Nanny Mania follows a formula similar to downloadable games such Cake Mania where you play a working woman going through the daily grind in order to make a living. The Mayor of Suburbia and his wife are too busy to cook and clean up after their growing family, so it's your job to straighten furniture, do the laundry, and perform all the little tasks that need to be done during the day. It's an extraordinarily well-made game that beats the competitors by leaps and bounds.
Shuffle is a combination of curling, marbles and billiards played with two rows of colored balls. You take control of the red team and must knock the yellows off the screen before the computer does the same to you. Grab a marble and drag the mouse to choose your throwing angle and power, then let it fly and watch the yellow marbles tumble off the screen.
Just when you thought you had seen the last of the Submachines for a while, Mateusz Skutnik comes around full circle and delivers another installment in one of the best point-and-click room escape game series on the Web. Submachine: Future Loop Foundation features music from a band of the same name (Future Loop Foundation) and it sets the mood very nicely for another enjoyable adventure.
Gravity: beneficial force of nature or oppressor of humankind? In the world of Amberial, it is both. In this unique platform game, you play the part of a bouncing ball, free to move about your world wherever you wish... horizontally. Unfortunately, you are not endowed with the ability to jump, so you must rely (primarily) on gravity and inertia to navigate vertically.
Similar to the Mystery Case Files series, Hidden Expedition: Everest takes the tried-and-true object hunting formula and whisks it away to exotic locations. You play one of several teams of explorers racing to be the first to climb the snowy mountain peak. The path is blocked, however, and the only way up is to locate a mysterious adventurer who knows of a hidden passage. Head off to South America and search the land for clues leading to this strange traveler.
The Gotmail team of Japan has just released their latest point-and-click adventure, and I am pleased to report this one has an English version available. The Shochu Bar takes place in a familiar setting for anyone who has played the other gotmail games, but the story here is a different one. This is the story of a woman who was considering leaving her boyfriend for good.
Ha55ii, creator of the previously reviewed Liquid Webtoy, has put forth another addictive webtoy: Powder Game. It bears a similarity in essence to the Falling Sand games, but takes it a step further with the introduction of wind and air pressure.
Lucky Coins is the latest release from Donut Games and it is a quick and chaotic game reminiscent of pinball or pachinko. The goal is simple: rack up as many points as possible by collecting stars, horseshoes, clovers and sevens, as well as hitting bumpers and moving platforms.
Crazy Mammoths is a racing title where your only action is to jump over other players and try to stay at the front of the line. Physics play a huge part in the game, as the slope you're on tilts as you slide, forcing you to tope with changing gravity and direction. Do your best to stay in the front!
Loose the Moose is the latest point-and-click, escape-the-room game from Bart Bonte. As with most other games like it, the premise is a simple one: you're in a room, you need to get out. You will have to be observant and think logically to solve puzzles that lead you to your escape.
Each time Ferry Halim of Orisinal.com releases a new game, I think I've seen the most beautiful and elegant combination of music and artwork in casual gaming history. With the latest release of The Crossing, Ferry has outdone himself once again. Control a platform to help leaping deer cross a stream. Go for the highest score possible while eyeing the gorgeous scenery and listening to a soothing piano tune.
Friend Chase is a simple arcade style game in which you run around a courtyard using only the mouse for movement and left button to jump. Your goal is always to collect friends by touching other people of the same color, though how many and in what combination differs from level to level.The gameplay is simple and delightful, and it managed to suck me in for quite a while.
ElectroCity is fun little Flash game intended "to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning" about the issues involved in power generation, cost, and environmental impact. It is obviously a very simplistic look at those issues, intended to give a broad overview and invite further research on the part of the player. It's also not a bad little town sim game to boot.
The hand drawn animations and old-school Jazz music soundtrack of Miestas and Menulis set the tone for an experience that is just this side of cool. The simplicity in controls leaves you wishing for something more polished until you realize the environments more than make up for it. Both games create a surreal world interactive art adventure to point-and-click through.
