In this action-puzzle, simulation game from Edit Undo, sit at the railway control desk, routing trains through color-coded stations, carefully changing directions on the appropriate junctions. Send locomotives along the correct tracks toward their destinations, all the while avoiding an epic fail: screams, explosions and carnage!

It's not Halloween, but there's always an open space for abandoned theme parks, midget jesters, and overweight clown ghosts in your gaming schedule! Weird Park: Broken Tune fits you in the fedora of a detective set on the case of John Flatter, a journalist who went missing in the town of Fairy Gate. You end up in an old theme park, complete with derelict equipment and dusty attractions that look like they're about to eat you. A journalist's work is never done, however, and the more you poke your nose around, the stranger things get.

MMORPGs a little dull? Then fire up this fast, frantic, and fun multiplayer co-op RPG shooter that pits you and other players against endless enemies in the search for fame, treasure, and the chance to ultimately tackle a god. Best enjoyed in short bursts and with a bunch of like-minded buddies, it's a chaotic, exciting experience that's also completely free.

Trapped in a cave. Laser things shooting at you. Buttons everywhere. Spikes even more everywhere. It's a normal day for our featureless friend in Focus, a puzzle platform game originally by Karoshi author Jesse Venbrux. Ported to the browser world by Joseph Ivie, Focus features over 50 levels of extra difficult action, sticking you in enclosed rooms with all manner of dangers and challenging you to use your platforming skills to make it out alive.

Nani-Quest, the newest of the many not-so-typical escape games that Detarou is so famous for, dumps you into the middle of what looks like a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon raid gone awry. Detarou has a knack for combining surreal elements with surprisingly logical puzzles, and such is the case in Nani-Quest as well... albeit this one's a little easier on the surreal than, say, Dayori or Office.

You may know a saying about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. Well, adventurers have their own saying: "Get into a fight with a demon, die or become horribly cursed." The hero of this dungeon crawler from Awoker Games clearly didn't get that memo, and thus he's forced to journey into the Cursed Dungeon in search of a cure.

Few things are as exciting as a well-made casual solitaire game. Well, few things that aren't cake, hugs from puppies, or driving up to a traffic light just as it turns green and starts dispensing candy. In the absence of that miracle, though, the latest game from Big Fish Games Studios will certainly fill that fun-shaped void in your life. Fairway is an enormously well-polished game of golf-themed tri-peaks solitaire. Take cards from the pile, pair them with the face-up card below, uncover a few neat power-ups, and try to clear the screen without breaking par!

It must be rough to be so fragile that even a bump against a ceiling will remove precious body parts. And yet that's the situation before you in Hanger 2, a small yet fun and addictive physics game. Swing from rope to rope, as with a grappling hook, to reach the exit of each level without losing too many body parts.

Spiders. Why did it have to be a top-hatted, web-slinging, physics puzzling spider? Because it's Halloween, sillies, and a fun way to honor the holiday is by playing this whimsically macabre game. But beware! The difficulty curve might just scare you! Definitely a game to tingle the spines of the physics puzzle pro, but even the less adept should give a few levels a try for some spooky fun.

Aah, the salt of the sea. Deadly waves threatening to drown passersby. Armed frigates firing on civilians. Mummies scuttling across the sandy beaches, infecting helpless folks with their embalmed charm. It's just an ordinary day for the citizens in Open Sea!, a satisfying and great-looking mobile arcade game by The Pixelizers. To get everyone to safety, you're going to need a little bit of luck and a whole lot of lightning bolts.

Most people would pay money to use a matter-absorbing gun to run through a gamut of puzzles, yet evil scientists still feel the need to kidnap people to do it. In this platform puzzler from Peregrimm you'll need to absorb and rearrange various objects to solve puzzles and reach the exit of each level. You're given unlimited shots to play and an efficiency rating at the end of the level so you can replay each to find a better solution. It's a novel and unique game that is a lot of fun to play.

Can't decide if you want to play a rhythm game or a good old fashioned dungeon crawling RPG? Now you can have both, with Iridium Studios' hybrid gem, Sequence. Originally released on the Xbox Live Arcade platform, Sequence takes a little bit of music, adds in combat, spells, weapons and items, shuffles them around in a sort of time management kind of manner, and sets it before you with a side of humor and a dose of "what the heck was that I just fought and why did it insult my mother?".

Everyone wants to get into this plummeting into the bowels of the earth business: robots, ninjas, skeletons, pirates, even Santa is jumping over ledges and rolling down slopes. What's down there? Cake and ice cream? Play Plumet 2, a simple but addictive action game from Person333 to find out.

