Return to the underworld of Avernum one last time in the conclusion to Spiderweb Software's iconic RPG series. When a blight brings famine down upon the people of Avernum during a war, four soldiers are called to become heroes from unlikely beginnings. Create your party and set out into a dark world full of adventure, betrayal, and, most importantly, hidden treasure!

Like being king of your castle? Best keep those orcish hordes at bay with a bit of fighting, building and training. But mostly fighting. After planting his castle on what might have been the resident sacred patch of land, a knight is facing wave after wave of orcs keen to remove him from the local scenery in Ninja Kiwi's interesting defense/hack-and-slash twist.

Hetherdale is a city of legend dreamed up by a mad poet... or so scholar Heather Montrose believes until she gets an invitation to come to Africa in search of it. A point-and-click adventure from the creators of Morningstar, Hetherdale is an ambitious game bogged down by some overly fussy puzzles, but with an interesting story at its core.

Another World, or, as it's known in North America, Out of This World, is a stunning example of storytelling in a video game originally released in 1991 (and re-released with better visuals in 2006) by Eric Chahi. Built as a cinematic platform adventure, you take on the role of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist who is teleported to a barren alien planet while running an experiment using a particle accelerator. You soon make friends with one of the humanoid aliens and together work your way through the subterranean environments trying to escape with your lives!

What's in a dream? April Ryan, a struggling art student, doesn't think there's much to the strange nightmares she's having. But she's wrong. A classic point-and-click adventure of epic proportions, The Longest Journey is the story of two worlds thrown out of balance. Featuring stellar dialogue, memorable characters, a haunting soundtrack and rich environments, this is a fantastic adventure that shows other titles in the genre how to do it right.

Take charge of natures number one predator and sort out all those people who dare enter the sea. Or sail on it. Or fly over it, for that matter... If Miami Shark from Mausland teaches us anything, it's that sharks are AWESOME. Providing you are the shark. And you can drag stealth bombers down. From the sky.

It might be a game to promote Comedy Central's new show, but the point-and-click adventure from ClickShake is a barrel of paranormal, devil-infused fun. Welcome to New York City, the traditional landing port for foreigners eager to build their own American dream. It is Mark's job, as an employee at the Department of Integration, to help these newcomers out with jobs and make sure they do not get deported because of some technicality. Such as losing their immigration papers or eating gray matter at the Brain Depository.

Take control of a flock of Canada Geese and fly for as long as you can, gaining more birds to increase points, and avoiding their natural predators. Like propellers. With upgrades to buy, achievements to discover, and high scores to capture, Endless Migration is a solid, if repetitive, avoidance title for the goose in all of us. HONK!

You know the old saying about not getting between a boy and his balloon? Of course you don't, since we just made that up. But in this fast-paced action/shooter/defense hybrid, you'll need to learn the value of a hot air balloon if you want to escape this strange landscape. Repair it as quickly as you can to sail off to safety, but be careful. There's a welcoming party headed your way, and it isn't very welcoming.

Ah, the opera. The drama! The romance! The... cadavers? As the lowly stagehand of a popular opera group, you weren't expecting anything out of the ordinary when you're all summoned to a tiny, remote town to perform. At least, until the performers start coming down with an unfortunate case of dead. Is it a simple case of a madman on the loose in the sleepy little town? Or is there something much more sinister lurking behind the scenes?

In Abduction!, the goal is to make your bloated overlords cold, hard cash by journeying to Earth and picking up a few (un)willing volunteers to be the supply for your demand. It's the perfect game for those of you who hate overalls and straw hats, and believe anyone who wears them should be punished. Sucking a fleshy creature aboard your ship causes horrible yet delicious things to happen to them as they're processed into Man-in-a-Can.

M-Bot: The Game is a gorgeous, shiny, frenetic gem of a 2.5D shooter with style to spare, where you pilot M-Bot through the urban ruins of the Newgrounds community to disable spambots and make the world safe for friendly posters everywhere.

