The forces of darkness are at it again in this tower defense game. They'll send wave after wave against you as you use your soldiers, mages, and archers to hold them back. Place towers in the designated spots to start training your troops. Upgrade your units in multiple ways to find the best strategy for each level. Evil won't know what hit it.

A Man's Quest is an HTML5 action platformer by The Drunk Devs that hearkens to yesteryear, both in terms of its retro graphics and the bouncy spirit of childhood. Help Ty show up his rival Kevin by swiping his place as Chosen One and being the first to make it to the top of Ominous Power. A compressed burst of fun, if one with somewhat loose jump physics.

Three determined monsters are doing what they can to make a break for it from the laboratory they reside in. Help these adorable little terrors out of the lab by making use of their special abilities when confronted by the chaos of science! With the option to use either your mouse or keyboard to control the mechanics this entertaining game is waiting for you to liberate poor creatures that are tested on against their will.

Harness the power of your particle gun in Tesla Defense. Place electricity zapping towers to rid yourself of the enemy army that is quickly approaching. Use your gun if enemies breach your defenses. Earn cash to upgrade your weapons and towers until you are tough enough to take down the boss!

Exposition... story... who needs it anyway? In just one month, Craze created a free indie RPG with extremely little narrative but extremely deep challenge and strategy. Over thirty difficult battles await you as you venture into a sprawling fortress with three young women as your guardians, where success depends not on grinding levels or items, but on carefully thinking out every turn in combat and swapping out the various skills and spells you'll learn to make the most out of bonuses, strengths, and weaknesses. Get ready to die a whole bunch!

Our true loves over at The Podge have given one heck of a gift to us: Dibbles 4: A Christmas Crisis. When a Christmas version of an established series is released, it often turns out to be a level-pack except there with more bells on the soundtrack and sprites modified to include floppy red hats. But with new levels, new commands, and new animated ways to kill off your squad of helpers, Dibbles 4 is slightly-sadistic holiday fun for the whole family.

Oh, now, where'd that smiling stump with the spectacles go? It was just there but now... Anyway, you've got three other weirdo creatures to find, and Hidden Doodles isn't going to slow down so you can take in the scenery. A hidden object game without all the story or adventure elements, Hidden Doodles from Invedars is similar to Little Things Forever releases, dropping you into level after level of crowded scenes filled with some amazingly creative drawings. Take your entire comic book collection, tear it up (please don't, not really), put it in a blender (don't!), then arrange everything on the table and try to find Superman with Bart Simpson's head. That's Hidden Doodles in a nutshell, and you're going to love it.

Get ready to smackdown your opponent in the one or two player game Wrestle Jump! Control a Mexican wrestler with the single goal of pounding the other guy's head to the ground. Kick your leg against the arena floor to throw your opponent wildly around. Whoever gets the most smackdowns wins!

Feel like an inexpensive trip to Austria? Maybe you're craving a tragic mystery that needs unraveling? Boomzap has returned with a new installment in the hidden object puzzle mystery adventure Dana Knightstone series: Death Upon an Austrian Sonata: A Dana Knightstone Novel! With a sprinkling of romance gone wrong thrown in, this is already shaping up to be a great romp into the European countryside.

ParanormalDev offers up their take on the now iconic Slenderman mythos with a free gorgeous first-person horror adventure made in just two weeks. When you wake up alone and disoriented in a vast park in the middle of a downpour, you have no choice but to seek out help. Unfortunately for you, you might find a big, malevolent mystery instead as you seek out more story and clues than before.

Short and sweet, Very Pink Game is an adventure game created by sheepherds using RPG Maker 2003. It stars a lonely little girl named Ivy who receives a letter from a friend asking her to meet outside of town. In order to make it out of the pink village, though, Ivy has to solve a series of puzzles, helping the townsfolk go about their day by finding lost items, answering riddles, and solving problems. Just like (a very pink-colored) real life!

Engage is a first-person action horror rail-shooter from FlyAnvil, where it's certain things are going to get more than a bit buggy as you fight off waves of insects on what was supposed to be a deserted island. The entomophobic should stay away, but Engage is a polished experience that will keep adrenaline-junkies engaged to the end

Liz's life is quiet and ordinary until a mysterious stranger appears to whisk her away to a colorful fantasy world where nothing is ever at all dull or mundane. Now you need to collect fragments and other objects to solve puzzles and find your way home in this gameplay stuffed adventure hybrid which is sort of like the Wizard of Oz. Except steampunk. And with a sarcastic, more cynical Dorothy.

