Mateusz Skutnik brings the story that began over ten years ago to a close in this tenth installment of his wildly popular point-and-click adventure series. But though the end may be in your grasp, getting there will be anything but easy.
The ability to change size is an oft explored trope from our favorite stories, from
Alice in Wonderland to classic science-fiction films. But how many have asked what effects such an ability would have on the protagonist of classic sidescrolling platform games? That's the gist of the odd premise of Specter Spelunker Shrinks. Created by Ken Grafals, Specter Spelunker Shrinks is an experimental puzzle platformer where the ability to grow and shrink the main character is key to navigating a world of dangerous pink prisms and disparately sized passageways.
Totem Tribe manages to pull together some of the best elements from a number of popular casual games and create something twice as engaging without upping the complexity. Gone are resource managing, complex building/unit requirements, and villagers who act while you're away, but in are over 20 islands to explore, friendly and not-so-friendly characters to encounter, mini-quests to earn spells, and unlockable artifacts that grant your tribe special abilities.
You've been knocked on the head and placed into a prison cell, and there's some kind of coronation going on in a little less than 24 hours. Your first priority is going to be figuring out who you are, why you are where you are, and what to do about it. Then you need to figure out what you need to get in order to do it, and finally, you have to figure out how to get it all done in the time period you have.
Robamimi takes you on a wonderful ride from beginning to end during this aesthetically gorgeous escape-the-room game in the tradition of Hermit Rabi and Wonder Fountain. Just follow a changing cursor to gather tools and solve puzzles until you open the door: only to learn there's more to explore! The hexagonal room designs mean extra footwork in your efforts to make sense of clues, yet the reward is well worth the experience.
You might know XGen Studios as the makers of Fishy, Motherload, Stick RPG and Defend Your Castle. Well, they have created another excellent Flash game, only this time it is a top-down shooter and features over-the-top multiplayer melee action in any browser. In Stick Arena, you take the role of a stick figure aiming to kill everyone else in sight to elevate yourself within the ranks.
As a casual gamer, you have certainly come across titles that fall into the defend-your-castle category. BowMaster Prelude fits that description as well, but certain aspects elevate it above other candidates, such as earning experience points and gold to recruit an army, the ability to upgrade and buy different arrows, and a unique feature that lets the hero leave the castle.
Robamimi serves up a challenge with this meaty escape game that traps you inside a maze that's packed with mystifying statuary and a whole lot of puzzles. You may want to keep a pen and paper ready if you plan on getting the best ending!
In this incredibly swanky and clever twist on the standard first-person-shooter formula, time only moves when you do. Dodge bullets, take out enemies, and navigate a field of deadly fire (or turn it to your advantage) in this short but incredibly stylish game that you'll want to see even more of.
We wanted a harder game with a stronger story, and that's what developer David Scott has given us. This sequel/mission pack to The Space Game offers a larger variety of missions, spread across three sub-plots that have you protecting valuable military hardware or facing never-before-seen threats from the pirate army. The tight, balanced gameplay is the same; it's just more engaging this time.
Frets on Fire is an open source clone of the ever-popular PlayStation 2 music/rhythm game, Guitar Hero. And just like Guitar Hero, Frets on Fire features a handful of songs and allows you to play the guitar sections by pressing just a few keys. Instead of using a separate controller to mimic the guitar, Frets on Fire lets you pick up the keyboard and jam in right front of your desk. Best of all, a built-in editor lets you tab any song, spawning a growing community of music-modders on the web.
Battle for Wesnoth is a free, open-source turn-based strategy game originally designed by David White. It's similar to games like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Shining Force in that each player commands an army of units, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Battles take place on a hexagonal grid and layers take turns moving armies and issuing commands.
Legend of Grimrock is a retro-styled first person dungeon crawling RPG that borrows liberally from the classic genre and updates everything for modern gamers to enjoy. From the visual overhaul to the lax but somehow intriguing storyline to the stripping of complex menu screens and stats, Legend of Grimrock will easily capture your attention and hold it for hours on end, whether you're an old school RPG master or a casual gamer looking for a little diversion.