Only the best trained monsters can make it through LittleGiantWorld's Monster Arena, a turn-based rpg, adventure, and sim game all bundled into one neat package. Whether you'd love a fire-breathing companion or a game of rock-paper-scissors, Monster Arena has something for everyone to enjoy

Mage Gauntlet, from Hook Champ and Super QuickHook creator Rocketcat Games, is the modern 16-bit action role playing game you've been waiting for. Everything about it is retro, from the level design to the pixel art, only instead of having to dust off your SNES, you just fire up your iOS device. In a decidedly awesome twist, this RPG doesn't take hours of playing before you can get into it, opening it up for shorter mobile sessions and casual gamers alike!

This new puzzle-heavy hidden object adventure by Sandlot Games contains a generous blend of puzzles and hidden object scenes to keep you actively engaged throughout your adventure. Join Tess as she confronts nightmarish scenes of skeletons, monsters threatening to devour young children, and dungeons of trapped souls as well as imagination-inspired fantasies: a bee with a mechanical unicorn, a room covered in gold leafing, and an Escheresque hedge maze. Alternating from beautiful childhood fantasies to twisted fears and dystopic visions, every scene is a gorgeous piece of art. Playing Sphera is well worth the experience, just be sure to have a cheerful something or other standing by for when you're done.

Normally you might want to avoid chasing maniacal tentacled Doctors into hellish nether-realms, but in this case you've got someone you need to rescue... several someones, as it turns out. In this imaginative hidden-object adventure, you'll need to delve into the nightmares of children whose fear is being extracted for... well, to find out why, you'll need to play yourself.

Drawn has returned. The third game in the series, Drawn: Trail of Shadows, dares to outdo its predecessors in what simply must be the most enchanting hidden object adventure game to date. The visuals have improved (if you can believe it!), the storytelling is even more intriguing, and the puzzles are as rich as before. Good hidden object games are hard to come by, so when you find a game this great, you'd best dive right in.

Not too long ago a relative newcomer to adventure/hidden object hybrids, ChaYoWo games, took us on a journey through the heart of Southern India in The Dark Hills of Cherai. Now they're back and once again the player will be transported to a place few will ever be able to visit in The Dark Hills of Cherai: The Regal Scepter.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who couldn't stay apart no matter how often it seemed like the world and their own emotions were trying to make that happen. A puzzle platformer with a beautiful sense of style and a sweet, nostalgic look at relationships, Mattia Traverso's game is short but well made and surprisingly warm and fuzzy. D'awwww.

As the Baroness Milena, you command the last of the troops of the kingdom of Emaeron, which has fallen to the forces of a demon horde. Using your mouse to control the various aspects of the game, it is your duty in Menara Games' turn-based strategy/tower defense mix, Demonrift TD, to restore the empire and send the enemy back to whatever depths from which they came.

In Concerned Joe, the title character has to move or he'll die, and it'll take all your platforming skills to get him through nineteen fiendish puzzle and trap-filled stages. A high difficulty game whose superb voice acting, fantastic art and adroit programming provides rewards that are more than worth the effort.

One of our favorite Flash games of all time here at JIG has just received an update! The Asylum, for abused cuddly toys, has just received a new patient and your care and treatment is needed to cure it from its psychological ills. Dr. Wood joins the other adorable messed-up toys: Kroko, Lilo, Dolly, Dub and Sly, and each one is desperately in need of your help!

Mining. Building. Fighting. Constructing. In the real world, all of these things are rough, painful sorts of jobs that most people aren't very interested in doing. In the gaming world, they're the Holy Grail of entertainment. Enter King Arthur's Gold, a multiplayer (with some single player, too) construction and combat game similar to Terraria, Minecraft, and hempuli's miniature masterpiece Masjin. Teamwork is the central focus of the game, and while some players will be busy mining and building, others will head out for direct combat with the enemy. How much more exciting could it get?!

It seems like only a few days ago we were given a new installment in Yoshio Ishii's gorgeous Hoshi Saga series, and today another one, number 8, lands in our virtual laps: Hoshi Saga Dokuringo. But before you go off playing this one, please note the rating. This latest set of levels contains some risqué imagery, as well as some way more difficult levels.

Ah, the Victorians. There are many tropes from their literature that still haunt us today, including eerie women dressed in white appearing at lonely intersections, pale, blood-sucking gentlemen in evening attire, and dark-skinned men wearing turbans. Perhaps the greatest of the era's paranoias was the thought of being buried alive, which permeated the culture to the point of having little bells and pulls installed on coffins. That fear was encapsulated in one of Edgar Allan Poe's great stories which has now been turned into a stunning adventure/hidden object hybrid, Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Premature Burial. Yes, ERS Game Studio is back with their third adaption of a Poe story, and this one is a killer! (sorry, bad pun)

The cactus is back-tus! Cactus McCoy, spikey green distributor of western vengeance is back, and this time he has competition. He's met up with technicolor bird lady Ella Windstorm who spins him a tale of the Volados: a fallen civilization laid waste to by a mysterious cult known as the Reptaras. It seems that there's a secret vault that contains the lost treasure of the Volados, including the magical Serpent Blade. With Ella kidnapped, it's up to McCoy to find the vault before the Volados and their Enemigo henchmen, recover the Serpent Blade, save his possible love interest, and make out like a cactusy bandit with all the loot he can carry. A worthy sequel to the earlier installment released in March, Flipline Studios' Cactus McCoy 2: The Ruins of Calavera will steal as many hours of action-platforming as the original did, pardner.

