When evil robots strike and steal all your lighthouse bulbs, it's GIL to the rescue!... easily killed Gil, with no defenses and a soft, pink body, but GIL nonetheless! This simple looking but tricky platformer from Animals Play Games is guaranteed to test your skills as you run, leap, and flying-machine your way through increasingly difficult worlds filled with spikes, robots, switches, lava, missiles, mines, and much more.
Fragments is a tile-sliding puzzle by Ozzie Mercado that's as simple as getting in touch with your shape-shifting side, with a bit of planning and some geometric twists. Mix in a mellow color scheme and a funky riff in the background, and you've got a fun puzzle to slide right into.
Given how our lives tend to be hectic in nature, it's a wonder we enjoy dashing around parking lots, hotels, and restaurants in the games we play during our time off. In Cooking Dash 3: Thrills and Spills, you, as Flo, sweep through a series of food venues in an amusement park like a cuter and more clean-mouthed Gordon Ramsay, turning run-down establishments into money makers. It's a refreshing prequel that furthers tightens an already impressive series.
The Machine is a simple-looking but intricate building puzzle game created by Bumpkin Brothers. Just like The Incredible Machine, The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, Armadillo Run and countless other "assembly line" titles, The Machine charges you with fulfilling certain orders using machinery, moving parts, and bits and bobs that change the size or color of the product being manufactured. Things start off simple enough, but as any great puzzle game, before long you'll have plenty to contend with.
Youda Games is back with a rare sequel to one of the its most interesting time management games, Youda Farmer. In Youda Farmer 2: Save the Village, you reprise the role of a male or female farmer trying to save a struggling town by farming as farmingly as you can. This time, though, the stakes are much higher, as a real estate tycoon is trying to buy up all of the property, so each delivery you make is an important step to help save the small businessman as well as the town!
There's a new science hero in town! Ray Ardent: Science Ninja is a solid platformer with a nice coat of polish that sets it apart from the rest, and it uses its hilarious concept to full effect which helps makes it a memorable game. Platform fans should certainly give it a shot.
Mya of Neutral just released her latest escape game, and it's another masterpiece. You find yourself trapped in a room that seems quite pleasant, but is full of a rather baffling array of hidden clues to find and codes to crack. With a little bit of elbow grease and some clever thinking, you too can conquer this fun, logical, and playful escape game from the creator of Vision.
Bart Bonte's Me and the Key sent us all on a voyage of self- and key-discovery. But the hunt for the self/key is an eternal quest, is it not? Luckily, the journey has been lengthened by another 25 levels in Me and the Key 2. As you progress through this series of abstract thinking puzzles and mini-games, maybe you'll discover that the key that you were searching for was around your penguin-thing's neck the whole time.
Fancy Maze is a classic room escape and a fun little time waster in which there are a lot of fun things to discover and puzzles to solve. Wander around, pick things up, see if you are up on the latest (and not so latest) technology, and see if you can find the two different endings in this amusing game.
When the hero's gone, what happens to the ones who get left behind? We're talking about the bad guys, of course, the little enemies you usually never think twice about. Nitrome's latest arcade platformer stars Enemy 585, who's not smart enough to figure out how to escape his tiny patrol area even seven years after the hero has beaten the game. As a friendly platform, figure out how to guide Enemy 585 through the levels, avoiding obstacles, and hopefully towards a better life.
Red and Giant Panda's master has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough panda to rescue him? So is the challenge of Neutronized's new teamwork platformer. Guide them through twenty levels of puzzles, alternating control between the differently-abled Giant and Red all the while. This is a slow-paced, almost zen, walk through a pixelated garden.
Sean Cooper's new online simulation of the classic game of marbles. Aim and shoot a white marble, attempting to knock red marbles out of the circle. The lack of AI opponents or online multiplayer is a flaw, but overall it's a fine iteration of a very niche genre.
Sudoku fans should rejoice with this new release from Conceptis. It contains a number of classic puzzles, along with several variations including Diagonal, Irregular, Chain, Odd/Even, and Multi. The sixty puzzles are over far too soon, but with such a well-done interface, the next volume is eagerly awaited.