The classic point-and-click game Myst is still alive and well, living on over a dozen gaming platforms (including the iPhone) with a number of sequels and a few remakes, all going strong. Even decades after its original release, Myst is still a force to be reckoned with.
Johnny has one wish... to go to the moon. As he lays, a dying old man, his only hope to fulfill it lies in the hands of two doctors with a new technology that allows them to alter the memories of their patients and give them what they desire. As they dig deeper into Johnny's past, however, they'll find his wish isn't as simple as it seems, and the path to happiness isn't always a perfectly smooth one. By turns funny, touching, and eerie, this is one indie adventure game you shouldn't miss.
Appearing out of nowhere like a crazy tropical storm, Coconut Queen has arrived and is ready to give Build-a-lot (and, heck, even Totem Tribe) a challenge for its casual sim throne. Combining the "neighborhood improvement" concept with some inventive unlockables and a subtle sense of humor, Coconut Queen provides a phenomenal gaming experience with enormous replay value.
Prepare yourself for an interactive fiction that peels back the truth in layers as you become more and more entwined in this tale of superscience and space exploration. The narrative begins with an itsy-bitsy clue that not all will be as it seems, followed by your character waking up in a fairly unadorned abode. From there, it's up to you as to what you do and how you go about it, but be wary of those who comment on your every move...
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the classic Infocom text adventure created by the late Douglas Adams, the BBC has put together this wonderful Flash re-creation of the game complete with illustrations and a graphical interface! Yes, it is still the same great text adventure, and now there are pictures to help you envision the wacky way-out worlds of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and get you across the galaxy safely.
Your last, best hope for a cure for the plague running rampant through your body lies on a remote island, but when you arrive, destroying your boat in the process, you discover that not only do all the researchers lie dead, but something is stalking you through the trees. IonFX Studios delivers a beautiful but unevenly paced atmospheric survival adventure where you'll travel all over a massive island, hunting down and researching everything you need to make a cure, while trying to evade a creature smart enough to smell, stalk, and trap you.
Breaking Banks can be nice, and Escaping from Prison can be satisfying, but diamonds are a stickman's best friend. And, wouldn't ya know it, the Tunisian Diamond is on display at Stickville Museum. It's night, so the usual rabble has gone home. So it's just a couple of guards standing in your way. With all your technology on-hand, they should prove no problem... Right? Ha. Ha. WRONG! Puffballs is back with Stealing the Diamond. And remember, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.
Hex Empire is a casual turn-based strategy war game, occupying a comfortable spot between the simplicity of Risk and the number crunching of the Avalon Hill-style board games that inspired the whole soldiers-on-hexagons thing. It lets you jump right into battle without much fuss, and offers enough tactical depth to be addictive even after several wars have ended. A bit of a treat, really.
Take a journey through one introvert's convoluted mind as you work to cooperate with your past selves, recorded in time. As soon as you reset the clock, the level starts anew, except now there's a phantasmal double of yourself scurrying about, re-enacting your first playthrough move for move. Press [space] again, and add another one to the mix, this one also moving according to the steps you laid out. Some levels will place a restriction on the number of ghostly doppelgangers you can conjure, and these are the levels where you'll have to see just how adeptly you can work with...well, yourself.
Kingdom Rush has returned! Ironhide Game Studio has released an official sequel to the tower defense game that stole our free time (and social lives) back in 2011. Kingdom Rush Frontiers is built on the same basic defense skeleton that made the first game so spectacular, only now there's more of it! It's Kingdom Rush, and you know it's going to be amazing, so get to playing!
Yoshio Ishii is back with another installment of one of our favorite puzzle games here at JIG: Hoshi Saga Ringoen is the 6th in the series and in full color like the previous version. Still not nearly as difficult as the first few games in the series, which may disappoint the more hard-core puzzle lovers, but for casual players are sure to eat this one up. Whether you are new to the series or a veteran, a new Hoshi Saga is always a day to celebrate.
