into madness again?

We've waited nearly 2 years for the next installment in Mateusz Skutnik's enigmatic Submachine series, but the wait is over. Submachine 8: The Plan is here at long last with more mysterious mechanical contraptions to figure out, more mysteries to be revealed, and maybe even some long overdue answers to questions that have been nagging at us since the last chapter. Portals within portals? This changes everything.

Mmm, delicious eggs. As we've learned from the Angry Birds series, round, legless piggies love nothing more than a good egg. And they'll do anything they can to get their snouts on one! In Rovio's latest physics game Bad Piggies, the tables are turned and you're working to help the pigs get what they want. Instead of slingshots and breakable forts, though, you're building rickety contraptions box by wooden box. It's a little bit of construction, a little bit of action, and a whole lot of crashing. Exactly what you need in a casual mobile game!

You are stuck inside a nightmare dream. Something lurks in the darkness... Something in the depths of your own mind wants to pull you even deeper. Someone will escape this dream for sure. The question is - who is that going to be? Deep Sleep is an entry into our 10th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, with the theme of "Escape", and our community of judges awarded it with the 1st place prize.

Love roguelikes but wish all that permadeath would lighten up a little? This fabulously retro and witty game might just be for you. Venture deep into dungeons and other areas populated by bizarre monsters and strange people as you quest towards one of four different endings and unlock a total of 20 classes. Offering a surprising amount of depth, laughs, and addictiveness, it's a great casual introduction to the roguelike genre, and a lot of fun for fans.

This escape game from Jan's Room is the kind of place where you'd want to hang out with your friends. While here, search through the Pool Bar for clues, enter codes, and even uncover the top secret VIP lounge. Pixel hunting detracts from the experience in a couple instances but not enough to ruin the fun. A pleasing number of puzzles, with just the right bit of challenge, makes being here enjoyable even while escaping feels well-earned.

Petithima is back with another mellow mini room escape to delight all of those who like logical, graceful puzzles. Mugcup makes the escaping go down smoothly. With an easy to use inventory, a mute feature, and a save feature, Petithima's games, although short, feature everything we like to see in a room escape.

The latest in Toge Production's popular series of zombie action-strategy games, Infectonator 2 thrives on frenetic chain-reaction based gameplay, its awesome sprite art, and the pure adrenaline rush one gets by infecting the world, continent by continent. It may be a bit taxing on the CPU for such mindless fun, but that just means you'll keep going even after someone has taken a chomp from your brain

Pheus and Mor, a boy and his dog. Best friends forever, right? This puzzle platformer puts that to the test, combining stunning, dreamlike levels with ominous foreshadowing for a flawed but engaging experience. Both characters will have to work together and use their strengths to get to the end, but are they ready for what's waiting for them on the other side of that locked door?

The shadows and your wits are the only things keeping you alive in this clever stealth-based physics puzzler. Navigate your way through a series of increasingly challenging (and deadly!) obstacle courses, avoiding lasers, turrets, and more, by figuring out how to use the environment, moving shadows, and even the light itself to your advantage. Originally a simple prototype back in 2010, Shadow Drifter shows how to expand on a much-loved concept and provide a polished, engaging finished project without losing anything from the original.

Your friend deserved a better end than this. Not at the end of the bottle of the tainted poison that the syndicate is trying to pass off as hooch. You may be just one man, but one man with a gun in his hand is often all you need to find some answers. Rot Gut is a action platform shooter by test84, set in a pixelated depiction of 1920's big city gangland. Gameplay is a little generic as shooters go, but it's solidly enjoyable and, more importantly, has atmosphere to spare.

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

An arcade avoidance game by Mortar Games that has you controlling a small. fragile virus, attacked on all sides by the defenses of the host body. The Fishy-styled gameplay little slow going at first, but the eerie atmosphere and a surprisingly affecting final level make Vivirion worth playing until the very end.

Escape from the Room with a Strong Door is the perfect equivalent of a bowl of beer nuts, an addicting little nibble that makes you hungry for more. The game is pretty stripped down, involving a stark room with the aforementioned strong door, one piece of furniture, a wastebasket, and two pictures on the wall. Try the latest salty snack from Hottategoya, a cute little bite-sized escape game that will leave you craving more.

