The night is dark and full of terrors. You are one of them. You cannot see, but you can hear, and though they may hear you coming, they will not be able to stop you. Because he deserves it. Jord Farrell presents The Hunter, an intense, challenging, and intensely challenging, unique top-down stealth-based horror adventure, originally developed as part of the "you only get one" Ludum Dare 28 competition, now expanded and refined for a final release.

Fever Blue isn't the name of some hair product, but it'll leave your scalp tingling like one. In this short puzzle shooter made for Ludum Dare, you're told that the markings on the ground will guide the way, but you've still got to figure out how to use them while navigating a maze of deadly turrets and monsters.

If two apples and five pears cost 37 cents and five apples and three pears cost 45 cents, how come math problems are so boring? A Game of Numbers is a puzzle game that challenges the stereotype of boring math problems, by giving you a maze of numbers and operations to solve. Even if you're not a numbers buff, there's still a lot of fun to be had finding the right path to the exit, while keeping your numbers in check.

Pathologic is a surprisingly sane minimalistic game in which you must find your way through a maze made up of squares, collecting circles as you go, without stepping on the same square twice. With fifty ever more complex levels, this is a Snake-like bundle of frustration and fun which will satisfy your daily need for puzzly goodness.

Take some ordinary circular mazes, decorate them with gold coins, spiders and swinging flails, add a ball-shaped ninja and you get a nice physics puzzle game. Your goal is to get all the coins and then roll out of one maze and into the next, shooting and sneaking your way past dangerous adversaries. And remember: Ninjas never die.

It's dark. You're lost. You have to rely on sound to find the exit in this maze while avoiding the traps laid for you... but something else is using sound to find you. Created for the Ludum Dare "minimalist" theme, this simple game that tasks you with finding your way out before something finds you. Though slow and repetitive, the formidable atmosphere of tension the game creates with sound and simple lines alone is truly remarkable.

Pipkin Games is trying to tie your brain in knots with something that should be simple. Roll a ball in a maze to an exit. Easy, right? Well, except for the fact that there are coloured keys, doors, locks, paint blotches, and more all strewn across different overlapping layers you'll have to hop in and out of holes to travel through.

If you've ever played with a bottle of oil and water, you already understand the basic mechanic of Liquid 2, a friendly (and occasionally psychedelic) little physics game from OneGoodGame. Tilt the maze to guide as much liquid as you can into the goal, navigating hazards and picking up bonus drops along the way.

The dungeon you're trapped in was designed by Eyezmaze, which means escape depends on combining items in the proper way. But only the toppest-notch puzzle solvers have even a chance of escaping the Grow Maze. The three-dimensional navigation gets a little getting used to, but this is definitely another classic installment of a classic series.

Light up all the hexagons in this tile based puzzler. Without backtracking, use your mouse to trace a path until all the tiles are lit. The mazes get more complicated as you go on, getting larger and adding special tiles. What starts out as beautifully simple, ends up fun and challenging.

All you really, really want to do is find your car keys and get away from the lonely, isolated cabin in the woods... but with the hedge maze surrounding the property (because everyone has a hedge maze) filled with malicious, supernatural children who want to play with you, you'll need to move fast and carefully... until your flashlight's battery dies. More concept that full game, but beautifully designed for its 48 hour creation period.

What springs to mind when someone says the word "maze"? Probably not an image of a butterfly dancing along a series of colored tiles to the sound of piano keys. Sergey Mohov, on the other hand, envisioned exactly that, turning the butterfly and piano vision into a gorgeously styled maze puzzle game by the name of Dedale. With music provided by Fractures, it is up to you to brave 100 levels of tile coloring, butterfly leading, maze escaping fun.

Developed by advergamesters supreme B-Reel, Cube: A Google Maps Experiment transforms locales across the globe into levels inspired by those maze toys where you must roll a tiny metal ball through a labyrinth, all while highlighting features of Google Maps. A little ephemeral in gameplay, but very, very pretty, Cube is smart futuristic fun.

Step inside the world of Fracuum, a top-down maze shooter where every inward move zooms you in to the next layer of the game. Made in just 48 hours for a Ludum Dare competition themed around Tiny Worlds, Tyler Glaiel may have given you a bigger challenge than you think. Can you finangle your way through the fiery funnel and fight the foes to find freedom?