Take another trip into the bizarre world of Detarou's escape games. Whether it's from the strangeness or not, it's your mission in Dayori to find a way out of this curious house. Fans of Detarou's work may find this offering somewhat mild compared to the others. That's not to say you won't see their regular cast of characters that we've all grown to love. If you haven't had your hand at a wacky Detarou escape game, this is a great introduction. You may just find yourself giving all their games a try!

Why can't villages just stay saved? You might have thought you deserved a break after your heroic efforts in the first Arcuz, but a vengeful demon lord and the greedy human who promised to free him in exchange for immortality prove otherwise... especially when there's a village blissfully parked right on top. Go on another top-down action RPG adventure in this simple but fun game packed with enemies, skills, weapons and more for the hack-and-slash fanatic in all of us.

Ding dong the witch is dead! Wait, what? She's still not dead? Not only that, the old hag is back and badder than ever creating havoc in the museum in Echoes of the Past: The Citadels of Time, the latest adventure/hidden object hybrid by Orneon and sequel to both Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone and Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows. Perhaps it's time to stop hanging out in that darn museum? Just saying.

You may have escaped Aurora before, but in Aurora 2, it's time for you to go after her in another point and click horror/Western from Pastel Games. Middle games in a series are tough to pull off, but this one lays the groundwork for what could be a seriously cool conclusion.

Playing with your mouse, you have to kill all the monsters on-screen. To do so you have to remove blocks or pop bubbles by clicking on them, alternatively slashing through chains with a sweep movement. The point is to work out the sequence required to get all of the monsters. There is a difficulty curve, but it steeps slowly over the fifty levels. If you enjoyed the rest of the series, you'll be all over this. And if you haven't, but like the idea of some physics-puzzle fun, give it a play!

This gratifyingly fun action-platformer by Page52 departs from typical at its very start as your screen fills with intricately interesting sketches and then it continues into the extraordinary, stopping to command: "Draw your own..." weapon, hat, enemy. Although dotted lines suggest the shape of such invention, in your Sketch Quest notebook, you're limited only by imagination.

Marcy and Justine just want to do a good deed, handing out free personal safety alarms on campus. How dare those stupid students feel so safe that they refuse this offer? Clearly they don't understand the danger they're in. It's time to teach them, brawler style, in this former Ludum Dare action satire entry.

It's super space puzzle action! In space! And, you get to be a delivery boy! In space! How could life get any more exciting than that? How about pirates, a snarky robot companion, a boss with an attitude to match his mustache, black holes, portals, and bombs? There, that should do it. The comedy-laden puzzle game Galaxy Express for iOS devices is all about twisting your brain while making you laugh, and it does so while looking spectacular!

Celestial Mechanica is a quietly impressive platform adventure (a.k.a. "metroidvania") game along the lines of Knytt Stories and the Robot Wants series of games. Created by Roger Hicks (author of rComplex) and Paul Veer (animator of Super Crate Box), it's the sort of game that sits quietly off to the side, never begging you to play it, but once you do, you'll be hooked 'til the end.

Play as the lovable cast of Mercenary, Inc. as they do their best to defeat the Evil Witch of the Evil Cave in the solid, entertaining RPG Crystal Story by Emmanuel Salva Cruz. The controls of Crystal Story should be familiar to regular players of RPGs, where your mouse is used to navigate the various menus. Crystal Story isn't innovative, it's just a good RPG with anime style graphics, epic battle music and a story to put a smile on your face.

One part strategy, one part text-driven choose your own story adventure, King of Dragon Pass is exactly the game you want on your mobile device. Ported to iOS from the original PC/Mac release of 1999, this storytelling experience is rich in its own history and affords you a vast amount of control over what happens within. Wage war, explore the land, trade with your neighbors, manage your tribe, and read pages upon pages of text explicating the world you're actively participating in. It's great to see a title like this brought back for a new wave of gamers to play, and it works quite well on the iPhone platform.

Belle's happily-ever-after is cut short when her Prince is once again cursed by the same evil enchantress who turned him into a Beast. The entire kingdom has fallen under a dark spell, and Belle is the only one left to stop it, assuming she can avoid the dangers and dark magic twisting her world at every turn in this stunning, engrossing hidden-object adventure from the makers of Mystery Legends: The Phantom of the Opera.

