Use a cannon to launch squirrels like bushy-tailed missiles into clusters of airborne acorns, hoping to accrue enough points to beat the level's target score and move on to the next. The more acorns you hit with one rodent, the more points you rack up. There's multi-shot acorns, fiery acorns, and an inexplicably fun "There's only a few acorns left" mode where your cannon becomes a gatling gun of furry fury. Suffice it to say, the squirrels have their work cut out for them.

Diver 2 is a physics-based game of cliff diving created by Jeff Weber of Farseer Games. Its simple premise sticks you on top of a cliff and says "ok, now jump gracefully into the water and land between the markers". Riiiiight. Doing that perfectly (and on the first try) is about as easy as teaching a cat to sing a canzone from Rigoletto. With a little practice, though, you'll get it right. The dive, not the singing cat bit.

A java demake of Terry Cavanagh's retro spacefaring platformer, VVVV is a challenging little gem sure to bring delight to your day as you set about rescuing six of your fellow crew mates across a dangerous map. And by "delight", we of course mean "difficulty designed to make your fingers snap like ineffectual little twigs". Yaaaaaay!

Use the awesome powers of ninja billiards to save the world from undead viral domination! Now there's a weird sentence. As Viro, a tiny globular ninja, shoot your way through the ranks of the monsters to infect them with a disease so they aren't a threat in 120 levels of physics puzzle mayhem that will test your skill and your fondness for the colour pink.

In a sketchy, notepad world, a doodled character moves with ninja-like precision over the landscape and deadly terrain. Under birds, over spikes, avoiding pitfalls and collecting floating clocks en route to the exit is a lot more difficult than it seems in this tricky one-button platformer.

Everybody in town is depressed, but you've got the cure! In the arcade game Pill Cannon, you are a robot with just one arm, and it's your job to feed pills to the sad people, firing them at their little pods as soon as they show signs of growing morose. The faster and more accurately you work, the better your score!

NinjaKiwi's follow-up to its first defense game is better in (almost) every way. Protect yourself from wave after wave of enemies by mixing potions and lobbing them across a wall. Each concoction will have a different affect, allowing you to mix and create your own recipes of doom.

Avalanche casts the player as a sled-bound penguin who is just trying to get home to his brood in the face of a relentlessly adversarial natural disaster. It's a running game that will test your agility and reaction as you pilot your little Antarctic hero to safety. It captures many of the features that made Dino Run and Canabalt great and presents them in its own unique way. It is a fine example in company with its worthy forebears.

More than "just another pool game", Pool Sharks is a high-quality offering from Silent Bay Studios. Offering different ways to play, silky smooth visuals, and the option to pull off some awe-inspiring trick shots regardless of your skill level, it's setting the bar high and showing other titles in the genre how it should be done.

A light touch and a lot of patience will get you far in this deceptively simple game of shapes and stars. Guide your smiling square to the exit of each level, gathering stars along the way, but beware... spikes, traps, and even time itself are all poised to wipe that grin off its face! Easy to pick up and play, Shape Shape is a light afternoon snack packed with all the square-pushin' action you can handle. And we bet that's a lot!

What's worse than a yeti? Something even bigger and meaner! In this tricky reflex game from Nitrome, help your mythical furry beast escape an unknown fate by swinging ever upwards from pole to pole, collecting points and avoiding enemies. Packed with Nitrome's signature charm, it's a tricky game of timing that is as frustrating as it is fun to play.

How well do your hands work together? In FireBoy and WaterGirl: The Forest Temple, you're either your own best friend or worst enemy as you simultaneously control two characters throughout fast-paced levels of puzzle-y, platform-y goodness.

How My Grandfather Won the War is a stunningly beautiful game that is worth a second, and even third play through. Treat it as a simple side-scroller or go deeper and explore every inch of its breathtaking cardboard world. The detail is so fantastic you can almost touch the screen and feel the rough edges of haphazardly cut items.

It's time to kick back, relax, and get ready to be wooed by the trademark soft visuals and simple, addictive casual gameplay of Ferry Halim's newest Orisinal flash game, Drifting Afternoon. Guide a kitten racing through a field on a windy day leaping from bubble to bubble as you try to rack up the highest score.

