On the surface, it's easy to put Thomas Was Alone in the puzzle platform genre, citing games like The Lost Vikings when you discuss the gameplay mechanics and mentioning VVVVVV as another possible source of lo-fi indie inspiration. But after you've spent some time with the game, you suddenly realize it's much more than just a platformer. Thomas Was Alone is an interactive, character-driven puzzle experience with a beautiful audio visual presentation and gameplay controls/physics that were no doubt fine-tuned with fastidious precision.

Nitrome seriously overhauls their balloon-centric action avoidance adventure series with this latest installment! When the family pooch is stolen by a malicious spiky baddie, it's up to the son of a hero to venture out into the hostile wild blue yonder and explore stages packed with wild hazards and enemies. With a complete engine revamp, checkpoints, and more responsive controls, it's still a challenge, but not an impossible one!

Scientists have spent years and millions of dollars to turn a regular cat into The Magnetic Cat. His frizzy ferromagnetic fur allows him to stick to all sorts of surfaces, and, as the scientists unfortunately discovered, to easily escape from secret government labs. Now, he wants nothing more than to settle down with a family, but there's still 30 levels of obstacles in his way. A puzzle platformer developed by GrimToyz, The Magnetic Cat's well-conceived central mechanic and multiple-solution level design make up for the minor problems of implementation.

Grab your Photonic Laser Blaster, and get ready to bring a little light to the creatures of the dark in Photon Baby, a genre-busting platformer by Jeremias Babini. Drawing inspiration from all manner of genres, Photon Baby is a unique little creation, with influences as far ranging as Laser Physics puzzles and the 16-bit classic "Zombies Ate My Neighbors". Some of the later levels get a little busy with competing inspirations, but overall Photon Baby is perfect for arcade gamers who wish Halloween lasted all year.

Oscura is a dark and shadowy mobile platform game created by Chocolate LIberation Front. The silhouette-based visuals might remind you of games like Limbo, but Oscura is much more grounded in action, preferring exaggerated leaps over more limited, realistic physics. Some of the levels feature horribly frightening phantasms, not all of which come in the form of moving enemies. But the visual design is one of Oscura's strong points, and you'll find it's both a graphical treat as well as a platform player's dream.

Deep within the spaceship, a lowly garbage worker tosses clumps of trash into the incinerator. Outside, asteroids begin pelting the hull, eventually causing the ship to crash on an uncharted planet filled with strange creatures. And now you, lone survivor, must explore and fight your way through an intricate maze-like world as you gather power-ups, fight bosses, and collect every little green square you see. In Wade McGillis's downloadable and mobile game Astronot, you get a good strong dose of pure retro metroidvania-style platform adventuring, and you'll love every minute of stranded torture it brings you.

What could be worse than some cretin named Big (who also happens to be your brother) stealing the pair of mystical underpants left by your departed grandfather? Nothing, as far as the folks at Black Pants Studio are concerned. With the team's first release, the sandbox-oriented action and physics game Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers, we get to see just what happens when you give a guy a raygun, a grapple-device, and unlimited rockets, then turn him loose in a sun-parched ruined desert world to find his pants-thieving brother. To put if briefly: a whole lotta rocks will get sliced, tossed, juggled, and destroyed.

Enter The Suspense II, a platform adventure game by Black Square where you can switch between life and death to possibly escape your own fate. The subtle difference between the worlds is pleasing to the eye and manages to be dark without feeling as if you entered a haunted house. Honestly, death never looked so good or seemed so fun.

Forests aren't born evil, you know. Their dislike of heroes can usually be traced back to one traumatic event. In this case, it was the arrival of an evil necromancer, who brought the forest with him courtesy of a magic crystal. Naturally, it's up to you to stop both necromancer and forest in Evil Forest, a 50 stage action RPG with roguelike mechanics.

If you want to join the club, then the titular hat is requisite. It's just that simple. But getting to this millinery accoutrement is not as straight-forward in this platform puzzler by David Durham. Use [WASD] or arrow keys to move about, pick up items, and enter doorways and the [space bar] to jump as you pass by obstacles such as disintegrating tiles and rolling barrels—all while keeping that hat on your head. The difficulty of this feat varies by your agility and timing, yet the production values are consistently excellent. So hold on to your hat and get ready for the fun!

What rotten luck to have your ship crash land on a zombie-ridden planet that you now need to fight across to escape. With a more vocal protagonist than you had before, shoot and calculate your way through this Metroidvania style physics shooter where zombies are just as plentiful as your headshot count. With sixteen levels to survive through and plenty of side missions to keep you occupied, your time with the undead hordes will be engrossing and quite challenging. Polish off the old boomstick and get ready to bust some heads if you hope to survive.

