We've waited a long, long, long time, but the follow-up to Cliff Johnson's seminal puzzle game The Fool's Errand has finally been released: The Fool and His Money. Packed with logic and word puzzles of all kinds, and the whimsically confounding prose that made the original so enjoyable, The Fool and His Money is just the thing for players looking for a mental challenge.

You know what the worst part of dealing with ghosts is? It's the ectoplasm. That stuff gets all over everything. If you don't want all your worldly possessions covered in ghost slime, you might just want to ghostbust by proxy in Phantasmaburbia, an RPG adventure by Greg Lobanov, creator of Dubloon, Assassin Blue and a variety of other titles. It mixes in the best elements of classic RPGs, adds in a bit of spookiness and shakes vigorously to produce a tasty ghost cocktail!

What do you get when you cross a potential Stephen King novel with a pinch of Indiana Jones, minus the Nazis? Not aliens. Better, I promise! You get the newest Mariaglorum game; Mystery of the Ancients: Curse of the Blackwater. This thrilling new hidden object puzzle adventure game is not only a new release by the team but also the newest installment in the Mystery of the Ancients series. And to get this out of the way: no, Shia Lebeouf has not decided to play a misunderstood rebel.

Angry Birds Star Wars is exactly what the name suggests: Angry Birds with licensed Star Wars characters! Developer Rovio has dabbled in different genres in recent months with the building game Amazing Alex and the contraption-centric Bad Piggies, but now the team has returned to old form, pasting together two franchises whose success could never be doubted. Star Wars fans will squeal with delight the moment the title screen starts to materialize, and if by some twist of fate you're not a Star Wars fan, well, it's still Angry Birds, and it's still a whole lot of good-looking physics destruction entertainment!

Kung Fu FIGHT! is a non-stop jump and run arcade game from Nostatic Software, creator of Quiet, Please! It's a game where you fight the bad guys to save the girl, just like in the cheesy old movies and video games from yesteryear! Sporting a variety of obstacles and a number of ways to deal with them, you'll fight your way across dojo and village on your quest, and since Nostatic loves us so very much, there are plenty of unlockable trophies as well as checkpoints to record your progress. Hooray!

Veronica's family's bloody legacy won't leave her alone, even when she travels all the way to Paris to get married and start anew. When she spies a hulking beast that can only be the werewolf that has hunted her for so long lurking around the family estate, she calls you, desperate for your help in bringing an end to the danger once and for all in this gorgeous hidden-object adventure.

The best mobile games are the ones that make us feel smart, are easy to play in short bursts of time, and look better than a Renaissance painting. IQ Mission from Yummy Factory is one such game, taking the very recognizable set-up of a brain training game and turning it into a spy-based series of missions around the world. On a quest for pieces of a map, you'll travel from Rapa Nui to London to Monte Carlo, solving a series of themed logic games with difficulty levels ranging from "no duh" to "...HELP!!!".

A spontaneous decision to rent a room in a stately old manor in the country takes a turn for the bizarre when you witness a girl abducted by a giant monkey before your very eyes and soon discover you're locked inside. With the help of a holographic cat, it's up to you to discover why the previous tenants at 13 Darwin Lane have quite literally lost their heads (and avoid losing their own) in this sublimely strange adventure from ERS Game Studios.

Step into the unknown to adventure in a secret world of unusual flora and fauna. Here, you follow in the footsteps of your father, "The Crazy Dr. Wright," while helping a village which is struggling against its oppressive queen and joining forces with Ian, a scientist who is also trapped in this strange land along with you. Throughout your adventure, you'll enjoy an extremely diverse assortment of minigames and fresh twists on hidden object scenes that will make you rethink the genre. As multifarious as the unusual flora and fauna of its verdant environment, Botanica: Into the Unknown is fresh and full of new discoveries.

Created by Colin Northway (Fantastic Contraption) and Sarah Northway (Rebuild) with art by Thomas Shahan, this gorgeous physics game feels like a vertebrate version of World of Goo with the building-centric gameplay of Fantastic Contraption. Using the simple tools of legs and muscles, you must help Quozzle on her quest to find her family as she attempts to traverse terrain as twisted and diverse as you can imagine. How are you going to make it over the next hill? Maybe by attaching two dozen legs to Quozzle's eye and strapping them all together with muscles? Why not, let's give it a shot!

Realore Studios knows a thing or two about the road building resource management genre. The team has produced several great hits, including All My Gods and the unusually unique Adelantado Trilogy: Book One. Now, with the release of Northern Tale, we return to the world of myth and magic to save a viking kingdom from the wrath of an evil witch. And what better way to cleanse the land than by working your way through stage after stage, busting up piles of rocks and collecting hunks of meat sitting on the ground?!

Robota: Lost is an in-progress adventure game that drops you in an open world with a ship that needs power to fly. Naturally, your first (and only) quest is to head out and find the hidden batteries so you can make your escape. There are no enemies, no bosses, no hazards, and no obstacles, it's just you, a few hills, a few forests, and a sunny countryside waiting to be explored.