Hey, you're trapped in a room! Where's that Nelson guy to laugh at you when you need him? You're not going to sit around and get mocked, though. You're clever, you're resourceful, and even though every time you leave the room you end up in an almost identical location, you're determined to get out. Doors

Fight as a team or create a free-for-all where everyone is the enemy; play for points or compete in a deathmatch; or have everyone shooting at once as opposed to individually, the choices are endless. Live chat allows you to talk trash to your fellow players as you try to annihilate each other across the changing landscape. ShellShock Live is back and better than ever with more weapons, more landscapes, more modes, and more explodey fun with ShellShock Live 2 (ShellShockaggeddon?)

In a desperate race to hold off the end of his kind a little dinosaur is going to square off against spikes, lasers, and bad guys (oh my!). In this one-button action platform game it's your job to act as the savior of dinosaur kind. With multiple items to collect and a single ability to be used for each level you need to navigate your way to safety and an interesting hidden message at the end of the game.

Magical Time Bean delivers a tower-defense game with a twist, as you play a wizard with the ability to summon the souls of warriors while searching a massive, ancient ruin full of danger. Summon and recall heroes to defend you while making use of their strengths and weaknesses against increasingly more powerful and varied monsters, visiting the Merchant to purchase upgrades. Challenging and surprisingly strategic, this is a clever, lengthy game that can keep you occupied for quite some time.

Stay on your toes (or in this case, your fingertips) in this fast-paced game of Lemmings-style mining arcade action for your iOS. Draw paths for relentlessly cheery little squads of miners deep into the earth, guiding them around peril to plunder. As stages advance, the challenge ramps up as more and more new elements come into play, but a stellar retro style and some seriously quirky humour will keep you coming back for more.

Baby it's cold outside, but with your Little Inferno fireplace, you can stay warm and entertained forever... as long as you don't run out of things to burn. The Tomorrow Corporation brings a unique, quirky, and gorgeously addictive indie game that's part physics puzzle, and part adventure, all without leaving your hearth. Who really needs the world outdoors anyway? What could it possibly have to offer... ?

Heart pounding, your raspy breath echoes in your ears amidst the sound of alarms and the inevitable ticking of a countdown clock. Swiftly you run to the nearest escape pod as time quickly slips away. Heels clatter amongst the throbbing of your heart and the wailing of the alarm as you dive into a handy escape pod and fly away from the mother-ship seconds before detonation. What is going on? The scene shifts to 24 hours earlier...That thrilling opening sequence belongs to the latest adventure hybrid from Alawar Games, Forbidden Secrets: Alien Town, and it's just the beginning of a rollicking good ride through a pastiche of nearly every sci-fi and horror cliche of the past 50 years.

Get your fuzzy blankey and turn on the lights, Imscared - A Pixelated Nightmare lives up to its name. This short and simple horror game from Ivan Zanotti puts you in a dark corridor and asks you to explore a bit, gathering keys in order to gain access to different rooms. You know you "need a heart" to make it to the exit, but surely that's some sort of riddle, isn't it? And that portrait totally had blood on it the first time you looked at it, you just didn't catch it in the same light... right?

TNNS is a wild arcade game from Action Button Entertainment and Rabbx that plays like a cross between Breakout and Pong, only about a billion times better (rough estimate). Imagine using a rubber paddle to smack a rubber ball around a stage filled with blocks, stars and arrows, then using some sort of telekinetic powers to make the ball curve a bit. That's TNNS, and if you're not laughing with amazement each time you fail/succeed, you're probably doing it wrong.

War of Eclipse is a one button arcade and role playing game from Game Stew that has a distinctly retro look and feel. A mysterious dark explosion destroyed half the population, bringing with it a race of evil aliens. The people fled in terror, taking refuge underground where they now spend their days gathering resources and hoping to survive for another day. But now, just when you get your new ship, the aliens attack. Now you've got to defend humanity the only way you know how: with steampunk ships that fire lasers!

If you grew up with the story of Thumbelina, you know her as a tiny woman who lived through many adventures before finding her one true love, the flower fairy prince who became her husband. What the classic fairy tale doesn't get into are the trials and tribulations she suffered after she found her prince. Fortunately Elephant Games has stepped in with a charming new adventure hybrid, Unfinished Tales: Illicit Love, and covered the gap after the romance and before the wedding, which of course is imperiled by an evil witch queen. Seriously, it's not a fairy tale without one.