Nuclearoids is a chain reaction arcade game that will remind you a little of Boomshine. A collaboration between GameBalance (Warp Forest, Orbox) and Alexander Samarin, expect a whole lot of smooth color changes and great visual effects to go along with your physics-based orb collisions. It's a game of not-quite-controlled chaos that takes a big step in the webtoy direction.
Not the most difficult point-and-click escape out there, and the pixel hunting can get a little annoying, but Ice Stone Escape delivers some fun logic and puzzles in this compact little game. Cute backgrounds and quirky, logical puzzles make Ice Stone Escape a fun mid-week break, something that will refresh your logic circuits and help you clear your mind for the rest of the week.
Running Ink, by Spelgrim, is a new paper parkour platformer with an artistic style that is uniquely inky, with drips and smears aplenty. It makes for a visual style that is stark yet fluid, and for a lively protagonist that is a joy to control. As the work draws inspiration from free-running, momentum control and quick reactions are vital to gameplay. It doesn't have a huge amount of depth and it's a bit short, but Running Ink's visuals and gameplay make for a fun well to dip a pen in for a half-hour.
This is your chance to be the spook, and we don't mean the sort that stare at goats. This simply vibrant and unusual action puzzler by the Super Flash Bros puts you in the role of a ghost who seeks to haunt a house in peace and quiet, but your house has been overrun by a bunch of noisy party guests and it's up to you to scare the living daylights out of all thirty, yes thirty, of them.
Coaster Racer is a first-person racing game where you compete against 16 other off-road race cars across eight elevated rollercoaster-like tracks. Complete each track as close to first as possible, or at least qualify to unlock the next track. Along the way, you can pick up cash on the course and finish races to earn money for upgrades and repairs to your racer.
In this physics puzzle platformer from WoblyWare, the Maoi Duck God has demanded tribute, and has luckily granted you, his humble servant, power over gravity to fulfill his godly demands. Waddle through forty colorful and increasingly challenging levels, bounding from surface to surface, avoiding enemies and collecting golden eggs.
Wallace and Gromit are back with another game, a physics puzzler that will well and truly test your noggin. Necessity is the mother of invention and apparently it's a necessity to get Crash-Test-Wallace from one end of a workshop into a waiting chute by inventing contraptions to help him get there. You'll use a variety of apparatus and mechanisms in your creations including balloons, motors, wheels and rockets. There's even dynamite!
In the battle between man and machine, what side will you take? You are a human who has volunteered to be "digitized" in an effort to bring a halt to the rogue AIs that are plaguing cyberspace. But who can you really trust? CoreSector's tower defense strategy game is an engaging, addictive title with eye-catching aesthetics, upgrades, enemy types, and an interesting story to tell.
Emma and Lilith are two little girls with a lot in common despite some differences... like fangs and a few centuries. These two spot-the-difference games are meant to be played together for both perspectives, and the end result is a short but sweet little experience that lightens up the spooky Halloween season, and is perfect to be enjoyed with whatever little monster you have in your life.
A previous work from Rosetta Escape author, Otousan, Enigma is an escape game that takes place in a pretty bare bones room. While not the elusive perfect room escape game we are always searching for, Enigma is still an amusing beginning and highlights the ability of a new talent on the escape scene.
Blosics 2 Level Pack is a new series of levels and a custom editor for the physics puzzler, Blosics 2. Shoot different-sized balls at various structures made of blocks, causing them to fall down. You have to deal with blocks on and around various stone, rubber and ice surfaces that effect trajectories, as well as exploding blocks and floating balloon blocks.
SpreadPath is a unique new puzzle game from Andrey Shponko that uses growth by spreading as its core gameplay mechanic. In order to achieve enlightenment by spreading, you must cover each target square with a creature of the matching color. Wherever your path takes you, SpreadPath is an intriguing challenge to push your logic and puzzle-solving abilities into new territories.
Time Mysteries: Inheritance is a hidden-object adventure game where you play the role of Vivien Ambrose, a young British physicist searching for her lost father by using a magical crystal ball that lets her travel through time. Her adventure spans over a millennium, and is filled with different locales, interesting characters, and dozens of various puzzles to solve.