Who doesn't like popping stuff? Come on, seriously, every time you come across a piece of bubble wrap, soap bubbles in the sink, or a bunch of balloons held aloft by a happy little kid in the park, you just can't resist the urge. See bubble, must pop. Popopopop (or Popopop 2 as my right pinky will insist on typing it) plays on this instinct of ours just like the original Popopop and the Bloons series does. Only now instead of rampant popping, you have do do things with a little bit of strategy.

Quick, intrepid casual gamer! The world is not at stake, but someone has inconsiderately left these brightly coloured balls lying about! We need someone with a steely eye to launch them into their matching buckets in this physics game of skill. Sound easy? You may be surprised. Simple, effective, and fun, BucketBall 2 is the perfect way to spend your coffee break.

How does one navigate a world frozen solid by an apocalyptic catastrophe? On a squeaky bicycle, of course! Pedal your way across eight treacherous landscapes in this stunningly gorgeous platformer by Reece Millidge.

In this funky little gem of a platformer, your goal is to make it across 26 levels in the fastest time possible. Collect the green atoms scattered along the way to remove 5 seconds from your time, but each time you die, you add 5 seconds to your total time. Customization features abound and help to enhance the experience within.

Indulge your inner siege engine in Crush the Castle: Players Pack, a sequel comprised of devious maps made by fans to test your destructive physics skills and push your ability to smoosh tiny kings to its limit. While it doesn't bring much else new to the table, the Players Pack is a great showcase of some genuinely clever community talent from people just like you. Although we're sure you have much better hair.

From Nitrome comes a game about space, stars, and making aliens blow up. Guide a fledgling star across thirty levels requiring a steady hand and quick reflexes. While the control scheme may take some getting used to, Nebula is a cute, quick little game that would be at home in any arcade, thirsty for your quarters. And remember, kids. Friends don't let friends play with space bombs.

Someone in Station 38 needs your help, and you'll never guess who it is! Pat Kemp's Station 38 puts you at the helm of a lander-type spacecraft, thrusting and sputtering its way through 38 levels in response to an SOS from deep within. And when you receive a distress call from Station 38 in deep space, well, you've just gotta answer it!

Our 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition received a ton of great submissions from a number of talented game designers. Taking first place in that competition was Wouter Visser's Gimme Friction Baby, a strikingly simple arcade-style game of skill involving a moving turret and expanding orbs. Now, just over two years later, Bitforge has come and updated the game for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Orbital is the new incarnation of Gimme Friction Baby, adding some slick visuals, tweaking the physics a bit, and adding a new gameplay mode along with multiplayer support!

What doesn't get mentioned often are games where the gameplay is the art, the thing of beauty. These games are often misunderstood, classified as boring by those who like a game to have such devices as characters and a story. Consider Pixel Grower, by Joey Betz. Visually, it's appealing, but not awe-inspiringly so. Likewise, the gameplay also appears simple, ...at least initially.

The first Flash game from Anna Anthropy, When Pigs Fly is an extra-challenging offbeat platformer about a pig who has to escape from a cavern using her newly-grown wings, which are unfortunately the most fragile creation in the history of the universe. Even negotiating a simple floating block takes some skill, and an innocent staircase becomes a jagged nightmare.

Space. The final frontier. Turns out, the final frontier is littered with coins, and you need to collect them all by using physics, math, blind luck, or any combination thereof as you harness the forces of gravity to your advantage. Work your way through 100 levels and then take advantage of the level creation system to build your own stage to share with your friends! Nothing says "I love you, man" like a fiendishly elaborate physics puzzle that will waste hours of their life.

We interrupt your internet viewing to bring you this important news bulletin: Rabbit Wants Cake. That is to say, one little remote-controlled rabbit needs to avoid spikes and furry monsters on the way to get cake. Program the rabbit by recording and tweaking its movements, in this odd little platformer by John Cooney.

Grenades and baddies and physics, oh my! Adjust your angle to lob grenades from a limited supply at waiting targets to get the best scores and achievements you can across thirty levels and three difficulty settings. Why do they look so happy about getting blown up? Who knows! Just remember; pull the pin, then throw it. It's okay. We get that messed up all the time, too. You should see our offices.