Nitrome serves up this plucky ducky demo of their upcoming puzzle platform adventure that serves to be a solid little experience in its own right. Unable to fly, your fine feathered protagonist (or plural, if playing with friends) needs to use a magical ladder to find his way through a hostile environment filled with gems, monsters, and secrets, where every room is a puzzle... and dangerous!

Scheherazade "Sadie" Keating has just graduated, but with famous (and missing) adventurous parents as her legacy, she has a bit more to live up to than most young women. When a thief reveals a secret and a mystery she never suspected has been under her nose all along, Sadie sets out on a massive globe-trotting adventure to uncover the truth... or, depending on your choice, forge her own legacy, become closer with families, kindle a romance, or much, much more in this huge, engaging visual novel simulation set in the 1930s.

The town of Brightfield is under siege by bizarre creatures that shouldn't exist in nature, and a sinister conspiracy is afoot. You arrive at the snowbound town to find that not everyone managed to make the evacuation... and you're not alone. Or wanted. Elephant Games delivers another stellar cinematic hidden-object adventure packed with strange sights, twists and turns, and will keep you wrapped up in your sleuthing for quite some time.

As a young wizard, the fate of the four kingdoms falls upon your shoulders in The Chronicles of Emerland Solitaire. Travel the four kingdoms, gaining companions on your way to defeat Seth before he destroys the magical amulets that keep the kingdoms in balance. WIth card bonuses, beautiful artwork, and hidden object scenes, playing solitaire has never been so much fun.

Search through the mirrored dimension, where the ordinary world is twisted and unsettling, on a quest to stop a romantic tragedy from unleashing an evil pact. During your adventure through a surreal realm, you'll encounter an intriguing assortment of strange sights as well as plenty of interactive hidden object scenes and puzzles until you reach the final confrontation with an ancient evil power. Will you discover the secrets of the dark carnival?

Hey, you there! You blocked my pixel in with your car. Wanna back up so I can get this thing outta here? What's that? You can't back up? Fine, let's just restart the puzzle and try not to be so daft this time, shall we? So goes the conversation (or something like it) you'll have with your self over and over again with Pixel Blocked, a rotation-based block firing puzzle game that has cute and casual written all over it.

Probability 0 is a procedurally-generated arcade platform game created by Droqen that's all about working your way down. Most games make it pretty easy to move in that direction, as we tend to think of up as the win direction (just ask any tall person) and down as, well, not-win. With this moody little game, though, you'll have to fight your way to the bottom of the screen, squeezing through blocks, punching holes in the terrain, dealing with evil enemies, and upgrading your abilities at every opportunity you get.

Franken-Stitch has lost his head in this physics puzzle game available for your mobile device or as a computer download. Tap your way through obstacle courses of pulleys, trampolines, fans and more to reunite him with his happy little noggin. Use realistic physics and interactive objects on numerous challenging levels spanning multiple themed chapters.

From 10tons, the heavy-hitting creator of some of our favorite match-3 puzzle games, including Azkend 2: The World Beneath, comes a game about destroying the entire world, one rock at a time. King Oddball is a physics arcade game that plays as sort of an upside-down Crush the Castle or Angry Birds, challenging you fling rocks from the King's tongue so you can cause as much destruction as possible. If that doesn't sound like it's enough fun, factor in the eccentric, internet-approved sense of humor and fantastic visual style and you've got a game you'll have to force yourself to put down.

Explore a world of tiny gardens, shady parks, and secret glades. Grow gardens and enjoy soothing sounds as you travel through this happy little block-fitting puzzle game from Michael Todd. Just click to pick up pieces, use space to rotate, and drag into place. Enchanting and sweet, Little Gardens has that bit of magic and heart that makes a good game a true delight to play.

What... the heck is going on here? At first glance, you probably think Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is some sort of Oregon Trail-related simulation game. But then you see words like "arcade game" and "side-scrolling shooter" and you suddenly think "Maybe I'm going insane? Maybe I've forgotten what words mean and I've just started seeing random flan horse topple red maneuver?". You can relax, however, as we're here to promise you that Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is everything the title suggests, and it manages to be fast-paced, crazy, and entertaining all within the first five seconds.

The continuing horrors from the casual adventure developer ERS Game Studios have returned, and this time it's more horrorey than ever. Haunted Halls: Revenge of Doctor Blackmore is the third game in the Haunted Halls series, picking up where the previous games left off and not stopping to let you gather your wits. It's a psychologically intense game for a point and click puzzle adventure, but it's carried out with the usual grace and flair we've come to expect from ERS. Ready to descend into madness again?

Mmm, delicious eggs. As we've learned from the Angry Birds series, round, legless piggies love nothing more than a good egg. And they'll do anything they can to get their snouts on one! In Rovio's latest physics game Bad Piggies, the tables are turned and you're working to help the pigs get what they want. Instead of slingshots and breakable forts, though, you're building rickety contraptions box by wooden box. It's a little bit of construction, a little bit of action, and a whole lot of crashing. Exactly what you need in a casual mobile game!

