The world of creativity games continues to expand, but this time it's on mobile devices! Growtopia, a combined effort from Robot Wants developer Hamumu and Dungeon Scroll creator Robinson Technologies, strips out a lot of the complexities often found in creativity games like Minecraft or Terraria, allowing you to build and decorate your own little world that goes wherever your mobile device goes. Bored on the bus? Growtopia! Don't wanna listen to your boss droning on? Growtopia! Entire evening free? GROWTOPIA!

After playing John Clowder's Middens, you might ask yourself the following question: what just happened? Calling this adventure/RPG "surreal" is a bit like saying a hike to the moon would be a bit of a trek. You start off with a talking gun who reminds you that each time you pull the trigger, its tongue will be close enough to lick your nails. Then you're dropped in the Rift, a place where... well, who knows what's going on there. The surprising part is Middens actually begins to make sense after a while, though your first experience with the game will be filled with delightful, bewildered confusion.

Lake House: Children of Silence is a casual adventure game from Alawar that involves a young couple, a mysterious death, a kidnapping, some really creepy goings-on, and, naturally, a lake house. It all begins in the cafe with an awkward wedding proposal met by a cold reaction from the would-have-been bride-to-be. When she explains that someone broke into your house and burned/scratched you out of the photo albums, you can understand why she's so freaked out. And you should be too, seeing as how there's a masked man who may or may not be Ann's long-dead brother following you around. At least the proposal will be a day to remember!

Unlike many similar platformers, Vex's goal isn't to frustrate the player. Checkpoints are liberally scattered throughout the levels, typically ensuring that you won't have to repeat tasks if you die. With a little patience and focus, anyone can get through Vex... and once they do, it's off to the Level Editor to see if you can throw together a stage to stump the world!

Hide and seek can be a very serious past time, but it loses som`e of its appeal when bad things start to happen as a result of an innocent game. Escape: The Ruby of Judgment is a point and click escape game from the talented folks at IDAC, the mobile division of Gotmail. Featuring lovely stylized visuals and an impressive battery of puzzles, this somber but entertaining release proves you don't need a mouse to craft a good escape game!

Poor Shawn had been planning for a nice night in watching horror movies. Alas, his wandering eye spotted a beautiful blonde that he simply had to convince to go out with him. The catch: She won't even speak with him and her friend is clearly blocking the opportunity. In this light hearted point-and-click adventure you'll journey through the town searching for the right incentive to make blondie want to spend some time with you.

Joe Danger is kind of a big deal. Not only is he the World's Most Determined Stuntman, he can also leap across shark-infested pools, dodge giant mousetraps, evade threatening speed bumps, and apparently hover atop giant fans. Pretty sweet deal, right? After Joe's initial outing as a console download, the fearless stunt driver has landed on iOS devices with Joe Danger Touch, a fantastic arcade game from Happy Games with tons of things to unlock and plenty of wild rides to pursue. Great mobile racing game, or the greatest mobile racing game?

The tired box is back in the fifth installment of the Wake Up The Box series. Once again use whatever means are at your disposal to prevent the little guy from getting his sleep. Get your physics puzzle fix as you draw various shapes to bounce, slide, or rocket the box out of dreamland.

Come build a snowman and enjoy the magic of a holiday night while treating yourself to one of TomaTea's most gorgeously atmospheric escape games to date. You will need to have a keen hidden object seeking eye to locate all essential parts but the neat design and helpful features will make puzzle solving much more pleasant. Anytime you're wistful for a wintery fiesta, ring in the season with this Golden Bell!

Kitty minions, go forth and fight! In Battle Cats from PONOS, you control legions of tall cats, chubby cats, flying cats, cows (which aren't cats), and plenty of other cute warriors whose sole purpose is to defend their base from legions of tiny stickmen, hippos, snakes and other bad guys. It's a familiar combat-oriented defense set-up we've seen before, but there's so much lovable style poured into this game, you can't help but to play until the wee hours of the morning, pitting cartoon cat against cartoon cat.

A lovingly detailed homage to classic platforming adventures, this retro-styled Metroidvania game takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where your only reason for living is suddenly abducted from you by a mysterious stranger. While it could use some more to do, it's a beautifully made title fans of classic gaming will enjoy.

Escape from the same old habits and start a new resolution for wackiness with Detarou's discovery-filled escape game. This time you're locked inside a large, multi-roomed house with new things to discover around every corner. With so much to explore, and three endings to reach, the challenge lies in how to sort through the abundance of information to solve the puzzles that lead to your escape. So shape up those synapses, prepare for strangeness, and you're well on your way to a fresh new Detarou outlook.