Bubbles are neat things. Stop and think about them for a second. You get some soap, some water, and you can make little floating orbs. I remember many a day in my youth where we'd whip up a batch, make some bubble wands, and start firing artillery at each other. Thanks to the makers of Bubble Tanks 2, we all can revisit a more innocent, vaguely dysfunctional time.
You'd think it'd be clear by now that you shouldn't pick up a shiny gem when the statue holding it warns you of a curse. Sadly, Cactus McCoy, the titular protagonist of the new platformer from Flipline Studios, does just that, and the result is that he's been transformed into a walking, talking, punching Saguaro. So now, if he ever wants to make balloon animals again, he must return the gem to its proper location across the beautiful landscapes of the old west... all the way pursued by the mercenary gang that hired him to swipe the gem the first place. An excellent game for fans of westerns or beat-em-up adventures in general.
A remarkably fun and inventive puzzle game series we won't ever get tired of seeing new installments of, Hoshi Saga returns to give us more opportunities to find the hidden star in each of the 25 brand new levels. Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames has created more full-color artwork for Hoshi Saga Ringoame, the latest iteration of the popular and revered series. Why are you still reading this? Go play!
Factory Balls is back and coming to a browser near you, with more wicked ways to waste time attempting to paint small white balls to factory spec while a throbbing beat plays in the background. Everything Bart produces is tons of fun and Factory Balls 3 is no exception. With its cutesy visuals and kicking soundtrack, Factory Balls 3 is one of the best time wasters around.
In Ginormo Sword, you play a pink, ninja-looking hero equipped with a sword that you must upgrade, making it bigger, longer and more powerful. A fantasy action game with subtle RPG elements drawn from the golden age of Atari and Intellivision games, packs a satisfying punch for such a pixelated style, like most other games from Japanese designer Babarageo.
Stick Ranger is a unique RPG with physics-based combat and starring tiny stick figures, from the creators of Irritation Stickman and Powder Game. Create your four-character party by assigning a class to each member—there are the Boxer, the Gladiator, the Sniper, the Magician, and the Priest—and send them on their way through stages with austere backdrops, fighting stick figure monsters for gold, items, weaponry and experience. You may interfere as you see fit by dragging them around the screen.
A wonderful room escape game with puzzles and solutions that are quiet, elegant, and echo the theme, thus creating a massively entertaining experience that is so much more than "throw a bunch of random puzzles into a four-wall room" that permeates so much room escape design. The delicate balance of theme, puzzle, solution, and space gives Kotorinosu games a unique feel that makes them so popular and so fun to play.
Submachine Zero: Ancient Adventure is a spectacularly detailed Flash point-and-click puzzle game from one of the leading designers of the genre, Mateusz Skutnik. This competition entry also placed within a tight group of puzzles that resembled a photo-finish at the horse races. In other words, it was difficult to pass this entry by as a prize winner.
The forces of darkness are at it again in this tower defense game. They'll send wave after wave against you as you use your soldiers, mages, and archers to hold them back. Place towers in the designated spots to start training your troops. Upgrade your units in multiple ways to find the best strategy for each level. Evil won't know what hit it.
Animator vs. Animation, by 17-year-old Alan Becker, draws a scene in the epic wars waged between the drawing and the drawn. Tensions draw high as the action starts simple and accelerates both in quantity and quality through the work, and the clever manipulation of screenshots will likely draw the appreciative attention of anyone who's ever worked in flash.
Ruins of Pantheon, the fifth and latest chapter of the Jinja Series,
Aztec's ongoing, epic
point-and-click saga, has just been released. Take one part Indiana Jones, mixing in a few heaping spoonfuls of mysterious alien technology. Add a nice dash of interstellar warfare, a sprinkling of impending doom, and plunk it all down into a tranquil, traditionally Japanese setting. Voila!
