If you weren't satisfied with your previous victory over You Have to Burn the Rope's Grinning Colossus, then try Gama11's shmup, Grinning Cobossus. You'll be taken through several stages toward defeating the titular bad guy, and along the way will earn skill points to upgrade your ship. So hop to it and get to work. There's bound to be a tune you can find to hum along the way...

The name of Hashi, the Japanese logic puzzle, is short for Hashiwokakero, literally "Building Bridges". This is entirely appropriate for the game of lines and connections that it is. It's interesting however, that "Hashi" can also be translated as "chopsticks", which also would be a perfectly applicable title. Of course, the appeal of the game goes far beyond linguistic trivia. That should be clear from the success Conceptis found in its previous browser collection of the puzzle. Classic Hashi Light is back in a second volume, and, with a palpable boost in difficulty, your logical reasoning will be tested like never before.

A Day in the Woods is a sliding puzzle adventure from Retro Epic that stars none other than Little Red Riding Hood. It's a simple game built around simple, classic puzzle ideas, but it's lengthy and challenging enough to provide an afternoon of brilliant entertainment. Also, one look at the game and you'll absolutely fall in love with the visual style!

A remarkable sequel to one of the most engaging match-3 games ever, 4 Elements. Once again the elements are out of whack in the Magic Kingdom and it's up to you to make things right before all life ceases to exist. Prepare for tons of elemental delights!

Expendable robot Nuts and his fairly useless robot dog Bolts have been picked to test a construction system in this path-drawing puzzle game. Rearrange beams to get to the exit, but you can only hold one beam at a time. A clean isometric interface and levels that unlock two at a time keep the challenge of this game from getting pull-out-your-sockets difficult.

Detective Marco is having a rough week. There's a serial killer on the loose, the professor he wished to consult has run off to the spooky town of Kraig Rock, and there's all these friggin' dire wolves on the prowl. Even as a typically hard-boiled Visual Novel action-RPG protagonist, he'll need all of his skills and the support of all of Kraig Rock's mysterious inhabitants if he hopes to unravel all the mysteries of the Town of Fears.

Normally you might want to avoid chasing maniacal tentacled Doctors into hellish nether-realms, but in this case you've got someone you need to rescue... several someones, as it turns out. In this imaginative hidden-object adventure, you'll need to delve into the nightmares of children whose fear is being extracted for... well, to find out why, you'll need to play yourself.

Wiu wiu! You're under arrest! And by "under arrest" we mean "about to get rammed off the edge of a cliff for parking in the wrong place"! Take that, evil-doer! Dmitriy Fyudorov and Dmitriy Zaletov's popular adorable physics puzzler gets another batch of clever, funny stages and a level editor besides in this cute sequel.

A re-imagining of the classic and original Lemmings game by DMA Design from 1991 using draw and erase tools for controlling the little critters instead of assigning skills to individual lemmings. For anyone who enjoyed the original classic, this reworked version provides just enough differences to make playing Lemmings again a lot of fun.

Zombies Ate My Phone, a Phones4U advergame developed by Koko Games, isn't the first top-down zombie action shooter we've ever featured on JIG. It's probably not even the first top-down zombie action shooter we've featured that's set in a mall. However, it is, in all probability, the first top-down zombie action shooter wherein you can chuck vintage LPs at a mummy. And you know what? Sometimes that's enough.

Damian Sommer created this short, no-frills little puzzle platformer to throw the player into a series of one-screen, "extremely distilled metroidvanias." He accomplishes this by first teaching the player some rudimentary game mechanics and then builds upon those rules incrementally while increasing the difficulty and complexity of each level's design. And it works quite nicely for a game made in just a day and a half.

Drawn has returned. The third game in the series, Drawn: Trail of Shadows, dares to outdo its predecessors in what simply must be the most enchanting hidden object adventure game to date. The visuals have improved (if you can believe it!), the storytelling is even more intriguing, and the puzzles are as rich as before. Good hidden object games are hard to come by, so when you find a game this great, you'd best dive right in.

The Honeymoon Is Over. The honeymoon suite is deserted. There's still a little wine left over, and you can see a few balloons are scattered, but clearly celebration time has come and gone, and it's time to leave. Of course, here on JayIsGames, escaping a room is never that easy.

Quick! Solve this bomb! Now find this password! Now break these bricks! Now blow up this bomb! Phew, what a workout... and it's only just begun! Must be another set of minigame puzzles from Ninjadoodle!