KintoGames serves up some challenging roguelike retro action in this squishy, slashy dungeon crawler. Battle your way through hordes of enemies, gain powerful weapons and armor, find power-ups, and try to stay alive... all with the click of a mouse. Some awkward controls keep it from really feeling as sleek as you'd like, but with a great sense of style and tons of baddies and bosses, it delivers a solid dose of arcade-style hack-and-slash action.

The ability to make theme and mood fit together into an elegant, peaceful escape-the-room game is perfectly illustrated by TomaTea here. Follow the glowing cursor to find clues and puzzle tiles and chess pieces. Then, use logical deductions and mathematical calculations to complete numerous doors and drawers until you find the exit key.

A topdown arena shooter by Daniel Twomey, Commit.5 is a game that's going to make it hard to stay in one place. As the little blue thingy in a world of other-colored thingies, you must survive as long as you can. By giving players an incentive to stand their ground for bonus points, Commit.5 has an arcadey-defense feel to it, which setting it apart from others of the genre.

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

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

Pity the poor royal court of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. The exhausted souls just finished uniting Egypt in order to keep the gods happy and now they are faced with a new challenge: travel down the Nile and rebuild temples before the gods start getting all explodey on their butts. And all of this must be accomplished while the royal architect is severely under the weather and the royal cat has gone AWOL. Pharaoh Touti and company are back in BlooBuzz's (formerly Wendigo) latest time management strategy The Timebuilders: Pyramid Rising 2.

Described as a "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" by its developers, Subset Games, you won't be doing a whole lot of boldly going where no one has gone before in FTL: Faster Than Light. In fact, most of your time will be spent directing crew members and putting out engine room fires. But scifi strategy fans will love every minute of it, even with the hardcore difficulty.

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

Point-and-click your way through a short list of complications to heroically rescue a damsel in distress. Using a touch of clever problem solving and item management, you'll soon reach the end of this creatively unassuming puzzle game. The blend of whimsical sketchwork and mild challenge ensures your left brain and right brain will be feeling quite pleased to have this meeting of the minds.

They say big things come in small packages, and you're one of the smallest around! But just because you start out on the bottom of the food chain doesn't mean you'll stay there, if you're fast on your feet, and with your teeth! A short, simple, and colourful action avoidance platformer themed around evolution and made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare.

Point-and-click your way through this modest escape-the-room game from Tateita, encountering a number of slightly sticky, never abstruse puzzles until you find the key to the exit door. It's short and easy enough to fit into those times when you're glued to your computer but want a nice escape to lighten your mood. Best yet, you won't end up with fingers stuck together or glue globs on your clothes.

A simple errand takes a turn for the surreal when our hero, forced away from the video game console and out of the house, stumbles down a hole into the middle of the earth where he is, of course, tasked with tracking down magical gems. The same thing happened to me the other day. A little bit retro, mixed with a healthy dose of metroidvania and high-difficulty platforming, and Kodachrome is a weird but appealing little challenge.

Play conductor and get the train cars to their proper stations in this railroad puzzle game. Drag the engines around the tracks to connect to the waiting cars. Push and pull them along the track, changing directions at junctions when needed, until you get all the cars lined up with their match. It may sound simple, but Railroad Shunting Puzzle will have you exercising your brain in no time.

Introducing a new-to-the-scene escape designer in this pleasant locked room venture from Libertechno. Those familiar with other, more well known escape games, will likely be making a lot of comparisons here which could leave you stumped when not everything is as it seems at first glance. Yet Aries Escape's puzzles are logically fair, with plenty of direct clues and a changeable cursor to keep the experience light and amusing. Can you open the door of code-filled café with both the normal and "happy" ends?

One of the greatest miracles in modern medicine is happening right before our eyes: Germs are finally learning to play by the rules! However, they follow those rules to a T (cell?), so you've got to figure out how to rearrange the germs in the Petri Lab, a rule-rearranging logic puzzler by Grace Avery. Transform the germs in the Petri dish to match the target at the top by activating the germs' specific rulesets.