We've been in charge of running a country during a national crisis Pandemic: American Swine Flu. We've led the nation to world conquest Mastermind: World Conqueror. But have you ever wondered what goes on during the downtime? In-between the diseases and the hostile takeovers, everyday decisions still need to be made. NationStates is a massively multiplayer online game by author Max Barry that puts you in charge of your own fledgling nation to create and shape how you see fit.
From developer Nitrome is a new physics-based action game, Skywire. You control a small chairlift that runs a crazy path through the sky. Three passengers are on board who would appreciate if you got them to the goal unharmed. A variety of obstacles stand in your way, from birds dropping bombs, deranged-looking pandas, and whales that leap from the sea. Each hit you take knocks a passenger from the car. Lose all three and you have to start over again.
The Caverns of Hammerfest, by French developer Motion Twin, is an expertly crafted love letter to classic arcade platformers like Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros. If you've ever wondered how the intensity and the heartbreak of those old arcade cabinets could be translated into online gaming, look no further.
To be filed under the "simple but highly addictive" category is this latest game by Max Abernethy of flecko.net. Simplistic but challenging is Cubefield, a strangely beautiful dodge-the-obstacles type of game. The author of this 3D Flash game even offers an explanation of the technology behind it for those interested.
You Are Games returns with a musical challenge this week. Introducing Nudge, a simple to use musical composition webtoy that gives everyone the ability to create pleasant sounding melodies. And we want to hear what you can do with it. Let loose your inner musician!
Petri Purho of Kloonigames has a reputation for churning out experimental prototypes in a matter of days. In 2007 one of these prototypes was the sandbox-style puzzle game Crayon Physics. The premise was simple — use a "crayon" to draw shapes that immediately come alive and interact with each other, the ultimate goal being to collect a star somewhere on the screen. The experiment was a hit, and soon it was announced that a full-fledged version of the game was in the works: Crayon Physics Deluxe.
Welcome to Tonypa's school of game design. Start with a very simple gameplay idea; it doesn't have to be original, but the idea has to be simple enough for anyone to understand immediately. Include a few attractive graphics in a minimalist style of your own design. Add a pleasing and relaxing soundtrack. Toss everything in a box and flip it upside down. Voilà. Brand new game all your own.
Armadillo Run is a physics-based puzzle/building game for Windows. Your job is to create structures to safely guide a rolled-up Armadillo to the goal. Assemble materials such as sheets of metal, ropes, cloth, elastic and more to create a path across the stage. The physics in Armadillo Run are remarkably accurate, making building (and destroying) things far more entertaining than it should be.
Do you have what it takes to be a real Hero Mage? This turn-based, tactical strategy game brings the feel of tabletop RPG combat to your mobile device or browser. Take control of a small group of heroes on their battle-ridden path to victory over darkness in the realm of Papillion. It's like a tabletop game in your pocket!
Mining. Building. Fighting. Constructing. In the real world, all of these things are rough, painful sorts of jobs that most people aren't very interested in doing. In the gaming world, they're the Holy Grail of entertainment. Enter King Arthur's Gold, a multiplayer (with some single player, too) construction and combat game similar to Terraria, Minecraft, and hempuli's miniature masterpiece Masjin. Teamwork is the central focus of the game, and while some players will be busy mining and building, others will head out for direct combat with the enemy. How much more exciting could it get?!
Get the Glass is a 3D board game produced as a part of a new Got Milk advertising campaign in the US. The object of the game is to get the Adachi family around the board and into Fort Fridge so that they can...erm...Get the Glass. It's an absolutely beautiful game with gorgeous scenery and surprisingly smooth animation.
A Break in the Road is a unique game that puts you in the role of a DJ recording sounds throughout the city to mix into a one minute song. An amazingly well-produced cut scene, complete with top-notch voice acting talent, introduces the back story and drops you right into it.