Need a zen break for your tired brain cells? Always wanted to create pixel art of Che Guevara or a man on a palm tree, but lacked the artistic skills? Now by solving some simple mazes in Maze-a-Pix Light, you can draw and relax at the same time! It's all part of the magic of Conceptis Light.

No wait, come back! This one is satire, I promise! For one, there's its pedigree: Anna Anthropy, master designer of such games as Mighty Jill Off and Redder, someone who clearly knows from killer pixel art, engaging concepts, and uber-difficulty minus uber-frustration. Then, there's its sponsor, adult swim a network that time has shown to have quite the track record in promoting works that capture just the right blend of retro aesthetics and modern sensibilities. And, last, but not least, there is the fact that Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars is a heck of a lot of fun to play. It's a high-quality throwback to 80s arcade-style risk-reward action whose gameplay sucks you into a frantic world of patterns and rhythms, scratchy sounds and blocky graphics, high scores and extra lives. And Lesbian-Spider Queens, of course.

Crystal Runner, the new action game release from Lionwood Studios, has quite the classic arcade sensibility. In it, you run around "Crystal World" collecting coins, rescuing people, rotating rooms, and dropping bombs in order to avoid being fried by malevolent black holes, all while racing the clock... I think Kevin Flynn was playing something like that back in 1982. However, while its inspirations are clearly old-school, its visuals and gameplay make for a nice modern remix.

Oozy and the Tower of Wulu is a new action adventure and puzzle game from Oddity Games. Oozy is a cute lil' alien mollusk. Oozy has a dream. Oozy wants to slime the whole world. To do this, Oozy needs a magical shard; one currently held at the top floor of the Tower of Wulu. All Oozy needs to do is climb through fifty levels of a top-down maze, sliming baddies, exploding ooze, collecting lime jellies, and battling bosses all the while. Won't you help poor Oozy to realize his vision?

Track down nine bodies in a brain-bending maze of unreal proportions brought to you by Ian Snyder. The premise is simple, and so is the gameplay, but the otherworldly design and lack of narrative combine to create an oddly meditative experience where the only real meaning is the one you give to it.

Ready for some spelunking? Descend into the depths of this fiendishly difficult little isometric puzzler, where the goal is just to get to the exit... which only opens once all the floor tiles have fallen... and is usually behind some traps, switches, and unbreakable green crystals. All in a day's work!

Remember those choking-hazard-tastic plastic maze toys you would get as a kid, usually as a dinky prize for something? Relive those happy memories in Sand Trap, a puzzle where you rotate a box to pour the sand trapped within into a pail. It's another fine HTML5 game from Gopherwood Studios, and a runner up in our Casual Gameplay Design Competition #8.

In Sorcerer's Maze, by David Frankel, play as Clyde Michaels, intrepid explorer, who must explore a mysterious mansion that stands alone in apocalyptic desert where he lives. It plays similar to Bomberman combined with one of the NES Metal Gears: you guide Clyde through the labyrinth of the house, avoiding or destroying skulls, ghosts, mermen and other creepy-crawlies on the way.

Not quite a pipe puzzle and not quite a gear puzzle, Grayscale is a melding of the two genres into something both unique to play and easy on the eyes. The difficulty ramps up quite nicely and is enough to hold interest through the levels as you struggle to produce the black and white fireworks that denote success. Quite a lot of brain twisting, turning, and teasing bundled up into a beautiful little bow.

The title, Finding Friends, is apt for this short and simple game that packs a satisfying, emotional experience. You start the game wandering around in the darkness, a little black square (with cute little white eyes) against a black background, in a maze with black walls. It's with the help of the friends you find that you'll be able to find your way to the exit of the maze.

What happens when the notorious Mr Evil has stolen some of the greatest works of art in history, and Batman is too busy hanging out on rooftops brooding about the girlfriend he doesn't have to be of any help? Why, you enlist none other than world famous detective Zigmond III to save the day, of course! Help navigate 20 increasingly clever mazes Sokoban style, avoiding lasers and dead-ends, to rescue real masterpieces! Just be sure to watch out where you point that mirror.

We added a new mini-game to the sidebar over the weekend. This one is named just "Tiny Game" and it was created exclusively for JIG by the Flash and casual game wizard, Tonypa. There are a number of features that make this little gem exceptional, besides the little gems that you must collect.