Undefined delivers another engrossing, addictive installment in the casual turn-based RPG series full of new races, treasure, streamlined battling, and more. Search for four fragments of a key throughout dungeons that are never the same twice in your quest to become a hero and enter the fortress of a legendary archmage.

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

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

For those of us who just can't get enough monster battling, there's Pocket Creatures PVP, a strategy game from NTFusion that expands on the original Pocket Creature. Pocket Creatures PVP is practically overflowing with content. Tweaking your monster team is a lot of fun, especially when you take them into battle against other players. The game is well-presented, accessible and addictive.

Speedy delivery! Or, no delivery, it seems. Static Quest: The Delivery from CookieBit is a survival-based arcade game packed with enemies, spells, weapons and items, all of which can be upgraded as you continue to punch baddies that get in your way. It's a little bit like Earn to Die, a little bit like Punch-Out!!, and a little bit like being glued to the floor while your older brother punches you in the arm and keeps asking why you're hitting yourself. But, you know, in an entertaining, good kind of way!

Cook, Serve, Delicious! is a simulation and time management game from Vertigo Games, creator of the similarly spectacular The Oil Blue. If you see a restaurant game and immediately think "casual diversion", let Cook, Serve, Delicious! change your mind. This isn't a light and simple easy to win time management game. It's a full-on simulation that makes you work for your money, pushes you to play faster than you thought possible, and teaches you to strategically plan menus to maximize income without turning the ever-picky customer base away. It's not an easy game to excel at, but it's an easy game to get hooked on, and the challenge of building and running your own restaurant from front to back is going to captivate you for weeks on end.

Good morning and welcome to Detarou's amusing wake-up call, Ohayo, a surreal room escape that continues the whacky Detarou tradition. Yes, Detarou greets the morning in some strange, strange ways, but that's to be expected. Ohayo is the usual surreal mind trip through a house filled with odd characters and strange puzzles, sprinkled with a hint of the bizarre. Pretty much like every morning in Detarou-world.

Pid is a unique and heavily atmospheric platform game from Might and Delight, a team of developers who obviously know some secrets about portable stone-based gravity control the rest of us aren't privy to. Set in a hazy otherworld and starring a lost little kid, you'll learn to control small cones of gravity as you work your way through bizarre landscapes. Sometimes Pid feels like A Boy and His Blob, sometimes a stealth game, and sometimes even Portal. But really, Pid is Pid, and it stands strongly enough on its own to be something unique.

Exploring a ravaged underwater utopia sounds like a great idea, right? No? But, think of all the interesting structures, the possessions that were once owned by people slowly rusting away, the great chance of seeing a shark and getting a great picture! Oh, and there are some sinister hooded figures that seem to enjoy causing havoc and destruction and may possibly have intentions to kill you, but that's such a small nuisance. I'm sure you wouldn't even notice it! For the daring protagonist in Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden, the new hidden object puzzle adventure horror game from Artifex Mundi, it's probably a bigger nuisance than she anticipated.

Knights of Pen & Paper is an RPG. But it's an RPG that's about a bunch of adventurer people sitting down to play a pen and paper RPG. So... when you play the game, you're actually playing a game about a game, even though both games are basically the same game. Inception, anyone? While these folks sit and enjoy their Dungeons & Dragons-type adventure, you get to take care of everything else, from fighting battles to accepting quests, upgrading skills and hunting down better equipment. And if that isn't interesting enough, you can buy the players a snack, maybe while eating a similar snack of your own?

Here we have it: Chrono Trigger on Android and iOS! Just the mention of the game's name will stir a lot of emotions in people, and not just those of us who were around for the original release. Almost 20 years ago, a dream team of designers and artists at Square (now Square Enix) got together to make a game with a silent protagonist who forms friendships with people throughout time in an effort to save the world from a most insidious form of evil. It had memorable locations, epic battles, emotionally charged sub-plots, and multiple endings. Chrono Trigger helped shape the RPG genre for years afterwards, and as the recent mobile ports prove, it's just as relevant and stirring as ever.