Blizz is a mobile matching puzzle game from Hex3d set in a futuristic world where ice is a bit of a problem. Hexagon tiles on a hexagon grid form your playing field, and all you have to do is drag things around to make matches and shut down the reactor. It's familiar enough concept to rope you in from the start, but the shifted focus from making matches to freeing up frozen cells that need to be matched creates an endless cycle of preparing and setting off chain reactions, one of the most satisfying parts of any puzzle game. Do your job well and you just might save the world!

The babies of fairyland have been nabbed! What kind of monster would do such a thing?!... well, um. You. Command a demon army trying to shepherd a group of babies back to their evil leader in this real-time strategy/tower defense hybrid. With upgrades, spells, fake demon babies, and more, it's a seriously cute, challenging, and quirky game where you get to be the bad guy.

Keep monsters from reaching the portal to our world, where they will presumably lurk under beds waiting to snap off toes, in this colourful tower-defense game. More an expansion and improved version of the original, it brings a new tower type, an expanded upgrade tree, and a creative level design that will up the challenge and keep you busy.

More mobile Conceptis puzzles, hooray! The team that practically invented the online presence of pen and paper logic puzzles has released an iOS conversion of one of its browser-based offerings. This time it's Conceptis Nurikabe, a touch screen friendly incarnation of Nurikabe Light. It has a very similar interface to the browser games, offering an easy way to work on hundreds of puzzles on the go without having to sharpen a single pencil.

All you need is a sword on your back and revenge in your heart to be a hero in this combat-centric RPG from JIMP and Grindhead Games. Venturing outside the city walls in search of the monster that killed your father, you'll slice, dice, and magic-fisherize your way through a series of colourful battles in this simple but fun title.

Duncan and Katy is a mobile action/arcade game by Francisco David Moreno Pérez. Featuring two young heroes, a nutty scientist, and swarms of invading aliens, you get to run around a series of small islands picking up things like swords, crossbows, guitars, chocolate bars and springboards to stave off the attack. Keep knocking those baddies around and the professor will provide you with a weapon that can chase them away, but don't think for a second that defeating aliens will be that easy!

Point-and-click your way to rescue your sister in this charming adventure game. You and your bee team together to get your sister back from the bad guys who whisked her away. Experiment on each level until you discover the secrets to continue on to the next. Short and sweet, Shapik: The Quest is a wonderful way to spend a little time.

The pixel is mightier than the sword, if only because a sword can only be used for stabbin' and the pixels in Social Titans' addictive iOS match-3 defense game can be used to summon vampires. Create matches on a battlefield to summon and merge new warriors and classes in order to protect your VIP, who is SUCH a VIP that they can afford to wander around said battlefield without actually lifting a finger to do anything useful. Sigh.

From the creator of 100 Doors 2013, Gipnetix Games, comes 100 Escapers, a game that strides a little closer to traditional room escape territory than the usual lot of mobile escape games. You're still trapped in rooms, of course, but instead of having a single screen to bust out of, you've got a little big of wiggle room to walk around, open drawers, examine things, and fashion a way to get that door open so you can continue forwards.

With a name like F.O.L.D. - Fantastic Olfactory Latrine Discoverer, you know something interesting has to be going on. This puzzle platform game by Cosine relies on just two mechanics to fuel its levels: picking up blocks, and folding the screen. By combining those in some seriously head-splitting ways, you get to figure out how to get from one side of the screen to the other, all in the name of making it to a single pristine bathroom fixture!

In this direct sequel to the original dark fantasy title, Kathleen and her daughter Emily thought they'd escape the bizarre otherworld and mysterious legacy left to Emily by her dead father. But a letter ten years later as Emily is preparing to go off on her own forces the family to realise they must confront and uncover the dark truth behind dreams and nightmares in this stunning hidden-object adventure.

Zap away colorful jewels to save the townsfolk in Jewelanche 2. In this beautiful match-3 game, draw lines to connect gems of the same shape and color to remove them from the board. Fight evil bosses and collect gold on your way. Beware obstacles, and spend your cash on the power-ups best suited for the level. Once again use your magic to save the day!