With DragonStone, dev studio PlayPond bravely mashed a marble-grouping game with a shoot-em-up, spray-painted it with a medieval fantasy theme, and literally turned the whole thing on its head. The result is an exciting and perilously addictive experiment, with the friendly face and high production values of a casual game.
Crazy Machines Golden Gears is a new addition to the Crazy Machines series of physics building/puzzle games. The franchise has made the leap from downloadable desktop game to the mobile world, bringing with it all the challenge, creativity and, well, crazy machines you can imagine. If Rube Goldberg only knew the kind of legacy he would leave to the casual gaming world.
New from Rocketcat Games, creator of Mage Gauntlet, Hook Champ, Super QuickHook, and Hook Worlds, Punch Quest is an endless running game built on the quest completing/loot gathering system found in games like Jetpack Joyride. Instead of flying around like a little beetle, though, you play as a well-muscled lad or lass who simply must punch everything in sight, from bats to skeletons, dinosaurs to priceless vases, all in the name of gathering coinage and upgrading your skills.
Fire and ice don't usually go together, but the wildly popular Fireboy and Watergirl games are the exception! Delve into a frosty temple and control two different elemental heroes at the same time, with new hazards, puzzles, and challenges in the beloved puzzle platform series!
The next chapter in Sam Otero's fan-made spin on the popular Pokemon franchise has arrived! RPG meets tower-defense as you are free to manually explore the world, hunting for and capturing Pokemon in the field as a boy or girl, and ultimately discovering the truth behind the strange Shadow Pokemon while you save the world... again! Homage or imitation? That's up to you to decide.
Daymare Town 2 returns you to the daytime nightmare of a place complete with new puzzles to solve, new characters to meet, more creepy creatures peering at you around corners, and more items to find. You can't help but enter this freaky town, but can you escape from it?
Despite being a relatively simple game, YHTBTR has earned quite a fanbase. It boasts a game manual, four walkthroughs (including one YouTube walkthrough and one in German), a speedrun posted on YouTube, a Spanish Wikipedia page, a text-adventure version, a novelization, and a fan-comic. Come see what all the hype is about.
In My Tribe, you play as sort of a guardian angel for a tribe of island-dwellers, telling them what to do, dragging them from place to place, and occasionally sprinkling them with a (hopefully) beneficial potion. Harvest food, wood, and stone to build with. Your tribe continues to work even when your computer is off. It's remarkably similar to Virtual Villagers but better in a number of ways.
The wait is over. The next installment in the Submachine series is finally here. Submachine 4: The Lab again submerges you inside a vessel that you must escape from. The author promises that this fourth chapter takes us to the heart of the submachine, the place where all the questions will finally be answered. So grab your mouse and your favorite comfy chair, and prepare to embark on a journey you won't soon forget.
Wooly the Mammoth has stolen your hat, and in order to get it back, you're going to need to get some epic questing going on, exploring a huge, non-linear environment, completing side-quests, collecting keys, and shooting cute but evil monsters in the face with your laser. Whimsical and with wide-appeal, this is certain to be another major hit from jmtb02!
Newly thawed from Nitrome, Ice Breaker is a great-looking physics-based puzzle game involving vikings, chunks of ice, and vikings frozen inside chunks of ice. Using the mouse, simply draw lines to cut the ice and drop vikings onto the ship. You'll often need to manipulate the frozen environment to create a smooth path for the vikingcicles to slide down, so timing and a little experimentation with physics are your two best friends in this game.
Today we launched a new banner game for the site, created by Mike Hommel of Hamumu Software. Mike is the author of the entire Robot Wants series of games, and this game plays very similarly to those. The objective is to light all the letters of the Casual Gameplay logo, as well as find all the JIGman bits scattered around the game. Sign in with a Casual Gameplay account and collect all the letters and JIGman bits to get your name added to the Hall of Fame!