Got mech? Time to suit up in Mechanical Commando 2, a fast and frantic top-down shooter from Berzerk Studio featuring lots of enemies, lots of bosses, lots of missions, and lots and lots of bullets. With achievements and upgrades galore, it's enough to satisfy the trigger happy space marine inside all of us.

If you're a fan of first person skydiving games with lots of vowels in the title, Aaaaa! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity by Dejobaan Games is right up your alley. Your goal is to make it from Point A (generally assumed to be somewhere above you) to Point B (somewhere below point A) without crushing every bone in your body. Unfortunately the skies are littered with airborne buildings and architectural oddities. And birds. And cars. And large glass plates with numbers on them.

Hostile Spawn is a top-down arcade shooter similar to Robokill in design. Move through a sci-fi setting grabbing weapons and taking out aliens with your mad skills. Although it's similar to other games in the genre, Hostile Spawn has a strong emphasis on exploration, carving itself a nice cozy niche amongst its brothers.

In the mood for a seriously intense turn-based strategy game? Solium Infernum is about as non-casual as you can get, featuring no in-game tutorial and a 30+ page instruction manual. But it rewards players with superb open-ended gameplay that has as many paths to victory as you can conjure.

When her fiance goes missing carrying a valuable string of pearls, Johanna turns to the only one she can trust on the seedy streets of London; you. Together with one of the city's finest, you'll need to put your hidden object skills to the test in this gorgeous adventure based upon the original legend of Sweeney Todd. Just be careful who you stick your neck out for. But do try the pie. It's delicious.

Go deeper into the rabbit hole and uncover darker secrets in this sequel to the original Alice is Dead. You wake up to find yourself the newest resident of Wonderland Jail, and while your newest cellmate isn't very talkative, the strange little man in the cell next door has entirely too much to say. Point-and-click your way to escape, if not all the answers you seek, in this high-quality game of fairy-tale gone wrong. Just make sure you play the original first!

The godfather of 3D shooters, 1995's Quake, takes a leap out of monster-infested dimensions and into your web browser. And it's surprisingly well-done, despite the control limitations imposed by Flash.

Roly-Poly Monsters is the latest in a series of arcade games from Johnny K. Ghouls are roaming the neighborhood, and it's your job to destroy them! Drop bombs on the baddies' heads in the correct sequence and with the proper timing to send them back to whatever bad Halloween party they came from.

You might want to put the kids to bed before you crack open this fairytale. A spot-the-difference game with a darker side to go hand-in-hand with its innocent artwork, Goldilocks might not be the same tale you remember this time around...

Unravel a mystery in a strange future where you can't trust anyone... maybe not even who you think you are. Nikopol is a large file adventure game with a lavish presentation and intricate story that overshadows its gameplay hiccups.

YAWWN! It's a brand new day, time to go out exploring! Level Up! is an RPG-like platformer by Nifty Hat all about exploring the world and discovering your past. In an odd world where the Squarians and Roundians are in a constant and bitter battle, your goal is to collect gems and exchange them for tools to help you restore your memory.

For those of us who love the idea of digital espionage but who don't have the ability to hack our way into a paper bag, Exoriare is here to fulfill all of our cyberpunk fantasies. The new alternate reality game from Smoking Gun Interactive sucks you in to a world of government conspiracies and stands poised to keep you hooked for a long time to come.

Kiss your free time and your loved ones goodbye. Torchlight is here. The indie rogue-like/action/RPG title has been highly anticipated, but is it worth all the hype? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Stop talking to me, I'm trying to play. With randomly generated dungeons, an obscene amount of treasure and monsters to hunt, and a faithful animal companion at your side, Torchlight is a stellar example of indie gaming at its finest.

Kids these days are just dying to spend some time alone. But when Christine's plans for a romantic weekend with her boyfriend are interrupted by a series of unsettling events, she may come to regret the secluded location for their rendezvous. Especially when she finds out that someone else has plans for her. Mixing hidden-object hunting with traditional point-and-click gameplay, The Hookman is a stellar example of creepy, quality story-telling that could have you jumping out of your skin.