Are all zombies all bad? Maybe they just need a little tender loving care... or, uh, a baseball bat to the head if you so choose. In this surprisingly engrossing simulation from Evil Dog, you are a scientist struggling to study the living dead after civilization has ground to a halt, and how you treat your subjects can mean the difference between one reconnecting with the remnants of its humanity, or becoming even more aggressive than ever... and maybe even whether you discover the truth about the outbreak.

Sure everyone's played a fighter, mage or thief, but few have had experience with the bard. Sapient Games has created a whole world revolving around this character in their text-based RPG, The Bard's Journey. Using your mouse, choose the options below the text to either take an action in that area or to move on to the next area (which can also be done with the compass). You can compose your own music to play in battle, but balance is the key in order to get the set of bonuses you desire. Even without the music writing, this RPG is fun and the story is interesting, so feel free to pack up your lute and use the default songs for a quick dive into a melodic, mystical world.

Hamumu's latest creation for Boy's Life is a nightmare... literally! Help Pee Wee escape from his elaborate platforming bad dreams before he has to get up for school... OR ELSE. Run, jump, ninja-roll and soar your way past all manner of dangerous traps and obstacles through three stages of difficulty.

Strawberry Cafe designed room escape games usually contain a luscious mix of reds, pinks, and whites that together evoke images of strawberry desserts, and Enchanted Room Escape is true to form. Despite the minor flaws this is one of the better escapes from this designer, simple enough for a snack but complex enough to satisfy the appetite. Perhaps you'd better grab some munchies before you dive in, just in case, and prepare to be enchanted!

It's always intriguing when a game developer takes a technical, even mundane, activity and makes it into a competition. KernType, a unique puzzle game developed by Mark MacKay for edutainment site Method of Action, charges you with dragging the middle letters of a given word for a given font to make it aesthetically perfect. Your result will be compared against a professional typographer's, and you will be given a score based on how close you get to their solution. It's not a concept that survives multiple play-throughs, but it's quirky fun.

Joey Betz takes his popular game of strategic real-time viral warfare into the realm of player-versus-player carnage. Compete against others online as you strive to create the deadliest virus and then infect everyone you can in a struggle for genetic dominance. Who knows? Maybe you'll meet that special someone right before you unload a seething swarm of viral nastiness into their personal space. Isn't that how all love stories begin?

More Steamlands? Yes, please! Nitrome has released Steamlands Player Pack containing several new weapons and almost five dozen brand new levels to complete, all created by players of the original steampunk strategy game.

You are a box in this Lemmings-inspired puzzle platform game from Games Northwest, and you're going to have to use your special box powers to jump and slide to guide the little box buddies (called "Nabbles") to the exit of each level to progress. Push crates, create paths over spikes and use yourself as a means to reach higher areas. Collect power-ups and use them wisely because you'll need to be perfect as you reach the more difficult later levels.

Not too long ago a relative newcomer to adventure/hidden object hybrids, ChaYoWo games, took us on a journey through the heart of Southern India in The Dark Hills of Cherai. Now they're back and once again the player will be transported to a place few will ever be able to visit in The Dark Hills of Cherai: The Regal Scepter.

What would you be willing to do to recapture your first true love? You'll get to explore the answers to that question in Media Art's Love Story: The Beach Cottage, the second adventure/hidden object hybrid game in the Love Story series that grabs the hopeless romantic in all of us and takes us on a journey that may (or may not) give us the "happily ever after" we're looking for.

It's adventure and excitement! Dragons and bears! Enchanters and rolling boulders! Everything you could possibly dream of from a collection of free games presented to enliven your weekend!

The Tribloos is a new time management game from Bumpkin Brothers, creator of the 3D assembly line puzzle game The Machine. Similar to the Roads of Rome series and My Kingdom for the Princess series in basic structure, Tribloos will surprise you with its knack for turning simple tasks into smart challenges. Do not let the game's simple visual presentation fool you, this game is filled with serious amounts of smart challenge!

Recently, we've seen a bit of a mini-renaissance of quality casual releases set underwater, defying the conventional wisdom that games get terrible when they go down the drain. Fisher Diver, an action game by Eli Piilonen, keeps the quality but darkens the tone. On its surface, it's a retro-styled fishing game about a little ball that hopes to follow in it's father's profession. However, like the ocean, there are some unsettling things to be found below the surface.

They say that no jelly is an island, but jellies that cooperate can explore many mysterious islands. Georganism never gets too terribly challenging in terms of puzzle solving, but the character switching and ability combinations make for a well-made and entertaining diversion of a game, suitable for casual gamers and jelly fans of all ages.