While chunky pixel goats are nothing new to the indie gaming scene (see Llamasoft's iOS release GoatUp), MagicalTimeBean has done something special with Escape Goat, a retro-inspired puzzle platform game that recently made the leap from Xbox Live Indie Games to Windows-based PCs. And you're going to be glad it did, as Escape Goat is an exceptionally entertaining game that strikes a perfect balance between challenge and frustration, reflexes and puzzle solving, and, well, goats and sheep.

What's a bear to do when a soda pop factory suddenly sets up shop in the bear's neck of the woods? Growl a lot! Oh, and seek revenge by drinking up all the cola and destroying the factory. In Cola Bear Float, you've got to guide the grizzly to the goal while playing with a gaseous twist in this high-difficulty platformer.

LovePunks: The Game, developed by a group of the same name and with help from the Yijala Yala cultural arts program, is strange, crazy, bizarre, and absolutely wonderful. It has all the energy and vitality that you would expect from a creative band of 9, 10, and 11 year-olds, and they were clearly having a blast putting it together. Though its showcasing of the photo-realistic animations makes gameplay feel a little aimless, overall it is a singularly unique piece of interactive art.

Find the key, get to the door, advance to the next level. Sounds like your everyday platform game, right? Well, it could be, but not in this instance. Strap on your straitjacket, and step into the psych ward of Funcrow's Psychout, where not everything is necessarily what it seems. Level by level, the laws of physics will continually change; sometimes gravity is controllable by a press of your finger, and sometimes you can scale a wall, and cling to ceilings just by walking.

Red Riding Hood was once a normal girl baking sweets, skipping through enchanted forests, wanting to visit her grandma without any ulterior motives. Little did she know that she was about to be thrust into a nightmare when her poor Granny was taken by some rude wolf. Now it's up to you, as Red, to brave 96 levels of puzzles to save Granny and show that wolf it's never good to mess with a girl who can master gravity.

Dreams can't hurt you right? Sequester puts that to the test when a deceased sister comes to call on her little brother in his dreams. She's stuck in limbo and she doesn't understand why but she knows that it's not where she wants to be. While you may not think a little kid is a suitable choice don't be so quick to judge! Taking on death itself, it's up to you to guide this nimble young lad and help him rescue the soul of his sister.

In a city where the wicked never sleep a brave hero shall rise. Jeff the Sanitation Worker has come to save the day. Er...well, he's come to clean things up so that people can at least walk around without catching the plague from the rats that seem to be everywhere. That's heroic right? Still, prepare yourself for the high energy thrill ride of cleaning the streets as Jeff.

Gently wafting down from the world of Wii Ware games, LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias is an iOS port of the 2009 sequel to LostWinds, a game that also recently made its way from console to mobile marketplace. Frontier Development has created a fantastic sequel to an adorable and easily lovable game, translating the same sense of awe and wonder that made the original such a pleasure while adding new elements (literally) to toy around with. It's a platform adventure ("metroidvania") like few others, and once you get a taste of the richly animated world LostWinds2 has to offer, you'll sit down and absorb the entire game without hesitation.

Recluse is a short, cute, and creative metroidvania-style platform adventure game from chambers that tied for eighth place in the most recent Ludum Dare compo. Centered around the "tiny world" theme, you play a snail who has never left its shell and is now ready to emerge into the world. While much of the gameplay is standard platform fare, there is a unique mechanic that makes Recluse worth experiencing: screen shoving!

This little girl named Mabel is stuck in a cavern and her only means of escaping is combining letter creatures into words and use them as platforms to climb out. A cross between a platformer and a word puzzle game that gives you the challenge of navigating platforms carefully while making intricate words for as many points as possible. Your high score and hopes of surviving all hinge on your extensive vocabulary knowledge and quick thinking in this game by Joel Esler.

He's a ninja with a mission: to complete the report on time... it's Temp Ninja! In Games Northwest's high difficulty platformer, fly through the air avoiding spikes and trying your darndest to land on tiny platforms or plummet into the unknown. Grab the nearest cup of coffee and spiral your way through 20 levels of an experience you're not likely to find in your own office!

The Podge's cute, cuddly, and ever-infernoey insect is back to set the world on fire once again in the puzzle platformer, Firebug 2. As before, the gimmick is that the protagonist will set everything he touches on fire, making speed a larger element than in most puzzle platformers. Refinement of the original's already fun gameplay, makes for a game that's a great for burning through a coffee break.