There's a cabin in the woods you should stay away from. A quiet little place where time almost seems to stand still. But if you do ignore the warnings and pay a visit, in that dark place, you might want to do a favour for the cabin's lonely occupant. If you don't, you may find yourself staying a long, long time. A point-and-click adventure of paranormal investigation.

Drawing inspiration from popular "castle defense" games like BowMaster Prelude, Elona Shooter adds a serious helping of Asian-influenced, tactical RPG mechanics. You not only get to defend your castle from swarms of oncoming monsters with a satisfying array of weapons and skills, you won't have to go at it alone; an entire tactical RPG-styled party of helpers comes to your aid, eventually.

You awake, dazed and disoriented, on the floor of an empty room, your eyes alighting first on the bricked up windows... and the gun on the ground in front of you. But the house is silent. What could you possibly need to defend yourself against? Find out in this atmospheric point-and-click game mingled with action elements that will have you questioning whether or not you can trust your own eyes.

Descend deep beneath the earth in this free RPG based in a realm of danger and fantasy. Create a character and join a scouting team sent to explore the realm of dwarves. When disaster meets your party, leaving you the only survivor, you'll have to rely on your wits to survive as you travel deeper into unraveling the mystery. Gain party members, train your skills, and battle fearsome beasts in your quest.

Behind every brave little German boy there's a clever little German girl. Which is a good thing in this slightly twisted point-and-click retelling of the classic fairytale, since Gretel is clearly the brains of the outfit. You'll need to think outside the box to keep the two tots alive, since danger can be found in the most unexpected places. Don't let the lovely watercolour graphics fool you. This one's not for the kiddies.

Injected with adrenaline, heavy metal, and buckets of (tiny, pixelated) gore, Juggerdome is a gritty top down arena shooter from Con Artist, creator of Crush the Castle. You are the lucky prisoner chosen to pilot the Juggernaut, a killing machine outfitted with upgradeable weaponry. During each round in the arena you must not only survive onslaughts of machines and armed prisoners, you have to entertain the crowd, too.

A classic point-and-click adventure that does horror in a Flash game right. It's up to you to save your friends from a dangerous intruder who has broken into their home. Your wits and reflexes are your only chance of survival. Unarmed, unprepared, and surrounded by shadows, you must enter the house alone.

The Jolly Gang's Spooky Adventure is a point-and-click adventure game that doesn't take place in a near-fantasy world, a scary haunted mansion, or a series of dream worlds connected by a magical portal. It also doesn't involve anyone's family member heading off to investigate a long-lost artifact. It does contain cheesy visuals and a bit of an adult sense of humor, making it one of the few casual games to target an older crowd. Think of it as a casual version of Ben There, Dan That mixed with your favorite browser-based room escape game.

In Finwick, the spritual successor to Platform, Jackson Lewis has once again crafted a brilliant gem of a puzzle platformer. Play the part of Finwick as he makes his very first delivery for the Royal Mail, passing through dangerous factories, quarries, forests and secret underground facilities.

Decades ago, the ship Pandora met with tragedy at sea while returning to America with some very... special cargo. Tonight, the phone rings and your grandfather has called to confess something terrible. Are the fears of an old man groundless? Or is there something else in the dark in this point-and-click hidden object game? You're about to find out you can't leave your past behind... no matter how hard you try.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Cuboy! Isometric hero to us all! And he's racing back in time in this riotously weird point-and-click adventure series to save us from... well, you'll find out. Featuring an off-beat sense of humour and sharp design, this first installment is a fun diversion and promises great things for the future despite a frustrating reflex-based minigame or two.

Man-eating plants! Skeletons! Giant spiders! Falling boulders! What do these things have in common? They're all very, very deadly. And they, along with a host of other unpleasantness hungry for your demise, are waiting for you in Spelunky, an incredibly addictive roguelike platformer from Derek Yu. Explore, descend, discover... just remember to watch your back and keep one hand on your whip!