Bubble Cannon 2 is what the original game should have been, with tighter goals and more thoughtful gameplay. Eliminate balls by colliding them with their similarly-colored mates, but take your time, because each ball is important! Engaging and very addicting!

A game of pure reflex, Zodiac Reactor blasts spiraling orbs at the center of the screen and asks you to collect them with near-perfect timing. It's like an intense bout of hyperspace Simon. If you are skilled enough, your reward will be the creation of a brand new star of your very own!

In Crane Wars, you play the role of a crane operator, and your mission is to grab hunks of building and stack them on top of each other. Your other, more fun mission is to fling stuff at those filthy scabs working next door!

Reach for the stars — literally — in Casual Space, where treasure, danger, and secrets are sprawled across two enormous maps comprising over 40 levels of spacey action! Balancing a quirky, kid-friendly presentation with some genuinely challenging gameplay, Casual Space is good casual fun for all ages.

Polygonal Fury takes the basic chain reaction gameplay of Boomshine and adds a number of bells and whistles to it. Ultimately, it's a skill-based game, and the balance is perfect to keep you playing for just one more level, until you've finished them all.

So there's this Ball. Ball wants to Go Home. It's your job to get Ball home. Ball lives in a hollow tree stump in a forest. Yes he does. Thankfully, said forest is filled with ramps, bridges, floating platforms, mine carts and more. Some parts are missing, and that's where you and your reflexes come in.

New features included in Stunt Pilot 2: A level editor. Bonus levels where you follow a curvy line that catches on fire if you're good enough. Cannons that shoot coins for you to catch in mid-air. Hollywood explosions that bring hot-air balloons and racing pylons crashing down around you. Yeah, this game rules.

Fun to play and play to say, ChuckaBOOM is a game from Ninja Doodle that makes throwing bombs into light entertainment! The object of each level is to clear a target number of stars, using bombs that go off three (short) seconds after you fling them.

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?

In Learn to Fly, you play as a penguin who looked himself up on Kiwipedia and took the whole "flightless bird" comment as a mortal insult. So he decides that he's going to learn to fly, presumably so he can visit whoever wrote that and give them a stern talking to. Fly high, long, and far to gain money and upgrade your penguin with gliders and rockets. And when you're done, try playing again to see if you can do it faster.

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!

In Crush the Castle, you control a trebuchet and fling rocks at a castle. Get off a good shot, and you get to watch it fly gracefully towards the castle, smash into a wall, and cause untold destruction, killing all of the inhabitants and turning the entire thing into a massive pile of rubble! Mwa-ha-ha!

Snake Ball is a game of mouse skill, in which you, the snake, must quickly score points by bouncing and trapping balls into a pit with your body. Green balls are healthy but score low, while red balls score big but slowly drive your snake insane. An insane snake is a disturbing sight, I'll tell you what.

Jmtb02 brings us a cheerfully nihilistic look at traffic, in the form of a fast-paced, fun little reflex-tester. Click on the stop-lights to turn them on or off, allowing cars, buses, and semi-trailers to pass through intersections safely. Can you beat all 20 levels, oh Invisible Sky-bound Weaver of the Woof and Warp of Interlocking Automobiles? Or will the jabbering banjo music drive you insane first?

Effing Hail takes place during the worst hail storm in history, and you are the unseen power behind the devastation. By making updrafts with your mouse, keep hailstones growing in the air until they are large enough to crush houses, airplanes, and even skyscrapers. It's time for massive property damage!

In ooPixel's brilliant new action game Escape the Red Giant, the sun is about to die, and you have to keep yourself alive for as long as possible by jumping from one asteroid to the next. Between the detailed physics engine and the tight gameplay, you may find yourself addicted without realizing it.

A game for anyone who loves tromping on bubble wrap, Popopop by Bad Viking offers you 42 puzzles of color combo popping action, plus a level editor and all the user-generated puzzles you could want. Just drag one of your starter bubbles into an empty space to burst all the adjacent bubbles of the same color, starting a chain reaction of popping that hopefully ends in obliterating all the bubbles on the screen. Special bubbles like needles and thunderclouds turn the game into a gauntlet of precision timing and mouse dexterity.