The adorable warmongery of The Podge's City Siege series of strategy action-shooters has taken a turn for the extraterrestrial in City Siege 4: Alien Siege. It's time once more to blast some martians, rescue hostages from the terror of brain-sucking plants, and to buy the heck out of some wicked cool upgrades. With the feel of its predecessors, but with a streamlined sci-fi bent, City Siege 4 has awesomeness to spare.

IriySoft delivers a gorgeous and easily accessible real-time strategy title with just the right amount of depth. Seize territory back from the invading armies of the undead as you balance the defense and maintenance of your own structures with aggressively leading assaults on captured buildings to add to your own forces.

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

Whenever it gets close to Halloween, most of us are ready for a good scare. Zombies tunneling from below the soil, mummies leaping out from behind tombstones. Slenderman staring at us from off in the distance. Lionsoft, creator of the previously featured Sprint - King of the Jungle, knows the feeling well, not to mention a handful of retro games that fit the scary setting just as snugly. And so comes 8-bit Halloween, an arcade platform game that borrows from some of the most popular sidescrolling games of old to create a challenging, holiday appropriate release to get you in the mood.

Inspired by a retro game? Check! Precision platforming tactics? Check! Melt-your-eyes gorgeous visuals? That's a check! It looks like we have another heavy-hitting indie game on our hands! Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams began life as a spiritual sequel to the original Commodore 64 platform game The Great Giana Sisters. What emerged from that Kickstarter project is something cleverly old school, supremely challenging, and more gorgeous than still images could possibly convey. You're going to have a great time yelling at the screen because you died at the same place for the 18th time in a row!

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

New from Rocketcat Games, creator of Mage Gauntlet, Hook Champ, Super QuickHook, and Hook Worlds, Punch Quest is an endless running game built on the quest completing/loot gathering system found in games like Jetpack Joyride. Instead of flying around like a little beetle, though, you play as a well-muscled lad or lass who simply must punch everything in sight, from bats to skeletons, dinosaurs to priceless vases, all in the name of gathering coinage and upgrading your skills.

In this sliding block-style puzzler by Mibix, a flying squirrel faces off against the natural predator of all rodentia: zombies. The cartoony graphics don't quite mesh with the strategic gameplay, but the levels are well designed and the scream the squirrel makes as he flies off the screen is schadenfreudely hilarious.

Haunted Halloween Escape drops you into a room full of spooky features and creatures. TeraLumina knows how to make a good game; the atmosphere is excellent, with the graphics and sound adding perfectly to it without being too distracting, and the puzzles flow just fine. Even the added challenge of making the game Halloween-themed didn't affect its quality. It's an excellent escape, and if you'd like a little Halloween in your day, here it is.

Cryptic Kingdoms is a casual point and click adventure game similar to The Haunt, Forever Lost, or the often cited Myst series. Featuring a semi-surreal Earth-like world packed with locked devices, mysterious locations, and a striking lack of living creatures, you'll explore scene after scene as you attempt to make sense of the puzzles and mystical contraptions.

It's a beautiful day outside! The sun is shining, the crabs are trundling, and it's time to go visit your girlfriend! Nothing could possibly stand in your way... uh... right? A short and very simple parody platformer with multiple endings that makes fun of the expectations we have for these games.

Kairo is a first person puzzle adventure game from Richard Perrin, creator of The White Chamber. Set in a minimalist, somewhat abstract world of temples and stones, floating pathways and mysterious mechanisms, you'll be given no clues as to what you need to do to complete the game. Instead, you'll wander through room after room, using your keen powers of observation to figure out where the puzzles are and how to solve them. It's a game design choice rarely seen since the days of Myst, and it brings with it a satisfying gaming experience that has become increasingly rare in the age of tutorials and online cheat codes.

Just in time for that scary late October holiday, The Haunt 2 from Furious Apps arrives with a serious dose of point and click adventure-style puzzle solving! Following the same set-up as The Haunt, you take on the role of a paranormal investigator who has come to rid the town of its little ghost problem. You'll sift through houses and barns, train stations and a dark forest in search of clues, and what you end up discovering may not be as "little" as the town would have you believe.

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.

Polara from Hope This Works Games is a jump and run mobile game with a little added color. Instead of simply hopping over gaps or testing your reflexes with split-second timing, you've also got to keep an eye out for an obstacle's color, switching your character's color to slip through each danger unharmed. Layered on top of that are some nice futuristic Tron-like visuals and a story that, while predictable, is actually kind of interesting in a semi-cheesy sci-fi sort of way!