In the latest Women's Murder Club murder mystery game, you play all four members of the titular group of friends from the books of acclaimed crime novelist James Patterson. Lindsey Boxer is a detective with the San Francisco police force, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Cindy Thomas is a reporter on the crime beat, and Jill Bernhadt is the District Attorney. Each of these characters' skill-sets will come in handy as you make your way through this series of bizarre murders.

This platform puzzle game from Edmund McMillen brings to the platformer table multi-dimensional planes. Press the [A] key to switch planes and alter what is visible on the screen. Sometimes you can see the other planes while you are occupying the current one, but you can't see what overlaps between planes. This creates an interesting dynamic that involves a lot of guessing with your jumps, especially when movable blocks make their appearance.

Make It Good is a dark, noir-esque detective mystery from Fail-Safe author Jon Ingold. You are cast in the role of a down-on-his-luck detective struggling to solve a murder case or risk losing his job. Moving about a complete, living world, you'll turn over every potted plant, scrutinize every room, and question every character as you attempt to stitch together shards of information to discover just what happened.

The first in a creepy new point-and-click series set in a Wonderland a few degrees off from the one you may recall. A gruesome sight greets you when you open your eyes in this fractured fairytale... but just who are you, anyway? To find out, first you'll have to find your way out and dig a little deeper into the mystery. Provided you're prepared for what you may discover on the other side of the looking glass.

Our favorite green-skinned favor trader is back and he's learning a very potent lesson from the last time he performed A Small Favor. Performing political assassinations can be bad for one's health. Still, once a favor trader, always a favor trader. Use your point-and-click skills to scrub your ID badge and keep the government goons at bay.

The tender story of a boy, his bow, and all the monsters that needed to be shot full of arrows. Medieval Rampage 2 is a top-down shooter chock full of upgrades, arrows, achievements, arrows, and fast-paced action across 25 levels and impossible odds. What it lacks in strategy it makes up for in action. Also, arrows. We can't stress this enough.

Q-Block is an extremely nifty graphics editor that runs in your browser. It allows you to build 3D pixel art, just by sticking colorful cubes to each other one at a time. Rotate your artwork in 3D space by clicking and dragging anywhere on the screen. It's just as easy to remove blocks or repaint them a different color.

Colony is a tribute to Starcraft from Jakrin "Krin" Juangbhanich, the developer behind the successful Sonny series. Crush your opponent's base with soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and walking mechs, while a computer-controlled AI acts as your partner and even speaks with you through a chat box. Plus, online multi-player!

Third floor; housewares, garden, home repair... CARNAGE. In this clever little tower defense game, hold out over multiple levels against incoming creeps as you strive to protect that symbol of mankind's courage, freedom, and ingenuity; the elevator shaft. Purchase new elevators (yay!), upgrade your weaponry (huzzah!), and repaint the corridor.

The neighborhood kids are on your lawn again, and it's time to take action. And that action is murder. In Get Off My Lawn, you finally decide to put an end to all the shenanigans, armed with the oversized blades on your trusty, indestructible, probably non-regulation, rotary lawn mower.

It's mightily easy to care about your tiny walking soldiers in Warfare 1944, the new real-time strategy game from Con Artist. They fall prone under fire, they take solemn aim, they dolphin tragically through the air when a mortar strikes. Your mind's mission may be to win the war, but your heart's mission is to protect your men. That's quite an accomplishment for a little Flash game.

When alien slugs start invading, giant birds are having a territory war, and the giant beast chained in your cave is more teeth than cuddles, who're ya gonna call?... what? No! Not the Ghostbusters! Reemus and Liam are back to save the day, eventually, in the third chapter of this point-and-click saga from Ringmaster of Weirdness, Zeebarf. "Ghostbusters". Honestly.

For most of us, waking up in a coffin isn't a great start to our day. The Dead Case is a ghoulish point-and-click mystery that puts you in the spectral shoes of a newly deceased soul, trying to find out how you got that way... and why so many others in town seem to have your exact same problem.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an ambitious mystery adventure from Frogwares. It simultaneously attempts to remain faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's eponymous sleuth, provide a crossover with another body of work with its own cultish following, and blaze new trails in the well established adventure game genre.