Fans of Metroidvania style games, rejoice, and put on your virtual sneakers! SubMu entertainment's latest release, Blockstachio, incorporates quirky, blocky graphics, and a soundtrack that solidly consolidates retro bleeps and bangs over the top of the heroic theme music that will drive you towards your goal, while also packing enough platform action to keep you happily satisfied, while running and jumping your way through each level, in your pursuit to save the world. The world needs saving, and it is up to you and your cubic hero to do it. Are you up to the challenge?

You might not be ready for this Jelly Escape, a puzzle-platformer by Taw Studio. Games about anthropomorphic blobs making their way through dangerous obstacle-laden settings are nothing new, and this one is hit by a bit of CPU lag. With a fluid progression of 50+ levels, a comprehensive checkpoint system that allows the game to be challenging without ever feeling too tough, and a hilariously whimsical sense of humor, though, it's worth checking out.

Ever wanted to do something, found out how unbelievably overwhelming the task would be, then decided it'd be a better idea to stay home and have a sandwich? Our hapless knightly protagonist in Climb to the Top of the Castle knows that feeling all too well, only in his case, sandwiches probably haven't been invented yet, and he's got a king breathing down his neck pretty much forcing him to haul his armored rear to the top of the castle and save the princess. Did we say "castle"? Because really, it's pretty much a mountain!

It is up to a green cosmic wanderer with a chain grapple arm to rescue some grounded birds from certain destruction in this retro adventure grapple game. Ladd Spencer (think classic grapple game...) may have had it rough, but the Chain Champ here has to swing over boiling lava pits, dodge pitfalls, and focus on collapsing grapple surfaces. A quick casual game packed with loads of gameplay, chiptune sound effects, and helpless birds to keep you swinging during a lazy afternoon.

An old idiom is brought back to life in the physics puzzle gaming scene in Eliot Pace's sequel to Pigs Can Fly. Manipulate multiple objects using time-and-space distorting colored potions so a little pig can get some wings. With a re-imagined look, more depth to the puzzles, and the same physics gameplay, this oinker has learned a few new tricks that are a welcome sight. This porker is as lazy as pigs get so it could use all the help it could get.

Aimed more at kids than adults but equally enjoyable by both for its charm, this sweet little adventure platformer tells the story of a teddy bear who gets lost and strikes out to find a way back home to the little girl who dropped him. Light on challenge but big on style and cuteness, it's just the right size for new gamers to try on, and just the right tone for old gamers to relax with.

Ever since Pac-Man first escaped off the right side of the screen to magically appear on the left, players have had a certain thing for games that skew traditional notions of spatiality. The Village Blacksmith offers another wonderful take on this kind of teleportation in Recursion, a cool little retro puzzle platformer. The series of single screen levels progresses nicely, even if the jumps require a bit too much precision. Still, Recursion worth playing over and over again.

Having a mellow spell and want a game that won't zap your brain? Conjure up a bit of amusement in this charming little puzzle platform game by Aizat Haibulin. Using your sparkly wand, strategically place dummies to overcome the obstacles and baddies standing between you and the magic door. Don't let the name fool you: nothing overly complicated or intricate here. It's just the right amount of cute design and mild challenge to suit your fancy.

Explore deeply layered fantasy landscapes, encounter boss battles and intriguing characters, discover treasure chests and secret coves, upgrade armor and weapons, level up and and everything else you'd want to find in an epic RPG platforming adventure. The on screen controls make your journey all the more enjoyable for a classic gaming feel. Any nostalgic cravings you had for your favorite games of old will be satisfied as you are the hero and your quest is great. Keep that sword handy and your magic prepped; who knows what danger lurks beyond those gates? You'll soon find out!

Oh no! The king of the realm needs you to save the princess from the evil clutches of the Dark Knight! Go figure, right? Wind-up Knight is a mobile run and jump adventure very similar to Canabalt HD except you get a fancy sword and armor to fight enemies while dodging traps to make your way to the princess. Convenient items in adventuring, yes, but it won't save you when the Dark Knight starts getting really serious about stopping you. A knight's mettle will never be more tested and neither shall your timing skills as pits, enemies, and environmental dangers stand in your way.

If you grew up in an age where dithering was a a common graphical trick to get around color limitations and were excited when CGA was succeeded by EGA which gave way to VGA, just seeing a screenshot of You Have to Win the Game will turn you mad with nostalgia. The exploration platformer from Pirate Hearts shares a lot of design elements with Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV, Lyle in Cube Sector, and Celestial Mechanica, though its main trick is emulating the computing environment of a decades-old PC. But even if you don't get excited by 16-color CRT monitors, You Have to Win the Game is a thoroughly enjoyable ride!

