The original freeware platform adventure game Cave Story was released by Daisuke Amaya (Pixel) back in 2004. An English translation from Aeon Genesis followed just two months later, opening the game up to a much wider audience and allowing to vault to the top of the indie gaming world. Featuring amazing music, a well-written story, power-ups, upgrades, and a big world to explore, saying Cave Story was a hit is a gross understatement. Several years later, the game has been ported to half a dozen other systems and re-released with remastered music and updated HD graphics. Now, Cave Story+ is here, upgrading the freeware experience to something your eyes and ears can more fully appreciate!

It's a popular misconception that cats have nine lives. In reality they've actually got infinite lives and are forced to restart at checkpoints every time they lose one. Katwalk is a short, fairly easy platforming metroidvania game, so aside from one tricky section involving swimming you won't need catlike reflexes to succeed.

You find yourself on the floor of a dilapidated hospital, apparently situated in the middle of a meadow filled with the drone of cicadas. Monsters roam the halls, and the only other human occupant babbles about a witch who's trapped you both there, but as you piece together the truth from papers and journals, you'll begin to wonder who you can really trust... if you can even trust yourself. An action-heavy adventure title from Phosphor Games for your iOS made with the Unreal Engine, boasting great writing, beautiful visuals, and a lot of mystery.

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.

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.

MercX is a retro action adventure sidescroller where you control a pixelated hero on an epic mission to rescue a biologist's daughter and save the world. Take out numerous enemies and strong bosses across six missions in different environments. With its 1980s-style graphics, music, and controls, MercX is simple old-school shooting fun.

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.

In this platform adventure game that spans multiple dimensions, help the robotic hero complete his quest and return home. Anyone who's played the classic SNES game Earthbound will feel right at home with TransDimensional. There's a certain air of irreverent weirdness about the proceedings that makes TransDimensional feel like something special. At around 20 minutes long, it doesn't require much of a time investment and fans of platformers are bound to have a good time hopping between dimensions.

Several years in the making, the darkly atmospheric (and strangely realistic) platform game LIMBO has finally migrated from console download to the PC ecosphere.Crafted by Danish studio Playdead, LIMBO drops you in a shadowy world filled with dangers, immensely difficult puzzles, and more ways to die than you would really want to count. It's an incredibly stylistic and engaging game, one that just about any player can pick up and enjoy from beginning to end.

When a car accident on a lonely road strands you on the outskirts on thriving metropolis Union City all you can think about is getting home to your significant other. You quickly discover, unfortunately, that the metropolis isn't so thriving after all, but is is practically heaving with zombies. Will you be able to survive the outbreak and find your beloved? Scavenge for food, weapons, ammunition, and more while trying to stave off endless hordes of flesh-hungry monsters in this enormous side-scrolling action RPG.

About as epic as any game about snails can be, Snailiad will take hours from you, and you'll be glad to see them gone. It's action-packed and adventure-filled, completely unlike the lives of real snails, who mostly sit around hoping they don't become escargot.

Everybody's favourite emotionally tortured little robot is back in this sequel to 2010's K.O.L.M., a Metroidvania style platformer about a lonely little robot with one very dysfunctional family. Picking up right where the original left off, having escaped the claws of his Mother, will our hero finally find out where he belongs, or will he be unable to escape his family ties?

Fans of the original Castaway will find much they like from the first game, plus many improvements. Castaway 2 isn't the deepest RPG around, but it's perfect for casual fans of the genre. The Isle of the Titans has a lot to do and a lot to see, and will keep casual RPG players well occupied. Just don't let it suck you in too much, or you might find that you suffer some light amnesia of your own.

With its cute, cartoony visuals, throbbing music track, fast-paced action, and Super Mario-like platforming City Siege 2: Resort Siege is a wild ride through the world of special ops and hostage rescue. So you can't be a member of Seal Team 6 (which doesn't actually exist, anyway), try City Siege 2: Resort Siege and live out your wildest commando team fantasies of saving the day, killing the bad guys, and reducing some random unnamed resort to complete rubble.

A space ship. An explosion. An escape pod. A crash. It's just you and an alien planet replete with jungle creatures who aggressively attack you, lone guy in a well-equipped spacesuit. Capsized drops you in an unfamiliar world and gives you just a few tools to survive. Fortunately, a grappling hook and a number of guns happens to be amongst these tools, the former of which is handy not only for swinging around and pulling yourself up ledges, but for grabbing and moving obstacles. Other than that, you really have to rely on your wits in this gorgeously-illustrated but challenging physics/action game.