In this cheery, silly RPG/simulation from maxmobile for iOS or Android, you're a pygmie hedgehog setting out on adventure and searching for friends. The vibrant presentation and simple, accessible gameplay makes this one addictive and fun despite its lack of depth, and something both kids and adults can find hard to put down.

Ah, the romance of the old west. Cowboys, cattle drives, the pony express... Also brush fires, coyotes, droughts, greedy land barons, and bandits who ransack towns and kidnap the population for ransom. It might not be as romantic as John Wayne movies would have us believe, but things were still pretty adventurous, a side of the times that Alawar chooses to represent in the time management adventure game The Golden Years: Way Out West.

Bigger, badder, and altogether better than the original, Runic Games' brings their action RPG back to life in this fantastically fun sequel. When old heroes fall and turn against the land as a sickness spreads across it, it falls to one lone wanderer to take up the mantle of hero. With multiplayer support, huge boss battles, sprawling environments, and new classes unrestricted by gender, Torchlight 2 is a sequel that delivers everything it promised and more.

In this fourth installment of Blue Tea Games' darkly dramatic adventure hybrid series, you join a band of femme fatales, once victims in other fairytales, to fight against a power-warped villainess and her plague of mist wolves. Fragmented object search scenes, side quests for cursed items, and a nice offering of gently-challenging puzzles add to your immersion in this action-filled, and oft times violent, adventure.

This is the story of the greatest band of all time... no, not Tenancious D... you! Heavily inspired mechanically by Game Dev Story, this musical simulation tasks you with handling the (hopefully) meteoric rise of a band of initially talentless musicians through the decades. Write songs, make albums, handle interviews and more as you strive to become legendary in an evolving industry. Also, make songs about farts, because everyone seems to love those. Speaking from experience here.

Chop! Chop! Chop! What's that sound? The sound of timber being harvested in Realore Studios' Adelantado Trilogy: Book One! The creators of games like All My Gods and Roads of Rome have done something special with this casual simulation/resource management game, adding some role playing elements and throwing in a good helping of originality. The Queen of Spain has appointed you, Don Diego De Leon, as adelantado of the new world, and it's up to you to find out what happened to previous expeditions that were sent out and never seen again. While you're there, find treasure to send back to fill the the country's coffers and best your rival Pablo Rodrigez to the gold and riches that surely rest in this unexplored land!

You've got a few minutes before you have to be at work. That means it's time for a game! But what to play, Pac-Man or a tower defense game? How about both? From Tametick, the creator of Cardinal Quest, comes Pakkuman's Defense, a surprisingly superb melding of the classic arcade game Pac-Man and a modern tower defense game. There are ghosts. There are dots to eat. There are towers to place. And yes, you're going to have a blast with this unusual hybrid!

Gateways, an exploration-based platform game from Smudget Cat Games, can be quickly summarized by saying it's like Portal, but in 2D. That's leaving a lot out of the equation, though, as Gateways goes to great lengths to provide a different kind of experience, one more akin to a metroidvania-type game than that other portal-making adventure. You'll realize that as soon as you start to explore the chunky pixel laboratory, smashing the glass domes over monkey's heads and wondering how on Earth you're supposed to climb over the next ledge.

Pity the poor royal court of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. The exhausted souls just finished uniting Egypt in order to keep the gods happy and now they are faced with a new challenge: travel down the Nile and rebuild temples before the gods start getting all explodey on their butts. And all of this must be accomplished while the royal architect is severely under the weather and the royal cat has gone AWOL. Pharaoh Touti and company are back in BlooBuzz's (formerly Wendigo) latest time management strategy The Timebuilders: Pyramid Rising 2.

ScrumbleShip is an in-progress sandbox-style game of ship construction and combat simulation, all accomplished using a massive list of building materials and a surprisingly smart heat simulation model. Built around simple block placements, you have complete freedom of movement in this game, allowing you to jet yourself in any direction so you can construct the most accurate (or most hilariously inaccurate) piece of space-faring machinery you've ever seen. Want a tiny escape pod all your own? Done. How about a massive star base? Orbital station? Or maybe even a Death Sta— er, moon?!

Being a detective for the Agency of Anomalies must require a good deal of patience and nerve. Patience because every door you encounter tends to be locked, and nerve because who would want to deal with secret Brotherhoods, strange powers, and unfamiliar terrain that could possibly be hiding a fiendish monster or two. In the third installment of the Agency of Anomalies series, Orneon sends its favorite detective to a theater filled with performers suffering the effects of special powers that are slowly turning them into creatures. Help find the leader of this rag tag band and reverse the transformation while avoiding the capture of the Seekers.

Cryptica, a sliding block puzzle game from Pixibots, is like being stuck in the trap-filled tomb of some pharaoh whose devious riddles were designed to keep you busy until the end of time. And, well, that's pretty much what it is, although according to the official backstory you're hunting for lost relics by solving puzzles in crypts. Either way, there's a lot of amazing challenge to be found in this game of symbol matching and stone sliding!