During a long and tedious day at work there is nothing better than a lunch break, especially if you've skipped breakfast and are starving. You're so hungry, in fact, that you're ready to take that lovely Bento Box Lunch and dismantle right it down to the bottom where the bomb is...wait, the bomb? Must be a Dismantlement puzzle!

No matter how cynical and jaded you are, it's hard not to be heart-warmed by the simple companionship of a boy and his octopus... especially when the boy is willing to help rescue the she-octopod of his pet's dreams from the evil kidnapping clutches of knights, archers and the dreaded Bad Mood Bear. With a wrench at Kit's side and a ready-to-be flung mollusc on his head, though, it'll be easy as octo-pie. Right? Jay Armstrong's Kit and the Octopod may sound like a silver age crime-fighting team, but it has a ton of charm to go along with its action-platforming.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who couldn't stay apart no matter how often it seemed like the world and their own emotions were trying to make that happen. A puzzle platformer with a beautiful sense of style and a sweet, nostalgic look at relationships, Mattia Traverso's game is short but well made and surprisingly warm and fuzzy. D'awwww.

Prizma Puzzle Challenges is more of an expansion pack than a true sequel to the Prizma Puzzle series of tile-based puzzle games by Silen Games, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in steady competence. There are no rough edges here, just pure, smooth, 3D goodness.

Robamimi is one of our favorite room escape designers and One Scene is a perfect example of why. It's a room escape that features just one scene, a single point-of-view of a room, which makes navigation in this amusing little escape pretty easy. There's no wandering around, just investigating everything from one perspective. One Scene is a midnight snack, meaty but not too heavy, a wonderful bite rather than a main course.

While zombies are perhaps over-common, and pirates are getting there, casual gaming doesn't have nearly enough zombie-pirates. At least that's the argument given by Pirates of the Undead Sea: Rise of the Ribcage, the new point-and-click adventure game from Pahu Pahu, and, given its quality, its a strong argument indeed. Captain Black Sam has spent years sailing the seven seas plundering and pillaging. After a night of too much rum, he wakes up to find his ship at the bottom of the ocean... and after fifteen years of decaying and trying to figure out why he isn't dead too, a chance mermaid-sighting convinces him the time is nigh to set out on another grand adventure. And so, you're off to seek glory, gold and grog! Mostly grog!

As the Baroness Milena, you command the last of the troops of the kingdom of Emaeron, which has fallen to the forces of a demon horde. Using your mouse to control the various aspects of the game, it is your duty in Menara Games' turn-based strategy/tower defense mix, Demonrift TD, to restore the empire and send the enemy back to whatever depths from which they came.

In Concerned Joe, the title character has to move or he'll die, and it'll take all your platforming skills to get him through nineteen fiendish puzzle and trap-filled stages. A high difficulty game whose superb voice acting, fantastic art and adroit programming provides rewards that are more than worth the effort.

One of our favorite Flash games of all time here at JIG has just received an update! The Asylum, for abused cuddly toys, has just received a new patient and your care and treatment is needed to cure it from its psychological ills. Dr. Wood joins the other adorable messed-up toys: Kroko, Lilo, Dolly, Dub and Sly, and each one is desperately in need of your help!

The city is under attack! Regular citizens have gone red-eyed with uncontrollable rage, security robots are running amok, mutants are smashing up storefronts, and sales of crowbars and health syringes are through the roof. Could it possibly have something to do with all those high-frequency broadcasting towers that the mysteriously menacing GlobalTek Industries have constructed all over town? Well, there's only one way to find out. Put together a party, load up on weapons, fight or sneak your way past the psychos and start causing massive property damage! Legends of Kong, new from Nerdook, is a randomly generated action-RPG that never plays the same twice.

Mining. Building. Fighting. Constructing. In the real world, all of these things are rough, painful sorts of jobs that most people aren't very interested in doing. In the gaming world, they're the Holy Grail of entertainment. Enter King Arthur's Gold, a multiplayer (with some single player, too) construction and combat game similar to Terraria, Minecraft, and hempuli's miniature masterpiece Masjin. Teamwork is the central focus of the game, and while some players will be busy mining and building, others will head out for direct combat with the enemy. How much more exciting could it get?!

It seems like only a few days ago we were given a new installment in Yoshio Ishii's gorgeous Hoshi Saga series, and today another one, number 8, lands in our virtual laps: Hoshi Saga Dokuringo. But before you go off playing this one, please note the rating. This latest set of levels contains some risqué imagery, as well as some way more difficult levels.