Anbot 2 is short and sweet, but so totally jam-packed with action and excitment that it's much more than just a mouthful of gaming goodness. It might not take long to help Anbot through his second adventure, but you'll definitely feel like he owes you one for helping him out this time.

Christine Love's Lake City Rumble II is not your run-of-the-mill fighting game, but instead offers an experience where choice and interpretation is everything if you want to pack a real punch into your attacks. Will you beat Qaisar, or accept defeat? Time to enter the arena.

Life in the Gemini galaxy isn't easy; war has left its mark on the lives of the people within it, but most of them are more concerned with the all-seeing eyes of the Boryokuden, a crime syndicate that seems to operate outside the law and swiftly deals with any opposition. In this top-notch adventure game, you play as Azriel Odin, a detective on the streets of New Pittsburgh, and Delta-Six, an amnesiac test subject stuck in a sinister training facility, and attempt to stay alive while you uncover a conspiracy that might hit closer to home than you suspect.

Wooly the Mammoth has stolen your hat, and in order to get it back, you're going to need to get some epic questing going on, exploring a huge, non-linear environment, completing side-quests, collecting keys, and shooting cute but evil monsters in the face with your laser. Whimsical and with wide-appeal, this is certain to be another major hit from jmtb02!

Contrary to what you might think, police work has been made to look more glamorous than it is long before CSI and Law & Order stepped into popular culture. Yes, we shouldn't forget the profound contributions of Miami Vice. But the most realistic of the Sierra adventure games did not stoop to such base entertainment. Instead, all four games were grim thrillers with a penchant for making you walk through all kinds of police procedure (sometimes to a pedantic degree), all while hunting down drug lords, serial killers and satanic cults. Forget Space, Heroes, Kings, or Larry. This is Police Quest.

We are not alone, and they are not friendly. In this appropriately creepy and squishy sequel to the original, the gameplay takes a different course; manually control an alien parasite that has crash-landed to Earth right in the middle of Camp Happy, a vast campground teeming with all manner of creatures to eat. Devour different animals to take their unique abilities and figure out how best to use your environment to your advantage to reach your goal of tender human entrés. Mmmm!

Insidia, the new Metroidvania-styled platformer from Woblyware, revels in its simplicity, not only concerning its graphics, but also is its plot and gameplay. In fact, I think that I can give you the gist in fifteen words: Crashed Spaceship. Alien World. Explore Caverns. Find Repair Kits. Collect Upgrades. Avoid Baddies. Quite Fun.

In Blue Knight, you control a human sent to purge a planet for future human colonization. This retro-looking platform shooter has you jumping and shooting your way through a large world, collecting powerups and facing off against various bad guys on your way to the final boss.

Strange Attraction is a standard shooter-platformer with a slick presentation and interesting gravity elements. Control the blobby-shaped Gus in his super suit as you try to rescue your fellow villagers from the vile clutches of a horrible cage-like machine. Jump, shoot, and invert your way through 24 levels across 3 unique worlds.

You play a plucky astro-pilot in this retro-styled action adventure game, with an ill-defined though doubtlessly heroic agenda, who keeps crash-landing onto planets with hostile, labyrinthine space bases, losing your steadfast feline companion in the process. Cat Astro Phi is a nice, short action game with retro appeal, and even players who aren't the targeted allegorical Internet Citizen will find something to appreciate.

In this platform fighting game, evil has no chance as you take the Blackmist form of a young hero named Leo and his Eagle, to puzzle and fight your way through various worlds, eliminating henchmen and completing boss battles to overcome the evil that threatens to annihilate your village.

Oozy and the Tower of Wulu is a new action adventure and puzzle game from Oddity Games. Oozy is a cute lil' alien mollusk. Oozy has a dream. Oozy wants to slime the whole world. To do this, Oozy needs a magical shard; one currently held at the top floor of the Tower of Wulu. All Oozy needs to do is climb through fifty levels of a top-down maze, sliming baddies, exploding ooze, collecting lime jellies, and battling bosses all the while. Won't you help poor Oozy to realize his vision?

After kitties, puppies, and fishies, Robot has finally figured out what he truly wants... ICE CREAM. But when he and his trusty Puppy arrive on a planet in search of some, he finds the situation a bit more explosive than he anticipated. Battle bosses, collect power ups, and explore in this wonderful finale to the hit platforming series from Hamumu Software!