Combining elements of exploration, puzzle solving, and some good old fashioned robot building, Mobiloid from Montrezina plays like the best parts of Metroid and Q.U.B.E. blended to perfection. It's a game that allows you to use almost two dozen accessories to create functional (or, you know, not so functional) contraptions that help you stick your nose in every corner of the world, uncovering new items, new parts, and new puzzles along the way.

HUEBRIX, a logic-based puzzle game by Yellow Monkey, wants your brain. Not in a zombie-eating kind of way, but in a cool, challenging way. Similar to games like PathPix and Link-a-Pix (or a number of other Conceptis releases), HUEBRIX challenges you to fill out a grid of squares by dragging "color snakes" around the board. All of this happens on a timer, so you've got to be smart, you've got to be fast, and it wouldn't hurt to have a positronic brain, either.

Angelica "Dream" Weaver is used to being called in to use her "gift" to help the police when they're stuck, but even she isn't prepared for the bizarre chase this latest case will lead her on. A killer who seems to be dragging her back through time and enjoys his game of cat-and-mouse far too much to ever stop murdering will prove to be a challenge... and hopefully not one she can't overcome, since failure might be fatal in this gorgeous, cinematic hidden-object mystery adventure.

Your best friend Mary has gone missing for a few days and you take it upon yourself to search for her. Your hunt for her leads to a mysterious floating island inhabited by the remnants of an extraterrestrial race that needs your help to get back home. In this visually decadent casual adventure game, solve puzzles and piece together fragments in hidden object scenes in order to help not only your friend, but the earth bound aliens who want to finally go home.

Maybe you should have suspected the school was evil when you saw all the eyeball-filled green vines growing out of it, but hey! Mistakes were made. Now your daughter has been kidnapped by the spirit of a vengeful witch who plans on using her as the last piece in a dark ritual that has claimed the souls of other young girls. Set out to stop the witch and bring your daughter home safely in this easy but gorgeous and creatively stylish adventure with a flair for cheesy drama and charm.

Dancing Robots! One night only! If you can reunite heads with bodies that is. Recover the heads of the dancing robots in this one-button action game. Using gravity wells, control your bot head, maneuvering around saw blades and fire spouts. Collect golden bolts along the way. Collect enough bolts to earn stars to open new levels. The dance must go on!

Never, ever gossip about a witch. Especially if they're the "suck your vitality to maintain their youth" variety. Top Evidence Studios provides a somewhat by-the-numbers hidden-object adventure that delivers gorgeous visuals and a few clever twists on your quest to put an end to the evil reign of a witch who has stolen your youth and spent centuries trapping and tormenting others.

In the medieval fantasy world of Trouble With Robots, robotic lifeforms from outer space have come to turn the world of Middle Turf upside down, destroying old villages and replacing them with futuristic highways and strip malls. You'll have to build your best deck full of spells, powerful trolls, dwarves, and elves (not to mention angry pitchfork wielding peasants!) to stop the invasion and bring peace back to the land in this lean little card battle game, that picks a few elements and does them right, rather than trying to juggle more than it can handle, leaving you with a satisfying experience that you can come back to and improve, even if you are a gamer on a time-budget.

Vogat Interactive, creator of Guardians of Beyond: Witchville and the Reincarnations series, knows how to make a stunning casual adventure game. The Theatre of Shadows: As You Wish is another excellent example of this, combining a rich story with serious puzzles, creative mini-games, and gameplay that gives you surprising freedom to roam. It's a challenging and well-illustrated steampunk-style adventure, and it's a journey you're not going to forget anytime soon (hint: living shadows and evil puppets!).

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a princess named Sophia who was having a horrible, very bad, not good day. Poor Princess Sophia woke up in an abandoned castle to discover that (a) she'd overslept by about 100 years, (b) all the humans including her family had booked for places unknown, and (c) there was no local wi-fi. Being the intrepid Princess that she is, Sophia immediately set out to find the rest of humanity along with a decent half-caf mocha latte. Yes, our favorite non-magical princess is back in Awakening: The Skyward Castle, the fourth and final installment of Boomzap's popular adventure hybrid Awakening series.

Do you dream of building a theme park that would put Universal's Islands of Adventure to shame? Can you out plan the creative genius that is Disney? Then put your designing skills to the test in this sandbox-style simulation game from Fugazo. Use strategy to research and build rides, attractions and concessions. Decorate your park to improve its appeal and win the hearts of its visitors. You'll know when you've succeeded as the coins pour in and you're on the cover of every magazine for international amusement park acclaim.

In this captivating and addicting match-3/RPG fantasy hybrid for iOS and Android, you time as a new student at a school for witches and wizards should be filled with studies. Unfortunately for you, you've been partnered with the brash and bossy Alicia, and her short attention span and hunger for power means you and your new friends might stir up some trouble in your cauldrons. A simplified version of Puzzle Quest with stunning visual designs and easy to master gameplay you may find hard to put down.