Hundreds, you should be a really easy game, you know? Tapping on circles to make them grow, increasing their value so everything adds up to 100. Making sure red active circles don't collide. Easy idea, easy to play, but when it comes down to actually getting somewhere, you present quite the little challenge. Part puzzle but bigger part arcade game, Hundreds from Semi Secret Software (which includes Adam Saltzman, creator of Canabalt) and Greg Wohlwend (from Solipskier team Mikengreg) is a minimalist experience that nabs your interest from the first level and refuses to let go until you've driven yourself mad with numbers and circles.

The next chapter in Sam Otero's fan-made spin on the popular Pokemon franchise has arrived! RPG meets tower-defense as you are free to manually explore the world, hunting for and capturing Pokemon in the field as a boy or girl, and ultimately discovering the truth behind the strange Shadow Pokemon while you save the world... again! Homage or imitation? That's up to you to decide.

Although Soom 2013 isn't long at all, particularly compared to Place of Light's earlier works like Loom Dawn and Room Marine, it's good while it lasts. The room and its puzzles are very well designed, and although the lack of any sound can be a little disconcerting, it doesn't really get in the way. As someone born in the year of the snake myself (...er, not this year of the snake, the one 24 years ago), I consider myself qualified to recommend Soom 2013, and I do so eagerly.

Nitrome's latest itty-bitty game puts you in charge of a bird with frost-spewing abilities who can freeze its enemies solid. But with one-hit KOs threatening you and a limited amount of icy power at your disposal, you'll have to think carefully and fly fast in order to make it through challenging gauntlets of foes, switches, doors, and more in this simple but clever little action game.

Escape from the Room with Three Keys 8 is less of a full room escape and more of a serial, one of those five to ten minute "to be continued" shorts shown before the main event. Here's a perfect way to take a short yet entertaining break that will leave you wanting more.

Originally released as a Windows Phone game, Wordament from Microsoft is a straightforward Boggle-like word game that's heavy on statistics and competitive scores. Round after round of letter arrangements you'll see, utilizing your precious few minutes to spell as many words as you can before it's on to the scoreboard followed by the next letter grid. And if you're not as interested in beating everyone over the head with your fast-finding word skills, you can also just, you know, play the game and have a good time!

Opposites attract. And, you know, it ain't fiction, just a natural fact that Char Studio integrates into their puzzle game, Electric Joint. Click through the charged particles of each level to create a loop of alternating charges. Remember not to cross the streams while dealing with the challenge of moving particles, electric barriers and whatever else the game feels like throwing at you. It's a simple and easy-to-learn game that any puzzling enthusiast can enjoy (even without being a Paula Abdul fan).

Nitrome serves up a frosty sequel in this gorgeous, quirky game of arcade avoidance. Chow down on all the fruit to complete a stage while avoiding enemies by building or busting ice. But with smarter, faster baddies, tiles that can impact your own cone avatar, and even fruit that will flee, it's even harder than you thought to be a sentient cone of ice cream.

Mateusz Skutnik's dreamily surreal point-and-click treat will help you play your way into the new year. Feeling much like a mash-up of Garden Door, 10 Gnomes and Submachine, you're tasked with finding and replacing all the necessary objects to correct an electrical malfunction after a world-shattering crisis. It is up to you to restore the energy: are you up to the task?

Tossed into a hostile, dark fantasy world that hates you and wants you to die with only your wits and the clothes on your back, how long can you stay alive? Klei Entertainment brings us a gorgeous indie survival exploration adventure as your scavenge for food and supplies, craft weapons and armor and more, and learn the rules of a strange land filled with stranger creatures.

The world is crumbling beneath everyone's feet, and there's only one hope for survival: rockets to the moon! In Handy Game's puzzle release Rocket Island, your job is to develop hexagons of land into functional rockets as quickly as you can. Start with the sea, build solid ground, prop up a platform, then make a rocket. All you have to do is keep everyone alive as you frantically swipe between meteors and volcanic eruptions!

This fourth installment of the alternative reality-bending series continues a milieu of pictorial parables set inside minutely detailed spot-the-difference scenes. Each level has two almost identical scenes side-by-side: your objective is to study both, looking for the subtle differences—such as a person's stance, a ruffle on a dress or the shape of a cloud—and clicking on them. As you search for differences, you're treated to entertaining and thought-inspiring artwork, making Music Box of Life 4 bound to please on multiple levels.