Your objective in Panda Star is to launch an ambitious panda into the night sky and light up all the stars you find there, which have gone dark because they apparently lack panda juice. This is a simple arcade-style game of skill that looks and sounds like a slow-paced mystical journey of spirit. It won't change the world, but it made us happy one evening in a simple, panda way, and maybe it will do the same for you.

A mouse-avoider game from Finefin, the makers of Dotville. Your goal is to skydive from Point A (umpteen thousand feet up) to Point B (the ground) relatively unscathed. However, a series of walls and tunnels has formed in midair, and running into them would likely be painful. The cheery pixel-art and energizing music make this a fun game to play.

Chicken's Flying School is about preparing newborn chicks for a big flying tournament by throwing them into the sky and keeping them there with puffs of air until they learn to fly on their own. The consistently high level of involvement makes it fun, and the atmosphere is sugary-sweet enough to make your arms tingle.

From game designer Michael Gribbin comes Pyro, a bevy of burning, a calamity of combustion, and a triumph of torch. In short, a game of flame! The goal is simple: light all of the torches. If the copious numbers of wooden blocks spread across forty levels should also happen to go up in smoke, so much the better!

Buggle Stars is a well-executed platformer with tight controls and over 15 interesting levels and 4 mini-games to unlock. Each level presents a sequence of stars that you must collect, in order, to advance. A variety of goals change up the gameplay just enough to keep each level interesting and addictive, and a bit intense at times.

A dice game of luck and strategy, race against the computer (or a friend) to 10,000 points. Earn points by rolling 1's and 5's, or by rolling 3 or more of a kind, or several other special configurations worth big points. Also known under a variety of different names, Zilch is definitely one of those games that's "easy to learn, hard to master."

In a twist on the classic block stacking game, 99 Bricks challenges you to make a brick tower using standard Tetris play mechanics. The twist is that as the tetrominoes fall and stack, they don't disappear when lines form. This time, your goal is to make the tallest tower that you can. A higher tower means a higher spot on the leader board.

Dogfight 2 is the newest entry into Rock Solid Arcade's quality series of arcade-style airplane fliers, which includes the first Dogfight and the previously-reviewed Stunt Pilot. Once again, they have based some nail-bitingly tough levels around the tricky but satisfying flight controls from classic DOS game Sopwith. All told, a difficult game with high production values worthy of your time investment.

Bucketball is a brand-new physics-based game from Arseniy Desrosiers and Florian Himsl. If you've already guessed that the general thrust of the gameplay has something to do with "buckets" and "balls," then congratulations, your amazing brain is way ahead of the curve. It's a simple idea game of skill, but to complete the game is anything but simple.

There is something about Sid Woo's Bounceroid 2000 that makes it so completely JIG-like. Elegantly simple in design, modern, stylish and enjoyable.Bouncing balls against paddles have come a long way, and gone through all sorts of fancy incarnations. This game is back to the basics and has an original take that makes it unique.

A unique new anti-shooter game of collection and avoidance by Felix Reidl. You have two minutes to collect as many yellow squares as possible, while various gun turrets try to mow you down. Whenever you start to feel overwhelmed, you should hit [Space], which instantly ends your game and adds up your score. If you don't hit the space bar in time—and this is important—you don't get any points. You have only one life, and if you die, your score is zero.

A sort of physics-based puzzler, Putt Base tasks you with holes that would make a mini-putt master balk, and then asks that you complete each with a hole-in-one. Sound impossible? Don't worry, to your credit you get to edit the course to your liking with a limited number of several different blocks that can change the direction your ball travels, give it a little boost, or nullify the bounce while increasing momentum.

It doesn't take long to get addicted to Pixel Field, Tonypa's perilous pixel pointing action strategy game. If you remember playing the original, you'll be even more excited about this latest evolution to hit your browser, as the game has been totally revamped with a new soundtrack and 30 all-new levels added.

On of Eyezmaze has just released this simple game of coordination and timing. Tonoko Family uses the same charming cartoon people we are familiar with seeing in his games. Using the keyboard for control, press the [Z], [X], [C], and [V] keys at the appropriate time to get all family members to safety.

Curse you, Kable Monck, and the no-good game you rode in on. Evito Ball. PAH! There's a treacherous name if I ever heard one. Did you realize that it anagrams into A VILE BLOT? This evil little game comes with 80 treacherous levels that will have you climbing the walls before long. Trust me.