Blocks That Matter, an indie game from Swing Swing Submarine, likes to do things a little bit differently. It likes to break the rules, mix up genres, tear down that fourth wall, and borrow the best from some of the most popular games ever released and turn it into something new. Blocks That Matter is part Tetris, part Minecraft, part Dig Dug, part platformer all wrapped into one, with a cute main character leading the whole thing up that serves as the perfect gateway to a game you won't be able to get enough of.

A popular reality program goes terribly wrong when one of the contestants appears to die onscreen during the finale, and the show promptly goes dark. Things only start looking more grim when the rest of the show's stars go missing, and you're called in to track them down. Easier said than done since the show isn't exactly ordinary, and The Maze is one unbelievable reality show whose sets are as surreal and clever as they are deadly. Track down the missing people in this imaginative and engrossing hidden-object adventure from Elephant Games, but keep your eyes open... in the Maze, you aren't alone, and you're never safe...

Often when game designers try to throw everything but the kitchen sink into an adventure/hidden object hybrid, what you end up with is an incoherent mess. In the case of Voodoo Chronicles: The First Sign by Space Monkey Games, start with a hard-boiled detective film noir, cross it with a horror movie, add in elements of steampunk, and the result is a fantastic, glorious sprawling mess of a game that is very difficult to put down and harder still to walk away from.

The Night Circus is a text-based advergame that requires Facebook or Twitter made by Failbetter Games in collaboration with the author of the book by the same title. By turns elegant, mystical, adorable, fantastic, ornate, and even delicious, it will pique your curiosity as effectively as it satisfies your craving for the most beautiful imagery of all: that which you see with your mind's eye.

Ready for some very serious RPG adventuring? The Ultima series has been grabbing players and pulling them into complex worlds for over 30 years, creating games that may look primitive on the surface but have helped define what a role playing game is since the beginning. The titles have graced almost every gaming platform known to humans, from the Apple II to the NES, PlayStation, and modern computers. Now, thanks to the nostalgia-hungry folks at GOG.com, the Ultima series is being made available as a series of digital downloads, packaging the games together in groups of three for all to enjoy!

Sing it with me! Jay Is Gamers sing this song! Doo-dah! Doo-dah! Online race-track nine miles long! Oh the doo-dah day!. Okay the track in The Race, a multiplayer action advergame developed by Akestam.Holst and Plan8 for Swedish horse-racing board ATG, measures only about eight inches and the horses are the size of a nickel. But the chance to feature to take on jockeys from all over the world should certainly the camp-town ladies singing.

Statues coming to life and racing through the streets? It all sounds preposterous, at least until you see it happen right in front of you. Suddenly, all the other stuff, like the malevolent little imp and the soul-stealing crystals, sounds a lot more plausible than it did a few minutes ago. Crack a supernatural mystery and lock horns with an old foe in this creative and atmospheric hidden-object adventure title from the makers of Haunted Legends: The Queen of Spades.

Taking its high production values and evident love for the medium toward a more comic, Monkey Island-esque direction with its new point-and-click adventure game, Nick Toldy and the Legend of Dragon Peninsula, Red Herring Labs gives those who yearn for the glory days of Sierra Entertainment a meaty afternoon's entertainment, and probably win some new fans to the genre as well.

From Halfbrick Studios comes a cave flying-style game with the power to keep you playing for many multiple hours. Jetpack Joyride takes the best from jump-and-run-style games and mixes in a host of achievements, missions, store upgrades, vehicles and more, crafting a game that looks phenomenal and will keep you doing "just one more joyride" dozens of times in a row.

The newest adventure/hidden object hybrid from HitPoint Studios, The Secrets of Arcelia Island is an experience in sumptuous environments, beguiling scenery and affable puzzles. Help Greta on her mission to save Arcelia Island from the witch Sirenia's curse by gathering clues, searching for objects and solving puzzles in expertly rendered realms that mix fantasy and mystery, surrealism and substantive locales. On the way you'll meet and help island inhabitants including a regal fairy queen and king, an elf, a satyr, and the sorceress Sirenia herself.

A short-but-sweet platform puzzle adventure. Rather than raid the employee fridge, one behatted and unusually bouncy worker responds to his company's financial crisis by entering a puzzle filled dungeon to grab a treasure. Somewhat like I Don't Even Game, figuring out what to do in each stage is sometimes the only challenge. Once you know all the tricks, it'll take you only a few minutes, and even your first play-through probably won't take you longer than 10, unless you get really stuck.

The hermit's son has been kidnapped by demons! Are you a good enough king to rescue him? And, while you're at it, could you do something about that advancing purple wall of doom? And, also, could you tell the peasants to knock it off with all the portentous statements concerning the upcoming apocalypse? Sigh... It seems that a monarch's work is never done. Though by the end of KingStory, the new adventure platformer from KintoGames, you'll at least have a pretty sweet crown on your head. That makes it all worthwhile.