Continue the adventure across the Plains of the Endless Grass in search of the Wiseman who knows every story ever told. Play as Myosotis and embark on a journey filled with fantastic creatures, breathtaking scenery and, of course, captivating stories. A Grain of Truth picks up (and leaves us) where The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart left us: wanting more.
Continue the adventure across the Plains of the Endless Grass in search of the Wiseman who knows every story ever told. Play as Myosotis and embark on a journey filled with fantastic creatures, breathtaking scenery and, of course, captivating stories. A Grain of Truth picks up (and leaves us) where The Trader of Stories: Bell's Heart left us: wanting more.
What'll turn your frown upside down? Well, if you're a monkey in this point-and-click puzzler, the answer might be a little weird. Choose your monkey and then solve a series of increasingly bizarre levels to cheer them up in the latest installment in Pencilkids' simple, bright kid-friendly series of break-sized gaming.
About as epic as any game about snails can be, Snailiad will take hours from you, and you'll be glad to see them gone. It's action-packed and adventure-filled, completely unlike the lives of real snails, who mostly sit around hoping they don't become escargot.
The Fancy Pants Adventure is an gorgeously animated platform adventure game created by Brad Borne. You play a hip, hand-drawn character who, as one might have guessed, wears a very fancy pair of pants. Run and jump around levels in this beautiful and enaging Flash game.
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!
Hermit Rabi is a satisfying little escape adventure chock-full of puzzles, logic, use of found objects, combining objects, and communicating with imaginary rabbits. With this designer you get the whole package: fantastic gameplay, intuitive and easy to use controls, and gorgeous visuals, making Robamimi one of our favorite room escape designers. So get ready for a perfect mid-week break with Hermit Rabi and Wonder Fountain.
Cottage is an escape game that manages to successfully combine cleverness with a relatively low level of difficulty; while the puzzles may seem simple, they are still creative and inspired enough to delight even the veteran escape gamers among us. Fabulous graphics, fun puzzles,
and an adorably surprising ending... it warms even my cold, grumpy New Yorker's heart.
A typical Kotoriscape consists of a handful of well-designed puzzles that follow a specific theme revealed by its title, and Device does not disappoint. There are all kinds of
devices to fiddle with in the vaguely Oriental room: a smartphone with a dead battery, a mysteriously fast-running clock, a service robot with three cranks on its head, and many more. Logical puzzles, soft and pleasing gradient-filled graphics, and a save feature for when you need a break are also hallmarks of Kotorinosu that stay with us for Device.
Kotorinosu is treading into Mya's Neutral territory with Mirror Escape in regard to variety and difficulty of puzzles. The game is fun, challenging, logical, and a joy for experienced room escapers looking for something fresh and new. Just remember, when gazing into mirrors it is sometimes wise not to look too closely lest you get lost inside with no hope of escape.
At first, you can't make out much in this escape-the-room game from Kotorinosu. Could this thing be a door? What are these green squarish things you've found, almost by accident? Yet, if you manage to solve the puzzles and survive the pixel hunts of this room, details come into being. You'll be that much closer to success.
The puzzles in Ancient Scripts are not necessarily the hardest we've ever seen. What Ancient Scripts has that many other games don't have though is that indefinable elegance of design, in the controls, in the backgrounds, and most especially in the puzzles.
Rabbits are blue and red, seals enjoy sea shells, and foxes make successful hotel owners. Those are just a few of the lessons we learn from BR's Climate Chaos, a gorgeous adventure game set on a group of small islands. The main character is Blue Rabbit, who, like your average rabbit, equipped with a digital camera, sets out on a quest to help the natives of the various islands to solve their problems with the local weather.
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.
In Boxhead: The Zombie Wars, your goal is to stay alive for as long as possible, but there are several ways to go about it. You can choose to take a more offensive front and plant traps for the zombies like exploding barrels, or a more defensive approach by building yourself a base complete with rocket launching turrets.
After bursting out of a coffin, you find yourself lost and disoriented in a strange city, and when night falls things get even stranger. The third chapter of the popular point-and-click horror adventure series provides some of the best atmosphere around in an otherworldly and supremely creepy setting that provides big scares without a lot of gore.