Juggler is a neat little diversion that I would categorize as a gravity-based game of mouse dexterity. The goal is simple: You control one paddle (ala breakout) while multiple balls bounce in sequence. You must maintain the balls in the air like a crazy one armed juggler.
A new release from Sean Gleeson is this original, online solitaire, 10-handed poker game of chance. Incorporating a uniquely animated, 10-armed gold statue called the Dashabooja, this new and unusual take on poker can even serve as an introduction to poker hands for those unfamiliar with the game.
Designed for our recent "grow" themed competition, Rob Allen of Foon.co.uk sent word today that he has finally finished his entry, and we have been scrambling ever since receiving his note to come up with a prize to award him for the latest entry ever. Eye Defence is an action puzzle game with elements of both Grow and Hapland rolled into one.
Echoes is a free downloadable game for Windows, and it is a manic shooter—and I do mean manic. The action in this game is fast, furious and very visually active. Binaryzoo's trademark neon graphics combined with the intense backgrounds may even have an effect on some, and those who can withstand the action will be pleasantly rewarded.
The latest offering from the folks down at NinjaKiwi. The objective is to protect yourself from a 30-round onslaught of enemies. Your chief weapons are flasks of potions that you lob at your enemies. You can control the potency of the weapon and the type of damage inflicted by altering the composition of your potion flask.
Far off in a dreamy land, tiny spots of light coax a little sleepwalking boy to follow his lost kitty. Never mind the fact that the little spots of light were what frightened the kitty away in the first place... Reunion, a gentle platform game by Mike Bithell, is a delightful journey full of good intentions and imaginary figments.
Dr. Steel has enlisted the talents of Starkraven Madd to take the task of growing his robot army and transform it into a stimulating puzzle game for the masses! It's a simple matter of placing the fuses in the proper slots to provide energy to the mysterious robot growth chamber.
Well, it's happened again. You've gone and gotten yourself stranded in the middle of enemy territory, surrounded by mines, turrets, and electrified Tesla gates. As usual, your only hope is to get to that little flag, even though all it ever seems to do is take you to another enemy-filled battlefield. Hmmm... Your steering mechanism also seems to be stuck, so you'll have to let the terrain dictate your path.
Eschewing the classic pixel art we are used to seeing in favor of a more spacey, out of this world appearance, Nitrome delivers yet another original and engaging platformer unlike any you may have played before. The objective in Space Hopper is simple enough: to find and collect all of the stars scattered about each level.
Mindscape is a side-scrolling platformer with a... twist, in that the entire level rotates as you play. There are three "worlds" with four levels each, which steadily progress from the creepily joyous Candy Meadows to the joyously creepy Center of Your Mind. It's a brilliantly conceived and executed platformer of the highest level.
Adventure games are tough to get right: they generally rely on the craftiness of their puzzles and the strength of their story, and balance is key. Hard puzzles are fine, as long as they involve some sort of logic. I don't appreciate the kind of adventure game that has you put masking tape over a mouse hole so it picks up the hair off the mouse, allowing you to use the hair and some glue to make a fake mustache to sneak into the library. What kind of sense does that make?! Who sneaks into a library? It's a public building!
Logic puzzle fans of Minesweeper and the recently reviewed Slither Link will enjoy this latest logic puzzle design from Wouter Visser, author of PLANned. The rules of Count Out are simple to understand: derive the locations of all the golden squares on the board from the numbers given.
Too often do we come across Flash games (especially shooters) that are either too brief or too repetitive. Luminara is a brilliant example of how to avoid those problems. It's simple enough: you are a dot and you fire bullets. And like any good game, the premise always stays exactly this simple. What gets more complex are the subsequent waves of enemies that come at you.