It all begins with an innocent little robot drifting through a leaky cave. It all ends with... well, a lot more than that. Talawa Games' Unmechanical is a physics-heavy action puzzle game where you control a round 'bot flying through an underground factory, trying to find his way back to the surface. It looks like something unsettling happened here not too long ago, judging from the rockslides and blocked passages and all. But you don't have time to hover and ponder, you just want to get out. And as you soon discover, you're not exactly alone down here...

It's always seemed inefficient to trap mammals inside robots. It didn't work for Dr. Robotnik, which should have been a lesson to everyone. Nevertheless, in Horn, an epic third person RPG adventure from Phosphor Games, the robots themselves decided to start converting humans into their own kind. While its a bit unclear why that happened, its up to you, an amnesiac blacksmith's apprentice, to sort it all out.

Twisted Lands: Origins starts with a bang, and it never lets up. The third game in the Twisted Lands series, the story goes back to the beginning and tells the tale of the terror that stormed the island of Tormente. It's an intense casual adventure whose focus is strongly centered on story and hidden object scenes, creating an interesting sort of action/puzzle duality that keeps you moving along at a rapid pace.

Help the little guy in BuniBon bounce his way through 72 levels of high difficulty arcade action! Ludosity's Regnslöja has created a well-balanced mobile game fit for anyone looking to kill five minutes at a time (or an hour or two, if you're so inclined). Out for Android devices, BuniBon offers an experience that's both cute and cuddly and frustrating at the same time!

Being rich is not enough. Being richer is not enough. It's time to Be Richest! In the third installment of the time management building series, it's up to you rebuild the city which has been left penniless by corrupt leaders. Watch out for thiefs, rats, and even yetis as you rebuild homes and help businesses get back on their feet. Build your empire and discover just how rich you can become!

Who doesn't love climbing mountains? Clamoring across stone, breathing in the pristine air from high above the land, defying all sensible concepts of human strength and endurance so you can grab bags of gold floating in the sky. Sure, our experience with climbing real mountains might be limited, but we're pretty convinced ROCKMAN (no, not that Rock Man) from TwO Bros. Games is a realistic simulation of the sport. If it's not, well, we'll want a full refund on that CD box set of square dancing music we just ordered.

When a lawyer goes missing while handling the inheritance for a young man following his uncle's mysterious death, you're called in to look into the matter. Unfortunately, this case is a bit more complicated than that, since the local townsfolk have been going missing and believe it to be the work of a vengeful spirit who has been murdering all the men in the Williams family for decades. Can you get to the truth buried beneath all the skeletons in this family's closet? Or will this hidden-object adventure be the death of you?

Siela's family restaurant is having trouble staying afloat, and her sister is considering selling the whole thing to someone else. With no choice but to seize management herself in a last-ditch effort to turn the business into a success, Siela and her friends must cook and serve food made using ingredients they hunt for in the wild in this simple but addictive blend of RPG and simulation for iOS and Android.

Mooooo! Do you hear that? It's the sound of cows being abducted! In this tower defense game from Lightmare Studio, you and your pal Barney must use your wits and whatever you can find lying around the barn to protect the cows from the aliens who crave them. Be it an explosive grill or poisonous gasses, you'll find plenty of ways to keep the invaders out of the cow field.

You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but otherworldly powers intervene when your would-be murderers pick the wrong cemetery to bury you alive in. Unfortunately for you, the island you're on is cursed, and the only way out is to appease the ferryman and tortured souls... perhaps saving yourself and another innocent in the process. A lengthy, campy, fun hidden-object adventure from ERS Game Studio.

Eternal Journey: New Atlantis is an amazing science fiction adventure wrapped up in an exquisite bow. Time to forgo the ghosties, ghoulies, and long-legged beasties and set off for a kick-butt adventure to the stars! Or the bottom of the ocean. Whatever. This unique game from Alawar is a hidden object hybrid with a phenomenal story and a lot of extras, and you certainly won't mind taking a dive deep below the sea just to, well, see what you can see... in the sea.

Found unconscious and unresponsive on the side of a road, unhurt despite the bloody knife lying beside her, Jane Doe has been lying silently in a hospital bed ever since. It's up to you to enter her mind in this creepy, surreal hidden-object adventure, and find out the truth about who she is and where she comes from, but with her mind and a sinister presence working against you, neither of you may survive the effort.

Sixty levels of smooth block sliding puzzling goodness can be a little bit too relaxing, perhaps? Well don't fret, because if you want a little snark to keep you on your toes, Woodhead serves up subtle Onion-style satire with every new level. Taking full advantage of the iPhone's interface strengths, this is a great little time-waster to keep in your pocket.

Claret Spenser doesn't care much for the outside world. She's happiest working in her airship repair shop, where machines are much easier to deal with than the aristocracy of her floating city, or the winged Skyborn race that conquered the humans generations ago. But her life is about to change... A gorgeous retro RPG from Dancing Dragon Games, Skyborn takes place in an engaging and fully-realized fantasy-steampunk world that begs to be explored. Highly recommend for fans with even the slightest love of the genre.