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

Teletrooper is a mission-based arcade shooting game from Adam Butcher and Ben Claxton. Crafted over the course of seven years, Teletrooper draws inspiration from the likes of Star Fox 64, creating an experience that is a far cry from a mindless test of reflexes. Instead, you'll be treated to a storyline, accept and complete a variety of missions, deal with smart enemies and tough defenses, and maybe even grab a few power-ups along the way. It's a challenging and rewarding game you'll thank yourself for downloading, even if you spend the first half hour figuring out how to not die!

Join Jack and his friend Scout on the trail of the dastardly wizard who nabbed the princess, learning to forge increasingly more powerful weapons for the soldiers who are willing to pick up arms for you, and gather new, more powerful blueprints and materials along the way. Despite there being nary a fast food item in sight, gameplay is pretty similar to Flipline's Papa's series of games... only with steel and pigmen.

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

If you want all the drama, passion, suspense and intricacies of the courtroom, the best way to get it is to go to school, study really hard for several years, then bribe—Nah, just kidding! You can easily get your fix by watching TV, reading a bunch of fiction books, and playing games like Devil's Attorney, a new simulation from 1337 Game Design that's one part comedy, one part 1980s culture, and maybe two parts lawyering, all carried out via a snazzy touch interface that's much more entertaining than studying case files and figuring out what habeas corpus means.

The monsters, sorry, MONSTARS are at it again, and it's up to Death and his trusty array of lasers, bullets, and special abilities to put things right... one explosion at a time. This sequel to 2009's arcade arena shooter smash hit packs a visual upgrade in addition to more gameplay, bigger challenges, and all the monstars you can handle.

Though not particularly deep, this top-down arcade action game is definitely polished. Unleash devastating magical spells and blast your way up through a tower filled with tons of monsters and massive bosses, snatching coins to purchase upgrades and new abilities with along the way.

When a low demon on the infernal totem pole trips and accidentally shatters an urn full of souls, he's got to track them all down or risk some pretty serious punishment. What follows it a vibrant, gorgeous, but challenging puzzle platforming title that packs a lot of character into its design.

Challenging adventure wrapped up in an atmospheric and portable package is what we have been looking for, and what Glitch Games has delivered in spades. Immerse yourself into the world of Forever Lost Episode 1 and enjoy the escaping fun!

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

Of Light & Shadow is a puzzle platform hybrid from 12 Angry Devs that focuses on two characters, each with different abilities as well as environmental weaknesses. It takes place in a crumbling world of chaos, with giant frogs, chomping machine monsters, flying platforms and bubbling pools of lava all waiting to take a piece of you with them to oblivion. But, since you're such a talented player, you can survive the surreal stages and work your way to safety at the end!

Enjoy Detarou's usual surrealistic nightmare as you try to escape from indifferent gymnasts, strange men in turtle costumes, and one of the grosser sights you might see in any room escape game. Just, you know, don't be creeped out by the living Dharma doll who not only watches but physically seems to follow your every move.

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

Save the world in this retro-fashioned Zelda-like adventure game with tons of enemies, weapons, quests, level up system, and a huge world to explore! Customize the keyboard commands as well as your character's stats to suit your playing style and hack-and-slash your way through the nostalgically detailed, 16-bit environment.

What would you go through for a ton of carrots? Jack Tube, the armless white rabbit from the Begamer game fo the same name, would gladly traverse 13 levels of puzzle platforming madness... with the help of your clicking finger, of course. Although the control scheme and some of the gimmicks in later levels make it clear that Begamer isn't doing a perfect job of disguising its usual point-and-clickery, and it's not exactly a difficult game, this is definitely a clever and interesting departure from the formula-- and if that doesn't grip you, the charming visuals and audio most likely will.

It's Pokemon for mobile devices! Ok, not quite, but the latest release from Game Dev Story and Kairobotica developer Kairosoft has certainly been looking at the monster training RPG for inspiration. Beastie Bay takes the familiar Kairosoft set-up and leans it more towards role playing territory, confining simulation elements to a smaller portion of the game while exploration, turn-based battling, and monster management take center stage.

As an investigation goes horribly wrong, William and Thomas must run for their lives. This CGDC #10 fourth-place finishing entry is a classic style point-and-click adventure game. Escape through the mansion before the monster catches up to you. Can you help the investigators escape before it's too late?