Playing equal parts as a maze, a hide-and-seek game and a guessing game, the idea of Neon Maze is to run around a glowing labyrinth in your little blur-pod, changing colours to open up new areas, while attempting to find the exit platform. The graphical presentation and surprisingly intricate level design make this one a winner.

Escape from the Starship is an escape game that uses sound to convey the relative proximity of monsters that you must avoid. The starship is composed of a maze of rooms, each of which is composed of homogeneous grey dots. Each dot represents a floor tile on which you may land. The sound you hear, however, ultimately determines whether that tile is safe.

At first glance, Off Balance looks just like all those other maze games where you move your mouse from Point A to Point B without hitting any walls. And indeed, that's the general idea. You control a preternaturally cheerful ball of cotton on a mildly psychedelic quest through 25 stages full of obstacles. The trick is in the steering.

Mallet Mania is Nitrome's newest production, a Marble Madness-type puzzle game. By using what appears to be a wireframe croquet mallet, you whack your ball with varying direction and power to guide it through maze-like levels to the goal. Stating the obvious but still worth noting, Nitrome once again stays with its tried-and-true pixel graphics and vibrant color scheme.

Kava-what? Is it a Pacific island drink of shamans and storytellers? No, Kavalmaja is the latest game from the brilliant Tonypa. A departure from his usual explorations of the abstract, Kavalmaja is a tile-based, Zelda like exploration game, except you have a wacky, randomly generated name. Unlike Zelda, it strips away combat, re-emphasizing the flow of the maze.

Trapped is a series of 5 adventure puzzle, maze games that start with a minute long "training level" and progresses to 30 minute long (if you play it ten times and memorize the maze) high quality casual gameplay experiences. You are a lonely little arrow, trapped, as the title suggests, in a maze full of simply-shaped enemies set on keeping you there for eternity. Escape if you can.

In Rat Maze 2, you are a mouse in a maze and you must collect all the pieces of cheese in the shortest time possible. Use the arrow keys for movement to zip around the maze. Running over a cheese is as good as eating it, so no time is wasted collecting them all. Simple retro fun from the highly talented developers at PixelJam.

The old "navigate through a maze" concept enjoys a small rebirth in the form of Overhead Persistence, a gorgeous Flash game by Acrid Rose. Guide the cursor through each level avoiding the walls and any other obstacles you come across. Normally a game like this wouldn't be anything special, but Overhead Persistence provides a stunning audio and visual package along with a level editor and other extras to make a worthwhile experience.

Back in 1980, Midway released an innovative maze game called Rally X. It involved the player driving a rally car through a maze collecting flags while avoiding enemy cars. Baja is an excellent Shockwave 3D implementation of the traditional gameplay first seen in Rally X, and delivered to you within the convenience of your browser.

Maze is another delightfully simple and accessible casual Web game by GameDesign of Japan. The object of this action puzzle game is to find the exit to each increasingly larger maze level within the time limit.

Iso-Infected is an action arcade Flash game created by Thorsten Diessner of Germany. With gameplay similar to the classic arcade sensation, Marble Madness, the object of the game is roll a ball around to collect all 15 blue gems hidden throughout the many areas of the game 'world'.

Philip Lenssen was very kind to send word that he has a brand new game added to his collection of Games for the Brain. LetterMaze is a sesquipedalian game in which the player first memorizes the spelling of two long words. Next, a maze is presented within which the mouse is used to simply touch spell the words within the time limit. The game is ...

NoName Games are a couple of games with no name, simply referred to as NoName Game #1 and NoName Game #2, created by MadMax of Poland. An action avoidance game of hand-eye coordination, the games are similar in design to DR3I and Reverse that were previously reviewed here.

While on the subject of Pacman, several months ago there was a posting on Slashdot games about a Japanese programmer who re-created Pacman entirely in an Excel spreadsheet. Upon reading the story I was both amazed and curious, so I downloaded the zip file from the site linked-to in the story. And it really was Pacman, right down to the cut scenes b...

Another classic game, and this one needs no introduction. Arguably the single game that injected the most excitement into arcade video games during their infancy. Original game: copyright Namco, 1980; this version hand-coded in Flash by Paul Neave.