And Then There Were None... an old English detective book that has been adapted for the stage, silver screen, and radio has given inspiration to an indie platformer game. As you quest through the blanketing snow and eerie white noise, the game follows a man known only as Hughes as he tries to defend himself from a roaming serial killer. Tensions rise and fear sets in as danger lurks around every corner, tunnel, and platform. Your only glimmer of solace is the voice emanating from a radio, leading you along and aiding you in your struggle until... it's too late.

Up for a challenge? In BlockHopper, an innovative puzzle platformer from GreenPixel, you control an adorable little robot named Bit across 35 different levels and landscapes to ultimate victory. But here's the twist: this isn't just some run-of-the mill, jump over static platforms to victory kind of game. Instead, you control the placement of platforms in the form of many different and ingenious blocks, each with their own separate logic and mechanics. This game features some cute graphic and a great soundtrack by Starship Amazing, but don't kid yourself, this game is hard. VERY HARD. To win, you'll have to think outside the block.

Help Johnny through a level filled with hazards by buying upgrades for.... everything! From run speed to the game timer to double jumping, it's in the store. Collect coins, buy upgrades, and repeat until you're strong enough to take on the final boss. Simple but engaging, Johnny Upgrade is a little treat for platforming fans, or anyone who really likes upgrades.

Use physics to maneuver around obstacles in your quest to collect stars in this stylish platform game. Without a 'jump' ability, you're going to have to use all the physics-based tricks you can to stay off the deadly spikes below. Blip is a fun, playable, and completely fresh take on the genre.

We are not alone. Life has been discovered on Mars, but it's nothing like we ever expected to encounter. In this gorgeous, one-of-a-kind moody action adventure game for iOS, you'll journey deep into the red planet and uncover the secrets buried within its soil. Discover new life forms and challenging puzzles that force you to use the environment to your advantage as you help the planet grow... and ultimately decide its fate.

The best games are ones that make you believe you are a part of one story, while another story plays out quietly behind the scenes. In The Ultimate Celebration, a poignant indie platformer from Brian Soulliard, you play a jolly little Party Dude who's only desire is to throw a party for all 20 of his friends. In the real world, you would just call them up on their cell phones and invite them, but where's the fun in that?!

Come along for the adventure with Pee Wee and Nits the dog as they travel through history to learn and get their friends out of trouble. Run and jump your way through Greece, Rome, Egypt and Great Britain to solve physics puzzle and learn a little from British sitcom star, Tony Robinson. The excellent voice over work, grainy sketch art style, and casual difficulty will draw anyone to this advergame who is looking for a quick distraction.

Imagine an entire game built around the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Arc and you'd have Rastatronics' Gem Cave Adventure, a bare-bones platformer that puts you in the role of a jewel seeking adventurer, exploring your way through 50 caves, dodging obstacles and finding treasure along the way. The only problem is that, once you've taken your treasure, ancient traps become activated and you'll have to make it past them all if you want to cash in your find. Gem Cave Adventure is a great little game that, while it doesn't do anything new, it takes an old idea and swings with it.

Explore the Tiny Worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom in Johan Peitz's Ludum Dare entry, A Super Mario Summary. A distillation of the original 32 levels of Super Mario Brothers in single screen puzzle-platform format, A Super Mario Summary is a loving tribute, but more than that, a great game.

Platformer. Ugh. Does just the mention of the word bring up bad memories of clunky controls, lame physics, and endless falls?. Have no fear! A plucky little boy with a purple baseball cap is here to make you believe again. Little Locations, Nolan Cooney's Ludum 23 entry, is a no-nonsense game with great physics and interesting backdrops that is challenging without being utterly impossible.

The riddle of the sphinx has tested many peoples puzzle solving skills for centuries, and now it is testing your platformer skills. Made during the What Would Molydeux game jam, Andrew Brophy and his crew presents Old Man Baby where you jump and crawl as a man who must change in between stages of his life to solve puzzles. You have to take baby steps when starting out, but do not worry because your glory years will set in pretty quickly.

Created for the Ludum Dare 23 Jam, this charming puzzle platformer puts you in the role of Soldier Hinds as he attempts to escape the clutches of the evil Zordak on the small prison of Planet 161. It isn't just a great game for something created in under 48 hours. It's a great game full stop. Using three very different types of guns that allow you to manipulate your environment in different ways, Planet 161 dishes out cramped levels that unfold in complexity, offering up a few pretty compelling exercises for the gray matter while not suffering from being overly difficult.

See the icon next to this text? That's exactly the size of Nitrome's newest puzzle platformer, Gunbrick. You've got to roll, slide, and shoot your way to the exit in this compact 50x50 pixel game. It may be tiny, but Gunbrick is a big puzzle adventure. (Unless if you cheat and play the game in the larger frame... but what's the fun in that?)