It seems like just yesterday that the Georganisms collected all their weapons and fended off the attack to their fair isles. But there is no rest for the weary jelly blobs quite yet! The local volcano has erupted, and those colorful critters will once again have to literally pool (or at least smoosh) their talents to unsubmerge in Georganism 2 a puzzle platformer by Karma Team. Georganism 2 builds on the strengths of its predecessor, displaying puzzles that fans of the original should find challenging, but not so difficult that new players cannot jump right in.

Shards of light fall from the sky over a cold, lonely, frozen land, and it's up to you to reunite them... or remain alone yourself. A melancholy but absolutely gorgeous bit of platforming exploration married heavily to interactive art, the game is simple and straightforward but well worth experiencing to take in the creative talents of the team behind it.

REW 2 is a point-and-click puzzle game that is centered around reverse chronology. This time, our favorite little beaver-squirrel guy has apparently ended his day in front of a smoldering corpse. How did he get there? Well, that's for him to know, and you to find out.

Three different people, three different worlds, and one very strange common thread. Tyler Glaiel, now part of Eyebrow Interactive, brings us one drop-dead gorgeous dark puzzle platformer in the form of this upgrade to his 2009 classic browser game full of ingenious levels and stunning design. Manipulate light to change your surroundings, using shadows to wipe away obstacles, and, ultimately, find your way back home.

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

Sticky Linky is an arcade physics puzzler from Sergey Batishev's Gluey Games! You'll match colors! You'll build wobbly structures! You'll see them crash to the ground after an unfortunate move! No other game is gonna do that! A somewhat generic presentation masks enjoyable gameplay of a surprising depth, which may eat up a half hour of your time without you even realizing it.

Super Hexagon, the latest release from VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh, is the kind of game that makes you hate games. It will make you feel like an inept player who couldn't play an arcade game even if you were in Russia (where arcade game plays you, we hear). You might even get mad at Terry, who crafted this fast, stylish game seemingly just to show you how often you can fail. But after you lose ten times in as many seconds, you'll suddenly realize that Super Hexagon has you by the collar, has already taken your lunch money, and if you want it back, you're going to have to keep playing. Strangely enough, that's a challenge you'll be thrilled to undertake!

Feel like you haven't played enough escape games lately? Especially games that involve animate pickles, potted noses and astronauts having a shove match? In perfect surreal serendipity, here is another Detarou game for your point-and-click escaping amusement. Explore your way through the multiple rooms, find and decode clues to open doors, and watch out for that Bad Panda end again! You'll be happy to discover plenty of challenging-yet-logical puzzles and all the oddball zaniness you've come to really appreciate about Detarou.

Kill the Baddies sniper style in another entry to the City Siege series. The civilians on the island need saving! You get to take the enemy out from afar using weapons ranging from a sniper rifle to a rocket launcer. Keep the civilians safe to earn stars to unlock more areas on your map. Earn cash to upgrade your weapons to cause even more destruction.

Your evil twin has hidden your lance somewhere in the castle, all because yours was bigger than his. Seek it out through 40 levels in this retro styled puzzle platform game - the king has promised the crown to whoever's lance is longest.

Take two unruly squids with a passion for shooting eggs, lightly fry in a randomly-generated deathtrap of chains of blocks, serve with cocktail sauce, and repeat. Nitrome's Calamari is a fast-paced platform shooter where a chopping block is the least of your little squidly worries. Grab a friend and see how many coins you can snag before you're placed on the appetizer menu.

Feeling peckish for a tasty room escape? Escape from the Dining Room is Tesshi-e at their best, so pull up a chair, unfold a napkin, and dig in! Gorgeous graphics, logical puzzles, what more can a person ask for?

Developer Ozzie Mercado is on quite the roll with his simple idea puzzle games. His latest is a cool little sokoban-variant named Push3m, that shows that squares can still be hip. It takes a bit for the challenge to get going, but for the most part, it is a short, sweet, and very clever game.

Valentin isn't what you would call the bravest Viking in the village. His best ability of running in fear is a better asset for the hundred meter dash than a battle with some big old brutes. However, he has to prove himself somehow and taking on the evil wizard who kidnapped Princess Estelle is the perfect way to do so. Armed with only his wits, guide Valentin through thirteen scenes of point and click adventure and brave the terrible wizard!