Game-Pure has just released a sequel to its fantastic Flash-based interpretation of the classic card game of Speed. SpeedCluster 2 upgrades the audio-visual presentation while maintaining the same engaging game play that made the original so compelling and fun.
NOBuzzle Tree is a beautiful logic puzzle game that is based on a simple concept; but its simplicity may be deceiving. The 'grow' theme implementation in this game, apart from the obvious sprouting tree blossoms, actually has a similarity to an Eyezmaze Grow game: Each puzzle has a correct sequence that will make the tree blossom in full. Can you find it?
Slither Link by Luke Harrison will tickle the fancies of you logic puzzle fans out there. While Luke gets the credit for making this polished Flash version of Slitherlink, the actual puzzle was invented by the Japanese publishing company Nikoli. Nikoli is also known for popularizing Sudoku, and publishes a number of other similar logic puzzles.
Sunday Lawn, a game from the creator of Castle Smasher, Donut Games, puts you in control of Charlie whose job is to cut the grass around his house. Unfortunately there are dogs, hedgehogs, and various other obstacles standing in the way of monocotyledonous perfection.
Enter the Rental House and note the viridian green walls. This Japanese-made adventure offers a quality game play experience packed with puzzles that will force you to think logically. It is a straight forward game of its genre with only a couple of minor pixel hunts involved. Easy enough to complete on ones own, and yet challenging to give you about an hour's worth of fun.
For a quick and addictive action game splurge, check out the recently released Angry Faic. Similar to Kill the Pacman, presented here way back a few years ago, Angry Faic is an arcade action game of skill that has you perpetually falling from the sky, constantly trying to land on tiny passing emoticons of a matching color.
Benjamin Colwell of Indie Flash Arcade has just released this remarkably attractive arcade Flash game that blends the casual gameplay of classic video games with a stylish (and stunning!) presentation. The result is POD: Planetary Orbital Defense, a 15-level shoot-em-up bonanza that culminates in a boss fight against an alien invasion.
OK, here's the scene: you're stranded with a handful of your best friends on some strange platforms suspended above an endless black abyss. You're understandably a little bit scared, all of you. You won't wander off onto a new platform unless you have at least one friend to go with you, and inevitably one of you chickens out and stays behind in relative safety—after all, they've seen some of the platforms drop away into nothing!
A crowd pleaser from one of our Friday link dumps, Spikey's Bounce Around is an arcade action game of skill in which you are given 10 tries per level to release all the butterflies while accumulating points. Butterflies are sealed in jars that must be broken to release their contents. A jar will break if it reaches the ground, thereby setting the trapped butterfly free.
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.
Acrobots are little 3-legged acrobatic robots that hop and jump around and react to each other. Together they form an unsual webtoy that includes impressive physics as well as some very fluid animation. Very nicely done by the same Vector Park folks that brought us Levers, and Feed the Head.
Colour Connect is a game created by Matthew Dirks and submitted to our first game competition. It was initially comprised of only a single, randomly generated level, and it showed a lot of potential. Responding to the feedback he received from the first version, Matthew recently reworked the design into a full-featured, multi-level game that is both fun and addictive.
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.
I think many people who frequent this site would agree: Tonypa is one of our favorite casual game designers. Grow Word, his submission to Casual Gameplay's second competition exhibits many of the characteristics that we have come to love about Tonypa's games: it's elegant, understated, and easy to learn but hard to master.
The popularity and success of Ninja Kiwi's recent Bloons game compelled the developer to put its next project on hold while they create another 50 levels to appease fans eager to pop More Bloons. But these levels promise to be even more difficult than the first batch.
A match-3 action puzzle game with zoo animals and a memorable soundtrack. While the moody animals are a nice touch, it is the Quest mode which makes this game enticingly addictive. As the zookeeper, you are set to 10 different tasks by your angry little boss. With clever variations, an emotional lot of animals and an uppity, cigar-smoking boss, Kiteretsu's Zookeeper will keep you busy and entertained.