FireBoy and WaterGirl 2: The Light Temple is the sequel to Oslo Albet's last Forest Temple offering. In it, you control two cute elemental characters as they attempt to grab various gems and reach their exits. Each character can be controlled independently or at the same time, leading to some interesting teamwork-based platform puzzles. The Light Temple includes extra light and darkness-based stages in a robust 40 level pack.
Control an adorable unibrowed cycloptic hero in this twist on the RPG genre, killing monsters, finding weapons, collecting loot and exploring dungeons. The twist is, all the inputs are controlled with the repeated clicks of a single mouse button. Quite entertaining, if a little bit repetitious, and yet addictive, too.
Who doesn't love blowing things up? Nobody, that's who. Why, you probably love blowing things up so much, you'd do it by hurling yourself bodily at other people if you could. Well, now you can, in the third installment of everyone's favourite arcade action series featuring an indestructible tank. Chain combos when you use explosions to propel yourself into the air and slamming into other enemies, playing in different game modes against new challenges and bosses.
RADiancE is an arcade game that combines the best elements of the classic Breakout with the best elements of the classic game of Snake, but it much more than a slapdash chimera of two different classic games. The colorful neon graphics and inventive use of music and sound make for a bold, flashy presentation. And while there is more than a little bit of randomness in the gameplay, there is also enough skill required to make it interesting to arcade fans.
A lively combination of beautiful scenery, strong puzzle design, and manipulative ability makes Kalaquli a fantastic escape-the-room game. Not too easy, not too difficult, easy on the eyes, and the added bonus of charming animations give this latest game from 58 Works must-play status for any escape game fanatic. Or anyone who just likes point-and-click adventures. Or anyone who just likes Ninjas. Okay, so it's fun for everyone!
Who hasn't wanted to fly? I'll tell you: penguins. They're perfectly okay with staying on land. You'll never see a penguin in an airplane, that's for sure. For all the rest of us who'd love to take to the skies, though, there's Wings of Ge.Ne.Sis, the new side-scrolling shooter from An Lieu. While the original Ge.Ne.Sis was a console-style RPG, this spinoff takes things in a whole new direction; namely, up and above!
In Brunhilda and the Dark Crystal, your fate-temptingly named heroine traverses a magical continent via teleportation, broom, dragon, flying ship, and more, collecting shards of the crystal. This team effort between Polish developers Codeminion and Twin Bottles features Mortimer Beckett-like hidden object game play and an outstanding fully voice-acted plot.
One of these things is just like the other. One of these things, oh it belongs. Can you tell me which thing is just like the other, before I finish this song? If you just had a flashback to a kinder, gentler time of your childhood spent in hypnotic rapture before a television, take For the Twin for a spin.
Oliver & The Basilisks is a turn-based, strategy, board game where you'll take control of the wizard Oliver. Your goal is to clear each level of basilisks either by using your magic spells or by maneuvering them into each other or into deadly objects. With three modes of game play and up to 14 spells, Oliver & The Basilisks offers a lot of variety.
Poor little Pichin can barely manage a jump, and apparently this fills its creator with disgust. In Reachin' Pichin, the debut from Malaysian game makers Kurechii, a sympathetic lab assistant helps Pichin launch up into the sky, grab all the money and gems conveniently floating around up there, and use them to evolve into something that will make its creator proud.
Bustabrain is a series of click or drag-and-drop minigame puzzles by Ninjadoodle. Play through 39 levels of rebuses, memory games, pattern recognitions, and others. Try to beat the game using the least number of mouse clicks possible.
Flabby Physics, by Every Day the Same Dream creator Paolo Percini, is a short and simple one button physics puzzle game. The goal is pretty obvious: move the ball to the star. The method for doing this is generally pretty obvious, too: use the [spacebar] to switch positions of the various on-screen blobs. Making the magic happen, though, will take some practice.
If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that lasers owe allegiance to no man. Sure, lasers might be useful for blasting extraterrestrial invaders, but chances are those same aliens are also armed with human-frying laser weaponry. Lasers are dangerous! Chromatronix, a puzzler from Lyngo Games, is a great example of this: you'll need to practice proper laser safety as you match colored beam-emitting Chromas to their proper Power Cells.