A lonely, lost robot wakes up to find itself floating towards a strange island. It has no memory of where it came from or what it's doing, but as the little raft touches stable ground, it does what any amnesiac creature might do: runs forward to see what's out there. Gear World may not be the most original concept this side of Cave Story, but the hyper-difficult platforming action and carefully designed levels more than make up for the conventional setting.

Switch, a puzzle platformer by Scott Addelsee, Jemma Barnard, Kate Fierek, and Tom Saunders, is like Sonic CD, if it were designed by the team that made LIMBO. You'll be switching between the past, present, and future to collect keys. Moody atmosphere and clever puzzles are hampered by wonky jump physics and unnecessary "switch" limits, but Switch is a game well worth your time.

John Cooney and Jimp are here to give you all the puzzle platforming you love, all the surprises you'd never expect, and 400 achievements to earn in Achievement Unlocked 3. Exponentially vaster in scope than its predecessors, Achievement Unlocked 3 is a game that's packed, even crowded, with content. Its busyness may be unexpected compared to previous entries in the series, but it's still a heck of a lot of fun.

Platform games commonly require a fair amount of jumping to move around, but the author of this unique platformer decided that jumping is the new walking. As the title implies, Momentum is your best friend and you can bound from platform to platform while dodging spikes and collecting colored candy orbs using that speed.

It's tough going when the love of your life is a ravenous member of the walking dead. Clearly the two of you want to be together but for that to happen you'll have run, jump, shoot, and dodge your way around angry zombies as you help guide your zombie lover to her cage in this endearing storybook love story of a platformer.

To have loved and lost is better than never to have loved at all. Or so the saying goes. But what if some loss is simply too unbearable? Would you go to Hell and back to return the one you love to the world of the living? You may not but the character you play in My Life is Yours does. Try it out and see if you'd ever willingly go toe to toe with the Underworld.

Bam! Caught ya! Being stealthy is something we all do when creeping around the kitchen at night, going for that last piece of cake before anyone else in the house gets a crack at it. In Stealth Bastard, a stealth platform game from Curve Studios, moving around unseen is what it's all about. Instead of getting busted and forfeiting half a slice of cake, though, you get blasted to pieces by a robot laser the size of your torso. Ouch!

A one button journey from cradle to grave with a mouse driven twist and decent production values. NTFusion takes us on a Canabalt-esque adventure as you nab power-ups and meditate on what's really important in life... aside from high scores, of course.

This springtime-themed puzzle platform game from Airomagic has twenty-four levels of a bonkers bunny in pursuit of one thing: a perfectly delectable green cabbage. Ingest carrots only to spit them out on buttons, lowering gates, while helicopter ears allow flight around deadly hazards. There's much enjoyment in reaching that goal in each of the twenty-four levels but...those poor panicky cabbages!

Eating blocks, swapping colors, puzzle platforming... it's a dinosaur's life for you in this too cute to be believed little gem. Eat the requisite number of blocks to pass each level while avoiding the hazards, and don't let the relatively light level of difficulty fool you... there's some real challenge waiting inside this vibrant little game.

Yahtzee is back, and this time he's offering his take on Metroidvania in Poacher, an action-adventure platformer. Join wabbit-hunter Derek Badger as he stumbles into an ancient conflict far below the Earth's surface. Expect some killer difficulty in this effective combo of humor and horror.

A puzzle platform game where your goal is to carry a heavy key to the keyhole by jumping and tossing it across the stage. Thrown keys travel in a horizontal line until hitting a solid object, then they fall straight down. Unburdened by the key, you can jump a little higher, allowing you to work your way through each stage using a combination of platforming and careful key tossing. A very well-designed game with some great levels to complete! (Note: You need to click the link marked 'Keylugger' after visiting the link above to download the game.)

Colgate, the fan-named background pony with a passion for fresh breath, takes center stage in this colourful and surprisingly robust platform adventure from Mark Sprague. Dissatisfied with her Cutie Mark and determined to embrace her true love, dentistry, the little blue unicorn sets out to gather an ingredient for a magical potion in the mouth of a dangerous beast deep in the Everfree Forest. Packed with surprises, secrets, and even extra endings, it's a brony dream come true that even non-fans can enjoy as they dispatch numerous foes and challenges with their magical toothbrush!

The third installment in Brad Borne's Fancy Pants Adventure series is here! Do gravity-defying wall runs, jump off some walls, and even cut up some enemies with your fancy new weapon! The fancy pants man has come along way since World 1 and he has definitely added some sweet, new tricks to his repertoire. The Fancy Pants Adventure series features some of the best platforming action you can have in a browser.