Pastel Games has just released a new point-and-click game, Morbid, designed and illustrated by Maciej Palka with programming, animation and puzzle support from Mateusz Skutnik. Although the artwork contained within is well-conceived and the atmosphere is enticingly moody, we weren't as impressed with the gameplay. Hard-to-find hotspots turn this game into a disappointing exercise in frustration. But give it a play and decide for yourself.

"Avernum" is the name of an underground domain that's home to the Avernites, a group at war with the surface-dwellers, collectively called the Empire. This time around, a group of adventurers is sent back to Avernum to hunt down an assassin who tried to kill the Empress. The story and its development is actually pretty thick for a closed-in dungeon crawler, unfolding constantly a simplified "choose-your-own-adventure"-styled dialogue.

Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon exists within that journey from the reality of Vlad the Impaler, the madman the Count was based upon, to the myth of the best-known vampire, Dracula. It's a long, deep and satisfying adventure game laden with volumes of text, and a pleasantly eerie setting that's brilliantly illustrated.

There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to step up to the plate and lay waste to an entire city despite the best efforts of the army and the air force. It's just one of those rites of passage, you know? Like riding a bike or going on a first date. Deflect missiles, crush your foes, and grab the... seed... by the, uh, horns?

What if Mario, instead of instantly reappearing at the beginning of the level after he died, had to earn his reincarnation by traveling the realms of Diyu, being judged by the kings of Yama? This is a game about that from Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... OW! Ew... is that a spleen? The fifth chapter of the puzzle-platforming Karoshi series is here, and it's one of the best of the bunch. This edition comes with a flying, indestructible, Super Saiyan alter-ego, a dubious power when the goal of the game is to kill yourself.

We here at JIG don't endorse rampant butterfly carnage. But we do support true love. And when the object of your affections has eight legs and certain dietary requirements, well, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Squash butterflies to keep your betrothed fed in this game of skill and balance!

Zeebarf, the author of Reemus and The Visitor, brings us a fully-explored sci-fi world in classic point-and-click adventure game style. From the nuances of animation to the excellent puzzles to the rich storytelling, A Small Favor is one of the best adventures available for your browser.

Pizza City has so much in common with the first two Grand Theft Auto games it seems to fall somewhere between spoof and demake. Like the notorious crime sims from Rockstar Games, you roam a city with virtual free reign in your car via a bird's eye view. There is a main goal (delivering pizzas and working your way up the pizzeria career ladder), but there are also plenty of other side quests to undertake, too. Pizza City isn't for everyone and the relatively simple gameplay may turn some off, but there's more depth lurking here than meets the eye and it definitely rewards those who choose to stick with it.

Help guide Spewer, an adorable pink blob, through a series of diabolical tests put forth by a watchful scientist in this physics-based platformer. It's a journey of adventure, excitement, and child-like wonder. Also, vomit.

When your spaceship crash-lands onto an unknown desert planet, you regain consciousness to find yourself one of the only survivors. Red Herring Games presents an incredibly polished point-and-click adventure game that has to be seen to be believed.

Are you feeling EVIL? As a demon, you must use your point-and-click skills to find a reincarnated soul and return him to Hell. Your demonic powers include levitation and the operation of simple machinery while your creativity allows you to get to no limit of utter mischief. Get ready to do EEEVVIIIILLLLL!

A little-known sequel to an even lesser-known original, UfoPilot 2: The Phadt Menace is a fun little action shooter that pays homage to the classic Defender, with gravity-based elements reminiscent of all those "moon lander" games that you've probably played throughout the last decade. You're tasked with leading rescue missions to save your fellow pilots, who are being held as prisoners-of-war by the Phadt Armada, a hostile alien enemy.

It's been around for a while, so we expect many of you are already familiar with A Case of the Crabs, but if Nick Bounty's first point-and-click adventure missed you, now's a great time to give it a go. It's a hilarious parody of classic detective stories, a noir-but-silly tale of a down-on-his luck gumshoe solving the mystery of a murder and a crate full of crabs.