Ninjadoodle is back with the jet-fueled madness that is ClickPLAY Quickfire 3, the adrenaline pumping action puzzle game that has only one goal, find the darned play button and push it, push it real good! There are 20 more levels of point-and-click puzzling, reflex testing action featuring fish, bugs, monsters, and some pretty choice hand signals to be found within.

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

Building an ark? Don't forget your nonograms! Beardshaker Games has released another episode in the NoNoSparks series of picross puzzles with NoNoSparks: The Ark. Now, it's up to you to help build the ark that will save the world's animals (the animals you helped create in NoNoSparks: Genesis), all with the power of grids, pencils, and logic!

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

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

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

JuicyBeast serves up a silly and addictive little arcade launch game about blasting off on barrels and cleaving monsters in 'twain. A Very Bad Guy has stolen ten princesses and hidden himself atop a tall tower, so you'll need to build a barrel cannon and blast your way up to him. Earn gold by completing achievements, upgrade your equipment and earn new power-ups, and prepare for a fun, frantic arcade experience that's perfect for filling time.

Holding onto your job just got a whole lot more difficult when your boss, a ruthless woman known around the office as The Crocodile, informs you that the estate agent who makes the least in the next several months will be fired. You may have the drive and the determination, but even you might find Crowther Terrace a difficult property to move... one might say you only have a ghost of a chance. A delightfully witty and even a little spooky text adventure from Choice of Games and the talented Gavin Inglis.

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

Movers over here, cargo over there. Can you guess whose job it is to make sure everything gets across the screen safely? Well, it's the movers' job, but since you control their actions and are also responsible for bridging gaps in this sparsely-platformed world, the task essentially falls to you. But that's ok, since Cargo Bridge 2, Limex Games' sequel to the 2009 browser game Cargo Bridge, is all about smart physics and crazy building goals. Construct sturdy pathways from one side of the screen to the other, all without going over budget.

A lot of games these days have a social aspect to them. What's more social than looking for someone like you, reaching out, and making a connection? Those colorful connections are at the root of Conceptis Puzzles' Color Link-a-Pix Vol. 2, a handful of quick logic puzzles where a snazzy picture is waiting if you can link numbers together in the right way. Ten new larger puzzles await your solving prowess.

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

Brightly colored shapes and arrows. Classical music. Devious programming puzzles. They're all key ingredients in Jahooma's LogicBox, a rather apt name for a game involving lots of boxes and logic and made by a developer named Jahooma. Like SpaceChem and Robot Unlock before it, Jahooma's LogicBox is a game for programmers, and a good one at that. At 18 levels including 4 challenge levels, LogicBox is a little short, but Jahooma promises more to come.

Call it base sentimentality, but sometime what we need is a pinata racing through a magical candy kingdom, collecting gummi bears and dodging sugar-hungry bat-wielding toddlers. Gameshot apparently has recognized this Jungian urge and delivers with Pina Pony, a retro jump and run platformer. Like a bag of Skittles, Pina Pony may not fill you up, but it's fun and colorful, and definitely a sweet snack.

Welcome to a room washed with sunlight and decorated with that symbol most associated with it, the sunflower. Whatever the time of year, or time of day, check out Sunflow and bask in the glow of a room escape done right, the Tomatea way.

In the sequel to the original high-difficulty platformer, you've squandered your second chance at life, and your miserly existence has earned you yet another boot back down below. But the Reaper's not quite ready to give up on you, and if you can escort an innocent soul safely out of the infernal depths, you'll earn your place in heaven. Provided, of course, you have the reflexes to survive.

It's time to clean up a new place in this sequel to FlyAnvil's original zombie shooter. Move through the city establishing secure locations and going on missions to bring each area under control, earning cash to spend on your substantial arsenal and upgrade tree. Adding just enough new elements to the original to spice things up, Decision 2 is still a bit repetitive, but keeps the tried-and-tested zombie shooter formula from feeling too brainless, and looks good doing it.