If you haven't played Feed the Head lately, there are new features to explore! It represents a piece of interactive entertainment of a type we don't often see anymore. There is perhaps no goal, no win condition. It's just plain fun to play. An enjoyable little webtoy for you to discover on your own terms. Spend a couple minutes or an hour. Lose yourself. Feed your head. Escape.
Playing with blocks is a universal experience, being not only fun for all ages but also an essential tool in development. Students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology have taken that basic structure and created a marvelous strategy game that involves not only stacking blocks but, in a stroke that some would call brilliant but I call mandatory, knocking your opponent's structures down.
In Rapture Capture, take control of a ship with a tug wire attached by waving the mouse back and forth. The tug wire is your only defense against incoming enemies and munitions, use it as a whip to take out anything that comes at you. The tip of the tug wire is especially powerful, as you can even capture enemies with it and whip them around as a weapon. It's fantastic!
On from Eyezmaze just released a brand new game he made to celebrate the birth of a friend's baby, Galves Adventure. In this charming little point-and-click, adventure puzzle game, help baby Galves make it through to where the sleeping boss lion lay. Click on various items in the right sequence and at the appropriate times to advance the little baby up to the top, at which point a boss battle will commence.
Similar to the classic game Rack-O, Tower Blaster puts you in a race against the Viking hordes in a randomly-assorted tower of numbered blocks to must arrange them in order from lowest at the top to highest at the bottom. Finish your tower before your opponent finishes theirs, else the mighty Viking Axe destroys your own tower and the game is over.
Frog and Vine is a unique collection of puzzles entered in our second Flash game design competition by Matt Slaybaugh, creator of Escape to Obion. Frog and Vine is one of the more varied entries and features four types of puzzles that can be completed in any order. And if the name didn't give it away, each one involves frogs and/or vines!
The setting of O-RI-GA-MI is made entirely of pieces of folded paper, making it probably the only handcrafted ETR in existence. From the furniture to the code panel to the unconventional fauna, almost everything that you see has been created out of a piece of paper and photographed in position. When you play, don't rush through it like you might some other games; this one is meant to be savored.
Dot Action 2 is a cute little platformer with a personality. For those seeking some old-school gameplay, OffGao of Japan may have just what you're looking for. At first glance these games may appear as nothing special, but as was the case with many early video games, it's all about the gameplay.
Jardinains is an Arkanoid clone with a little something extra: the presence of 'nains—giggling little garden gnomes that will hurl potted plants at your bat, paralysing it and causing you to lose points. You can get your own back, though—if you can break the pot you win the points you would have lost, and if you can knock the giggling little brats off their perch, you can bounce them on your paddle to get points and power-ups.
Cannon Bods is a slick little action game where you must shoot falling pirates before they hit the water. The controls are easy and intuitive, and a nice touch is that as you hold down the mouse button for more power the trajectory line changes its shape to match your cannon's increased power, giving you an accurate look at exactly where your "ammo" will go.
Stone Cold Curling is another well-polished game by Preloaded, the makers of CDX and Shootin' Stars. It's a simple Flash version of curling where your goal is to slide stones to the end of a field and come as close to the center of the target as you can.
Enter the Vision Museum. You have been invited by your favorite celebrity to visit the VIP-only trophy room of famous performers at a local museum. You enter and, like most room escape games, you can't get out. Using your point-and-click finger and puzzle-solving prowess, collect items to solve puzzles in this gorgeous graphic adventure.
Aqui Griffin delivered a visually stunning entry to our recent game design competition that is as easy to pick-up and play as it is to look at. enQbate is a simple puzzle game in which the objective is to highlight all cells in play by mousing over them with the cursor and then clicking.
At first glance, the latest offering from Taro Ito's GameDesign appears to be just another Tetris clone, but closer inspection reveals gameplay dependent upon color rather than shape. In Porolith Flash, the objective is to stack and group shapes of the same color together to remove them from play.