Somehow, due to some strange coincidences no doubt brought upon by NASA's Dawn spacecraft discovering a massive mountain on the asteroid Vesta, this edition of Weekend Download features three games that pretty much cover the spectrum of gaming preferences. Want action? Got it. Puzzles? Got it! An engrossing RPG? Got it. No dress-up games, though, for which you have our sincerest apologies...

Ah, the Victorians. There are many tropes from their literature that still haunt us today, including eerie women dressed in white appearing at lonely intersections, pale, blood-sucking gentlemen in evening attire, and dark-skinned men wearing turbans. Perhaps the greatest of the era's paranoias was the thought of being buried alive, which permeated the culture to the point of having little bells and pulls installed on coffins. That fear was encapsulated in one of Edgar Allan Poe's great stories which has now been turned into a stunning adventure/hidden object hybrid, Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Premature Burial. Yes, ERS Game Studio is back with their third adaption of a Poe story, and this one is a killer! (sorry, bad pun)

The cactus is back-tus! Cactus McCoy, spikey green distributor of western vengeance is back, and this time he has competition. He's met up with technicolor bird lady Ella Windstorm who spins him a tale of the Volados: a fallen civilization laid waste to by a mysterious cult known as the Reptaras. It seems that there's a secret vault that contains the lost treasure of the Volados, including the magical Serpent Blade. With Ella kidnapped, it's up to McCoy to find the vault before the Volados and their Enemigo henchmen, recover the Serpent Blade, save his possible love interest, and make out like a cactusy bandit with all the loot he can carry. A worthy sequel to the earlier installment released in March, Flipline Studios' Cactus McCoy 2: The Ruins of Calavera will steal as many hours of action-platforming as the original did, pardner.

Sarah Northway's incredibly popular and addictive zombie survival game of strategy and simulation gets a big update in this sequel that adds more skills, more items, and a lot of other tricks and tweaks. Defend one of the sole bastions of humanity left in a sprawling city and slowly work to reclaim the rest from the zombie horde, recruiting survivors, scavenging for supplies, and dealing with hazards like raiders, zombie attacks, and even dissension in your own ranks.

Sometimes it's all about going fast and getting far. This is the premise behind Tenebrous' arcade game Accelerator. A deceivingly simple game, you only need a mouse for the controls. The game is in first person perspective where you careen around and through 3D obstacles towards a non-existent finish line. The longer you play, the faster you go. The menu offers many options in the controls to assist in your avoidance through these randomly generated corridors. This game's a trip, so roll your computer chair real close, flex that mouse hand and dive into a world of soft sound effects in Accelerator.

Take another trip into the bizarre world of Detarou's escape games. Whether it's from the strangeness or not, it's your mission in Dayori to find a way out of this curious house. Fans of Detarou's work may find this offering somewhat mild compared to the others. That's not to say you won't see their regular cast of characters that we've all grown to love. If you haven't had your hand at a wacky Detarou escape game, this is a great introduction. You may just find yourself giving all their games a try!

Most of the fun of Figurines Room Escape is simply enjoying the ambiance as you work your way towards getting out of a place that pretty much anyone would probably love to visit once in their lifetime. Figurines Room Escape provides both time and a location to relax and enjoy a mini-vacation.

Team Fabulous brings us an LGBTQ-friendly prototype adventure about a young person who ventures into a dark forest in search of their beloved. Battle personal demons as you risk it all for the promise (or even the idea) of a better feature in this flawed but profoundly hopeful narrative that any player can enjoy and identify with regardless of their identity or orientation.

Odin City - the last refuge of human kind against the resilient Creeper. It does what it can, but it's always just a matter of time before it needs to create a wormhole and travel away. You control Odin City in Knuckle Cracker's Creeper World: User Space, a strategy game consisting of user-created levels from the level editor in Creeper World. It's a great introduction to the series with an easy to pick up interface and a progression of levels which allow you to figure out the finer points before it increases in difficulty. Hey, and if you find yourself intrigued enough after 12 levels, you can always shell out the dough for the full game.

In Bamba Snack Quest 3, the adorable baby returns in an interstellar quest to rescue his squirrel friend and his beloved crunchy snacks. From Gal Mamalya, maker of Mitoza, it's sure to satisfy not only point-and-click groupies, but anyone who enjoys zany, surreal art and top-notch animation.

Why can't villages just stay saved? You might have thought you deserved a break after your heroic efforts in the first Arcuz, but a vengeful demon lord and the greedy human who promised to free him in exchange for immortality prove otherwise... especially when there's a village blissfully parked right on top. Go on another top-down action RPG adventure in this simple but fun game packed with enemies, skills, weapons and more for the hack-and-slash fanatic in all of us.