You didn't mean to rip your sister's Best Friend Bear. You just wanted to play with it a little too! She should really learn how to share. But now she's up in her room crying, and you feel just awful. Fortunately, there's a sale on Best Friend Bears at the local emporium. What's more, they accept shooting star gems as currency, and your little planetoid is just pelted with them! It's time to get to work. Star Drops, an upgrades-based action game by Plixik, is a fun and quirky little game that manages to balance fast-paced action with soothing music and visuals.

No one respects the rights of ghosts these days. Wether it's a bunch of drunken teenagers with a Quija board or wannabe "ghost hunters" from no-name basic cable channels, no self-respecting ghost can find a moment's peace. Well, for the undead and their sympathisers, the moment of catharsis has finally come, with Kelly Weaver and Jimmy Hinson's action-packed little real-time strategy game, The Haunting of Magnolia Manor. It may have a simple premise, but it manages to do what all the best realtime strategy games can: provide a fast-paced, action-packed, knucklebiting good time...at least, if you still have knuckles to bite.

Rob Allen is back with another banner game for you to enjoy. This one we're titling "Jigland" and it's similar to the others we have featured. It includes a variety of puzzles and mini-games to complete all the letters of the Casual Gameplay logo. The game is located right within the banner at the top of every page of the site, just click on it to load the game and play.

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

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

Originally developed by Kepuli Games for the 7 Day FPS Challenge, then polished up to win 2nd in the Assembly GameDev Competition, Force: Leashed is a first-person gravity-based physics puzzle game. It combines the structure of the Quake engine with the mechanics of Auditorium and the overall design sense of Portal (if GLaDOS never spoke and handed out gravity guns). And despite the title, Jar Jar doesn't show up once. That's gotta be worth half a point right there.

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

Do you dream of building a theme park that would put Universal's Islands of Adventure to shame? Can you out plan the creative genius that is Disney? Then put your designing skills to the test in this sandbox-style simulation game from Fugazo. Use strategy to research and build rides, attractions and concessions. Decorate your park to improve its appeal and win the hearts of its visitors. You'll know when you've succeeded as the coins pour in and you're on the cover of every magazine for international amusement park acclaim.

It's always interesting when a flash game comes along that makes you look at things in a whole different light. Who knew, for example, that the ordinary day-to-day activity of making breakfast was frought with so many pitfalls and hidden dangers? In Breakfast, a strangely compelling little onebutton cooking game by Gio-M, you awake after a one night stand and your chances of a second date will depend completely on your ability to make a high quality breakfast by pressing the spacebar at the precise moment necessary to chop, blend, and boil your ingredients in the best way possible to satisfy your lover-in-waiting.

Weird? Sure. Wonderful? Little bit. Hot Chick Games, creator of Kissma, deliver another bizarre arcade game about dressing up as a cat and batting at a toy dangling from the screen. Unlock strange bonus rounds full of surreal imagery for a simple, frantic, and fun experience that will raise an eyebrow but inject a little surreality into your day.

In this humble escape-the-room game by minimalist mastermind Hottategoya, it's up to you to find three medals and use them to open that stubborn, locked door. Whether it's arrows or fragmented shapes you need to examine, Escape from the Room with Three Medals is a joy to encounter. It's hard to want to escape when being stuck in the room is so fun.

Billiard Blitz Pool Skool keeps it neat, simple, and does exactly what you'd want and expect from a little flash simulator. Just line up your cue stick, watch the white direction indicator, ram up the power bar for more umph, and slide the spin control to your prefered setting for a little extra pizzazz.

Robots do a lot of things. But Gloid? Gloid just knows how to levitate. But when all you know is levitating, you learn to master it pretty quickly. Gloid: The Levitating Robot was developed by Playnamic Studios as an experiment in fusing puzzle platforming with physics-based levitation mechanics. It's a whole new kind of movement, and, if you're able to master the controls, it's a fun game.

Robamimi once again infuses magical allure into a very affable escape-the-room game. You're locked inside a serene and slightly surreal little courtyard garden; surrounded by such pretty peacefulness, who would want to leave? Anyone who likes solving puzzles, that's who. Just point and click your way around, find clues, open doors and, eventually, get the key which leads to the world beyond in this user-friendly escaper's paradise.