What happens when a game's mechanics are affected by, well, themselves? That's what Mark Essen of Messhof Games might have been wondering when he devised the idea for Flywrench, a downloadable freeware game in which you must guide your bat-like ship through a maze of obstacles to the exit.

Blobink is a unique and original new game in which you have the power to restore colour and rescue the girlfriend you never knew you had and who doesn't appear in the game(!) Simply race around these levels, touching each item as you go, and the world will once again be saturated in beautiful R, G & B. Don't fall into the water! You're an ink blob!

Immediately upon opening Ferry Halim's latest, Sunny Day Sky, you feel as if the sun has just come out, the birds are singing and all is right with the world. Grab your trusty umbrella and embark on a journey cross-country. Take a leap (by clicking the mouse) and sail as far as the winds (and your umbrella) will take you. But be sure not to land in traffic, land ON it! If you land between vehicles your journey is over, and so is the game.

Seek Ver. 0 tasks you with protecting your column of hearts from a stampede of letters sliding in from the right. As letters appear on the conveyor belt, you must quickly find and click the matching letter in the grid below. But if you are too slow, or if you click the wrong letter, one of your hearts will be wiped out.

Swinging Ball is a new, fun little flash title developed by Gimme5games. It's a fairly simple ball-physics game, much as we've seen before in which your goal is to guide the ball through a series of obstacles to the exit. What makes Swinging Ball noteworthy is the implementation of a grapple-like rope that you can use to latch onto surfaces and swing around like Tarzan.

In Falling Forever, you control an unlucky black silhouette of a fellow who gets dropped through a trap door into a tall empty room. Empty, that is, except for the DEADLY LASER stretching across the floor. Your job is to stay alive as long as possible by launching yourself off the convenient but fragile bubbles rising through the room.

SteerWheels is a fun little physics-based action puzzle in which the objective is to move the little yellow ball to the yellow goal of each level by pushing it with a set of wheels. If you're like me, you love physics-based puzzle games like this. We've seen more and more of them lately as Flash has matured, and I never tire of playing them.

Gride is an arcade-style action game in which the objective is to apply and remove abilities to an always-moving little pink sedan at just the right moments to make it as far as you can along the never-ending terrain. It was good enough to take 3rd place in our 5th game design competition, and it earned the coveted Viral award by receiving more than one million views more than the next most played game!

The latest from OddGoo and the sequel to the first Amberial game released last June. The mechanics of the original are put to an olympic workout; rolling a ball around has never felt so fresh. From the terrestrial furnace to the skyways, to outer space and distant nebulae, this game explores both increasingly exotic settings and increasingly clever level design.

Gooey gooey goo! Time for another Sling review! The third full installment in the Sling series has just been released. Once again, evil monsters have stolen an element from the Oozeville power source, destabilizing it and threatening to destroy life as they know it. As you grab, stretch, sling, and bounce your way through each of the game's 50 levels, watch out for spikes, freezing water, special grabs, monsters, and more!

John Cooney (jmtb02) is back again. Less than a month after giving the world Grid 16, he brings us Elements, a high-tech cross between Breakout and his own Ball Revamped series. Control the game by rotating the level, and make your way to the "go down" brick on each of the game's 25 levels.

In his ongoing, mad quest to give us all nightmares about geometry, Tonypa has unleashed Cobacoli upon the world. It sounds like a deadly bacteria, but no, it's an elegant puzzle game based around 2-dimensional ball physics, although in many ways it qualifies as an infectious disease. Symptoms include intense concentration, swearing, and the inability to pry your hand away from your mouse. Updates include a level select screen and better high score memory.

In Spin the Black Circle you must rotate the game field to move a ball to the goal in each stage. Gravity pulls it to the center, however, making physics and fast reflexes vitally important to your success. Avoid obstacles and enemies in this well-polished game of skill!

Trying to describe a game using splendiferous prose just seems so... right-brained-centric. How discriminatory! Thus, as a public service to all you left-brainers out there, I hereby present this mathematical description: Retroid = (Pong + Gravity - 1 player + Ball2 + 3Enemy) * 4 modes + Bob.