You can't keep a bad witch down, and the shadowy old crone in Orneon's hidden-object adventure series is back for another round. This time, she's used her spells to ensnare an entire kingdom with her shadowy minions, rendering the court magician helpless and turning inanimate objects against you. Together with your sassy talking magic mirror, you'll need to search for ten magical MacGuffins to power an ancient staff before it's too late.

The life of a hero is never easy, but sometimes just breaking into it is hard enough. As the child of two of the city's former most beloved heroes, you'd think you'd have an easy time getting noticed, but a tumultuous past means the chips are stacked against you. In Choice of Games' newest narrative text RPG, do you have what it takes to become a superhero legend in your own time? Or will you die in obscurity if you make the wrong choices?

Grim Tales: The Wishes is the third in the series of Grim Tales hidden object adventure releases from Elephant Games. Featuring an absolutely chilling storyline, Grim Tales 3 plays like an epic tale filled with puzzles that are sprawled out across the detailed landscape. Items and points of interest are practically in every corner, and while you search for the pieces you need to continue through the game, a surprisingly terrifying plot is unfolding right before your eyes.

In order to play all of the latest surreal puzzle game from prolific purveyor of awesome, Eyezmaze, you'll need to donate at least a dollar, but you can still play the first portion for free. Discover the strange and strangely adorable secrets of a mysterious black box by clicking on it and trying to figure out what you need to do and when in order to proceed. It's weird, it's cute, and like all of Eyzemaze's games, definitely one of a kind.

Strap on your physics shoes (moon boots?), it's time for some quirky Rube Goldberg-like contraptions! Amazing Alex is the latest offering from Rovio, the well-known creator of the Angry Birds series. This new offering is a physics-based puzzle building game not unlike Crazy Machines or The Incredible Machine, though everything has been greatly scaled down to make it more fitting for a casual audience.

In this time of over population, it's hard not to daydream about having a nice little town all to yourself. Sadly, unless you're a billionaire, chances are the only way to experience the feel of colonization is through the gracious world of casual gaming. The Promised Land from Boolat Games is a pleasant simulation building and strategy game similar to Virtual Villagers that hands you a piece of uncharted land ready to be plundered. As an adventurer, you're off to find the elusive spring of eternal happiness and build yourself a town that could rival even the most advanced of civilizations!

Astronaut Spacewalk by Jorge Hernandez is the closest most of us will ever get to taking a no-tether trot in outer space. The delightfully complex and detailed simulation game gives you a screen filled with controls and a few simple missions to complete, then sits back and watches while you climb the impossibly high learning curve. It will take hours, not minutes, to learn how to maneuver your lone astronaut, and until you do, you'll probably feel confusion, bewilderment, and possibly a touch of anger. If you stick with it, though, you'll discover a game that shares the joys and wonders of space exploration tempered by the realism of science, and it's a wonderful experience indeed.

Howlville: The Dark Past is a lightly-flavored science fiction-themed hidden object adventure game from N-Tri Studio. Featuring a balanced mix of puzzle solving, item hunting, and adventuring, Howlville manages to be a hidden object game without feeling like a rehash of the games that came before it, touching on common elements found in the genre but focusing intently on smart puzzles that really challenge the player. The result is something light and casual, recognizable but still different enough to offer mounds of enjoyment.

Just when you thought secret societies were a thing of the past (literally, ha!), World-Loom brings them back to you in full force in their hidden-object/adventure hybrid, Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope. With some unique visuals and a good puzzle-to-hidden-object-scene ratio, Dark Heritage will have you feeling like Tom Hanks as you chase down a mysterious killer. You know, if Tom Hanks were a woman.

Quantum Conundrum is a light-hearted puzzle adventure game from Airtight Games. Taking pages from releases like Q.U.B.E. and, of course, Portal, Quantum Conundrum pits you against a series of challenges that require some fine manipulation of physics in order to solve. In this case, you have the dubious honor of being able to switch between four unique dimensions that affect everything in the game in a different way. Work your way through your uncle's mansion as you help him attempt to solve the riddle of where exactly he's gotten himself lost this time!

Strap on your pistols and saddle up, pardner, there's a new card-based strategy game in town! From Cryptic Comet, the maker of Solium Infernum, comes Six Gun Saga, a game that combines cards, heavy strategies, and all the fierceness of the wild, wild west. Choose your boss then go at it with guns-a-blazing! Build up your town (or sell your cards) to make money, and form posses, then use them to collect victory points by defending story cards or just blow your opponent's men away! Turn by turn, you will either play as, or match wits with some famous characters like Wyatt Earp, Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, and others.

The Flux Family Secrets series started back in 2009 with Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect, followed by Flux Family Secrets: The Rabbit Hole just over a year later. Now, after a longer than usual wait, the third game in the series has arrived: Flux Family Secrets: The Book of Oracles. Skunk Studios has produced an equally high caliber game with Flux number three, continuing the story precisely where it left off and telling a hidden object-laden tale with a side of lush visuals.