Heart of Ice, an action adventure platformer from Eddy Larkin, is one of those games that really nails the fundamentals of what makes a game enjoyable. It's visually and aurally appealing, the boss fights keep the experience varied enough that it remains enjoyable throughout and there's enough secrets to keep you searching. Larkin has said that he's spent a year and a half on this game, and it shows.

e7's minimalistic and gorgeous presentation accents its simple and engaging gameplay as you pilot a little probe on an alien planet in an effort to deactivate a bomb threatening to destroy Earth. Fling yourself from the surface of the Jello-like crust on the planet's surface and battle laser-wielding robot alien defenses using only your kinetic energy.

Defying your Elders, you and a small group of like-minded people dare to brave what lies outside the safety of Sanctuary 17. Why are you in hiding? Why do the Elder oppose your efforts? And why do robots roam the halls, striking down anything that crosses their path? Find out in this tricky almost-roguelike from Twofold Secret.

Divine Divinity is a classic action RPG that borrows a few style points from the Diablo series. Despite its appearance, this isn't a game for "serious" role playing fans, though it still tells a fun story and features a lot of engaging gameplay.

The starship Hermes was supposed to revolutionise space travel. Instead it found something in the dark that it never should have let inside. As security officer Hermes, board the silent ship and discover what happened to the crew in this unsettling but flawed action/horror/platforming title.

After washing up on a tropical beach, you find yourself befriended by a short green monster and embroiled in the local village's troubles. Likwid's isometric action/RPG is light in the story department, but provides an extremely polished oldschool adventure for fans of the genre.

Poto and Cabenga are minding their own business, riding along and collecting golden feathers, when a giant skybeast swoops down and swallows Poto whole! Now you need to control both characters, racing along on the top and bottom of the screen, to eventually reunite horse and rider under usual circumstances with this challenging one button game of reflexes and action.

Another World, or, as it's known in North America, Out of This World, is a stunning example of storytelling in a video game originally released in 1991 (and re-released with better visuals in 2006) by Eric Chahi. Built as a cinematic platform adventure, you take on the role of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist who is teleported to a barren alien planet while running an experiment using a particle accelerator. You soon make friends with one of the humanoid aliens and together work your way through the subterranean environments trying to escape with your lives!

Caster is a third-person action-shooter with distinct influences from the glory days of console gaming; it cooks up some of the most-enticing features of high-energy, super-powered shooter action and serves it up on a silver platter.

Not enough cute in your day? Never fear, Chibi Knight is here! An action/adventure title with RPG elements, the game has you sending your itty-bitty hero out to save the land from some big, bad beasties, and maybe uncover a secret or two along the way. How cute is this short little gem? Just give the title screen a gander, and a listen. Melted yet?

Step into the shoes of a Stetson-clad treasure hunter with a glint of gold in his eye who can read five dead languages for no apparent reason and has his spelunking boots all laced up. Trounce baddies and collect golden idols that allow you to move from one leg of the tomb to the next in this pixelrific platform adventure game.

Where We Remain is a quiet game. It is also an action adventure game of exploration in a randomly generated world. You're a lost youth stranded on a haunted island in the Aegean Sea, searching for your lost love among the ruins of a wasted civilization stalked by mysterious spirits. Find 10 possible power-ups to help you complete your quest while avoiding the mysterious spirits that populate the island. You'll also discover that there's more to the island than initially appears.

If you're searching for a fun and chipper exploration game to kill a little time with, good for you! Searching is one of the key components of exploration games, so you're already off to a good start. After that, the fun is in what you do with what you find. In Little Rocket, you get to explore a small universe AND solve puzzles along the way! Aren't two-for-one bonuses lovely?

Set sail for action, adventure, and... spelling? When Lucy runs away from home to avoid being shipped off for her tomboy behaviours, she never imagined she'd get wrapped up in a conspiracy involving the powerful East India Trading Company. Now she has to fight her way through a horde of pirates and rivals in her efforts to save countless lives and her family's name. Sink your opponents by spelling out words that charge your cannons in this clever new adventure release from Moonpod and unleash the Pirate Princess in you! We know you've got one.

You awake, dazed and disoriented, on the floor of an empty room, your eyes alighting first on the bricked up windows... and the gun on the ground in front of you. But the house is silent. What could you possibly need to defend yourself against? Find out in this atmospheric point-and-click game mingled with action elements that will have you questioning whether or not you can trust your own eyes.