In his ongoing, mad quest to give us all nightmares about geometry, Tonypa has unleashed Cobacoli upon the world. It sounds like a deadly bacteria, but no, it's an elegant puzzle game based around 2-dimensional ball physics, although in many ways it qualifies as an infectious disease. Symptoms include intense concentration, swearing, and the inability to pry your hand away from your mouse.

Aquanaut is a game of underwater exploration that puts you in the driver's seat of a small submersible pod on a mission to discover hidden treasures. Using your mouse, click and hold to guide the pod around a colorful undersea world. Navigate through dangers of the sea, up and around rocks and structures and, with a steady hand and a little luck, you will find the treasure chest at the end of each level.

Your role in Scuttle Buggery is that of of a lowly beetle, trudging through a grimy, moth-infested world stitched together from burnt paper and rusty typewriter parts. Your burden is to find drops of oil and liquor near the discarded musty bottles from which they spew, and push them into the appropriate drains. The artwork is sumptuously detailed, perfectly matched to the music, full of decadent textures and decay. The liquid transparency effects are especially noteworthy, but everything, right down to the creepy flutter of a moth's wings, has been rendered with sickly beauty and realism.

Whether you're going for the gingerbread transmutation or the old fashioned stew, you gotta respect the rights of satanic magick users to extend their lives indefinetly by robbing life from the young. If you're on board with that proposition, you'll like Witchhunt: Nooboo Mary, a time-based defense game where you defend a witch's house from an angry mob of villagers.

Stunt Pilot is a challenging, high-quality game of precision acrobatics. It transcends the familiar trope of flying through rings with a sophisticated scoring system and singular control. The result is a simple but engaging test of skill that would fit comfortably in any 80s video arcade, although it would probably be the prettiest game there.

As the name suggests, Balancing Act requires you to keep a number of balls (and other ball-ish things) balanced on top of each other. Click on a ball and drag your mouse to rotate it, but remember that each action has an equal and opposite reaction! The stylish and humorous presentation and simple control system are to be particularly commended in this worthy game design competition finalist.

The aptly named Absolute Awesome Ball Game is truly awesome because it manages to capture the thrill of discovery that we look for from pinball games and delivers that in an addictive, unique and appealing package. The game requires a bit of patience and perseverance before seeing any visible progress, but those that stick with it are in for a very pleasant and enjoyable ride.

MoonMaster: RahKon is the latest from Lost Vectors, creator of BowMaster Prelude. Gone is the resource management and medieval setting, but in its place you'll find a space-themed setting along with a similar physics engine under the hood. You play the role of a ball on the moon shooting rocks and a UFO with your lasers. The goal? Try not to get smashed to pieces.

Slingoween combines the rubberband-flicking action of Sling with the familiar climbing theme found in games such as Winterbells. It's a simple game with little more than earning a high score as a goal, but the flying pumpkins, ghosts and Halloween candy help kick off the impending holiday with style.

Sling Fire from Ezone continues the physics-based goo slinging action previous games in the series introduced just over a year ago. The fire element has been stolen from the Oozeville power source, which of course spells doom for the slime-based folk. Playing as Sling or Slingette you must toss your way through 50 levels of traps and puzzles to recover the lost element!

New from Hero Interactive, creator of Bubble Tanks and Light Sprites, is a unique combination of tower defense and role playing genres (with a little BowMaster Prelude thrown in for good measure) called Storm Winds. Defending the last fort against an oncoming enemy, you must purchase and place turrets on the structure and keep them in good working order. As enemy waves fly in, select a turret and start firing. It's an intruiging combination of game types that's both strategy-oriented and action-packed.

The next entry to the 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition is from David Beers of California (US). Mathematigolf: The CGDC Open is a golf game that includes 3 courses of 10 holes each with terrain that affect "ball physics" in unique ways not usually seen in golf games. Please leave your kind feedback for David in the comments.

Just past the half-way point, the next entry to the 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition is from Derek Brandao of Washington (US). Break Into is an action arcade-style game in which you must hit balls into a goal to move on to the next level. The "ball physics" theme in this game is a straightforward implementation with a Gimme Friction Baby twist.