Here's a tip. When it comes to ancient demons, send the most qualified person for the job to do it right. Not the person nearest at hand to slap a bandaid on the problem. Jordan, a powerful but lazy and opportunistic warrior, manages to mess up his quest to put an ancient evil back into slumber in the worst way, and suddenly finds himself facing the unwelcome task of saving the world through actual hard work and adventure in this enormous, vibrant, and frequently funny indie RPG.

In this short text adventure from Hyptosis, lead a party of mercenaries from the esteemed guild, the Children of Brinn, on a job to solve the supernatural problems plaguing a tiny town. The choices you make determine who lives and dies and gets a face full of acid, and provides a brief but solid little diversion brimming with potential for future installments.

Created by Danny Yaroslavski, Cube Cube Cube is an entertaining 3D variation of Nurikabe that presents sets of mental blocks for you to quite satisfyingly smash. Though a way to access interior blocks would be appreciated, puzzle fans should be quite pleased to find this new Flash implementation of the popular logic brainteaser.

Squishy and malleable, colorful and in great peril. That pretty much sums up the creatures in Clay Jam, an arcade game from Fat Pebble that lets you save a world of clay creatures from the clay nemeses that are gobbling them up like tasty appetizers. You've got the power of physics on your side, however, rolling down hills, squishing small monsters to gain mass and make a mad leap from the island to knock the big bad guys away. Heroic!

if you're still interested in taking out a little rage by using a cricket bat to launch a facsimile of a fellow internet user into the ionosphere, then Berzerk Studios has you covered: Berzerk Ball 2 is the latest in the series of action games which proves hitting-stuff-with-other-stuff will never get old. Packed with content, making for a bit of a crowded presentation, but, overall, a very addictive little game.

It's a good thing that TomaTea isn't changing because it's so nice to find all the characteristics you love a fine escape game: a welcoming, richly-decorated room in which clues are presented in a logical order, asking you to draw only a few lateral conclusions to be as free as a bird. No matter how easy or tricky, though, TomaTea always makes escaping feel as pleasant as an afternoon cup of tea and biscuits.

The Journey Down: Chapter One is an adventure game from SkyGoblin that made the trip from desktop download to mobile app without a hitch. First released in 2010, the game has since been remastered with brand new visuals, voice acting, and lots of additional content. It looks fantastic and plays like an expertly-crafted adventure game of old, even with the fancy futuristic touch screen interface!

In this twisted, gleefully weird little action game, take on the role of a crushing spike trap in a video game. You love your job, mainly because you love crushing things, but also because it gives you a chance to see your beloved game mascot... right before you crush him. Can you reach your quota and maintain job security as the fireballs start flying?

Once in a blue moon Tesshi-e gets mischevious and builds an escape around finding not one, not two, but whole lot of lucky coins in a room. These escapes make Tesshi-e fans very happy, thus the title, The Happy Escape. The Fourth time's the charm in this escape where the only objective, besides finding Santa Claus' sack of presents is finding the ten Happy Coins hidden in the room. Another Holiday treat from the mind of Tesshi-e!

Pangolin from Feed Tank is a physics-based arcade game that does a fantastic job straddling genres to create a very different, very entertaining sort of game. You indirectly control a bouncing orange critter by creating temporary trampoline platforms on the screen, guiding the little guy through some crazy stages filled with bumpers, tunnels, portals and more. Pangolin is almost like a game of vertical mini-golf. Except not. And it's way better!

Nekonote's diminutive cherubs are extremely shy and they're hidden about this winter landscape for you to find. Search around, solving puzzles and performing certain actions needed to gain a key, a helping hand or otherwise uncover the hiding spots of each of the ten dwarfs. Like the chirpy pip-squeaks you're after, this point-and-click game is short and simple but big on cheerful cuteness.

Help Santa save Christmas, one present at a time. In this launch sequel from Berserk Studios, once again blast the jolly fellow to great heights. Collect coins to upgrade your rockets. Grab power-ups and maybe you'll be able to save the presents that were blasted into the sky.

Enjoy the anticipation of Christmas Eve year-round with this amusing room escape packed with an astonishing number of puzzles for such a small room. The basic premise of the game is simple: it is Christmas Eve, your boyfriend is on his way over, the tree is not decorated, and you can't remember where you stored the ornaments. Can you decorate before your date arrives? Better hope so!

What's the last thing that happens before Christmas? You go to sleep! That is, you would if there weren't so much going on in your house. A follow-up to Quiet, Please!, Nostatic Software has released Quiet Christmas, a sidescrolling puzzle adventure game that's all about getting a bit of rest before Santa arrives. The sooner you get your brother to chill out, fix the tree, get rid of the neighbor's annoying decorations, and find a way to warm up the house, you're good to go!