Chick Chick Boom is a combat-style game that pits two teams of chicks against each other in a small divided field. Draw your attack and defense moves on an egg at the bottom of the screen and try to best your opponent. Chick Chick Boom also holds the priviledge of being one of two Flash games to be sponsored by Nintendo.
Dofi has just released a demo version of a new title for us to play with: Cat with Bow Golf. The name may sound strange, but that's only because the game is strange. You control a cat with a bow and arrows attached to a rope. By pulling back with the mouse, fire the arrows to pull the cat across the screen and try to hit the target on the other side.
You have entered the realm of Entombed, an amazing and surreal, first-person, point-and-click adventure game filled with puzzles, mazes, traps, acid moats, tunnels and a glimmering crystal cathedral. There is even a room carved from ice. These puzzles will tease your brain and give your grey matter a work out for sure.
Peggle is the latest arcade action game from PopCap, and currently available as a download for Windows or Mac. Think of a pachinko machine and an upside-down breakout game and you will be close to the unique and simple gameplay found in Peggle. It is a classic casual game: simple to understand, easy to pick-up and play, and difficult to master. Find yourself the nearest PC and download it now.
Something Amiss is an online adventure game created by Tucker Bowen to promote his book of the same name. It has a distinctly classic Lucas Arts adventure game flair with surprisingly good visuals and plenty of mystery surrounding the main character, Alice.
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.
There is something inherently gratifying about smashing or destroying something, even watching a building be demolished is good fun. So it should be no surprise that we see the concept come up a lot in games. Stephen over at Ninja Kiwi claims that his latest Flash game, "is based on the very simple fact that popping balloons is fun". And you know what? He's right! In Bloons you get to pop a lot of balloons!
You sit yourself down in front of an odd looking, dusty old monitor that displays what appears to be a radar screen with a few colored markers and controls along the outer edge. There are no instructions to be found anywhere, just the thrill of discovery by pointing and clicking with the mouse. You can do no harm to it; nothing is going to break or send you whirling into space without a helmet. So leave caution to the wind and boldly go into Orbit.
A new game from Donut Games, creator of Castle Smasher, has just rolled onto the web: Chicken & Egg. All of the cute chickens have been trapped in their eggs by the Easter Bunny. It's your job to match like-colored shells together by sliding the eggs across the grid. When the pairs come together, they hatch, revealing a set of rather bewildered chicks!
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.
From John Hattan comes BaffleBees, a quick, fun puzzle game for those on a coffee break. Be the best by ordering your bees around the hive until your entire honeycomb is filled with honey. The game has extremely simple graphics and almost zero sound. That said, it is fun and casual play. There are a multitude of other games on the site that are worth a look as well.
Tau'Ri Bedrock by Luca Deltodesco is an unusual and original platformer. In Bedrock you play a... slime? blob? that has been tasked to roll a boulder through levels upon levels of verdant terrain in order to return it to its parent rock. It's a lot like a simplified version of Loco Roco melded with the indie title Gish.
Matt Hammill's Gesundheit! is a beautifully hand-drawn, action puzzle game with a soothing toy-instrument soundtrack (you'll need it) and adorable sound effects. You play an allergic pig chafing under the invasion of hungry monsters from the mountains.The monsters can hear your footsteps, and if they see you, they'll eat you. But you have a secret weapon - your yummy snot!
Matt Hammill's Gesundheit! is a beautifully hand-drawn, action puzzle game with a soothing toy-instrument soundtrack (you'll need it) and adorable sound effects. You play an allergic pig chafing under the invasion of hungry monsters from the mountains.The monsters can hear your footsteps, and if they see you, they'll eat you. But you have a secret weapon - your yummy snot!
It's here! The next chapter in the captivating virtual island village sim is available to download. The follow-up to the monumentally successful Virtual Villagers game keeps the same formula as the original but adds all new puzzles, events, collectibles and more. It's the perfect follow-up to one of the most amazing casual games ever released.