The Malstrums Mansion is a retro point-and-click game with a surprisingly tense atmosphere, in the style of old Apple Macintosh adventures like Shadowgate. The heavily pixilated black and white graphics are chunky but lovingly crafted. If you love games that give you the creeps, or if you just like to relive the early years of gaming, this is a title you simply can't afford to pass up.

How great is it to be a detective? You wear expensive suits, your hair always looks perfect no matter what angle you're seen from . . . oh! And of course you get to utilize everything from hidden objects, spot-the-difference, fun puzzles and more to catch your man! And if you do it by playing one of Big Fish Games' newest releases, CSI:NY, you get to do it all with a substantially decreased likelihood of getting shot! And hey, who doesn't like not getting shot?

From Spiritonin, creator of Adult Swim's Death Vegas, comes Capoeira Fighter 3, a 2D fighting game with a free online demo and full-fledged downloadable version. Featuring more than two dozen playable characters and a refined, logical system of combos, it's one of the rare fighting games that captures the nostalgia from the genre's heyday while updating everything to fit in with a new generation of gamers.

Women's Murder Club: A Darker Shade of Grey is the latest installment in the murder mystery/hidden object adventure game series based on the books and television program of the same name. Investigating the death of a young boy, you play the role of several different experts, each with a specialization and accompanying gameplay mode. Gather evidence and clues and piece things together in the forensics lab to solve the mystery!

Bloody Fun Day is a refreshingly original turn-based strategy game from Urban Squall, built around the character of a cute little nihilistic, selfish grim reaper. Your objective is to score as many points as possible by reaping the Cuties, who populate their hexagonally gridded island like dense, colorful game pieces. Their crime is incessant happiness and adorability. Their punishment is a gratuitously violent death. Deceptively well-crafted and deep, Bloody Fun Day is a bloody good time.

Schizo-Phrenzy is a surreal platform adventure with an art deco look and a discourteous attitude towards gravity. Guide the mentally unwell private investigator John K. Facey on his quest to confront the titanic Mayor and discover the true extent of his own madness. Schizo-Phrenzy will fill your shoes with spider eggs during the night, and if they hatch, you are in real danger of having your privacy invaded.

Sin Mark is a Bowmaster Prelude-inspired side-scroller by Con Artist of Armor Games, featuring subtle strategy elements and lots of magic arrow, spell-weaving fun. It's meant to be played with your hero as mobile as possible, unlike many of the static, turret-defending bow-and-arrow games in this genre. Progressing through a series of levels battling waves of Middle Earth-type monsters, you'll extract magic from "Rune Stones" to build a larger arsenal of offensive and defensive spells, all of which are cast from your trusty bow.

"What good is Magnetic Poetry if you can't be the best at it?" you might be saying. Well, wonder no more, for Paul Preece and David Scott (AKA the Casual Collective) have just the thing: Farragomate! Compete against up to 9 others to make the best sentence out of a given pool of words.

In Escape, a multiple-room point-and-click escape game in the Trapped series by Godlimations, play as Dialla Reineheart, a spunky red-headed lady detective tasked with bringing down a sinister crime syndicate. Your partner, Mickey, has been tragically slain by the leader of the gang, the ruthless Dan McNeely; now, you must escape from his clutches. This won't be easy.

An entrant into the 2009 Independent Games Festival, 2DEngine's Chains is a game of color connecting that puts a new spin on the same-game genre. Twenty unique levels challenge the player to clear circles while balancing a coat hanger, cleaning a clogged pipe, painting a pyramid, and dodging giant pinball flippers. But of course, we all do that every weekend, don't we?

In Cortex Command, you assume the role of a disembodied brain (floating in a jar, actually) that's able to network with—and telepathically control—a variety of machines and soldiers. The basic premise is that you're setting up shop on hostile alien worlds to mine for resources, while your enemy is doing the same. Superficially, it sounds more like a real-time strategy game than a turn-based warfare game, which is one of the main reasons Cortex Command has so much potential; it's both.