'Tis the season for pixels in this holly jolly twisted simple hidden-object game starring roughly every character ever from all of pop culture. From video game heroes to 80s cartoon stars, they're all here participating in some winter wonderland carnage, and it's up to you to track them down in the chaotic scene... all 173 of them.

Hottategoya presents a math lover's dream escape: a room full of ten safes, nine of which remain locked until you arrange the proper algebraic equation to get them open. One by one, you'll gain the buttons needed to solve each numbers puzzle until, likely in a matter of mere minutes, you've earned the key to the exit door. Whatever your attitude toward algebra, you should feel happily liberated once you succeed.

This iPad-only puzzle is a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. And jump scares. Claiming to be a faithful digital recreation of an actual, physical puzzle box with an unsettling history, the game is a series of mechanized puzzles where figuring out the goals and controls for each one is part of the challenge. And it's definitely a big challenge at that. Unlock more of the Box's history as you proceed, and play somewhere nice and dark with the sound turned up.

They say it's all in how you look at things... and they might be right! Perspective, by the fine students of Digipen, is a unique game that combines two-dimensional platforming with three-dimensional worlds to explore. As you switch back and forth between the two modes, you'll see that there's more to this well-crafted challenge than first meets the eye.

Short but sweet, this point-and-click puzzle departs from the original Monkey GO Happy formula by providing a brief diversion as you scour the countryside for all the decorations our sad simian needs to make his Christmas complete. Don't expect much of a challenge, but DO expect some Christmas cheer!

A platform game that presents a world where the Yeti spends his days outrunning an angry anthropomorphic snowball. One of the few platform games where action and puzzle elements are split right down the middle, Oh Snow can be occasionally frustrating, but always fun.

I don't know about you, but every now and then I get bored with all the paranormal mysteries and long for something smothered in fairy dust and happily ever afters. Luckily for anyone with the same desires Elephant Games has found that star we all wished on and made Detective Quest: The Crystal Slipper, an enchanting hidden object puzzle adventure game that will bring that Disney themed twinkle to your eye. Sadly, you won't be the princess in this tale, but instead a Detective trying to help that silly Prince Charming get his lady love.

Potatoman is looking for something. What that is he isn't entirely sure, but he'll know it when he finds it. But one thing is certain: every living thing he encounters seems to have an opinion. Also, they're trying to kill him. Potatoman Seeks the Troof is a short "potatosophical" action adventure game from the retro masters at Pixeljam. Trot and hop your way across several landscapes as you take in the wisdom from the animals, avoiding things like bouncing/growing cacti, flying bird eggs, and a host of more creative obstacles. If you're lucky, you might even learn something along the way!

You're lost in some archaic remnants of an ancient civilization, verdant jungle surrounding an ancient structure peppered with archeological enigmas. Find the clues and useful tools, solve the puzzles blocking your path, and you will soon uncover untold secrets and escape from these mysterious Ruins.

It's been a few years, but the Knytt series has finally returned! Knytt Underground pulls in design elements from several of Nifflas' other games, including Within a Deep Forest, NightSky, and Saira, and creates a beautifully atmospheric game of exploration. There's a big world to run, climb and bounce through, packed with secrets that can only be found by mastering some unique character switching moves.

Swampy still needs a bath, and Perry is still trying to solve a mystery. Who has time for celebrations? These guys do, apparently, as they've managed to squeeze in a little Christmas cheer in Where's My Holiday?, a free release from Disney Mobile that turns the Where's My Water? and Where's My Perry? games into something special for the holidays.

Street Fighter X Mega Man is exactly the game you'd expect it to be: Street Fighter mixed with Mega Man. A free release created by Seow Zong Hui with support from Capcom, this love letter to both franchises stays true to the source material while shuffling things around enough to make it something new. Expect a nice and challenging experience, complete with a new chiptune soundtrack and plenty of inside references for fans of each series.

Paper Galaxy from Liquid Entertainment is an arcade game that's just about as charming as a game can be. Once upon a time there was a happy little blue-eyed moon named Luna. While momma Earth was snoozing, Luna caught sight of a beautiful space butterfly. As she followed it, she encountered some space dust that gave her a terrible case of the sneezies, propelling her off into the wild yonder. Now, lost in the cold blackness of space and far from her home, Luna needs to find her way back, navigating an array of planets, black holes, comets and other obstacles using little more than the power of her own sneezes.