Guxt is an original shooter created by Pixel, author of Cave Story, This work-in-progress download doesn't attempt to be revolutionary or even particularly modern, but Pixel's original music, sound effects and pixel-perfect sprites come together beautifully in this difficult but fair shooter.
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.
Bubble Tanks is a hypnotic and relaxing shooter if ever there was one. Man your bubble ship on an excursion through a vast bubble field seeking out hostiles to assimilate. The more bubbles you collect, the larger your ship and the greater your weapon become. But as you grow so do the enemies that you will find around you. It addictive and relaxing, a dangerous combination.
Danny Miller's Boomshine is a new riff on the chain-reaction action pioneered by Omega's Every Extend. The goal is to remove a given number of the colorful, floating dots moving around the screen. It would be a stretch to call Boomshine relaxing, but it is certainly refreshing, and a nice, albeit simple addition to a rapidly growing category of casual gameplay.
Tower of Babblers, an entry by Lars A. Doucet in our second Flash game design competition, is one part puzzle, one part frantic action game. It takes the contest theme of "grow" and morphs it a bit into "build", incorporating cute fuzzy creatures into one of the most unique titles entered into the competition.
Created by Philipp Lenssen, Games for the Brain is a series of almost 40 different puzzle games to exercise and challenge your brain. It's a remarkably well-designed site that features a good variety of puzzles to tickle your gray matter.
Dotville is a city-building Flash game along the lines of Civilization, but greatly simplified. You play the leader of a tribe of Dots (yeah, Dots) and must rise to the rank of Emperor in fifty turns, then defeat the evil empire of Squares. It's a simple game, and yet somehow very complex; a bit flawed, and yet fun despite it's quirks.
For those who've been to Clack and back, it's time for another puzzle adventure with Clack 2, as Sean Hawkes has been busy finishing up the next in what is shaping up to be a series of delightful puzzle games. If you haven't already played the original, you may want to go do that first as it is an excellent introduction to these wonderful and original, Flash mechanical puzzle toys.
It really is amazing to see such creativity sprout from a simple word, as with the recent competition and its "grow" theme. Beginning with a very simple premise of expanding rectangles on a grid to connect them, Wouter Visser creates a unique and enjoyable puzzle game entry with PLANned. In this 18-level game, there are only but a few rules that you need to know to get started.
Sphere is a great-looking room escape by Japanese developer neutral. The visuals have a wonderful polished 3D appearance that seem a bit surreal at times, almost as if you were inside a doll house. The challenge level is an almost perfect mix of vague clues and helpful hints that keep you interested without frustrating you.
The second installment in Shawn Tanner's Escape Series has been released: Escape Series #2: The Closet. Each game has no plot, no characters, and no motive, just bare-bones point-and-click room escaping. The first game had us trapped in a car, and now we've moved indoors and are stuck inside a closet. Search the area for items you can use to help you escape!
On of Eyezmaze continues to impress and amaze us with his game development skills, and Dwarf Complete is no exception. Perhaps his most ambitious project to date, the game was commissioned for the online RPG, Lineage II, and it even features dwarves from that game. Dwarf Complete is an amazingly good adventure puzzle game with quality, presentation and gameplay that all helped push this title to the top of the Best of 2007.
David Scott is back. If you don't recall who that is, you will certainly remember Flash Element TD, David's first JIG-featured title. In Flash Circle TD, you will immediately find yourself at home with similar concepts as before. It is your duty to defend your position against wave after wave of various types of monsters.
The new Nest of Moai game features a bigger screen, more stages, and an interesting "zoom" feature that lets you take a closer look to find hidden moai statues. Simply move your mouse over the statues as they appear. Quirky, casual fun as one might expect from a game with Japanese roots.