The sequel to one of the best tactical battle games on the internet has finally arrived! Sonny 2 improves on the first game by offering three separate character classes, hundreds of new items, and a Player vs. Player mode. The turn-based combat flows like water and requires plenty of intense decision-making, while the incredible amount of character customization available right from the start opens up a world of interesting choices.

How close are you with your family? What if you received a letter from an uncle one night, asking for your help in investigating rumours of an ancient culture deep in the wilderness? Would you pack your bags and head out to help? You might. But the blood on the ground when you arrived might give you serious pause. How bad could things be, right? As befits the first chapter in a series of adventures, you're going to end this one with more questions than you started with, and maybe, just maybe, a prickling feeling of unease at the back of your neck.

Warfare 1917 is a rather excellent World War I strategy title from Armor Games that concentrates on the use of trenches as strategic choke points. The gung-ho cries of your troops make it hard to lose them, and if you waste too many lives, you run the risk of losing the battle to low morale. It's a real gem of a wargame that works on more levels than just pew pew pew KABOOM. Though certainly it provides that as well.

You kids these days with your Halos and your Gear Wars and your Half Lifes... you don't appreciate what we had to work with! Back in my day, we didn't have no fancy-schmancy high-end graphics in our shooters! No complex storylines, neither. We didn't even have a jump! You know what we had? We had Doom.

Reemus and Liam continue their journey to save the kingdom from the plague of death slugs that appeared from nowhere in the first chapter. Zeebarf is a fantastic animator and he uses his talents to tell an imaginative story full of interesting characters and fantastic situations. You will be entertained (and perhaps a little grossed out, too). The puzzles are not too difficult, but wacky enough to keep you from just breezing through the game.

Violet is a richly engaging one-room puzzle game from the annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2008). The problem? You're a graduate student working on your dissertation, but you haven't gotten any writing done in months. Your girlfriend Violet has put her life on hold, waiting for you to finish, and she's getting fed up. If you don't get a thousand words written today, your relationship is over and she flies home to Australia.

Ghostscape, a new escape game by Psionic, is just chock full of supernatural goodness. You play a veteran investigator of the occult who, upon hearing rumors of a haunted house, cannot stay away...and what a paranormal gold mine it turns out to be! Chairs and cups move as if grasped by some invisible hand, mysterious diary entries litter the floor, grotesque paintings adorn every room. And then, of course, there are the ghosts.

It is a classic horror scenario: the car broken down in the middle of the road, the swirling snow and biting cold, the beckoning light visible just over the hill. A house! Oh, thank goodness. But what's this? The lights are on, cheery fireplaces crackle in every room, yet no one is there. You call out a hello, but your voice echoes unanswered through the hall. How strange.

Karoshi is a platform/puzzle game where your goal is the exact opposite of most such entertainments: you have to die. Throw yourself onto spikes, zap yourself with electricity, smash yourself with a falling safe. It's like an extended version of the cathartic moment when you get finally get sick of Mario's empty-headed cheerleading and just hurl him off a cliff.

Monster Basement 2 is every bit as entertaining and well-made as the original; like the first game, it is extraordinary for its thought-provoking plot and tense, eerie ambiance. Patrick Majewski, from Godlimations, has spared nothing in bringing his tale of monster-against-man-against-monster to life.

Ben There, Dan That! is an old-school adventure game in the classic sense. You know how this works. Right click to access the interactive menu. Interact with objects. Pick them up. Use them with other objects. In this game, you default to playing as Ben, but you can switch to being Dan when the occasion calls for it. It features some fairly witty writing with that rather unique British self-deprecating sense of humour.

Zeebarf returns and you'll be pleased to know that his work just keeps getting better. Your job is to guide opportunistic exterminator Reemus and his ursine companion Liam through a series of eight oddball misadventures on a quest to... well... do something or other. Go to a castle and save the world, I guess. They get sidetracked a lot.