Any avid Jay is Games reader will have, at one point or another, paid a visit to game hosting site Kongregate. The site features hundreds of developers, and has a veritable smorgasbord of games. But until now, the folks behind Kongregate had not created a game of their own. Finally, after months of development and a lengthy private beta, the site has thrown its proverbial hat into the ring with Kongai.
We're used to suspending a little bit of belief when it comes to the games we play. Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, however, really tests the limits. You play a raptor driving a jeep with a spiky ball and chain attached to the rear. Your goal is to chase down other raptors and throw them into a teleporter that sends them to the future. At this point it's a good idea to throw intellectual understanding out the window, because this game is all about hitting dinosaurs with cars for points.
Several years in the making, the darkly atmospheric (and strangely realistic) platform game LIMBO has finally migrated from console download to the PC ecosphere.Crafted by Danish studio Playdead, LIMBO drops you in a shadowy world filled with dangers, immensely difficult puzzles, and more ways to die than you would really want to count. It's an incredibly stylistic and engaging game, one that just about any player can pick up and enjoy from beginning to end.
At long last, after a year and a half of waiting, Tucker Bowen has released Something Amiss Chapter 3, the final installment of his truly excellent point-and-click adventure saga. This chapter finds the intrepid escaped test subject Alice back in custody, awaiting her fate at the hands of persons unknown.
Pest Control is the latest from Nitrome. You are the exterminator, your job: kill the bugs. You run through a wide variety of scenarios with different kinds of bugs, all timed, with slightly different win conditions. It's WarioWare with a swatter, and it (mostly) works. The gameplay is simple: you control the position of a swatter with the mouse, and when you click, it swats.
After months of waiting, it's finally here! Nitrome has just rolled out Hot Air 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the balloon physics game Hot Air. The new incarnation is bigger, better, more intricate and more stylish than the original, proving it's possible to take an already polished game idea and turn it into something even better. Plus, you get to make your own balloons!
Bart Bonte's particle physics puzzle goes mobile with 35 all new levels plus (of course!) a sandbox mode. Thousands of sugar particles pouring down onto the screen with no place else to go until you draw a line here, another there, and a bit of gravity manipulation in the middle to direct all that sweetness into the cups. What begins as a simple task steadily increases in complexity until your cup overflowth with fun!
Aah, the salt of the sea. Deadly waves threatening to drown passersby. Armed frigates firing on civilians. Mummies scuttling across the sandy beaches, infecting helpless folks with their embalmed charm. It's just an ordinary day for the citizens in Open Sea!, a satisfying and great-looking mobile arcade game by The Pixelizers. To get everyone to safety, you're going to need a little bit of luck and a whole lot of lightning bolts.
King of Bees in Fantasy Land, a Twine adventure game by Brendan Patrick Hennesy, hails to an earlier time of gaming plotting; one where "all your base are belong to us". Thought there's not much action to speak of, this little choose-your-own-adventure tale of a Space Knight taking on the Evil King of Bees in the year 2888 is a quick, smart, piece of video game comedy.
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!
From mining basic raw resources to producing sci-fi hardware, this elaborate indie strategy sim with sandbox crafting and action elements has you single-handedly advancing an entire planet just to get home!
Cellar Door Games delivers a challenging roguelike mixed with brutal platforming action in this indie game. Take on an ever-changing castle filled with peril and challenges, and when you're inevitably struck down, your children will take up the cause... and your children might be more than a little unique. Featuring upgradeable classes and powers, equipment, runes, and even traits ranging from simple color-blindness to dwarfism, this is one game that offers both a challenge and a unique look at the ideas of heroism and "disability".
Created by Macoto Yanagisawa of Japan, this Shockwave work of art is a nice diversion from the usual fare, and there is much to see and hear in this electro-luminescent piece. Click the mouse to cycle through the displays; move the mouse to interact with each. Although it's not Electroplankton, it is very reminiscent of the musical wonder-toy for Nintendo's dual-screened handheld.