Out of this World, developed by SeethingSwarm, is a short action game centered around shifting play mechanics. The game starts as two lovers leave a fancy restaurant. They aren't named in-game, but since they look British, let's call them Ron and Hermione. Anyways, Ron and Hermione decide to go for a ride on their rocket ship, but, son of a gun, wouldn't you know it, aliens decide to kidnap the fair maiden. So its up to you Ron, with your shock of red hair, your badass longcoat, your awesome umbrella, and your shooty-blasty space gun to rescue her from the extra-terrestrial's clutches.

Roguelike, The Legend of Zelda, a dual stick shooter, and the twisted mind of Edmund McMillen, part of the team behind Super Meat Boy. Put them all together and you've got The Binding of Isaac, a game that is as unhinged as it is entertaining, as good-looking as it is, well, disgusting. Even still, it's the kind of game you'll play through again and again, just to collect every item and explore every corner of the game's randomly-generated world.

You've probably heard that "all roads lead to Rome". What you didn't count on is that you'd have to build them all! In Roads of Rome III, a building-centric time management simulation from Whiterra, you take orders from the Caesar himself and set out to repair damage to the empire caused by barbarians. It's no easy task, and you're not really in the mood to do it, but it's your duty, and one never questions the Caesar!

From Nitrome, creator of Final Ninja, Test Subject Arena, and a few dozen other grand browser games, comes Mega Mash, a game that is sort of seven games but is really just one game (does that make it eight games?). The gist of it is all of these games are interwoven due to the buggy nature of the cartridge they're on. Instead of playing one or the other, you hop between them, using abilities from one to clear a path to progress in the other. Unusual? Yeah. But it works better than you might think!

Waaaait, wait a second. A retro-inspired remake of Team Fortress 2? How'd that happen? What twisted mind thought that up? Oh, that's who. Well, it's a jolly good job, that's for sure. And when you're done playing the game that's all about hats, sans hats, get your serious game face on for the other two releases below!

Ding dong the witch is dead! Wait, what? She's still not dead? Not only that, the old hag is back and badder than ever creating havoc in the museum in Echoes of the Past: The Citadels of Time, the latest adventure/hidden object hybrid by Orneon and sequel to both Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone and Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows. Perhaps it's time to stop hanging out in that darn museum? Just saying.

Some might argue that life working on a conveyor belt is tedious work, but not if you're working for Bart Bonte Manufacturing. As white balls come rolling down the line, your job is to custom craft each ball to a specific order in Factory Balls 4, the latest in the series of Factory Balls puzzlers. You've got all the tools you need to fulfill each order... except the instruction manual.

You may have escaped Aurora before, but in Aurora 2, it's time for you to go after her in another point and click horror/Western from Pastel Games. Middle games in a series are tough to pull off, but this one lays the groundwork for what could be a seriously cool conclusion.

Even with the promise of super-abilities, volunteering to undergo tests performed by mysterious organizations is the kind of thing that seems like it could go either way. That said, it's already too late for the mild-mannered and slightly-jerkish Melex Archer: he's signed his name on the dotted line and, with the influence of radioactive Thelemite, he's been given a ton of power and no particular sense of responsibility. Sure, he'll spring into action and brawl his way through waves of mutants, but it's sure as heck not because mission control is telling him to. No sir. In this fun little retro fighting game from Sos, the hero is as much a danger to the town as the monsters he faces.

In Revenge of the Zombees, you control an undead swarm of killer bees with the goal of causing as much damage and destruction as possible across five retro-looking levels. Do more damage to get your zombees to catch on fire, causing even more mayhem. It's silly and simple fun, with excessive pixel gore.

Werewolves, dragons, and mermaids, oh my! LittleGiantWorld puts you in control of every monster ever, but the goal is less world domination and more sweet moolah. Gather new creature DNA to create and manage a zoo/expo hall/what could possibly go wrong facility for the customers to visit and bring in more money. Despite some repetition, it's a cartoony, appealing little time management simulation worth a look.

Raze 2 by AddisonR and Juice-Tin is the latest in a long line of action shooters with spacey-marines and/or one-word non-indicative titles. Let's count them off: Doom, Quake, Halo, Descent, Unreal, and, uh... Haze. It's surprising there are any alien-demon-zombie menaces left to battle considering how quickly we're able to deploy a near-endless supply of Master Chiefs. It's a good thing then that Raze 2 has the quality gameplay and presentation to distinguish itself from the competition.