What Makes You Tick: A Stitch in Time is a handsome, evocative adventure game from Lassie Games. It features an excellent presentation, puzzles that are solid and never illogical, and a rich storyline. I continue to be entranced by the world of Ravenhallow and vicinity. One novel feature of A Stitch in Time is the ability to play every scene in both day and night. The differences between Ravenhallow in the day and nighttime are not only crucial to solving certain puzzles, but give you nearly twice as much game to explore. Ravenhallow becomes an entirely different world at night.
Trinklit Supreme is a puzzle game from the purveyors of the equally-addictive Slingo series. Match up grids of blocks to form whole pieces, unlocking tons of game-changing power-ups as you play. The more you unlock, the better the experience gets, creating a hyper-addictive experience you'll pick up and play countless times during the day.
Columbus: Ghost of the Mystery Stone is a new and gorgeous looking hidden object adventure from Vogat Interactive. Use your object finding skills to help Christopher Columbus escape a mysterious island, resurrect a phantom, and save himself from a deadly curse. Succeed, and Columbus may survive to discover a new continent.
When we last left our nameless, amnesiac hero in The Fall Trilogy Chapter 1: Separation, he was plummeting down through a metal chute after having been indeterminably shot with an anaesthetic dart. Now, in The Fall Trilogy Chapter 2: Reconstruction we find our hero regaining consciousness in the basement of a 22-storey office block in an unknown city, and not unlike his adventure in the temple he has to find hidden objects and solve puzzles to regain his memory and find his family.
It is the year 2000... wait, no, wrong The Humans are Dead reference. This strategic board game by Lethe Games puts you in the metal boots of one of four robot factions who move across the grid to claim resources, spawn units, create defensive structures and more in a clashing of tactical minds.
Wake Up The Box 2 is a physics puzzle that has you attaching various wooden pieces to objects in order to wake up the tie-wearing Mr. Box. The game includes interesting contraptions, new gameplay elements, and a few surprises along the way. It's a solid, casual game that fans of the series and physics-aficionados should enjoy. The title feels even more refined and smoother than its predecessor. Give it a try!
Sticky Blocks, Aaron Maupin's new variation on the sokoban concept, introduces blocks that stick to each other as well as the avatar. With each move you make, your collection of blocks becomes larger and, possibly, more unwieldy, forcing you to consider every move beforehand!
Word Bubbles is a word game of a different sort, exercising your brain as you devour round after round of word-guessing goodness. Enter as many words that begin with the set of letters given at the beginning. Float the numbered bubbles to the top and you'll earn a star!
Feed the King has you dropping various-shaped cakes on top of each other, forming a large tower and earning points through careful placement. Eventually you launch the king into the sky, controlling him as he gobbles up the pastries for more points.
And Yet It Moves, the simple but marvelous indie release from Broken Rules, will reignite your love for video games. That, or it will cause you to shake with anger as you replay the same part of the game for the tenth time. It might even do both! The physics-centric platform adventure employs the familiar "world tilting" mechanic that allows you to rotate the entire game environment in 90 degree increments. And Yet It Moves then proceeds to do crazy and wonderful things with this, allowing you to explore a universe as strange as it is satisfying.
Farm Frenzy: Gone Fishing takes the Farm Frenzy series in a slightly new direction: to the sea! Instead of messing about with chickens, cows, and sheep, your new friends are fish of all types (and maybe even a mammal). While the basic set-up remains the same, the new visual direction breathes a bit of life into the game, and as always, a Farm Frenzy title is bound to keep you busy for many afternoons on end.
As anyone who has ever worked in the customer service industry knows, pleasing the general populace is right near impossible. Fortunately for us casual gamers, Paradise Beach 2: Around the World not only makes it possible, it makes it entertaining! AstarGames' follow-up to the original time management/simulation game Paradise Beach puts you in the role of a vacation tycoon, pleasing beachgoers by building fruit stands, lounge chairs, planting flowers, and by meeting the needs of the ever-needy consumer.
The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart is a new point-and-click adventure by Marek and Marcin Rudowski with help from Pastel Games. You take control of Myosotis and travel through a town in a beautifully drawn world trying to fix your wagon wheel and learn the story of a wiseman named Derrida. Though short and fairly easy, Bell's Heart is a great, wonderful looking game.