It's been a rough day. You finally made it to London with visions of super-wealth in your head. Then your backpack was stolen. But, as you stand flummoxed in the rain, someone in a car driving by take pity on you and offers to give you a lift to the police station. That said person turns out to be local millionaire Mr. C, whose ailing health has left him in search for a young successor to his empire can only be described as an incredibly convenient coincidence. Still, now opportunity knocks, and if you make some smart choices, you just make make it to the penthouse at 56 Sage Street. A fine financial simulation advergame from Barclays, BBH London and B-Reel that hopes to introduce teens to the world of financial literacy.

Quick! You're trapped in an office with a violent little girl, a giant wall-mounted face, a despondent-looking mechanical spider dude and something weird in a box. What do you do? Well, if you ever want to find your way out of Detarou's latest surreal and silly escape game you'll need to think outside the box and pay attention to your surroundings... or YOU might be the next one to be planted in the floor!

When you introduce a small and somewhat cute little green blob that has the power to take over people's bodies into your planetary conflict, expect things to get a little... squishy. Infestor is a new puzzle platformer featuring tight, responsive controls and clever, bite-sized levels, so crawl in the skull of someone with a computer and give it a play.

The second chapter in the Arkandian Legends series, Revenant provides all the enjoyment and adventure of its predecessor plus more. There are endless possibilities for tailoring this rpg adventure to your playing style, including three races of hero: Arkandian, Necretian and even a Demon/Ascended once you've completed the previous chapter. Finding Wizard Tola's House to catch him dabbling in necromancy or rallying your defenses against an army of orcs on the battlefield are just a tiny part of the vast fun in Revenant. Just don your Bunny Slippers of Brutality, equip your Katana of Alacrity and battle your way to glory!

A friendly reminder from your internet pals: if a mysterious painting of a spooky old castle appears on your doorstep late one night, do not let your child hang it in his or her room. Mischievous things are bound to happen, and not the sort of madcap adventures one would find in an episode of Scooby Doo. Lost Souls: Enchanted Paintings tells the story of a missing boy who suffers the unfortunate fate of getting sucked into a painting. His mother, Bella, will do anything to get him back, including enlisting the help of some otherwordly friends.

Once upon a time, there was a lonely little boy who lived deep in the woods with his parents... and that's about all we can tell you when it comes to Terry Cavanagh's very short but very odd retro RPG. It'll only take you about five minutes to play, but the heebie-jeebies may stay with you a bit longer than that.

It was a time of peace. The tribe was ruled by a fair and just leader named Bold, a ruler known across the plains for his fairness and generosity. However, trouble was brewing in the Mountains of Moira: Rangor the Terrible had raised a dread army of conquest, and sprung an attack in which no prisoner was taken. With his village decimated and his son kidnapped, Bold once again took up the garments of a warrior to lay siege to the hordes pillaging the land. Oh... and by the way, Bold is a Beaver. That would presumably explain why the name of Rob Almighty's new RPG-brawler is Battle Beavers. 'Twould only make sense.

In SilenGames' latest defense shooter Granny Strikes Back, you'll help the eponymous Granny as she fends off snowmen commanded by aliens who need her raspberry jam to fuel their spaceship. Yes, you read that right. Well... what else do you use jam for? If you're a fan of the genre, you'll be hard pressed not to like this one; it's silly, beautifully designed, fun, and just like Grandma used to make.

Ok, so what have we got here? A couch. A window. Some scissors suspended from the ceiling. A present with a lid that's firmly taped down. And The Boy with Tape on His Face in the middle of it all. From BBC Three comes a short, comedy-driven point and click game starring Sam Wills as his quiet little character with a slab of tape over his mouth. His goal is quite simple, and if you're going to help him get inside that box, you'll need to solve some pretty strange puzzles.

There's no place like home, but in this beautifully atmospheric little point-and-click escape, it's hard to say if the dingy little apartment you find yourself stuck in could be called home by anyone. A lack of changing cursor makes this game harder than it might normally be, but a cleverly handled narrative and twist on a familiar story make this one moody little gem fans of the genre will want to check out.

You've got your eye on the world... just the one, in this case, since you're a little blue cyclopean alien. But that's all about to change in this clever puzzle platformer; when your ship crashes on Earth and parts go missing, you'll need to hijack the sight of various characters in order to manipulate your surroundings and ultimately find your way back home. Repetition mars the execution, but Proxy By Sight is still a neat concept that deserves a look.

