Monkey Metric – A group of monkeys is threatened by a nearby volcanic eruption, but one lone brave primate sets out to save them. You are that monkey, and making it to the volcano to save your family requires solving puzzles through a host of isometric stages. Pressing buttons, moving levers, carving out pathways, sliding boxes around, all to make an unobstructed view from yourself to the exit. It’s an extremely challenging game, so don’t let its cute exterior fool you!

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Dr. Sweetvalley and the Broken Time Machine – More puzzles, please! This charming little game features a series of small rooms with detailed pixel art cubes occupying a very real 3D space. Move around the world, careful not to neglect the up and down axes, as you try to activate the exit portal. It takes some getting used to, especially if you opt for keyboard controls over the on-screen arrows, but after an adjustment period, you’re ready to fix the time machine with your puzzle-solving might!

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Cuboy: Hot Pants – It may not make the most impressive use of the isometric perspective, but you’ll have a tough time not falling for this crazy, hilarious, and challenging game. Dashing down a volcano, you must leap from cube to cube, avoiding lava and cracked blocks as you stay one, two, three steps ahead of the liquid hot magma. We liked it so much, we even created the Cuboy: Hot Pants strategy guide!

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How much of a “game” is :The Game:? Not as much as you might think for something with the word “game” in the title. This little curiosity plays out in a series of short vignettes centered around a theme introduced just before the action begins. You can usually control a little character with the arrow keys, jumping and crouching like any old platformer, but that’s almost incidental to everything else that’s going on. And besides, not all levels feature that sort of control scheme, so the statement “no rules” shoved in your face at the beginning is pretty much accurate!

Level after level, you’ll take part in an exercise extolling the pros and cons of societal concepts. Sometimes your choices matter, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you’ll play a tiny mini-game, sometimes you’ll just dive off a cliff. No matter what happens, the game goes on, tossing new ideas in front of your face and summarizing things up a few moments later with big red letters.

With something as minimally interactive as :The Game:, you can almost look at it like an interactive Flash video. There are some sections where actual gameplay occur, but the outcome doesn’t hinge on your skills at the keyboard, which could be another layer of this “satire” we’ve heard about. Do Flash games care what you do? Does any game really care that you’re playing? Do you care about your choices changing the game you’re interacting with, or is it just another way to pretend you’re in control of something in front of your eyes? There’s something to get your noggin’ churning!

Note that :The Game: frequently employs violent scenes and some adult-type concepts to make commentary on various social structures. It’s nothing you wouldn’t see on a PG-13 movie, but since it’s a browser game, we thought we’d let you know!

If you’re ready to think about things like communism, the environment, the five stages of grief, and 37 other concepts presented in a defined order, give :The Game: a try. And if you’re not in a cerebral mood, give it a whirl anyway and just watch the pretty colors move in front of you. At least the animations are pretty, right?

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My Word! – Here’s something a little different: a word game you have to play three moves in advance! A 3D grid of letters sits at the top of the screen fading into the background. You can use any of the letters facing the front to spell a word, clicking on them in order to scribble on the paper below. When you spell a valid word, the blocks you used disappear, sending the letters behind forward to take their place. The challenge comes from getting rid of letters that bring more valuable letters to the front, and since you can see several rows behind, you’ll often spell words just to get at valuable blocks. Special tiles add some flair to the experience, and several modes of play let you relax and spell or scribble in a rush. A very sleek game that’s both challenging and fun!

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Word Kingdom – Simulation game, meet some words! A grid of letters occupies the left side of the screen. By making valid English words, you’ll collect gold, wood, food and stone. Use those resources to build structures like a market or a farm, each increasing your kingdom’s reach and value throughout the land. It’s a bit streamlined in its goal, but somehow the odd combination works. You actually feel like you’re commanding this kingdom, and all you have to do is click on some tiles to spell a few words!

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Blocks with Letters On 3 – Despite receiving several follow-up sequels, the Blocks with Letters On series still hasn’t received the recognition a unique, challenging game of its nature deserves. Why? Mainly because it’s a strange blend of physics and spelling, which catches many players off guard. If you sit with it for a few moments, though, you’ll realize just how brilliant it is. Your goal is to spell a word in the marked area on the screen. To get letters there, you’ll have to slide them around the level, just like they were real-life blocks. Some have special properties and can do things like float, adding a ton of challenge to the game. Can you get them in the right order? It’ll take some time, but when you do, it’s oh-so rewarding!

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That Word Game – So, what is this thing, exactly? Is it a puzzle game? A word spelling game? A physics game? Sometimes you can’t tell, and that’s exactly what makes That Word Game so very, very good. Words tumble from the top of the screen in a realistic sort of manner, collecting in a big pile on the floor. Click on them to make words, clearing them from the screen. The longer the better, naturally, but good luck getting anything beyond “dog” and “tree”, this one’s tough!

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All you’re tasked to do in Kangaroo Jump is jump. Move the mouse to choose the distance and force of your jump’s arc. Farther away means a stronger leap, while closer results in a quick hop. Aim for the platforms above your head, and watch out for big dollops of lava. They’ll send you back down with a single touch!

Checkpoints can be found throughout your climb, and you should always, always, always activate them. If you die, you restart at the last one you hit, so if you miss a checkpoint, you’ll have to re-do a lot of climbing. You can also find little silvery orbs that give you a handful of measurable jumps, adding a dotted line to show you exactly where your leap will take you once you press the mouse button. Very handy!

Apart from a few hazards and the ever-present danger of falling, Kangaroo Jump is basically a straight-up hopping adventure. Make it as high as you can, and keep going when you don’t think you can go any further. A meter on the top right side of the screen tracks how high you’ve gone, and it takes a lot of jumping to make it move.

If Kangaroo Jump has any serious drawbacks, it’s the lack of any sort of break in the action. It’s just one long climb, never pausing to show you how far you’ve gone or to provide a segue to the next set of jumps. Inserting a pause is a key element to successful entertainment, just ask any filmmaker or writer, and without that stop/start, the player never really absorbs the situation and just continues onward mindlessly.

It may stumble a bit when you analyze its deeper elements, but otherwise, Kangaroo Jump is a lot of fun. Simple action that almost never ends, and gameplay even children can learn to enjoy!

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Dr. Sweetvalley and the Broken Time Machine –  This game probably is loosely related to time travel, but it has the name in the title and it’s an excellent puzzle game that’s simliar to Excit, but in a “three-dimensional” space.  So now you can give your brain a workout as you listen to quirky music and watch pixel graphics fly around on your screen.

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Panda’s Bigger Adventure – I’m a big fan of multiple things attached to this game: Rob Donkin, RobotJAM and point-and-click adventure games that take me back to my childhood and Scumm/AGS games.  Talk about time travel, right?  In any case, this is another excellent sequel (you get a nice recap during the introduction sequence) to the other Panda games where this time travelling “portaloo” has gotten you stuck on a deserted island.

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Minima Time – This is an interesting platformer game that takes the idea of time and uses it to base your score upon.  The longer you stay alive, the better your score.  The thing is that you only have 10 seconds to live.  Luckily you are provided time clocks which allow you to slow down time around you or to stop time completely.  With a pretty large world to explore and a real sense of urgency, this one’s great for a few goes.

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Spotfinder: The Doctors – And since we’re on the subject of our lovely Doctor, here is a spot the difference game featuring fanart of the many different Doctors that have dotted the timeline in the series.  Outside of theme, the only real time based game mechanic is that you’re racing against the clock.  Featuring the artwork of Kevin Bolk!

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