The next entry into our 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition is an entry from another newcomer to our competitions, this one from Sebastian Mayer of Germany. Asteroid Pilot is an arcade driving, or piloting, game in which "ball physics" have been implemented as part of the design of the player-controlled spaceship. I'll leave the rest up to you to discover and discuss in the comments.

The next entry is from Lopsidation of Maryland (US). A long-time JIG visitor, this is Lopsidation's first CGDC, so please give him a warm welcome with your feedback in the comments. Brownie Motion implements "ball physics" in a game based on a very simple idea that demonstrates a more complex one, too (Brownian motion). Simple to understand, and yet difficult to master. See for yourself.

Paracaidas ("parachute" in Spanish) is from Scheletro, a very talented newcomer to our competitions. It's the tale of a dedicated stunt performer who is never satisfied until he has either safely missed his target, or mysteriously closed his parachute and plummeted to his death.

Mountain Bike is a charming little 2D stunt biking game from Miniclip. Doing tricks will boost your score, but also make you crash a lot. Thankfully a trick tutorial is provided for those of us (myself included) who don't already know the difference between a toothpick grind and an icepick grind.

Avalanche is a fast-paced climbing game in which your goal is to scale the mountain of falling blocks, without being flattened or falling into the river rising from below. The flood of cascading blocks starts slowly, with only a few blocks to start. Before you know it, you'll be madly scrambling to avoid being turned into a marshmallow pancake.

Mythic Marbles is an action puzzle game of skill that is very simple to pick-up and play. It offers an engaging and rewarding experience to anyone that can appreciate the simple and subtle strategy of a good game of marbles. And even if you've never played marbles before, you're in for a treat. :)

We are big fans of the original Dolphin Olympics and this sequel does not disappoint. Although the mechanic and aim of the game are pretty much the same, this has a slightly different look to it, with significantly more detail added to the sea bed and background. Once again, the challenge is in chaining together strings of successive tricks to boost your multiplier and amass some impressive scores. And the trick to that is ensuring that your re-entry to the water is perfect every time. Now other sea creatures will interact with you. In fact, you can earn more points by getting other fish to follow your lead and jump out of the water. There are some new tricks and secrets to discover as you try to swim, leap and tail-slide yourself onto the high score board.

Ok, so there's this ball. And then there's this square. You gotta get the ball to the square. How complicated could it get? Plenty complicated, it turns out, in this absurdly fun and addictive physics-based game from John Cooney and his prolific jmtb02 studios.

It should come as no surprise to hear that great things often spring from the simplest of ideas. Gimme Friction Baby is one such simple idea turned into an award-winning arcade game of strategy and skill that will keep you coming back for more long after your first play. First place and audience prize winner from our 3rd game design competition, and now part of the elite selection of games to be called Best of 2007. Another exceptional game design by Wouter Visser.

Everybody likes flinging around barrels full of toxic waste, right? Toss, tumble.... Oops. Well, perhaps not in a real environment, unless you are a law-breaking factory owner with questionable ethics. But, when tossed across a gorgeous fantasy landscape, lined with carefully placed adjustable platforms and forces, it isn't so bad. When you get to clear the way with dynamite, and watch things explode... now we're talking.

Game-Pure has already pumped out a pseudo-sequel to Bound Bears with more levels and an updated presentation. Bound Bear Quest Mode features the same Bloons-meets-Breakout gameplay along with the ultra-cute square bears, but now the music and backgrounds have been jazzed up and the levels are much more challenging.

Sound Energy mixes a simple color-matching game of collection/avoidance with a little bit of musical interaction to create a superb multimedia experience. You control a transparent orb that can change color from purple to blue to gray. By clicking the mouse you can switch colors and absorb pieces that match your color. Build up combos to earn a high score and keep the background music shifting as you play!

Game-Pure continues to amaze us with the rate at which they can release new games. Bound Bear is a simple action projectile game that combines elements from Breakout and Bloons to create something wholly unique and enjoyable to play.The objective is to reunite baby bear with mama bear, and to do so you'll have to avoid the black bears that can block your path.

From Hero Interactive comes a physics-based game Light Sprites. It also happens to be the happiest, most rainbowiest game ever made. Light Sprites is a hit the target game where you toss colored orbs to hit matching targets on the landscape below. The music and visuals are extraordinary and make this simple game so fun you might just crack a smile.