ErlinE is a puzzle-platform adventure game from FedeehSevenfold that features a bewitching ingénue trying to save her home, Aurla. With the help of her ever present companion, who could easily be mistaken for a bulldozer in disguise with all the pushing and shoving he provides, she must brave a terrain filled with spikes and lasers to save her world from evil that has seeped through portals that were supposed to keep that stuff gone for good. In this besieged magical world waiting for a hero, it's up to you to throw caution to the wind and charge headfirst into danger. After all, who else but you could possibly save such a gorgeous landscape that has no other champions to defend it?

Fire and ice don't usually go together, but the wildly popular Fireboy and Watergirl games are the exception! Delve into a frosty temple and control two different elemental heroes at the same time, with new hazards, puzzles, and challenges in the beloved puzzle platform series!

An interesting combination of 2D and 3D, Rinth Island takes classic sokoban block-pushing, switch-throwing fun, throws in some tropical twists, and shakes it up to make an iOS game that's as refreshing as a hurricane (the cocktail, that is). With 60 adventure levels, 3 more modes for each level, and an in-game level editor and user-created levels, it's a lot of puzzle for the price.

Offspring Fling is a poignant game about the dedication of family, the scary beauty of nature, and the lengths to which a parent will go to protect their kids. Of course, it's also a game about throwing children, so don't think that it gets too sappy. Developed by Kyle Pulver, maker of Depict1 and Verge, Offspring Fling's central puzzle platforming mechanic of carrying and throwing bouncy offspring is so clever and fun, it's surprising no one else thought of it first.

An early-release demo of a game that's been in production for several years and is still a work in progress, Vertex is on track to be the next massive-hit metroidvania. Inspired by the likes of Cave Story, Chrono Trigger, Spelunky and Super Metroid, Vertex drops you in a world that encourages exploration with multiple branching non-linear paths, upgrades, an RPG-like equipment menu, item shop, and much more. The game already looks and sounds fantastic, and the demo is nice and meaty, so you won't feel sleighted when it ends. You will, however, want more, and with any luck, that dream will come true soon enough!

Kathryn is a woman who has issues... or at least, she must if her friends are pressuring her to see a psychologist. But while she's unwilling to confront her own problems and habits, she discovers that you can't (or maybe shouldn't) always avoid the things about yourself and others that bother you. A devious puzzle-platformer with a sleek style that serves as a prequel to 2009's The Company of Myself.

A quirky off-kilter adventure puzzle platformer from PixelWelders, starring a Killbot who isn't too sold on the whole "killing" thing. Interesting Gravity Gun telekinesis mechanics and snarky writing is weakened by glitches and loose controls, but there are a lot of cool ideas displayed in this debut release.

A high-difficulty minimalist platformer by Noxious Hamster, Spikes Tend To Kill You 2 makes no bones about its brutal difficulty. However tough it is though, the challenges are mostly fair, and clever level design and dialogue will keep players interested, even after the 500th impalement.

The Fancy Pants Adventures is now available for iPhone and iPad! Referred to as simply Fancy Pants, this is the fast-moving blur of a browser game we've all come to worship over the last few years, including the more recent and feature-filled XBLA and PSN releases. Tons of levels, tons of extras, and tons of creativity. It's so much Pants, you'll barely be able to contain yourself!

It's a platform game. It's a puzzle game. It's also a rather funny game. Office Rush is exactly how you feel when you work in an office, dashing around to run errands while you try not to trip over your own feet. Similar to the browser games Rooms and Continuity, Office Rush blends a little bit of puzzle with a whole lot of style into a mobile game you'll be proud to grab and play for the rest of the afternoon!

The latest in the "absolutely amazing" sub-category of platform adventures, Out There Somewhere from MiniBoss puts you in a world of not-so-intelligent aliens (well, there are a few smart ones), falling blocks, massive pits of lava, mysterious sky-facing beams of light, and seemingly impassable corridors, all standing between you and the pieces you need to fix your ship. Explore a non-linear world filled with puzzles and passageways, using your teleportation gun in some very crafty ways.

When your paint factory experiences disaster, you must move through twenty-two rooms of toxic hazards and labyrinth obstacles using your platforming skills and your paint gun. The challenge grows harder with each new level but with the help of two special new paint colors—slippery fast orange and super bouncy green—you get to be the hero. There's plenty of cool party hats to collect and achievements galore for instant gratification to encourage you along. The final, timed level is a devil to get past but the cheers of your rescued co-workers will be worth it. By the way, who pushed the factory destroy button?

Science has proven that water physics are some of the most entertaining gameplay mechanisms ever created. Forget things like realistic friction models, voxels, endlessly generating worlds, and being able to rewind time. Capturing, deploying, and just messing around with gooey water is where it's at. Vessel, a new steampunk puzzle platformer from Strange Loop Games, builds most of its gameplay around liquids, using them as both mindlessly flowing matter and as something you probably never expected water to do: become semi-intelligent!