A typical Kotoriscape consists of a handful of well-designed puzzles that follow a specific theme revealed by its title, and Device does not disappoint. There are all kinds of devices to fiddle with in the vaguely Oriental room: a smartphone with a dead battery, a mysteriously fast-running clock, a service robot with three cranks on its head, and many more. Logical puzzles, soft and pleasing gradient-filled graphics, and a save feature for when you need a break are also hallmarks of Kotorinosu that stay with us for Device.

Playing with your mouse, you have to kill all the monsters on-screen. To do so you have to remove blocks or pop bubbles by clicking on them, alternatively slashing through chains with a sweep movement. The point is to work out the sequence required to get all of the monsters. There is a difficulty curve, but it steeps slowly over the fifty levels. If you enjoyed the rest of the series, you'll be all over this. And if you haven't, but like the idea of some physics-puzzle fun, give it a play!

This gratifyingly fun action-platformer by Page52 departs from typical at its very start as your screen fills with intricately interesting sketches and then it continues into the extraordinary, stopping to command: "Draw your own..." weapon, hat, enemy. Although dotted lines suggest the shape of such invention, in your Sketch Quest notebook, you're limited only by imagination.

Guide a helpless, flightless, half-hatched baby bird from its nest to the safety of the ground below. Watch your step, slide down walls, and use powerups to avoid suffering too much falling damage in this simple, relaxing, vertical-scrolling platformer.

Marcy and Justine just want to do a good deed, handing out free personal safety alarms on campus. How dare those stupid students feel so safe that they refuse this offer? Clearly they don't understand the danger they're in. It's time to teach them, brawler style, in this former Ludum Dare action satire entry.

Evolution has you wandering a rocky underground base filled with mysteries and puzzles, your only company an egg-headed scientist who really likes bananas and seems to have lost his pet cat. As is the 58 Works custom, you'll pick up and use various items that come in handy here and there, and more uniquely acquire pieces of a rather cool bodysuit that gives you all sorts of new abilities. Everything that made Solitude great (an interesting environment, totally logical puzzles, simple but appropriate graphics and sound) is back in Evolution, and the new content (intermittent short cutscenes, a somewhat more artificial setting) is nothing to sneeze at either.

Celestial Mechanica is a quietly impressive platform adventure (a.k.a. "metroidvania") game along the lines of Knytt Stories and the Robot Wants series of games. Created by Roger Hicks (author of rComplex) and Paul Veer (animator of Super Crate Box), it's the sort of game that sits quietly off to the side, never begging you to play it, but once you do, you'll be hooked 'til the end.

Leila is a toddler. She doesn't know much about platforming, and even less about physics. All she knows is that she wants her bottle, and there are all sorts of 2x4s and I-beams standing between in her way. Fortunately though, she has an ally: a ball that she can call to her hand; a ball that will smash against anything in its path and which is just perfect for bouncing off from. She's got a lot of places to explore, and a lot of bottles to collect, but she would have to do it alone. Leila and the Magic Ball, new from Paul Gene Thompson, is a cute little game that will keep you playing right up until nap time.

Physics puzzle Totems Awakening serves up ball passing and wacky Rube Goldberg-like contraptions with a refreshing tropical twist. With 30 levels that are easy to comprehend but difficult to master, the game will attract both veterans and dilettantes of the genre.

The hottest graphics of 1982 are back in Vector Stunt, a sequel to 2007's hit Vector Runner from DigYourOwnGrave. Pull off some tricks to get a high score while listening to a thumping electronic soundtrack in this arcade action driving game, or provide the MP3 of your choice.

After an explosion, you wake up in shackles on the floor of a dirty room. A frantic phone call warns you not to trust the police woman who breaks down the door moments later... but who CAN you trust? And what happened to you? Find out the truth in this short and easy but surprisingly engrossing hidden-object adventure from Vast Studios.

You're in a cave full of monsters, which is bad. But you have a sentient gun to help you, which is good! But you seem to have run afoul of a mad scientist, which is bad. But Arkeus' newest action platform shooter is a ton of fun, which is good! Gather diamonds to upgrade yourself and your weapons, unlock new play modes, drink in the fantastic retro aesthetic, and discover the truth in this impressive reboot of a Ludum Dare entry!

It's been five long years. You're ready to play the newest action release by LostVectors. It's Bowmaster Winter Storm! For fans of the previous BowMaster Prelude, you'll see a lot of familiar aspects of the game was carried over. Those of you who loved the first Bowmaster will pluck at the upgrade to the graphics and music, and those of you who never experienced it will simply find a good defense game in Winter Storm.

