Puzzle

Have you had your cake yet? If you haven't then you haven't played the innovative and award winning puzzle-action game Portal from Valve. This weekend may be your time to find out what all the fuss is about as Portal is the subject of the regular weekend sale on Valve's Steam service.

Portal is priced for this weekend only for just $9.99, a 50 percent cut for its normal price of $19.99. With that you get a game that, while extremely short, is still challenging and entertaining (and not without more than a little humor). Valve is reportedly working on a sequel to Portal but it may be a while before that's even officially announced.

American McGee's Grimm truly delves into the darker side of fairy tales with its latest episode, The Girl Without Hands. For those who haven't been keeping up with the previous reviews, players control the character of Grimm, who uses an aura of darkness to transform the fairy tale world around him from a bright and happy to miserable and wicked. Grimm's aura becomes more powerful as he transforms the landscape, which enables him to change over more objects, including NPC's that will impede his progress by cleaning up his mess. In the end, players are rewarded with a dark retelling of the story.

American McGee's Grimm is sick of how bright and cheery fairy tales have become and aims to fix things. Grimm uses his aura of darkness to transform environments from colorful to dark and gothic, ultimately changing how the story plays out. This week, he takes fire at Puss in Boots and seeks to transform the children's story to something dark and macabre. It works well, but doesn't leave a strong enough impression for repeat play.

Some games incorporate such simplistic gameplay and aesthetics that they become addicting classics in an instant. coign of vantage is one of those games. An extremely simple puzzle game, you must rotate a clouds of 3D pixels to form a 2D image. You do this by moving your moves to any side, which rotates the image to that side. It's an excellent casual game and a great example of how a simple mechanic can be so engaging. There's also several tricks you begin to learn to speed up your time, which is awesome. A game with that sort of complexity is always welcome.

[Via TIGSource]

There's nothing like some fun physics gameplay. Combined with playing it through your browser, you have a recipe for lots of procrastination at work. Ragdoll Cannon 2, a flash game on Armor Games, has addicting physics gameplay by the truckload. Controlling only a cannon that shoots ragdolls, you must hit a target, either by shooting your man deftly through obstacles or by moving said obstacles out of the way with bodies and then hitting the target. It's very relaxed and simple, which is great for a browser game, and as you can access it anywhere, it's doubly awesome.

[Via IndieGames]

Now, before you get all reactionary and declaim this title as "yet another Bejeweled clone", let me just say two things right up front: 1) It is a Bejeweled clone, and 2) There's more to it than the standard Bejeweled swap mechanic. What's the big difference? Explosions. Read on for the full scoop!

For those of you familiar with Puzzle Quest, you will take to Corpse Craft like a boat to water. Both games take the puzzle genre and then mix in another genre to make something monstrously addicting. Where with Puzzle Quest is was the RPG genre, with Corpse Craft it's strategy games. And it's loads of fun. Click on blocks of 3 or more to destroy them, adding resources to your pool. You may then use those resources to summon undead creatures to eliminate your opponent. It's addicting (as all puzzle games are), simple, and well executed.

[Via IndieGames]

There are some games that are incredibly intriguing by virtue of their control scheme. FIG is one of them. A freeware puzzler game, your goal is to get the little green-clothed man to the end of each level, collecting the blue stars along the way to unlock the final 5 or so levels. However, you can't actually control him. You must do things like blow out lights and scare crows to get him to move the direction you want him to go and avoid the obstacles. There's a total of 30 puzzles in the game, and they are all entertaining and challenging.

[Via IndieGames]

Talk about a game that makes sure you paid attention in physics! ColourWise, an entry in Eegra's Game makin' Shindig, is a game about combining colors to match the color required to exit the level. It's a very simple puzzle game, but makes up for its simplicity in greatly refined gameplay. It's also somewhat of a mind bender unless you have all colour combinations memorized. The music is also pleasant, bringing back memories of ages spent wasted away in SimCity 2000. It even has goofy cartoon cutscenes! If there is one complaint about it, it's that the colors are hard to distinguish sometimes and the color combinations are confusing at times.

Those of you who preferred the frantic pace of Doom and Doom II when compared to the slower, survival horror-esque Doom 3 are in luck: the fourth Doom game (which will not be called Doom 4) will return to the more chaotic pace of the originals, Shacknews confirmed in an interview with id genius John Carmack.

Carmack acknowledged the primary complaints of Doom 3, admitting that not being able to wield weapons concurrently with a flashlight, as well as a constant stream of closet monsters, provided the impetus to cancel a survival horror game titled Darkness that id was developing.

Will the id Tech 5-powered Doom once again feature rooms filled with angry Imps and snarling zombies? Most likely. In Doom, players will certainly experience a few tense moments with only one bullet and hordes of enemies to kill, but overall, "you have to be blowing demons all to hell all around you," explained Carmack. The best way to do that? Guns. Lots of guns.

The Grimm Fairy Tales were originally written as adult-oriented fables featuring very dark themes and plenty of violence. All of that was wiped away when Disney adapted some of them into family-friendly animated features. American McGee, famous for imaging a grown-up and gothed out Alice running through a demented Wonderland, plays off the change in attitudes and applies a darkened point of view to childhood fairy tales with American McGee's Grimm. Grimm is a weekly series of episodic games, each focusing on a different fairy tale. The premiere episode, A Boy Learns What Fear Is, establishes the tone and gameplay for the rest of series. Although the game literally focuses on transforming bright, go-lucky, fairy tales into dark stories, the aim isn't to tell a "mature" story. In fact, the quirky art style and toilet humor practically guarantees that these stories won't completely get back to its dark roots. Instead, American McGee's Grimm provides an experience much different than expected.

Download American McGee's Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is [Full Game] (193 Mb)

Continue the American McGee's Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is in-depth after the jump...

There's nothing like a good physics puzzle game to relax when you are stressed. FWG Bridge 2 is that game. A Flash game on Kongregate, you must build bridges for little critters to get across. You can either opt to play it in puzzle mode, where you only have a certain amount of cash to use, or sandbox mode, where you can experiment without worrying about money concerns. There's no real rewards for finishing and all levels are available from the start, but sometimes it's just fun to experiment with designing something. In this case, it happens to be bridges.

Okay, we just have to apologize for that pun. We can't resist! You know how easy it is for bloggers like us to give in to the temptation of constant puns? Too easy! But we are missing the point. Boondog is a recently released freeware platformer which reminds us very much of Prince of Persia, minus the combat elements. This is a very good thing. Featuring a plethora of levels, smooth controls, and elegant platforming gameplay, this is one game we fully recommend to anyone. On top of this, the game supports both custom graphics and levels. If a modular platformer sounds like your thing, you can download it off the developer's website.

[Via IndieGames]

If there's anything that shooters have taught me, it's that absolutely everything must die. From aliens to comrades to bubbles, guilty or innocent, good or evil, everything blows to pieces. That's why Ceramic Shooter is such a turnaround for an avid bunch of shmup players like ourselves. A surreal anti-shmup, you are continually firing and it is your goal to avoid destroying the myriad obstacles that come your way. The bizarre imagery, retro graphics, and unique gameplay make this one trippy and unforgettable game. You can give it a whirl by downloading it from the developer.