What happens when you give Mario a portal gun? A mish-mash of two extraordinarily recognizable games — Super Mario Bros. and Portal — with a whole lot of extras. Mari0 puts you in control of our favorite pixellated plumber as he goes on his famous adventure from the mid-1980s, only this time, he's got the power of portals on his side!

Ms. Particle-Man! Ms. Particle-Man! Showing off things that Silverlight can! What's it like? Pretty good! Ms. Particle-Man! A fun little work from Picobots where the quest for the Higgs Boson particle takes on the guise of a 1980s arcade hit, Ms. Particle-Man is so aggressively science-geeky and displays such love for the games it emulates, that a nostalgia trip is almost inevitable.

A flight of fancy makes young Nelly venture out of her house alone one night, and she winds up stumbling straight into trouble of the "deep, dark, deadly" variety. Will she survive her journey through this melancholy yet oddly beautiful realm? Only your puzzle-solving and platforming skills will tell in this short but striking little adventure.

A somewhat steep difficulty curve can't hide the polish and enchantment of this interactive art/hidden-object adventure. Young Sellar Dore runs away from home and the constant fighting of her parents, but years later, news of a devastating earthquake prompts her to return home... as long as she can earn the money for her ticket by tracking down the important items other people have lost in this surreal fantasy world.

Launch a bouncy robot into space in Last Robot 2, an action platform game by Karma Team. Dodge bombs, leap from clouds, and continue ever upward to stay alive. Along the way, you can collect coins and purchase up to 24 upgrades to make your robot better - faster - stronger! A handful of achievements and an easy learning curve make for an addictive adventure into the cosmos.

Under orders from your demanding master it is up to you to brave the perilous city and retrieve the precious golden eggs in this physics puzzle platformer sequel to the original. Be prepared for spiked walls, laser guns, angry dogs, and an assortment of other weapons waiting to foil your brilliant egg snatching plans.

When a prince is turned into a frog then trained into a ninja, what do you get? A puzzle platformer that's a bit like Sticky Ninja Academy only less sticky and more... green. Help Kaeru collect enough magic gems to reverse the curse by using physics and mouse-driven controls to navigate surfaces, avoiding those hazards that make you go "Splat!" Ninja Frog starts out easy then quickly becomes a lesson in discipline and diligence yet it remains compelling and fun for those who take great satisfaction in their accomplishments. Aah, Grasshopper, you have learned well.

In this puzzle platform game by Vyacheslav Stepanov, you'll do more than tapping arrow keys to move through all twenty-four levels. Use the [spacebar] to turn your creature into a stone step or shield but be sly, plan your way carefully: their numbers are limited. With a smooth difficulty progression plus a fair amount of challenge, you can breeze through, maybe even earning all seventy-two stars easy-peasy, and still make with a solid good time.

As Magnet Kid, it's your job to search for some arms, avoid spikes and maybe learn a little about magnets on the way. This tough puzzle platformer has you swapping polarities in true magnetic fashion as you strive to reach the exit of each stage.

A Tale by Alex from Digital Dreams is a sidescrolling adventure told in three areas at the same time. You control Alex in three worlds simultaneously, jumping, attacking, and collecting coins like synchronized swimmers gone to ground. The bottom level is Alex's real self, but up above is the fantasy realm conjured by his imagination. Evil goldfish, a dark forest, and turtles the size of a Buick? Hey, if he can dream it, it can take form and attack his imaginary avatars!

Ziggy Fraud will never learn, at least not as long as he can bend reality to his will in weird ways and his noble chicken steed is there to carry him from danger! The follow-up to Humbug is distinctly more of a straight-up puzzle platformer with difficulty this time around, but the bizarre sense of humour is definitely intact.

Whoa... what happened last night? You remember leaving the waller around 10... Did you have one too many swigs of slop? How the heck did you end up in this stump? Where is everyone? Well, I guess it can't be helped. You'll just have to get started on the long, dusty, spike-filled road back to your pen. Mr. Bree Returning Home is an award-winning platform game by TawStudio Entertainment, taking home Best Art Game at the 2011 Brazilian Games Symposium. It's up to you to ensure this little piggy makes it all the way home.

The Lost Vikings is a great game; one of the best puzzle platformers ever. But haven't you ever wished that it had more... zombies? Well good thing for you Gentleman Squid has come along and developed just that. In Three Dead Zed, you play as a zombie who has three forms, each with its own abilities. Your job is to jump, climb and attack your way to the end of the level to rescue some defenseless beings.