A great Calamity rocks the world, wiping out all of civlization in an instant and leaving behind only a handful of floating islands in a vast void. As the Kid, along with your ever-present Narrator as a guide, search the remnants of the world for something that might rebuild it, uncovering the truth about the Calamity (and human nature) as you do. Featuring stunning visuals, an engrossing story related in a unique, immersive fashion, and fast-paced combat with upgradeable weapons, Bastion is a top-notch indie action RPG players looking for another realm and a good story will definitely want to investigate.

People love the Castaway series of action rpgs, and now tower defense fans can stand proud as well. Now you can enjoy the series' signature pets and protagonist while attacking waves of baddies. The makers clearly put some thought into making this its own game, and they understand what the genre's fans like. So you can stand proud, tower defense fans. You have a Castaway game of your very own!

Playing the role of an unfortunate hero who is cursed with the habit of sleepwalking, you awake to find yourself in an unfamiliar witch's hut. Since witches aren't exactly known for their hospitality, you're tasked with escaping the building before she returns, using only your wit and maybe a few handy magical resources.

Is there a occupation cooler than Vampire Hunter? After seeing the exploits of Van Helsing, Buffy, Blade, Alucard and D, I'd be surprised if high-schoolers don't flock around the recruiting table at the yearly career day. However, not all of us have time for the years of intensive training that is required to spot vampires on sight. Thankfully, the University of Winconsin's Center for Game Science has developed an online training program that will focus your Vampire Vision through a combination of arcade puzzling and hidden object spotting... and it just might improve your regular vision too.

In this turn-based match-3 battling game, adorable little creatures are locked in combat (in space!) and need you to swap gems, upgrade, and earn rubies to help defeat their opponents. The only mystery is why these cuddly astro-pets feel the need to wail on each other anyway. If snuggly little kittens can't get along with giant squids, is there hope for the rest of us?

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Raven Locks Smith. She lived in the city of Dull, and although she loved her motivational-speaker parents, she wished for something more. One night, as she considered her boredom, a dream came to her and told her of a life changing tome that could be found near the Mountains of Oddness. Soon she walked there, and found it to be a most interesting place... And so, in this new point and click adventure game by Jonas and Verena Kyratzes, set in the same universe as their earlier The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge, you help Raven search through the quite unusual Land of Dreams in search of The Book of Living Magic, a point and click adventure. Highly recommended to all lovers of classic adventure games or fantasy worlds in general.

Do you ever think about death? Not just about dying, but about everything connected to it... the emotions, the concepts, the way people from all over the world look at it in vastly different ways? The End from Preloaded and Channel 4 is a bizarre puzzle platforming adventure through a series of realms that ask questions designed to make you think about life and what comes after.

To make a good platformer, you don't need new ideas. You just need to make fun of platformers. Lee-Lee's Quest is more of a platformer doing it at the expense of the genre. In fact, start it in style. When the game starts and Lee-Lee awaits your movement commands, just hold back and do nothing. He's got a few things to say.

A nightmarish wreck at sea one evening should have left you and your father dead, but instead you find yourself a lost soul stranded at the bottom of the briny deep, trapped somewhere between life and death by none other than Davy Jones himself. In this creative, cheesy-good hidden-object adventure, you'll have to play the malevolent sea-spectre's games if you want to win your freedom, but with so many other listless spirits trapped below the waves for who knows how long it looks like the odds aren't in your favour. Will you be able to rescue your father and the oddball assortment of other beings who lost themselves to Davy Jones' tricks, or are you doomed to an eternity underwater?

Hey! Orcs, skeletons, giants, mosquitoes, bunnies, and evil bees! Those acorns are mine! Armed with a bow and arrows and a few other more boom-inducing weapons, Elliot Pace's Defend Your Nuts is a fast-paced defense game that puts you in the furry shoes of a squirrel perched on a tree. As evil minions tromp in from the right side of the screen, take aim and fire to send them back to the flames of Hades where they belong, keeping your winter stash safe and secure from their muck-covered paws!

You haven't seen your twin sister Luisa since you were children, and when you receive word that she was pushed off a bridge in a wedding gown by a shadowy figure it seems you might never get the chance to reconnect... but a dark offer from a mysterious being may just grant you the ability to uncover the mysteries and set things right if you're willing to put your soul on the line. Travel back in Luisa's life in this dark, beautiful hidden-object adventure full of tragedy, mystery, and family secrets best left undisturbed.

If you've ever wanted to reenact a summer blockbuster sequel in the comfort of your own Flash game screen, Exit Path 2 by jmtb02 will have you running and jumping and dodging lasers like your very own action hero. This time... it's personal. Uniplayer and multiplayer fast-paced jump-and-run action return with a vengeance in an addictive, flashy experience.

In 1899 Steam & Spirit, you play a young Winston Churchill on a secret mission while traveling on a steamship in the Mediterranean. This episodic, old-school point-and-click adventure will have you solving puzzles and interacting with pixelated characters as you try to accomplish your mission. The game is written in DHTML (HTML + Javascript), so it may be played on some mobile devices.