It's a vision of the future we've all considered at one time or another: zombies have taken over the world, and the only way we can get to safety is to drive beat-up old vehicles across the barren landscape, splatting undead walkers as we floor it until we're out of gas. Earn to Die lets us play out that inevitable reality in the safety of our own mobile devices, dropping you in a desert and giving you a hefty garage of upgrades and the ability to earn cash by running into the wilderness and stunt driving as far as you can over and over again. Despite being a teensy bit repetitive, Earn to Die has that lovely ability to keep us hooked, probably because we get to crush zombies with sawblades attached to our bumper.

God of Blades is an endless running/combat game designed by White Whale Games. Instead of focusing on jumping around like a little grasshopper, you are given the ancient and epic powers of sword combat, dispatching foes by unleashing various swipes and abilities as you take on a stream of enemies who stand in your way. It's all about the artwork and aesthetic in God of Blades, and the development team absolutely nailed the look that will remind you of fantasy novels and prog rock album covers from the 1970s. Even if you weren't alive and kicking back then, everyone needs a little unabashed sword combat now and again!

Take one color-coded multipurpose vehicle, add a variety of shapes scattered all about, then throw in the ability to mess with gravity in just about every way possible. The result? Colour Bind, a brand new physics-based indie puzzle game from Finn Morgan. Controlling a simple little car (two wheels on a chasis, basically), you have the pleasure of working through dozens of levels as you flip switches and change gravity so you can reach the exit. Best of all, Colour Bind was built with old school sensibilities in mind, meaning you'll be rewarded for exploration and challenged with difficult levels from beginning to end. Hooray!

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

Love roguelikes but wish all that permadeath would lighten up a little? This fabulously retro and witty game might just be for you. Venture deep into dungeons and other areas populated by bizarre monsters and strange people as you quest towards one of four different endings and unlock a total of 20 classes. Offering a surprising amount of depth, laughs, and addictiveness, it's a great casual introduction to the roguelike genre, and a lot of fun for fans.

A house, in a field, looking about as haunted as haunted can get. Why not step up and take a closer look? The Haunt is a mobile point and click puzzle game from Furious Apps that plays (and looks) like a casual adventure/hidden object game you might download to your desktop computer. Instead of a mouse and keyboard, though, you get to investigate a haunted house with your own two hands, finding items, managing your inventory, and solving mini-games while a paranormal presence follows you from room to room.

Pheus and Mor, a boy and his dog. Best friends forever, right? This puzzle platformer puts that to the test, combining stunning, dreamlike levels with ominous foreshadowing for a flawed but engaging experience. Both characters will have to work together and use their strengths to get to the end, but are they ready for what's waiting for them on the other side of that locked door?

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

An arcade avoidance game by Mortar Games that has you controlling a small. fragile virus, attacked on all sides by the defenses of the host body. The Fishy-styled gameplay little slow going at first, but the eerie atmosphere and a surprisingly affecting final level make Vivirion worth playing until the very end.

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

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

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

Point-and-click your way through a short list of complications to heroically rescue a damsel in distress. Using a touch of clever problem solving and item management, you'll soon reach the end of this creatively unassuming puzzle game. The blend of whimsical sketchwork and mild challenge ensures your left brain and right brain will be feeling quite pleased to have this meeting of the minds.

A simple errand takes a turn for the surreal when our hero, forced away from the video game console and out of the house, stumbles down a hole into the middle of the earth where he is, of course, tasked with tracking down magical gems. The same thing happened to me the other day. A little bit retro, mixed with a healthy dose of metroidvania and high-difficulty platforming, and Kodachrome is a weird but appealing little challenge.

You are wanted, you are obsessed over. Thus you are trapped in a room on the threat of death should you leave. Makes you feel kind of, um, icky all over, right? In this series of escape-the-room games for your mobile device, you must use lateral thinking, deduction and some general savviness to outwit your capture and find freedom.

REW 2 is a point-and-click puzzle game that is centered around reverse chronology. This time, our favorite little beaver-squirrel guy has apparently ended his day in front of a smoldering corpse. How did he get there? Well, that's for him to know, and you to find out.