The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart is a new point-and-click adventure by Marek and Marcin Rudowski with help from Pastel Games. You take control of Myosotis and travel through a town in a beautifully drawn world trying to fix your wagon wheel and learn the story of a wiseman named Derrida. Though short and fairly easy, Bell's Heart is a great, wonderful looking game.
The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart is a new point-and-click adventure by Marek and Marcin Rudowski with help from Pastel Games. You take control of Myosotis and travel through a town in a beautifully drawn world trying to fix your wagon wheel and learn the story of a wiseman named Derrida. Though short and fairly easy, Bell's Heart is a great, wonderful looking game.
Warp back to 1977 for some root beer and pizza with extra cheese in this retro themed point-and-click puzzle game from Nickelodeon. Colourful, photo-realistic art and some pretty groovy music combine to create a truly fabulous retro experience. But you'll have some unusual puzzle-solving to do before accessing that mmm...melt in the mouth cheesy goodness. If you're a post-70's child, then you're about to experience a taste of life at a time when technology was only just making appearances in the home.
Cheat Death is a puzzle game by Garbuz Games where you help a young man avoid turning to dust by leading him to the elixir on the other side of a cliff. This involves manipulating a series of floating tetris-like blocks and dragging them into a specific area. Once formed, the man will hike across the path, reach the elixir, regain his youth, and "cheat death" until the next level.
Thomas Weibel's Backgammon is fun, challenging, rock-steady, and doesn't suffer from its super-simple presentation. The game assumes you are familiar with how to play backgammon, so novices might benefit from a quick tutorial found elsewhere on the Web. It's the classic game of Backgammon against a computer AI right in your browser.
Original, enjoyable, and in some respects different from many of the samey room escape games out there, Rosetta Escape is a fantastic way to while away your time in the middle of the week. Although the game is from Japan, no knowledge of the Japanese language is needed. Any letter puzzles are in English, and everything else is a complicated code of colors, tiles, symbols, and funky drawings which, if interpreted correctly, will help you get out of the stark space.
Oozy and the Tower of Wulu is a new action adventure and puzzle game from Oddity Games. Oozy is a cute lil' alien mollusk. Oozy has a dream. Oozy wants to slime the whole world. To do this, Oozy needs a magical shard; one currently held at the top floor of the Tower of Wulu. All Oozy needs to do is climb through fifty levels of a top-down maze, sliming baddies, exploding ooze, collecting lime jellies, and battling bosses all the while. Won't you help poor Oozy to realize his vision?
Track down nine bodies in a brain-bending maze of unreal proportions brought to you by Ian Snyder. The premise is simple, and so is the gameplay, but the otherworldly design and lack of narrative combine to create an oddly meditative experience where the only real meaning is the one you give to it.
Moxie 2 is a solitaire puzzle game where you try to create words by modifying or adding letters to existing words. Each letter has a different point value, and larger words earn you more points. Earn the most points by forming special Moxie words, based on animals, vegetables, or minerals. A simple concept with surprisingly deep, addictive play.
Quantum warping might seem like a simple mechanic after you've done some experimenting with it, but My First Quantum Translocator pulls out all the stops and sets up some brain-bending puzzles. You'll have to make seemingly impossible leaps, dodge murderous moving walls and avoid being smashed in any number of ways. Thankfully, you've got unlimited lives, but it almost makes you think that there's some sort of sinister undercurrent to these lab tests...
After kitties, puppies, and fishies, Robot has finally figured out what he truly wants... ICE CREAM. But when he and his trusty Puppy arrive on a planet in search of some, he finds the situation a bit more explosive than he anticipated. Battle bosses, collect power ups, and explore in this wonderful finale to the hit platforming series from Hamumu Software!
MythPeople returns with another gorgeous puzzle game that bends the rules at all the right places. Heroes of Kalevala is a match-3 puzzle game infused with a village building sim. This means you get to swap tiles in MythPeople's traditionally dramatic manner and earn gold to build a city with. As you play, you unlock new buildings for your town and discover new power-ups, creating that "just one more level" feeling we love in our casual games!