Turning Moai features the same statues from the previous moai games but with a slightly different take on the gameplay. Instead of rescuing or touching the heads, you must move the cursor to make them face the same direction. Same great Moai sound and music, same catchy gameplay!
Earning an honorable mention in our 2nd Flash game competition is Rings and Sticks, a captivating and original puzzle game from designer Komix and created expressly for the competition. More so than any other entry in the contest, Rings and Sticks took the Grow theme and made it a fundamental element of the gameplay.
Frost Bite is another great-looking game from Nitrome, creators of Hot Air and Scribble. Your goal is to climb to the top of each stage, fending off monsters and collecting bonus items along the way. The best part is that you get a grappling gun you can use to latch onto platforms and swing yourself upwards. The gun doubles as a harpoon to attack enemies and gather items, making its use a central element in the game.
Free Rider is a brand new take on the massively popular Line Rider, which you voted best web toy of 2006. Pete adds several interactive elements to the mix that actually serve to create an entirely different experience. It's more like Line Rider meets Teagames' BMX series, the result of which is a create-your-own-level style of game.
Apple Farm is a simple and very stylish arcade game in the style of Breakout. You control a cute little bear trying to catch apples the bouncing bird knocks from the trees. Gather fruit and drop it in the basket as quickly as you can and try not to let the bird touch the ground!
Tabuto is a fast-paced action game with a strangely mesmerizing concept. Cards fall from the top of the screen, and your job is to touch them with the cursor before they vanish. The more you collect in a row, the more points you get, but if you drop 20 it's game over.
Sprout is a creative and original puzzle adventure game created for our second Casual Gameplay Design Competition. From the moment you lay eyes on it you know it's something special. The unique artwork for a Flash game has a paper-cut appearance that lends a storybook atmosphere to the game. This environment perfectly suits the role you play as a young seedling trying to find its way home. Sprout has everything we love to see in a Flash game: originality, a simple design, and a beautiful presentation.
Block Quest, the sequel to Block Action, is a free online platformer game with hundreds of user-created levels to play. Run, climb and wall jump your way through the surprisingly deep variety of stages of varying difficulty and creativity. It's a very simple game idea that has turned to gold in the hands of its users.
Instead of simply moving one object around the screen to avoid the falling dots, in Formation you must control an entire setup of orbs that rotate and periodically change position. Touch one of the flashing white balls that fall from the top of the screen and it becomes part of your formation, thus forcing you to be mindful of yet another ball's position and causing your brain to hurt.
A brand new game from varStudios, the creators of Neon Wars 2, has recently graced the internet: Abstract Sea. Using simple but stylish visuals and a nice electronica soundtrack, the game puts you in control of an armed ship at sea fending off enemy attacks. The game has a very visceral feel to it with screen-shaking explosions and a few power-ups floating atop the deep blue sea.
Orange, a follow up to the first color-themed game Red, is another physics-based Flash project by designer Case. In the center of the screen sits a heavy orb. You control a mobile orange dot with the mouse and can fire shots at the nearest object. Move around the screen shooting at the orb in an attempt to push it off the screen. Get too close, though, and its gravity starts to pull you in.
Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst is a "hunt the item" game similar to Hidden Expedition: Titanic. The Queen of England (affectionately known as "Queenie") has sent you to investigate the mystery behind this creepy cluttered mansion. But beware. Not only is this house abandoned, and likely haunted, but it is also filled with strange twists, puzzling locks and hidden clues.
You might have guessed that with a name like Growbal Warming, it is likely the next entry from our "grow" themed competition; and you'd be right! The game was designed and created by Richard Ohanian, a fellow alum of RIT, and it features gameplay that mimics the futility we potentially face with the problem of global warming.
The rather strange online flash game Toon Crisis 2 combines photographs of real locations in the UK with cartoon enemies leaping out of bushes to attack you, all in the traditional click and shoot style. If you think that's weird, check out the weapon: your right hand with thumb and forefinger extended.
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