Poor, helpless little... what are those again? Squished hippopotamus faces? Circle-blobs? Yeah, those. Poor helpless those. Actually, at least one of those circle-blobs has a name: Mayhem. And as you play this little genetically engineered experiment in OneSmartBunny's action/platform game Project: Mayhem, you'll begin to pity these critters more and more. But then you'll realize how tough this game is and start focusing on what really matters: landing jumps that require almost pixel-perfect execution, all without slowing down to see what you're doing. Good luck with that!

Feel like you haven't played enough escape games lately? Especially games that involve animate pickles, potted noses and astronauts having a shove match? In perfect surreal serendipity, here is another Detarou game for your point-and-click escaping amusement. Explore your way through the multiple rooms, find and decode clues to open doors, and watch out for that Bad Panda end again! You'll be happy to discover plenty of challenging-yet-logical puzzles and all the oddball zaniness you've come to really appreciate about Detarou.

Kill the Baddies sniper style in another entry to the City Siege series. The civilians on the island need saving! You get to take the enemy out from afar using weapons ranging from a sniper rifle to a rocket launcer. Keep the civilians safe to earn stars to unlock more areas on your map. Earn cash to upgrade your weapons to cause even more destruction.

Your evil twin has hidden your lance somewhere in the castle, all because yours was bigger than his. Seek it out through 40 levels in this retro styled puzzle platform game - the king has promised the crown to whoever's lance is longest.

Building an ark? Don't forget your nonograms! Beardshaker Games has released another episode in the NoNoSparks series of picross puzzles with NoNoSparks: The Ark. Now, it's up to you to help build the ark that will save the world's animals (the animals you helped create in NoNoSparks: Genesis), all with the power of grids, pencils, and logic!

Flight to Freedom is the second in the series of Mission US educational point-and-click adventure game titles focusing on American History, created by Electric Funstuff under the auspices of New York PBS Station Channel 13. The year is 1848. The tenuous balance that had been struck concerning the issue of slavery wavers in the face of a nation expanding by conquest and treaty. Living in these tumultuous times is Lucy, a 14 year old slave of Kentucky's King Plantation. Lucy must balance her wishes for freedom with the risk of recapture, but an incident on the farm will force the issue sooner than she'd ever thought. What can a slave do? An intelligent and thought-provoking game that should appeal to both its student audience, and anyone with a passing interest in history.

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

In the sequel to the original high-difficulty platformer, you've squandered your second chance at life, and your miserly existence has earned you yet another boot back down below. But the Reaper's not quite ready to give up on you, and if you can escort an innocent soul safely out of the infernal depths, you'll earn your place in heaven. Provided, of course, you have the reflexes to survive.

No one respects the rights of ghosts these days. Wether it's a bunch of drunken teenagers with a Quija board or wannabe "ghost hunters" from no-name basic cable channels, no self-respecting ghost can find a moment's peace. Well, for the undead and their sympathisers, the moment of catharsis has finally come, with Kelly Weaver and Jimmy Hinson's action-packed little real-time strategy game, The Haunting of Magnolia Manor. It may have a simple premise, but it manages to do what all the best realtime strategy games can: provide a fast-paced, action-packed, knucklebiting good time...at least, if you still have knuckles to bite.

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

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

Need some hack-and-slash action that makes you feel like a hero? Then turn on this free iOS titled stuffed to the gills with strange locations, magical abilities, ferocious monsters, and fast-paced challenges. Spend rupees to unlock more equipment or upgrade your skills as you slash and spellsling your way through a ton of stages with requirements that sound simple but will need a whole lot of reflexes to pull off.

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

Platcore, an avoidance game by Chris Jeffries, pushes you to achieve perfection by threatening to destroy you with lasers, guns and the laws of physics. These are surprisingly good motivators, as it turns out! Platcore is definitely worth a look for action and avoidance fans.

Bitless by Nicholas Rapp is like Space is Key meeting up with a platformer. It's a tough but funny, unforgiving but strangely compelling arcade game you play simply by tapping the screen. You'll be mocked by the narrator, you'll be tricked into messing up, and you'll die more times than you'll admit, but you'll keep playing simply because you can. And because you must. Getting hooked on Bitless is almost like acing an exam just because your friends said you couldn't do it. That'll teach them to spout mildly non-supportive jargon at us!

Trapped inside a classic Gameboy, help an anonymous little 8-bit character to escape his world in this retro platform game from Folmer Kelly. Or don't, and take him through an endless gauntlet of spikes and platforms. It's short but worth the 5 minutes it takes to beat.

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