Bloons 2 is here and it continues the high standard of quality the series has established. It looks and sounds good, there's a lot of fun new stuff to experiment with and those who want a challenge will definitely find it here. This iteration introduces a bunch of new bloons, a world map and even some puzzle solving rewards. With 96 levels, Bloons 2 offers a lot of fun and heaps of challenge to keep you entertained for hours.
Saunavihta Vortex is another physics puzzle game where your goal is to click away the white shapes and send your little fella tumbling into a nice, warm furnace...er,um...sauna. The puzzles appear deceptively tricky, but in fact, they are a little easier than the first two games, with a couple of exceptions which will have you replaying levels just to get the timing right. It's a distinctly unusual puzzle game that will warm you to the core with its smokey, crackling fire effects, mostly easy puzzles and the satisfaction of seeing your little guy reach his smokey sauna.
We are pleased to announce the next Casual Gameplay Design Competition! For CGDC #9 we are teaming up with our friends at Electronic Arts' EA2D studio and asking that you design a game around this theme: FRIENDS. You may use any browser-based technology platform you are comfortable with (Flash, Unity, Javascript/HTML5, etc.)! Please read the official competition announcement for all the rules and details.
The first thing I noticed when playing Bits and Pieces, David Lorentz's new platform game, was what a crazy good jumper its pixelated protagonist is. I mean, yeah, most platform heroes wouldn't make it through screen one if they couldn't jump five times their own height, but this dude easily launches himself off like a bottle rocket at the slightest provocation. Good thing though, as making it to the artistically confusing finish will require quite a bit of hopping and/or bopping. And it's a load of fun.
Although Camel Eye is not technically an escape game, it does fill the expectations that escapers have when they play. It's a wacky crime caper in which you play Camel Eye, famous thief, attempting to relieve some rich man of his valuables. There are a lot of items to find and use, and a ton of puzzles to crack before you can become a very wealthy person. Fun, tricky, challenging, a good time will be had by all. Besides, who wouldn't like a chance to get rich? Even if it's just a game.
What do you do when you find yourself under attack by enemy forces? You could cry, you could pray, you could break out the tambourine and try to get them to give peace a chance... or, if you're one of the mice in Nob Studio's clever puzzle/defense/strategy title, you dig up an ancient, mysterious war machine, man it with your mousey comrades, and tromp your way across fifteen levels to ultimate victory.
Initially created to showcase the upcoming Impact Game Engine, Dominic Szablewski's Biolab Disaster morphed into a short platform adventure all its own. As the game begins, a short quake rocks the underground lab, sending debris falling all over the place. Monsters have spread themselves around the lab, and pools of acid threaten to end your day all too quickly. What's a guy in a biohazard suit with a gun to do? Run through the lab and take out the computer core, that's what!
Quiet please. If you'll look this way, you should be able to see the Flightless Dragons, Draco nonvolo, in their native puzzle habitat. Note how they are unable to reach the gems down there in the corner. Yes, I know they are staring at us with large, beseeching eyes, but it is simply not ethical to interfere with the ways of physics.
Record Shop Tycoon is a browser-based business simulation in which you own and operate a record shop. At its core it's a very simple game that is easy to dive right into. Each day is divided into two parts: preparing your store(s) for business, and then sitting back and watching while you rack up the sales. It's not perfect, but it is good and worthwhile of your time if you enjoy business simulation games like the classic Lemonade Stand.
Wispa Forest is a new hidden object game from Reflexive Entertainment. It immediately stands out from the dark and gloomy crowd of hidden object games with its gorgeous watercolor scenery and light-hearted storyline. Forget insane asylums, being trapped in castles, and relatives going missing while searching for ancient artifacts. Wispa Forest is about fairies, fairy friends, fairy enemies, and a curious little human girl, too!
Give Up Robot 2 is a solid platformer with enough neat tricks and visual appeal to set itself apart from the crowd (and its predecessor). You'll guide Robot through 60 stages spread throughout three worlds, each of which is filled with a variety of deadly traps. Your only saving grace is Robot's built-in grappling hook, and you'll need to master its use quickly. It's worth a look for anyone who won't throw their computer through the nearest window after hammering away at a tough level.
Based upon the upcoming novel, this spot-the-difference title takes place inside a very unique museum that takes a certain type of person to find their way through. Despite lacking any real story, it's visually stunning and easily worth a play for any fan of the genre looking for something a bit more lengthy.