Hoshi Saga Ringohime is the seventh installment of the popular and revered Hoshi Saga series by Yoshio Ishii, and it's in full, glorious full color as all the "Ringo" versions of the series have been. There are 25 new stages to clear, so don't just sit there, click and play! :)

Pedro and the Pearls of Peril is the kind of game that's likely to have appeal to multiple demographics. First of all, there will be those in the mood for a good action-shooter, with some shades of Metroidvania and a masochistic edge of difficulty. Then there will be those who'll be convinced once they see the name of Robot Wants retro-maven Hamumu on the title screen. There will be those Cub Scouts who just happened to stumble over the game on the Boys Life website, and are intrigued by what wacky new adventures Pedro the Mail Burro has gotten himself into this time. And last, but not least, there is the not insignificant group of gamers who have a thing for alliteration. Never count them out.

Think you can play platform games? Try this challenging game from Paradoxon Games and test your reflexes to the bitter edge... all so that Stu can get a night's sleep. Following in the tradition of VVVVVV and Gravinaytor is Sleepy Stu's Adventure, probably the hardest platform puzzler game you will play this year.

Alright, let's make sure we've got everything: Black and white stripped shirt? Check! Domino mask? Check! Lock picks? Check! Green toque? Check! Anti-heroic sense of morality that makes you more than happy to lift some cash from the unfriendly neighborhood mob boss? Oh, you'd better bet that's a check! It's Bob the Robber, new puzzle platformer from Flazm. All you footpads out should be prepared to burgle until the whole burg is burgled. Robble robble!

Sometimes, it's not that bad to be a little fish in a big pond. Or at least it isn't when Neutronized is the one at the helm of a new action-arcade game. Little Fins stars a goldfish who wants nothing more than to explore the ocean and clean up some of the soda cans laying about. Unfortunately, there's sharks and rays and groupers afoot... err, a-fin. So with heaven above and the sea below, it's up to you to help a little fishy on the go!

There's very little to complain about with Escape Hotel 4: the puzzles are logical and flow, the navigation is pretty intuitive (except in some hidden spaces), the translations are excellent, and the pixel hunting is at a minimum. This is Tesshi-e room escaping at its best!

Libra Horoscope: Today you are likely to play an escape game by Otousan, with puzzles themed around determining the weight of objects by various means. When Otousan picks a theme, they play with it in seemingly every way they can; Libra is no exception. It has all the hallmarks of an Otougame: a group of well-designed themed puzzles with some simple minor ones to tie them together, and a simplistic atmosphere that makes sure you know what you're messing with without being distracting.

People of Earth, beware, for the doughnuts are finally coming for us in Fodo!, an action arcade planet defense game. The game is pure fun, and charming to boot. It gets high marks for originality and has a decent replay value, and I know those dapper doughnuts in their fancy bowler hats and monocles don't stand a chance against you. Now get out there and save the planet!

Polished to a shine and featuring over 150 levels, the original release of Siege Hero (a spiritual companion to the browser game Sieger) for iOS devices has been an easy way to whittle the time away throwing rocks at conquering warriors. Now, browser-based fans of physics games can join in on the fun with the release of Siege Hero - Viking Vengeance, a port of the first few dozen levels from the iPhone/iPad release with one epically awesome bonus: a level editor and community-made content!

She's a witch! Or is she? The townsfolk in the sleepy, creepy little burg you're summoned to seem split on that, and it's clear something very strange is going on. Take a step towards finding out the truth in this short first installment of a new point-and-click adventure series from one of the co-creators of Alice is Dead. After all, fairytales were made to be twisted.

Lock, load and get ready to take out an unending horde of zombies in this action-packed game of survival from Ironzilla. Thank goodness for all those weapons that keep dropping from the sky. With a nifty upgrade system and achievements, just how long can you hold out?

Play as the lovable cast of Mercenary, Inc. as they do their best to defeat the Evil Witch of the Evil Cave in the solid, entertaining RPG Crystal Story by Emmanuel Salva Cruz. The controls of Crystal Story should be familiar to regular players of RPGs, where your mouse is used to navigate the various menus. Crystal Story isn't innovative, it's just a good RPG with anime style graphics, epic battle music and a story to put a smile on your face.

Belle's happily-ever-after is cut short when her Prince is once again cursed by the same evil enchantress who turned him into a Beast. The entire kingdom has fallen under a dark spell, and Belle is the only one left to stop it, assuming she can avoid the dangers and dark magic twisting her world at every turn in this stunning, engrossing hidden-object adventure from the makers of Mystery Legends: The Phantom of the Opera.