Choose between playing as Anakin Skywalker for the Republic, or as the Jedi assassin, Asajj Ventress, in this Star Wars action adventure game built in Unity 3D. Forget what you think you know about browser-based games and give LEGO Star Wars: The Quest for R2D2 a try. It won't be long before you get sucked into a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away, where plastic bricks vied for control of the universe.

To boldly go where no one-eyed, rocket-propelled cat has gone before, Rockitty needs your help in this bouncy, bizarre arcade space adventure from Nitrome! Explore the milky way, battle dangerous space squid, collect delicious fish, and more across 22 levels of space cat fun. It's a wondrously weird, frequently squishy game that plays like pinball. In space. With one-eyed green cats. Just as Mother Nature always intended.

Miracle Witch is the bright, fast, colorful, hard-as-nails story of cute little witch Polfe and her quest to defeat the evil king Yeah Walusa, which is the best name for an evil king ever. Find secret treasures, slay monstrous bosses, solve obscure puzzles. Like a mouse-controlled Legend of Zelda,

Sentokun in Kamakura is a short 3D action adventure about a monk with antlers on his head, on a quest to defeat a giant, antlered cowboy. At the beginning, the monk is too weak to prevail, so to build up his strength, he must ransack a peaceful coastal town and raze it to the ground. If you liked Katamari Damacy, or you wish there were more browser games that let you throw houses at people, you may enjoy this.

A new addition to the Wonderland series, retro-themed isometric puzzle/adventure games that are of the best around. They retain the spirit of what makes the genre so enjoyable while adding new, more modern twists to the experience. Wonderland is threatened once again, only this time the quest to save the world goes terribly wrong. Shipwrecked and marooned on the shores of Fire Island, its your job to maneuver through sets of puzzle challenges and make your way to freedom.

From The Fancy Pants Adventure creator Brad Borne comes a 2D re-imagining of the 3D action-adventure console game Mirror's Edge. Mirror's Edge 2D uses the Fancy Pants engine and adds a whole host of new acrobatic moves, allowing you to jump, climb, scramble and run across rooftops with surprising fluidity.

Meat Boy is a platform game that dares to ask the question "What if the main character from Knytt or N was made of bits of sticky, gooey raw meat?" And even though you never wanted to listen to the sound of meat slapping against solid blocks over and over again, when you're playing Meat Boy, you probably won't mind.

Wik and the Fable of Souls is an engaging action platfomer classic developed by Reflexive Entertainment. Help guide the frog-like Wik as he swings and jumps using his grapple-like tongue, collecting coins, gems and grubs along the way. Watch out for enemy bugs and shoot them down with an array of objects or other insects you spit from your mouth.

In Larva Mortus, you play a 19th Century ghost hunter (or rather, an "agent of exorcism"). Plow through monsters and demons with your trusty broadsword and an assortment of weapons, such as shotguns and flame throwers, to rid the land of supernatural evil forces.

There's a new Wonderland in town, rounding out the 3D action-puzzle series by Midnight Synergy. Our last review in this series was the well-received Wonderland Secret Worlds, in which a storm rolled through and blew all the little Stinkers away. In the new Wonderland Adventures, you fill the shoes of a hero once more, this time trying to save entire Wonderland realm, which is being threatened by a dark, matter-destroying void.

Jasper's Journeys is a downloadable platform game that plays much like an old-school side-scroller where exploration is essential, power-ups are few, speed is often encouraged, and secret areas are plentiful. In many ways it's similar to Brad Borne's The Fancy Pants Adventure games (or even Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros, or Jazz Jackrabbit), though with a decidedly different atmosphere and feel.

The second chapter in Brad Borne's epic tale of a man with righteous pants is here, and it is spectacular. The Fancy Pants Adventure: World Two is a Flash platform game focused on high-speed acrobatics, like a hand-drawn Sonic the Hedgehog. Twice the size of the original, World 2 is one of the most ambitious, audacious Flash games out there, bursting with thrills, imagination, and whimsy.

The Sea of Glomp is an adventure-themed Flash game created by Paul Kramm that draws heavy inspiration from old-style adventure games such as ... Adventure! You play a young fish whose egg has been stolen by a creature that looks like a bat. An underwater bat. You set out on a quest to find the egg, a task that takes you through some of the strangest parts of the sea you could imagine.

After months of waiting, it's finally here! Nitrome has just rolled out Hot Air 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the balloon physics game Hot Air. The new incarnation is bigger, better, more intricate and more stylish than the original, proving it's possible to take an already polished game idea and turn it into something even better. Plus, you get to make your own balloons!