This is one of the best, most elaborate adventure hybrids to come out this year. With the emphasis squarely on the point-and-click adventuring, Sacra Terra: Angelic Night is a mind-blowing throwback to the days of yore in adventure gaming with its engrossing story, stunning visuals, and, most importantly, depth of gameplay. Alawar has created a world which is fascinating to explore and difficult to leave, and the combination of beautiful, otherworldly scenes juxtaposed with the grim, haunting asylum proper makes the entire experience surreal.

Life isn't easy for fairies. You have to shop in the newborns' clothing section, you leave messy dust everywhere you go, people think that by shaking you around and sprinkling your dandruff on themselves that they can fly. It's a tough life! This is a situation that our heroines Chante and Elise are learning about firsthand in Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters, a new action-RPG developed by EasyGameStation and published by Carpe Fulgur.

Ready for some brawling? Superfighters from MythoLogic Interactive is a single-screen single-player or 2-player versus fighting game replete with weapons, tactical maneuvers, and chunky pixel art your eyes will adore. It's a game where little dudes shoot, stab, burn, kick, shoot (again) and trick each other until they pass out from non-livingness, and once that round is over, you get to do it all over again!

Blue Tea Games, a studio that knows its hidden object adventure genre better than a chef knows how to boil water, is at it again. Following series such as Enlightenus, Dark Parables, and Forgotten Riddles is a tough job, but Macabre Mysteries: Curse of the Nightingale definitely holds its own, crafting an environment filled with intrigue, danger, mystery, and loads of shiny objects to find. It's a hidden object/casual adventure game for the most discriminating fans, and it never fails to impress from beginning to end.

Kingdom Rush has itty-bitty visuals but an ogre's worth of style and strategy. In this fantastic tower defense game, protect your kingdom's roads and countrysides against incoming hordes of goblins, bandits, wulves, and other nasties. Build towers, upgrade your army in and out of battle, take on challenges, and enjoy all the POW SOK SHUNT battling you can handle while you're at it.

Twenty years after nuclear confrontation wiped out the planet known as Earth, Cosmonaut Laika receives a distress bark from the ruined surface. Armed with your trusty swap-gun, a rainbow shooting device that lets you switch places with pieces of the world around you, you land upon the planet to locate your companions. Every dog has its day, and today is the day you... Escape from the Puppy Death Factory! Brought to you by Arthur Lee and the fine people at Adult Swim. A fun, if deceptively challenging, puzzle platformer.

These monsters aren't monstrous at all! Look how soft and trusting they are, how they make innocent eye contact with you as if to say, "Please don't electrocute me and all my friends and family!" Too bad that's the aim of the game in this negative space puzzler that has loads of charm and black humour, not to mention style, to carry you through the day.

Who knew that a bunch of simians could create a game that depicts one of their number being cruelly experimented upon, forced to use a reality-bending helmet to manipulate his environment to avoid being killed? You'll just have to set aside a chunk of time to focus on this game. Get some infinite monkeys to do your other work. How do you think I manage to create such great reviews for JIG?

You know, somewhere deep in the blackness of infinite space, there have to be all sorts of life forms bouncing around the void. Space clowns, for example, could exist here, living off of stray particles or digesting dark matter itself. With these life forms comes the inevitable life forms that feed off of them. In the case of Space Parasite, an arcade/action game by Kale Kramlack and Andy Wolff, you are that life form, infecting every piece of space life that floats your way!

Scrape Scraperteeth actually has you start out the game by reading and acknowledging a satirical "warning", pointing out its flaws before the critics can do so: it's easy (you can't die or fail), it's ugly (well... just look at the screencap), it's strange, it's even wanky. Platforming enjoyment is not what you're signing up for when you play this game. Slow down and take the time to watch all that happens as you move around the levels, to read the text, and to figure out the subtext.

After the end of the world, we're all dead... but that doesn't mean we aren't still leading productive unlives! Dem, grumpy skeleton hero extraordinaire, doesn't have much interest in the past, but that all changes when bouncy, just-a-little-bit-crazy magical ghost Sara forcibly ropes him into an adventure to explore the ruins of days gone by. Breath of Death VII is a short but sweet classic RPG parody chock full of strategic combat, gaming references, technologically hip vampires, usurpers and more, it's a great funny treat for anyone who remembers what it was like to be a magically animated skeleton with barely contained loathing for his party members.

Gorgeous, entertaining, and fit for both the noob and the advanced adventure gamer, Timeless: The Forgotten Town is a feast of astounding visuals and amusing gameplay. Do not, however, expect an exciting roller-coaster ride of adventure in game form. Instead, enjoy a quiet and meditative stroll down avenues of the past, probably a lot more entertaining than actually being there.