Good ol' Uncle Whatsisface has disappeared, according to a letter from a British consulate in Africa, and it's up to you to solve the mystery of Finders Seekers: Mystery of Stonecliff. Easy, right? Well this little point-and-click escape adventure might have you thinking "What the...?" more than once.
The third installment in the block-manipulating, anagram-solving, funny-bone-tickling series, the first installment of which was voted one of the Best Games of 2008 by JIG. After nearly two sad blockless years, Marty Sears is back with all the fiendish brain-teasing action and absurd animations fans have come to expect. And if you're new to BWLO, you'll find this even more of a treat... and even more of a punishment. A punishing treat? Anyway, yay!
Tone of Vesper is less of an escape from a room and more of an escape to a certain state of mind. Strawberry Cafe has stripped away many of the usual room escape trappings, leaving a game that is more of a point-and-click adventure than an escape. The object, you see, is not to get out of the space, but to explore it and find out what hidden treasures it holds. Specifically, what hidden musical treasures.
Cap'n Goldgrubber is retiring and giving you fourteen days to find and dig up enough treasure to live the rest of his days in comfort. Succeed and you share in the wealth. Fail and it's a one way trip off the edge of a plank. What follows is a set of orienteering puzzles. Each day takes you to a different islet with numerous buried treasures and one "secret" treasure hidden therein, and the only way to find the very expensive bonus treasures is through following lists of cryptic clues.
Ready for some spelunking? Descend into the depths of this fiendishly difficult little isometric puzzler, where the goal is just to get to the exit... which only opens once all the floor tiles have fallen... and is usually behind some traps, switches, and unbreakable green crystals. All in a day's work!
Not a lot can be said without spoiling the fun of playing Srdjan Susnic's entry into our CGDC#8. What you should know is that ZOO Director is a truly traditional sandbox gameplay experience. Your aim is to rise above the rank of humble Zoo Novice to claim the glorious title of Zoo Director, by creating and maintaining your very own zoo. Sounds simple, but this quirky little game quickly reveals its challenges.
Flock Together is the latest game from John Cooney. It tells the story of a little girl whose pet sheep, somehow, gets tied to a balloon and floats toward the sky. Your job is to follow after it by tethering yourself to different birds. You start off with only three ropes tied to one weak dove, but it won't be long until you'll be soaring.
After taking over her grandfather's failing cafe and turning it into a thriving business, intrepid barista Amelie returns for more in Amelie's Cafe: Summer Time, a new time management game from Boolat Games. Summer Time trades the bustling city setting of the original for a summer beach motif, but the gameplay is just as enticing
Sneak Thief 1: Prime Catch is a point-and-click adventure from Pastel Games where you play a thief, a sneaky one if the title didn't tip you off. In it, you're tasked by a man called Don Fabiano to retrieve the inventions of Prof. Bellamy. For your efforts, you will be paid top money and isn't that the best kind of money?
Remember those choking-hazard-tastic plastic maze toys you would get as a kid, usually as a dinky prize for something? Relive those happy memories in Sand Trap, a puzzle where you rotate a box to pour the sand trapped within into a pail. It's another fine HTML5 game from Gopherwood Studios, and a runner up in our Casual Gameplay Design Competition #8.
If you're younger than a certain age, you've probably never thought, "Wouldn't it be great if I could take part in my favorite radio dramas?" But the advent of podcasting has borne a renewed interest in all sorts of languishing radio formats, including radio drama (or "TV without pictures"). It's true, really! Now BBC and Radio Scotland bring us an interesting experiment in combining the audial thrills of radio drama with the interactivity of online gaming. Legacy is a sound-heavy adventure game, telling a tale of secrets, cryptic clues, and underground vaults.
We all learn as toddlers that square pegs won't fit into round holes. You can pound your tiny fist all you want on top of your Fisher-Price playset, it just isn't going to work. Now Blockage, a brain-teasing puzzle from Guillhermo v.S. Heldt., has come along to teach us another important lesson: red blocks won't fill green squares. Also, sometimes teleportation is necessary. Very, very important life lessons.