Blocks That Matter, an indie game from Swing Swing Submarine, likes to do things a little bit differently. It likes to break the rules, mix up genres, tear down that fourth wall, and borrow the best from some of the most popular games ever released and turn it into something new. Blocks That Matter is part Tetris, part Minecraft, part Dig Dug, part platformer all wrapped into one, with a cute main character leading the whole thing up that serves as the perfect gateway to a game you won't be able to get enough of.

A popular reality program goes terribly wrong when one of the contestants appears to die onscreen during the finale, and the show promptly goes dark. Things only start looking more grim when the rest of the show's stars go missing, and you're called in to track them down. Easier said than done since the show isn't exactly ordinary, and The Maze is one unbelievable reality show whose sets are as surreal and clever as they are deadly. Track down the missing people in this imaginative and engrossing hidden-object adventure from Elephant Games, but keep your eyes open... in the Maze, you aren't alone, and you're never safe...

With fifty levels to play, this fast-paced and addictingly enjoyable new game from Youda Games is sure to provide many hours of fun. Youda Fisherman succeeds in combining a variety of popular time management and simulation elements in a way that makes sense while adding a fresh spin on the genre. Make use of fantastic inventions to fight off pirates, gather resources, and build a thriving fishing company into a successful enterprise.

So, there's this company named Google. You might have heard of them. One day this company decides to have a meeting. The big boss guy stands up at the front and says: "People, we are obviously crushing the competition in the fields of searching, mapping, translating, and plussing. What we need now is an html5 puzzle game based around our company's various and sundry products. Also, we need it to be completely friggin' insane, so we should probably outsource development to the Japanese puzzle-smiths at SCRAP." And so, from that simple brainstorming session has come great things: The Google Puzzle: coming soon to wreck a desktop near you.

More Ludum Dare games, anyone? The 48-hour game creation-a-thon has ended yet another competition, inspiring developers from around the world to create almost 600 new games, all centered around the theme of "escape"! The voting has ended, the scores have been tallied, and we've picked some of our favorite downloadable titles to share with you!

Chess: Favorite pastime of Machiavellian rulers, rogue Artificial Intelligences and cool old guys in the park. The game that Goethe proclaimed as the touchstone of intellect. The sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. The basis for programs as imposing as the human-crushing Deep Blue and as totally sweet as Interplay's Battle Chess. At JayIsGames, we're always on the lookout for quality casual versions of classic board games, and this release of Great Matemaster is just that. The focus here is on chess puzzles, and its huge wealth of content and polished presentation makes it something you should definitely check, mate.

Customize, train, and gear up your own fox-like creature to reclaim the fragments of the precious Star Stone and drive out the enemy monster invasion! What Vulpin Adventure may lack in depth is more than made up for in charm and a fair bit of nostalgia. You're bound to notice the nods made to beloved games of yore, and it's impressive how well this game manages to incorporate those features.

Boys and girls, it's Adult Swim time with a delightful yarn of sheep herding from Megadev, an action reflex game. Use your mouse to move the dinosaur (which in turn moves the herd) and click on things that need to be eaten. These do not include the sheep. You will try to eat the sheep, however... the temptation is just too big.

There's only one way to win the hearts and minds of your people... by obtaining your rank as King by ousting the previous ruler in a violent battle. Kurechii Studios brings you an absolutely adorable little time management/strategy/fantasy action game about recruiting and training a group of heroes to participate in a seasonal tournament. If you win, you win the right to challenge the King for crown and country. If you lose, well... there's always next year. (Plus, you get a "I took part in violent ritualistic combat and all I got is this stupid t-shirt" shirt!)

What do you get when you cross a stegosaurus with a bear? You get the lovable creatures in Tamus and Mitta, a new sidescrolling platformer produced by Lartar Games. The sun has had all its toys stolen by evil bats, and it's your job to get all 120 of them back. Find the tools and collect the toys, jumping on enemies to stun them, but don't let your candlelight run out! If you're looking for a well made, challenging platformer, try out Tamus and Mitta. It's kid-friendly and adult-approved!

The Night Circus is a text-based advergame that requires Facebook or Twitter made by Failbetter Games in collaboration with the author of the book by the same title. By turns elegant, mystical, adorable, fantastic, ornate, and even delicious, it will pique your curiosity as effectively as it satisfies your craving for the most beautiful imagery of all: that which you see with your mind's eye.