Get ready for a gruesome discovery or two in the latest freaky escape game from horror master Psionic. Waking up in a basement cell is bad enough, but when you find out you've become imprisoned by one seriously twisted killer, all you have to escape are the clues left behind by the victims who came before you.

Tumble Towers 2 is a fun and engaging physics puzzle by Team Omni, in which you must keep totems from tumbling and dropping from wobbly towers of blocks. It doesn't really try to hide the elements it swipes from the Totem Destroyer games, but, even if a clone, it's made with a lot of love for the concept.

Choice of Games and Alana Joli Abbott deliver a gorgeously detailed and immersive text adventure for iOS and Android set against the backdrop of mystical ancient China. Outwit or succumb to mischievous fox spirits, challenge or support the emperor, become a student or one day a teacher of an ancient art, and craft a legacy that will stand the test of time.

The Puddings need your help! Without legs or traction, they're helpless against the selfish humans willing to ignore their pleading eyes and chow down on them, so they need you to help them slide around and combine into more formidable monsters! With different flavours of Puddings with different abilities and a whole bunch of levels, ZeptoLabs brings another gorgeously high-quality puzzle game to your iOS.

If lil' SkullFace is going to make it through the Greg Sergeant-developed action platform game that bears his name, he's going to have to run, jump and duck like a mad-skull, since spikes, enemies and magic portals abound! SkullFace is an engaging, if unforgiving platform with tight controls and that parkour-perfect sense of flow.

This sleepless young prince is a puckish, mischievous sort who wants to play pranks on everyone in the castle. You can join in by exploring every room using keyboard commands, to find and use objects until you've racked up every trophy and achievement to be had in this point-and-click puzzle adventure from Black Square. What to do and where can be arbitrary at times, but for those who love the artwork and the searching about, The Prince Edwards proves to be charming and handsome indeed.

Graduation time at Spellwood Academy! Biggles the bespectacled bunny wizard is ready for finals, but unlike most school exams, these happen to be quite entertaining. Spellwood from Three Rings (creator of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates) drops you in a cheery fantasy world of one-on-one word battles, allowing you to face off against opponents in turn-based tile combat. Think of it as Scrabble meets Puzzle Quest with wands and anthropomorphic animals and you'll have a good idea what to expect!

In this adorable little multidirectional shooter, Alone in the Park, you play John the Cook, who after a long day at work, closes down his restaurant and decides to take a shortcut through the park. Big mistake. Because, as we all know, walking alone at night in the park is just asking for a purple multidimensional portal to open up and suck you into a parallel universe controlled by evil mushrooms. In more conventional shooters, you'd have your pick of shotguns, ninja stars, or BFGs. But you're just a cook afterall, so you'll have to make due with thrown cigarettes and pizza cutters, at least until you've earned enough points to upgrade your weapons

It's a snowy December evening and these landlocked pirates need your help! In as few moves as possible, remove blocks to send them a flood of water so they can be happily at sea—yet don't drown the village elves while you're at it! Earn extra points by figuring out how to get ice to Christmas trees without turning people into frozen chunks, in this eighteen-level holiday-themed expansion pack of Staal Media's original puzzle game.

Take a break to enjoy Tesshi-e's very unseasonal Christmas present to all room escape fans! Featuring some familiar things (it just wouldn't be Tesshi-e without Mr. Birdy and a wobbly picture puzzle, would it?) and some new, Tesshi-e is in fine form with a host of amusing and challenging puzzles dealing with logic, math, color, and a little intuition. With its lush tropical backgrounds (time for a beach vacation!), zippy music, and thought-provoking puzzles, Santa in the Southern Islands is a welcome room escape any time of the year.

October 25, 1888. The Wyoming Territories. The scientist has returned from his first excursion through the Worldgate, and brought with him a strange hexagonal component. But there are still worlds to explore and answers to be found. Worldgate 2: Contact continues the story of William Buchanan's well-received point-and-click adventure. Its puzzles are satisfying and its twists are proving ever more intriguing.

When an evil businessman wants to take possession of a forest that's beloved by the town, it's up to you to stop him... by training up a horrifying beast of mass destruction in this bizarre but addictive training/combat simulation with a fantastic visual style and a surreal premise.

Such an easy concept, but such a challenging game. Zyl is a one button arcade release from DevilishGames (whose work you might recognize from Cube Droid Saves the Galaxy) that's all about patience and timing. It looks so calm and peaceful on the surface, but once the game gets going, you'll quickly realize it's in your best interest to leave nervous anticipation in the other room.