Monster Basement is a chilling room escape game that injects mood and atmosphere into what is often an almost apathetic genre. The motivation to leave is made all too clear; this room with its vampire flies, blood stained meat hooks, and grotesque abominations sitting in fluid filled beakers, scares the jebus out of you, and as you slowly work through a way to leave this terrible place, things aren't likely to get better either.

Developed by Dark Realm Studios, Pandemic 2 is the sequel to the morbidly fun original Pandemic, a game in which your goal is to eradicate the human race with the perfect disease. While the original game didn't go on to become hugely popular, Pandemic II is more an improvement upon its predecessor than a sequel, with an improved interface and more features.

Gigolo Assassin is a new point-and-click adventure from Mediatonic and created for Adult Swim. In this first installment of a three part series, you must guide your gigolo (I named mine Bruce Digelow) through an isolated tropical island in order to put a stop to the sinister goings on of one Alana Lamia. In so doing you will meet an assortment of unique (and decidedly non-unique) characters as well as solve item based puzzles much along the same vein as the old Sierra and Lucas Arts point-and-click adventures.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble is an innovative and award-winning download game for both Mac and Windows that defies classification. It's a unique genre-bending game that includes puzzle and RPG elements, as well as a variety of mini-games. All these disparate elements synthesize remarkably well, and the gameplay quickly becomes intuitive.

Enlightenment is a snack-sized text adventure set in the general neighborhood of the Zork universe, with Infocom-esque humor, sly quotes and footnotes, and a wealth of entertaining but unnecessary actions. It doesn't play like an 80s game, though: it is short, polished, and focused, with lots of clues and guidance, and probably won't take more than an hour to play.

Based on the James Patterson novels (and the subsequent television spin-off), Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet is a murder mystery wrapped in an adventure game spiced with light hidden object scenes and a few simple minigames. Investigating crimes is the central focus of gameplay, with heaping doses of clue sniffing, murder scene scrutinizing, and some light labwork here and there to keep the story moving along. You don't need to be a fan of the series to enjoy the game, and even if you are, Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet weaves a completely new tale (penned by Patterson) that stays faithful to the original characters' personalities. This time, however, you're in charge.

The Several Journeys of Reemus is a point-and-click game with a medieval fantasy setting from talented flash artist Zeebarf. Wanna-be hero Reemus must put a stop to a local infestation of giant ants, armed with only his dubious wits, a kickin' handlebar mustache, and his faithful purple bear sidekick Liam. By applying your skill at pointing, clicking, and problem solving, you must guide Reemus unscathed to the final confrontation with the towering ant queen.

Monsters' Den: The Book of Dread is Flash RPG of extraordinary depth. It is essentially a turn-based, tactical dungeon crawl, and it understands your insatiable clawing lust for magical super-trinkets. If the promise of powerful enchanted do-dads gets your blood pumping even a little bit, then Monsters' Den will have its generous claws in you for quite a while.

Alan Probe: Amateur Surgeon is a cartoonish and casually offensive entry into the simon-says-surgery genre made famous(ish) by Atlus' Trauma Center. Your job is to follow the exact requirements of each surgery as quickly and as accurately as possible. The game is blessed with the finest production values a second-tier television network can buy, with bright, detailed environments and an ever-present sense of self-conscious irony. The violence is so over-the-top that it's not really gross, but there's still plenty of comically intense moments to go around.

Bow Street Runner is a mystery adventure series commissioned by Channel 4 (UK). Set in London's Covent Garden in the 1750s, crime in the city has risen to such a level that local magistrates were forced to take action. The Bow Street Runners were born, created to instill order in the increasingly crime-ridden city. It's a dark and historically accurate journey through old London, presented with live actors, voice narration and full motion video for an impressive cinematic experience.

XSketch is a multiplayer Pictionary-style game with an interesting twist on gameplay and scoring. Players can jump right into any game already in progress and begin to have fun immediately. Points are earned by drawing and guessing successfully, and monthly competition leader boards give the game a real competitive feel.