In this gorgeously detailed Flash-based driving game, the developers combine highly stylized computer motion graphics and 3D cut scenes to create a unique experience you won't soon forget. Players travel to (and through) destinations such as Lisbon, Paris, Berlin and Prague, all the while competing to earn credits for upgrades and to purchase new vehicles.

Knytt is a downloadable game of exploration and atmosphere for Windows created by the author of Within a Deep Forest, Nifflas. The game emphasizes discovery and intrigue over everything and creates a massive world with varied environments and lots of places to explore. A spacecraft kidnapped the cat-like Knytt from his home but crashes on its way back, sending pieces of the ship across a mysterious planet. Your job is to traverse the barren world in search of the missing parts and try to get back home.

Poid is a short flash platformer from Protopop Games, the creators of Nimian Flyer and Nimian Hunter. The Nephohedron transport ship (profit class) has run into a bit of a problem. On route to Junx city the navigation system failed and the crew wasn't responding. To the rescue is a small poid, a flea-like creature you release from a slumber pod. Guide your poid through the ship and uncover the mystery behind the strange errors.

Tri-achnid is a new action/adventure platformer in which you play as a creature of an endangered species of exopod on the verge of extinction. Your goal is to find a safe place for your brothers and sisters, who are tucked away in a portable cocoon, by moving throughout each level using a unique click-drag gameplay mechanic.

Bill the Demon is an action adventure platformer with a very nice old-school flair to it. In the game you play as Bill, a lowly demon with a voracious appetite for human souls. To prove himself worthy to his peers, Bill sets out on a mission to the Ninth Circle of Hell to fetch the devil's autograph.

Nimian Flyer Legends is a 3D action adventure game by Protopop Games. You play the role of a young dragon named Salamond on a quest to defeat seven legendary beasts. Armed with fire-breath and the ability to pick up many objects, you'll have to use your speed and wits to battle each unique foe. Nimian Flyer Legends has a remarkably full 3D world to explore coupled with a grand soundtrack. It's a surprisingly lengthy game that feels more like an epic journey than a pick-up-and-play flash title.

The Fancy Pants Adventure is an gorgeously animated platform adventure game created by Brad Borne. You play a hip, hand-drawn character who, as one might have guessed, wears a very fancy pair of pants. Run and jump around levels in this beautiful and enaging Flash game.

This Java applet game impressed me with the old-school charm of its scrolling tile-based worlds, its quirky characters and dialog, and its addictive gameplay. And yet the moment the game begins you realize that this is no ordinary Web game. Immediately you are teleporting back to the glory days of the SNES, and from there your task is to seek out the one last sprout, which is the one item you need to open the final gate.

Director, game designer and art director Fumito Ueda and producer Kenji Kaido, along with the rest of the development team behind ICO, have broken the mold and released, exclusively for the Playstation 2, what has become the single most original and awe-inspiring gaming experience of my life, Shadow of the Colossus...

Your starship awakens you from hypersleep early when it detects an uncharted planet. Your mission is to explore the planet and report your findings back to the Galactic Union. Terrain is a series of interactive Sci-Fi action-adventure games made in Flash by March De Laurentis.

The Grrr Game puts you in control of a white rabbit, on a quest for carrots, using the arrow keys to move around the isometric pseudo 3D environment. Landing next to any hateful object will cause the rabbit to whip out his gargantuan hammer and whack the smithereen stars out of it, and thus turning it into a lovely object of affection.

Merlin's Revenge is a cute little adventure game in which you play as Merlin on a quest to save your brother, Berlin, who is kidnapped by the evil Scarlet Wizard. As Merlin, your primary method of attack is, of course, magic, and the mouse is used to aim and fire a burst of energy at your foes. It's a fun game with pleasing tiled pixel graphics and cool effects. Not an easy game my any measure, but one not to be missed.

PixelHugger in the Field of Typography is about defeating the evil Auntie Alias who has mesmerized the Typographic World with her ultra-smooth ways. As a result, many perfectly good pixels lie abandoned in the Field of Typography, and your mission is to rescue as many as you can.

This is simply amazing. Someone that goes only by the name of Voxel, has created a 3D version of the original Metroid game in Director! By taking the Metroid tileset, he built a utility that allows him to convert 2D sprites to 3D sprites, and then he uses those to build the levels of the game.