Bart Bonte delivers a deliciously swank yet simple sliding block puzzle with a holiday spin. Push, pull, stack, and stick using the incredible powers granted to you as a magnetic star in order to assemble the shape in each stage. A stylish exercise in clever, clean design and gameplay no matter what time of year it is.

An HTML5 retro puzzle game in which golf plays in reverse as you put together the friendliest fairways possible. With puzzles that effectively mix programming and physics, FLOG captures the feel of an 8-bit classic that never was, and its high-but-not-frustrating challenge level is just par for the course.

It's hide-and-puzzle time with Ubooly and Friends! All twelve of Ubooly's friends are hiding somewhere on the nine-screen map, and the only way to reveal them is to point and click around and solve puzzles relating the the clues they give. If this premise sounds familiar, it should— its author, BenRadish of BeardShaker Games, was also the one behind Tanooky Tracks, which is very similar both in art style and in gameplay, and there's no reason to complain about that. The puzzles are logical and well-designed, the tropical environment is well implemented, and the graphics and audio have a charm all their own.

Man, those ancient pharaohs had it rough. Keeping cobras out of the marketplace. Trying to collect stamps by fulfilling citizen requests. Dealing with the Pyramid Association. And how'd they ever decide where to build their hammer shop?! Kairosoft, makers of Kairobotica, Beastie Bay, and the Story series of games, has recreated a slice of the ancient world with The Pyraplex, a mobile simulation that will steal massive chunks of your time and refuse to let go until you're the pharaoh of all the pharaohs.

Choose your hero and embark upon a dungeon crawl in Dungelot. In this roguelike you'll face a myriad of monsters as you fight your way deeper into the dungeon. Collect items to increase your stats as you find the key needed to exit each level. How deep can you delve?

Hey there, adventure gamer! Remember the good old days when your favorite genre was funnier than a car full of clowns crashing into a kazoo factory? Ok, while it doesn't take much to top that colorful feat, you've got to admit you miss the days of The Secret of Monkey Island at least a little bit. Here to soothe those old wounds is KING Art with its release of The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles, a prequel to The Book of Unwritten Tales that goes all-out for some fantastic laughs, never sacrificing a solid puzzle in the process.

The smash-hit comic series invades your iOS in this gorgeous real-time strategy game. Following officer Rick Grimes as he regains consciousness in a hospital some time after the zombie apocalypse has already begun, the game takes you through a series of iconic locations and allows you to recruit and upgrade all your favourite characters, each with their own unique abilities, to assemble your zombie-hunting dream team. Learn how to make the best of your heroes on the fly, working both solo and as a team, and activate distractions in your environment in order to stay alive and complete bonus challenges.

Inspired by just about every intense action arcade game of years past, playing Maldita Castilla from indie developer Locomalito is a bit like booting up a decades old computer and running one of those old chestnuts that punish you with extreme difficulty. In this case it's not quite as punishing, but the look and feel of an old school Ghosts 'n' Goblins-like experience is definitely there. Don't get too caught up in the nostalgia, though, as you've got a world stuffed with demons to cleanse!

There's no need to bother with crazy cryptic clues when you solve a Gryptics puzzle, because they're all about finding the twelve words that fit perfectly in each mini-crossword. There's only one perfect solution, but there may be plenty of red herrings waiting to trip you up. Fire up your vocabulary box and see what words you can come up with in this intriguing minimalist word puzzle.

Neutral's latest holiday gift is a charming and challenging mini escape set in a child's room full of toys, decorations and presents. Explore everywhere and make connections between the clues you find to solve puzzles and make your way out. Either because of or despite a cute platform style minigame obstacle, Christmas Escape Toy presents a rewarding experience for your escaping merriment—and it's all wrapped up with that special Neutral touch.

This might come as a surprise, but there's a lot of discrimination in the ninja industry, or the "ninjustry" as those of us in the 'biz call it. If you're not a mutant turtle from New York chances are you're going to have a little trouble finding work. Sure, every so often you see a rising star from Beverly Hills or something like that, but for the most part in this job it's go sewer or go home. Thankfully for those of us who aren't reptiles, there's Mark of the Ninja, a stealth action game developed by Klei Entertainment that provides ninja excitement without the heavy shell or outdated surfer lingo. As an unnamed ninja, you'll use your weapons, skills and the powers of a mysterious tattoo to seek revenge for an attack on your clan.