Sometimes, it seems like we could all use an extra pairs of hands. There's just so much to do around the house: taking out the garbage, washing the dishes, pushing around the giant crate collection, flinging yourself across that inconvenient electrified spike-filled pit in the backyard, defeating the neighborhood evil overlord. Wouldn't having a clone on-hand just be great? Keybol apparently thought so, and the result is Splitman, and it's good ol' puzzle platforming fun.

Dragon Quest is one of the easier physics games we've featured and it won't take you long to make your way through it. Most of the puzzles involve finding creative ways to dispatch enemies; a favorite has you dumping a skeleton into a fire pit by way of a wall of barrels, Donkey Kong-style! You also get to mess with a variety of physics-based props like ballistae and drawbridges. There's enough charm in the puzzles to make it worth a look, though. Just be careful... they say dragons have pretty terrible breath. Must be all those knights they eat.

Ever since the eighties, gamers have known that there is no greater friendship than that of a boy and his blob. It's as true for Fancy-Pants Styled stickmen who live in a world of notebook paper as it was on the NES. And considering how crazy that notebook paper world can get, they'll need to push their teamwork skills to the limit. Otherwise... they'll just end up Crumpled. An artistic platformer by Oslo Albet, Crumpled is beautifully animated with clever level design, though marred by wonky controls.

Muu's quiet little cave-dwelling life is about to be turned upside down when he sets out to find the source of an explosion that rocks the land. Though short and somewhat challenging, this platformer packs a lot of appealing retro charm into a small package and is worth checking out for the fifteen minutes or so it'll take you.

Arche is worried about fitting in. Her family has just moved to the little hamlet of Tonkiness to open an item shop, and it turns out her dreams of learning magic may be short lived once she discovers she needs an expensive elemental stone to even practice at her new school. But a simple rumour might lead her on to a much bigger adventure than she ever imagined in this beautiful but difficult action platforming RPG.

Imagine a dimension not only of sight, but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are imagination. This should help put you in the right state of mind before you venture into Louis (T)'s unique puzzle platformer, where you control a black pawn in 4-dimensional space. Your goal in each of the 14 levels is to touch the grey checkpoints through what looks like some impossible jumping. This game will blow your mind! Or possibly just blow it up.

Would you go to the ends of the earth, through bat-infested caverns, crossing fiery pits of lava and crawl like a spider to get your significant other a gift? Of course you would—because it's fun! So flex those finger muscles over the [WASD] or arrow keys because each level is another test of dexterity and ingenuity in the courtship gauntlet. The funky tuba tunes and art that brings to mind The Flintstones is especially enjoyable, worth a either a quick dabble or dogged determination to the end.

If the hero of Pick and Dig 3 could jump and actually bothered to use the mace on his back, there'd be no challenge to the puzzles in this platformer, and therefore no fun. The levels in this game are nonlinear, and unlock based on how many you've completed and your own ability to maneuver around the level select screen, so if you get stuck on one level, you can always try some others to get coins to upgrade.

Originally released in mid-2011 by indie game creator E. Hashimoto (Buster), Hydra Castle Labyrinth is an old school-styled platform adventure that was previously only available in Japanese. A brave soul recently translated the game to English, and now the cute metroidvania title is available for a much wider audience to enjoy. And enjoy it ye shall!

Centered on the mechanic of changing your color to interact with different objects, Coloraze, a puzzle platformer by Colin Brown, is a simple concept done well. It's one of those works where a string of gameplay elements are introduced in the beginning, then paid off in the long run with a string puzzles that force them to interact in interesting way. Each individual level won't take too much time to play, but with a good ninety included, plus a solid number of levels made by the community using Coloraze's solid level editor, you won't be running out of game any time soon.

While it isn't big on innovation, Neutronized's adorable platformer is big on charm and packed with loads of classic platforming action to boot! Play as a pudgy, snowball throwing penguin and run, roll, butt-stomp and hope your way through a beautiful world packed with interesting enemies and loads of style.

Dustforce is a speed-centric acrobatic platform game from Hitbox Team. A demo first appeared back in 2010, showing off the concept and basic design. Since then, the game has undergone some silent but effective changes, improving upon the controls and adding loads of content to sweep through. It's a fast, combo-centric arcade experience that emphasizes speed and perfection, and thanks to the online highscore boards and per-level badges, you'll be strangely compelled to keep playing until everything is just right.

Legend tells us of King Midas, granted a gift by Pan that all he would touch would turn to gold. The tale is the inspiration for Midas, a puzzle platform game by Wanderlands, and overall winner of the Ludum 22 Game Jam. In it, you must guide the king to his love, but not before you reach the river that will wash him of his "gift". The theme for the competition was "Alone", a word that's perfectly captured by this short, challenging, and even poignant game.