Platcore, an avoidance game by Chris Jeffries, pushes you to achieve perfection by threatening to destroy you with lasers, guns and the laws of physics. These are surprisingly good motivators, as it turns out! Platcore is definitely worth a look for action and avoidance fans.

Delight in the artistry of 58Works latest room escape adventure in an abandoned art gallery, a place of mystery, wonder, and fantastic puzzles! Available in your browser or free for your iOS, Garou is a distracting and challenging escape and yet another hit by the designers.

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

It's hard to be 2D in a 3D world, which you'll soon find out if you play this austere little platformer from Henning Steinbock. But don't let the minimalist atmosphere lull you into a false sense of security, because you'll need to do all your best wrist exercises from that mandatory carpal tunnel workshop your boss made you attend last spring if you're going to be limber enough to keep this line on track to ultimate victory. Jumping Line is a great example of a simple idea done well that will appeal to all the oldschool gamers out there who don't need a lot of bells and whistles to have a good time and break a satisfying gamer sweat.

Trapped inside a classic Gameboy, help an anonymous little 8-bit character to escape his world in this retro platform game from Folmer Kelly. Or don't, and take him through an endless gauntlet of spikes and platforms. It's short but worth the 5 minutes it takes to beat.

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

Robot wants dots! Okay, the star of Robot Arm, a simple idea puzzle game by Amidos2006 might be missing his torso, head, and legs, but his desires are no less poignant. Robotic Arm offers a cunning test of spatial logic that should appeal to any fan of mechanical manipulation puzzles.

They say curiosity killed the cat, though in this case it's more "curiosity got the cats trapped in a cave filled with treasure and puzzles". Choko-Chai serves up another silly and crafty little escape game that will brighten your day despite a few bugs kicking around. If you haven't seen a cat perform a flying kick, you don't know what you're missing.

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

The star of Kyle Rodgers' Bread Duck is a duck that's a loaf of bread. Who rescues kitties. Do you really need anything else, internet? Well, if you do, it's a fun little retro puzzle platformer, whose chirpy chiptune soundtrack and off-kilter humor will keep you playing.

Polish your pop culture recognition and your eyeballs in this latest installment of Nitrome's popular word trivia series! Identify more tiny characters, real or fictional, as they file on stage... and no, it turns out "that one guy who was in the show on channel 6, you know, with the pants" isn't a valid answer.

Let's be honest. If you had both a medieval-style cannon thing and an unlimited supply of the undead to serve as ammo, you'd probably spend most of your time trying to launch them into various obstacles. Fortunately Mibix has come out with Impale 2, a physics puzzler that gives you gory zombie-flinging without the intensive clean-up after words. A little macabre and immature, but a lot of fun, its 70 levels will make one wish for Halloween to come early this year.

It's high octane snake as you slither around 73 levels, trying to keep ahead of the explosions caused by your own combustible body. A help as much as a hindrance, blast through bricks and push blocks with literally explosive force to make your way through progressively more difficult mazes.

Selfdefiant presents a short and sweet room escape featuring cute critters and simple, direct logic. Use the various clues, inventory items, and your smarts to solve the puzzles sprinkled around each room. The ease and simplicity of the gameplay as well as the cartoony graphics makes Must Escape the Pet Shop fun and accessible for escapers of all ages.

The newest installment of the racing series by LongAnimals and Biscuit Locker is out, and that means it's time to strap on your seatbelt, pretend your automatic is a stick shift, and start doing donuts in the supermarket parking lot. Or you could just sit within the safe confinues of your comfy home office with the speakers turned up and enjoy the virtual fun.

Months after discovering You Are a Box, Games Northwest is happy to report that You Are Still a Box. And you've got some work to do. The remarkably brain cell deficient Nabbles need to get to the exit, but since their only ability is walking and turning around when they hit a wall, you've got to help them avoid stepping into traps. As a box, you're just the moderately-animate object to do it, though you're going to need a little help along the way.

Enter the eerie world of a playground at night and try to escape before becoming totally creeped out in this fun new escape from Dassyutu. The puzzles are a fun mix, mostly use of found objects and observational skills involving colors and shapes. There is almost no dialogue, but what's there is in English.