Double Fine Productions knows the spreadsheet is mightier than the death ray, but only when it has some serious super power to back it up! Hire, train, and manage a squad of elite superheroes from the ground up as they handle the day-to-day task of fighting crime and more in this fun and funny free simulation for iOS.

It's important to realize that aliens doesn't necessarily equal a creature that will be faced down by Will Smith. It's also important to know that Will Smith may not be the one who can fight off an alien invasion, even if he is looking sharp in a nice suit. In Symbiosis this possibility has come real and the defenders of the world are none other than plants that need you to properly position them so they can attack crystal aliens bent on the destruction of our world. Peppered with plenty of upgrades to take advantage of those aliens will be poorly prepared for the fight the plants are going to bring.

Santa Claus is stuck in a precarious position. Fortunately, he has some pointy-toed shoe-wearing back-up to assist him, as Santa's Rescue Elf is comes to the rescue. A point-and-click puzzle game by The Gamer Stop, Santa's Rescue Elf is a holly-jolly bit of Christmas fun, albeit with a few obtuse solutions.

It's been a while since we've seen serious activity from Kloonigames' Crayon Physics games. From its debut as an experimental project in 2007 to the release of Crayon Physics Deluxe a few years later, the crayon-drawing physics/puzzle game went from being a neat-o toy to OMG WANT MORE. And now, not too long after its initial mobile release, the game has fully grown up and is ready for its HD iPad debut, sporting a few nice extras along with the visual upgrade.

Some might call this Haretoki creation one of the best escape games this year in terms of brain busting scenarios and enjoyable gameplay but that's up to you to decide. It isn't the prettiest room we've spent time in nor is it the friendliest, if you can stick it out through some head-desk-thump moments, it will reverse those escaping tummy growls into a plump full feeling of satisfaction.

Chain-reactions and arcade action get seasonal in this latest addictive title from SilenGames! Help break Santa from his icy underwater prison by dropping bombs (oh, he's Santa, he'll be fine), and grab coins and presents for upgrades. Simple, flashy, colourful fun that's just the right size for midday gaming!

Welcome to the life of a teaching assistant (and/or editor)! The Grading Game by Mode of Expression is a beefed-up version of the arcade-style browser release First Person Tutor. It puts you in the unenviable role of a TA grading papers for a grumpy proffessor who wants his students to get the grade they deserve: a perfect F! Since you're a bit strapped for cash you have no choice but to capitulate, sifting through papers and marking every error you see with a big red pen.

Somehow our slimy friend Bob has landed himself in another predicament, this time in ancient Egypt with its sun glare, caravans of camels and oodles of sand. Trust me, you don't want to be a gastropod in conditions like this. Bob is a trooper and is going to just keep head held high, inching his way forward toward his goal. So it's on your shoulders to clear the path and keep him safe.

Game Balance's series of sliding-puzzles is back with a shiny new coat of sparkles in Orbox C! This installment may be a little heavy on the glitz and techno music, but the intelligent challenges should appeal to fans both new and old.

Gracing the Weekday Escape stage this week is a touch of color therapy in a mellowly studious room from 10 Color Dots. Although the way may be bumpy in spots for those who do not read Japanese, this pleasant little escape utilizes its environment well to present clues and puzzles needing just the right amount of inference and deductive reasoning to solve. It's as enjoyable to spend time here as to earn your way out.

It's time to learn to race like a champ, as some of the best in the biz steer your from rookie driver to pro as you face off against a field of challengers, and, perhaps, learn a little about proper engine maintenance. 4T2 Multimedia and Mobil 1 presents Mobil 1 Racing Academy. Fast and responsive driving action, with well integrated in-game ads, even if it focuses on breadth much more than depth.

Available in action-RPG or classic turn-based flavour, this moody roguelike from Aaron Steed and music maestro Nathan Gallardo is deliberately mysterious. Descend into a dungeon searching for an amulet with your undead minion, figuring everything from the backstory to the deeper gameplay mechanics as you go. Oh, and tearing off the faces of your enemies and wearing them for bonuses and enchantments. Hooray!

Smart Code Games is back with another puzzling brainteaser that will test your plumbing mettle. You can leave the overalls and the wrenches at home, however, because your tools here as you seek to fill up pots with just enough water are everything from magical mathematical multipliers to teleporters to freakin' bombs. Plumbers lead a much more interesting career than we ever imagined!