On the surface, it's easy to put Thomas Was Alone in the puzzle platform genre, citing games like The Lost Vikings when you discuss the gameplay mechanics and mentioning VVVVVV as another possible source of lo-fi indie inspiration. But after you've spent some time with the game, you suddenly realize it's much more than just a platformer. Thomas Was Alone is an interactive, character-driven puzzle experience with a beautiful audio visual presentation and gameplay controls/physics that were no doubt fine-tuned with fastidious precision.
From the developers of Delicious Emily's Holiday Season comes another gem of a time management game every casual gamer needs to experience. Heart's Medicine: Season One takes place in a hospital where the newly-arrived Allison Heart is just beginning her residency. Help sick patients by tending to their needs, shuffling them through the hospital as efficiently as you can, never forgetting to take good care of each person. The storyline is fantastic, the presentation is superb, and both the variety and the game's pacing are perfect. Heart's Medicine is simply one of the most well-balanced and entertaining time management games you can find!
Mortimer is back with another hidden object adventure in Mortimer Beckett and the Lost King! In case you couldn't tell, this time around a king is missing, and even though Mortimer is still stranded in the Time Paradox, he hops to it to set things right. Beautiful cut-scenes, superb inventory puzzles, and a well-made game on every front!
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.
If you've spent any time around the indie gaming scene, you're familiar with the name increpare, also known as Stephen Lavelle. Known for creating short, small, creative and artistic-type games, increpare has jumped from the realm of experimental games to the world of full-fledged releases, unleashing the fantastic English Country Tune for the world to scratch their collective heads over. The game looks fantastic and plays like several of your favorite logic puzzle games rolled into one superb, pseudo-3D package.
Ouverture Facile is French for "easy opening" and is an online puzzle/riddle game similar to Dumb: The Game and God Tower. Using a combination of flash, images and other media, you must gather clues to find the solution to each level. There are over 90 puzzles to solve, so you'd better get started...
In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, some things were created by an all-benevolent superbeing-type god. A not-so-benevolent deity also has a job to do, though, and once the world exists, his task is to cause a little mayhem. The original Doodle God, both the iPhone version and the browser game, focused on creating the universe by mixing basic elements one after the other. Doodle Devil, on the other hand, is about crafting the darker side of life, blending rudimentary concepts together to create chaos.
Summer is often a season of sequels, a season of unimaginative rehashings of proven hits, hoping that the sweaty populace will be too befuddled to notice that the movie or game they're consuming is exactly the same as its predecessor only with all the charm and surprise sucked out. That's why Learn 2 Fly is as refreshing as a blast of south pole air.
Gotta train em all! Toy Chest Games' strategic turn-based strategy game may be heavily inspired by Pokemon, but a gorgeous design and a focus on simple yet satisfying combat with a whopping 101 monsters to train makes it a casual treat.
What do you do when you're the only robot with power thousands of years after a mishap has sent your entire civilization offline? You put on the snazziest jazz soundtrack you can find and point-and-click your way through this short-but-stylish adventure. That's what!
Connor Ullmann fires up the Wayback Machine for those gorgeous little retro action adventure inspired by classic 2D games like Zelda. As a little boy who was apparently born from a breath of wind, your quest for self-discovery and the wishes of your maker will take you across a huge world teeming with enemies, secrets, treasure, puzzles, and more. A beautiful little gem with classic gameplay and a satisfying adventure that is well worth checking out even if you weren't born when games like this were in their heyday.
A while ago we asked Rob Allen to come up with a banner game for us, something reminiscent of his amazing Hapland series, with which visitors of the site could interact and have fun with while here. We wanted a goal-oriented game that involved lighting all of the letters of the Casual Gameplay logo, and he took the proverbial ball and ran with it. The result is what you see now
at the top of this page.
Recent Comments