Akarimado brings nothing new to the room escape genre; you're locked in a one-view room (with an unlockable side room that's also one-view), and you have to solve many and various puzzles to get out. Although this particular dish of room escape contains few if any unfamiliar ingredients, there's not much to complain about; we enjoy these particular ingredients and we know it. It's a very satisfying journey all in all, and one that should not be missed.
What's in a dream anyway? This experimental prototype from Gambit is an attempt at introducing replayability into the point-and-click genre with procedurally generated content, but it's also a surprisingly intriguing exploration into memory, dreams, and logic. As a bedridden hospital patient, Symon's only means of interacting with his family is through the fragmented dreams he has. Can you help him solve the perplexing riddles his subconscious offers up?
Sometimes a game so weird and charming comes along that, despite its flaws, you have to enjoy it. Lost Head by Garbuz Games is one of those games. This short and simple physics puzzler won't change the world, but it might make you smile with its absurd characters and presentation. It seems that our titular hero has become detached from his friends by an evil hand. Luckily a glove waits for him in each level, ready to be his new body. The trick is getting there.
Out of the capable hands of Youda Games comes a time management game that will have you hooked for days on in. Youda Survivor combines some of the best elements from Youda Games' previous efforts with some stylistic influences from games like Farm Frenzy. Not only are you gathering items and converting them to better products, you're also boiling them into new and exciting potions to make you look more impressive in the eyes of the island chief!
From the experienced casual game forces of Reflexive Entertainment (Simplz: Zoo) and Anawiki (Soccer Cup Solitaire) comes GabCab, a way-too-cute time management game starring the big-eyed taxi cab, Gabby. People need to get to where they want to go, and seeing as how you seem to be the best (and only) taxi in town, it's your job to drive them there! Answer the call of the customers and take them to their destinations, picking up tips along the way to spend in the game's well-stocked upgrade store.
Help save your brother from a labyrinthine rubber duck factory in this quirky physics puzzle platformer from Garbuz Games. Oh, and beware the pools of deadly acid. Those can really put a damper on your day.
What's in a doooor? A puzzle by any name would not be as cute... or brainwracking. Developer Hempuli's first foray into the world of flash gaming is a deceptively adorable and simple looking platform puzzler where your only goal is to figure out how to get the glowing blue crystal on each level. There's only eighteen stages, but trust us; that's more than enough to give your brain a workout, thanks to some clever design.
Once upon a time, there a was a young llama with a dream. A dream and $200 adorably clutched in his hoof. With that hoof-ful of dollars, he would take the wretched turf left to him by his father and become... KING! King by plagiarizing all the neighboring cities, but still. In A Llama, A World and a Plan, a building simulation from StefanT, you can become a Lama glama and make your every ungulate wish come true.
From the creator of Windosill comes a quiet, creative romp through an imaginary world. Seasons is a gorgeous piece of interactive art that lets you explore half a dozen scenes with Thomas and his unicycle. Pedal through the snow and see which animals pop their heads out. Shake the beehive and see where the bees go. Take a dip in the lake and watch your reflection in the water. Seasons is nothing short of beautiful, and its relaxing, webtoy-like presence will captivate your curiosity for longer than you might expect.
Ah, the cosmos. It contains the whole of everything that is, was and shall be. It is filled with the awe-inspiring beauty of the nebulae, the quasars and the familiar stars. Science cannot know how big the universe is, nor can it count the number of planets or star. Every time we get close to an exact figure, a giant space whale, dubbed Harmony Keeper, starts devouring celestial bodies. Or at least, that's what this latest action/arcade title from Mofunzone teaches us.
Light Up 2 is a physics/puzzle game from the creator of the original Light UP. This chill, relaxing game is all about moving circles around the screen to light up dark orbs, hence the name. You do this by turning neutral orbs into colored orbs that reflect certain types of orbs, creating a little bit of controlled chaos that will (hopefully) settle in to a fully-lit arrangement of circles!
5xMan is an action/puzzle game that plays on the now-familiar concept of controlling multiple characters one at a time. You play a team of five guys, each in a stunning single-color one-piece jumpsuit (is that a Louis Vuitton?!), and work your way through each stage. Make it as far as you can with one guy, then switch to the next to see what more you can do, opening new paths for subsequent team members as you go.
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