You start off on ice, which is rather natural for penguins, but soon enough you'll be sending your rampaging army into the jungle and beyond. This is a game where turtles are evil. And can hide under the ground sometimes. And also carry military-grade weapons on the backs of their shells. Look, turtles bad, penguins good, alright? You've got to upgrade la resistance manchot if you're going to stand a chance. Say by hacking off the beak and replacing it with a zombie beak.

Breaking Banks can be nice, and Escaping from Prison can be satisfying, but diamonds are a stickman's best friend. And, wouldn't ya know it, the Tunisian Diamond is on display at Stickville Museum. It's night, so the usual rabble has gone home. So it's just a couple of guards standing in your way. With all your technology on-hand, they should prove no problem... Right? Ha. Ha. WRONG! Puffballs is back with Stealing the Diamond. And remember, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

The business of fixing dreams is a delicate one. It requires a lot of time and energy, the clients are few, and let's face it, the pay probably isn't that great. That doesn't stop a young woman from helping out her tormented friend, Victor, from sussing out the source of his nightmares by traveling within his world of dreams. Foreign Dreams is a visually stylish hidden object adventure game that lays on imagery and mystery in its unusually-crafted world. As you follow a frightening young girl through Victor's dreams, you begin to piece together a bit of the puzzle surrounding the source of his nightmares.

The Mission: A Search and Rescue Mystery is still a blast to play if only for those puzzles. For those who miss the days of classic point-and-click adventuring this is a game that, while not completely resurrecting the old days, certainly comes closer than most on the market.

My Little Pony, My Little Pony, what will today's adventure be? Well, in Friendship is Magic: The Story of the Blanks, a retro-NES experience by Donitz, it seems that Applebloom is going with Twilight Sparkle to deliver a package to the magician that lives deep in the woods. But the woods are dark and scary, and you'll never know what you will find... Flowers? Friendship? Magic? Love? Diamonds? Candy? Who knows? You'll need a beautiful heart, faithful and strong, to make it to the end, but a little bit of magic should make it all complete.

Brimming with attention-to-detail, artistic touches and many customizable options, Battle Stance: Human Campaign is designed to entice every ilk of casual gamer into playing hero. The upgrades, details and customizations make this real time strategy fantasy game worth venturing.

FBI Agent Nelson Tethers works for the Department of Puzzle Research... yes, that's a thing, and he's quite happy with his job, until the day he's assigned to Scoggins, Minnesota, to find out why the local eraser factory has stopped working. What starts out as a simple missing persons case takes a drastic turn for the bizarre, and soon Nelson finds himself wrapped up in the weirdest, creepiest small town mystery he's ever seen. Take a trip to Scoggins in this clever duo of point-and-click adventure game that doesn't skip on the charm, the creeps, or the chuckles.

From Intenium, the makers of the equally awesome Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 and Tulula: Legend Of A Volcano, comes Sandra Fleming Chronicles: Crystal Skulls, a hidden object adventure with heavy emphasis on the latter. Sandra Fleming cuts out most of the casual stuff we see in modern games, leaving you alone with a strange world with nothing but your wits to get you out. It's a challenging and intriguing game that goes to greater lengths to satisfy your puzzle solving itch than most other games of its species!

You want action? We got that. You want cheesy storylines with French villains obsessed about obtaining immortality, kidnapped scientists, plane crashes and giant spiders? Got that, too. Hide and Secret: The Lost World from Anarchy Enterprises is the fourth game in the hidden object adventure series, featuring a classic-styled plot ripped out of your favorite dime novel from a century ago.

You must sprint, kick, and bribe your way to athletic glory! Refusal to use exclamation points is counterrevolutionary! Grab a bowl of rocky road or double chocolate chip some morning and double your pleasure and/or fun by accompanying it with this game.

Escape Castle consistently defines fun. Although some puzzles may leave you feeling you've been there, done that, Escape Castle's final "puzzle" is a welcome twist on the genre, elevating it to a new level while harkening back to an age-old gaming tradition of the final boss battle.

A young boy is cruelly mocked. Years later, he becomes a mad scientist and seeks to destroy the world by breeding giant rampaging monsters. If you've ever taken a Godzilla figurine and stomped it around a sandbox while providing your own terrified shrieks for the GI Joes and Barbies in your wake, Days of Monsters will provide that service while sparing your vocal cords.

From ERS Game Studios, creator of Haunted Halls: Green Hills Sanitarium, PuppetShow: Lost Town, Redemption Cemetery: Curse of the Raven, and a number of other games, comes a hidden object adventure that takes place in old Italy. Grim Facade: Mystery of Venice is a dark, atmospheric game populated by empty streets and moonlit statues, strongly punctuating the shaded character you're chasing after: the man in the mask.