There's a murder on the prowl in the Italian countryside. When the maid of a wealthy family finds a notebook that appears to detail the gruesome murder of three young women, she turns to you, a local detective, in fear. But when you arrive on the scene it soon becomes abundantly clear that someone doesn't appreciate you trying to solve the case, and you'll have to keep your wits about you to survive to the end in this cheesy but beautifully packaged hidden-object adventure mystery from ERS Game Studio.

As the new girl transferring for her final year of school, you've got a lot on your plate, especially if you want to get into a top-tier university. But in Roxanne Chen's gorgeous, funny, and charming visual novel simulation, you've also got the potential to make friends that will last you forever... and maybe even find love, too. Packed with colour, energy, and tons of replay value, this is well worth checking out. You've only got one year... make it count!

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.

Theresa and her twin sister were the first victims of a plague spreading through the city of Oxford, but not the last. Now, with many dead and dying, and the city evacuated and under quarantined, it's up to you to venture inside the limits searching for the lost little girl who may hold the key to a cure... but with the disease already spreading to the wildlife, will you be too late to contain the problem? A somewhat short but top-notch thriller hidden-object adventure with a plot full of twists and turns that will appeal to fans of more serious stories.

One of the main tropes present in hidden object hybrids these days is that someone gets kidnapped by mysterious forces and you must rescue them, be it a prince, a princess, children, a whole town, or some random guy off the street. However, Fierce Tales: The Dog's Heart by Blam! Games goes in a completely different direction. You see, your cute little puppy is kidnapped by mysterious forces, and you must rescue him before it's too late. It may not reinvent the hidden object wheel, but it's still a pretty darned good adventure waiting to be played!

Deep within the spaceship, a lowly garbage worker tosses clumps of trash into the incinerator. Outside, asteroids begin pelting the hull, eventually causing the ship to crash on an uncharted planet filled with strange creatures. And now you, lone survivor, must explore and fight your way through an intricate maze-like world as you gather power-ups, fight bosses, and collect every little green square you see. In Wade McGillis's downloadable and mobile game Astronot, you get a good strong dose of pure retro metroidvania-style platform adventuring, and you'll love every minute of stranded torture it brings you.

Long has it been dictated that a woman in a fairy tale had better be either beautiful, meek, humble as apple pie, or a mix thereof. Someone hates her, a prince wants to save her, and some sparkly fairy dust is going to cause some type of dilemma. Throughout it all, this princess is going to hmmm and sigh but ultimately go along with the ride because, hey, she's a damsel in distress and you best not forget it! Fortunately for us, Moacube didn't just forget it, they threw it out of the proverbial tower turret to the alligator infested moat below. In the team's dazzling visual novel Cinders, they charge headfirst into the outdated and come out the other side with brand spanking shiny and new.

Offering up something unique and creative, this point-and-click puzzle adventure follows a young shepherd and his pet goat on their quest to rescue his stolen flock. The gorgeous watercolor artwork and nearly wordless narration makes this a poignant, meditative experience. While a few rough edges might repel those who are not as charmed by the artistic qualities, those looking for challenging puzzles and fragmented object searches set in a surreal landscape will be instantly won over. Which group are you in? Give Shaban a demo to find out.

ERS makes their first foray into pure adventure gameplay with this shlocky, over-the-top horror game. When the little girl you're supposed to be babysitting vanishes, you find yourself drawn into a murder mystery that's corrupted an entire area and left the place teeming with vicious ghosts and secrets. More kooky and creative than scary, it's still a polished game with loads of puzzles and creepiness worth checking out.

When a physicist researching a world-changing project ends up dead, it's up to you to figure out what happened. In Resonance, a stellar point-and-click adventure by Wadjet Eye Games, you control four strangers who are forced to trust each other to help you solve the mystery. Use the unique long and short term memory system to explore the world around you and uncover clues. Can you recover the research before someone else ends up dead?

Looking at the title of Alexandria Bloodshow, your mind might fly all over the place wondering what genre the game represents. Sounds like a great name for a first person shooter set in ancient Egypt, right? Well, that may be, but in this case, Alexandria Bloodshow is actually a tactical card combat game that succeeds the even more unusually named SAMURAI BLOODSHOW: les vagues blanches, les nuages rouges. Yeah, that's right! Once you put the names aside, though, you'll find a couple of excellent slow-paced strategy games that will remind you of Plants vs. Zombies in some surprising ways.

Life Quest was an excellent game when it was released for the downloadable casual games market, and the mobile port effortlessly brings that experience to touch screen iOS devices. Kick back and enjoy an experience not unlike The Sims meets a time management game, which is to say, you'll spend a whole lot of time getting very little done! (Just like real life, no?) Have a little virtual life in your own hands, no matter where your real life takes you!

From movies to books to video games, the "creepy" seems all-pervasive. Put an individual or group in some deserted, out of the way place with lots of shadows and eerie sounds and you've got the recipe going strong! Luckily for you, assuming you're the type that likes creepy things, Specialbit Studio has quite the joyride for you! In the hidden object puzzle adventure game Haunted Hotel: Charles Dexter Ward, you get rewarded with the creepiest of creepy: a deserted hotel in a bayou out in good ol' Louisiana. I wouldn't stick around for any jambalaya if I were you.

Here's the good news: you get to go to a small European village for free. The bad news? Well... there's this tiny issue of horrific and angry statues randomly coming to life and carting off the villagers for who knows what reason. Also, you have the good fortune of being the most prominent detective around! That means you get to go deal with those statues and puzzle out what in the heck is happening. Elephant Games has returned to us with a wonderful new hidden object puzzle adventure game Royal Detective: The Lord of Statues, so put on your bowler hat and get ready to do some mystery solvin'!

When your plane goes down following a ghostly apparition and strands you on a deserted unmarked island, that's bad enough without throwing a centuries old fatal love triangle and one seriously malevolent ghost into the mix. Fuzzy Bug Interactive delivers a short and easy but effortlessly enjoyable hidden-object adventure that doesn't bog its subject matter down in heavy doom and gloom.

Originally released on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace, Nostatic Software has recently brought its thoughtful little puzzle adventure game Quiet, Please! to Android devices, allowing you to explore (and shut people up!) on the go. It's a great fit for the small touch screen and will remind you of old school adventure games like Maniac Mansion, both in terms of gameplay and overall puzzle design.

The developers at Stolen Couch Games have captured that child-like kindergarten drawing time feeling with the one-button puzzle game Ichi, a mobile port of the downloadable version available for Windows and Mac systems. It is only the team's second commercial creation for the iTunes App Store, but they understand that quality is much better than quantity. If the simple visual style makes you think "oh, this game will be a piece of cake!", well, my friend, you'll think twice when level 'some-odd-number' comes around and you can't master it!

Decades ago, Nikola Tesla's experiment ruined mankind's ability to see colour and enjoy music before he vanished, and nobody can agree whether he did it on purpose. Marie Tesla, his great-great-granddaughter, has been working to fix things without much success, but a phone call from beyond space and time might put her on the right track to solving a mystery and travelling into the past. An easy but stellar hidden-object adventure that combines intrigue, light-hearted storytelling, memorable characters, and gorgeous visuals.

Ready to get dragged into an undeniably captivating time management strategy resource management building game? Kingdom Chronicles by Aliasworlds casts you in the role of humble do gooder John Brave, resident unlikely hero hero. I know what you're thinking, been there done that. But wait! It's not only about being sexy and knowing it while having damsels in distress swooning in their tallest tower prisons. I promise.

Children are disappearing from the quiet little town of Everlake; police and parents are their wits end but you're not about to give up. Enter a surreal world that is rather like a David Lynch version of the Drawn series. Superior graphics and added interactivity make the hidden object searches a delight, a diverse and plentiful assortment of minigames will keep you thinking, and the immense number of settings and locales to explore will make this feel like an epic journey. Forget about pragmatic realism and let yourself be won over by the strange magic of Rite of Passage: The Perfect Show.

With the intricate and challenging gameplay, fantastical backgrounds, and most importantly an actual story Build-a-Lot: Fairy Tales may be the best of the build-a-lot bunch, rather than a stale re-skinning of something we've seen before. For those who love the series and those who've never tried it, here's an imaginative gift from HipSoft wrapped in bright shiny paper and an elaborate bow.

Do you enjoy hunting for tiny items? Picking out hidden objects? Finding small things contained in much larger things? Fresh from Klick Tock, creator of ZONR, Little Things Forever is an updated and expanded follow-up to the original Little Things, offering up thousands of tiny items to find as you hunt your way across puzzles unlocking new shapes to pick apart. It's a great improvement over the original game, but it's also precisely what we like about casual mobile releases: quick fun, lasting appeal, and endless content.

Red Riding Hood was once a normal girl baking sweets, skipping through enchanted forests, wanting to visit her grandma without any ulterior motives. Little did she know that she was about to be thrust into a nightmare when her poor Granny was taken by some rude wolf. Now it's up to you, as Red, to brave 96 levels of puzzles to save Granny and show that wolf it's never good to mess with a girl who can master gravity.

Winter Wolves serves up a huge visual novel adventure RPG with deep tactical combat. As a slave to the Amazon empire, you're sent out with your princess, Loren, in search of a missing queen. In short order, you discover Loren's problems are only a tiny symptom of a greater evil plaguing the world... but will she be able to overcome her own shallow world view and limited life experience to become the hero everyone needs her to be? And does she even want to?

Whether you consider yourself an expert sleuth, someone who can readily pin the perpetrator in any whodunnit you watch, or are just a big fan of searching for hidden objects and solving puzzles, this adventure from Eipix Entertainment has the perfect walk-on role for you. Art Deco designs, well-rendered graphics and use of live actors are just some of the detailing adding to this entertainment value. Although the premise isn't new, it's presented with such fine-tuned finesse and grinning affability that it's reels of fun, from the opening segment to the roll of the credits.