This is simply fantastic. Using the arrow keys, the aim of Chaser is to catch a small stick man who is running away from you through a black, grassy world of randomly placed trees, rocks and bushes.

Starting off slowly, you soon build up speed by collecting coins which your prey hurls around. The brilliant thing which really makes this game so much fun to play is the music which builds itself up and the feeling of sheer speed once your score gets to around 1000 points. Colliding with a rock or tree will send your little guy spinning and you'll have to start again.

I must admit after about 20 minutes of play, I still have no idea if you can win the damn thing - the most I managed to get was around 1400.

Chaser is a must-play. Download it now.

Here's your extremely short and extremely strange Sunday game pick which David Scatliffe spotted over on his MOUSE NO! blog.

Created for The Poppenkast's 3 Hour Astronauts Competition, Sad Torino Girly Harry is a space-based platforming... experience. Beef describes the game as a means to 'play the heroic parcel every little boy and girl child wishes they could be'. This clears things up, of course.

Give it a try. (direct download link)

Cat Gets 100 Stars is a small Flash game created by the developer of Cursor*10 and the Hoshi Saga series, where players are tasked with guiding a cat around the screen and collecting a hundred stars at their own leisurely pace. There's no time limit to complete your objective, although acquiring some stars might prove to be a little trickier than it seems at first. (source)

Polkadot is a charming little platformer created by the developer of Sworrd Buster and Social Experiment, in which you play a rabbit searching for a party to attend. This will require solving a couple of puzzles and also conversing with the characters you meet during your short trip.

A method to increase the conversation text scroll speed is explained on the same download page. The game will work on both Windows XP and Vista operating systems without a need to use the Game Maker converter.

Steam's usual weekend offers delve into indie and casual grounds this time around, with offers on all of MumboJumbo's casual collection and a 'Bone-Breaking Package' from Redlynx.

Every single MumboJumbo game is now 50% off for the next couple of days. Personally I can't claim to have given their games much of my time, however I did once give one of the Samantha Swift find-a-thons a go and, while nothing special, it was quite relaxing which I guess is what part of being 'casual' is.

Redlynx's Trials 2 and more recent Monster Trucks Nitro are on offer together in a double pack for $4.99. Trials 2 has been on offer so many times now it's getting a little embarrassing, while Monster Trucks Nitro is basically Trials 2... with monster trucks. Still, if you haven't tried either, this is definitely worth splashing your pocket money out on.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Microsoft's Halo team to a level designer for Blue Castle's Dead Rising 2.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

A trailer for cactus' upcoming Flash game, Air Pirates. Will feature pirates (unsurprising), airplanes, giants, loot and secret bases inside volcanoes. The game is set to be released on e4.com sometime next month. (source)

Naginata Destruction is a frantic vertical shooter that features a secondary weapon similar to the one found in Taito's Ray series. Only one stage is playable in this version, but the game does not allow continues so it might take at least couple of tries to beat.

Your ship is equipped with a laser cannon that can lock onto a single enemy, and when fired all enemy ships in the path of the laser will be hit and damaged as well. The more ships you destroy with a single laser shot, the quicker you will gain an upgrade for the laser cannon. (screenshots)

Here's the basics: In each of The X-Spot's 25 puzzles, find the X as quickly as you can and click on it. Sometimes the X will be staring you in the face, other times it will need forcing into view.

Some of the locations of the X are quite clever, including a couple of puzzles which want you to fail purposely to achieve a cross rather than a tick. It's incredibly silly at times but all in all a charming experience. Plus there is score submission at the end for all of you with something to prove.

Newgrounds marks the spot.

Along with the above 'Alpha Walkthrough', Flashbang Studios have confirmed that their next project Crane Wars has about 2 weeks of development left and will be released sometime in June.

It's looking pretty decent up to now, although I can't help thinking it could be so much cooler if there was an option for 2 player mode. Or even 4 player?

The game will be release through Blurst.

A pretty awesome list of the best twenty vertical doujin shooters, with a collection of download links posted in the video description. Most of the chosen games are commercial releases with trial versions, but there are a couple of free stuff to grab as well. The great thing about this video is that the names of featured developers only appear on the list just once, even if they have more than a couple of fantastic shooters under their belt.

I have no idea what the double r is about, but I do know that Sworrd Buster is rreally good fun.

Using the WASD keys to fly around, your character grabs the 'sacred magic sword' before being persistantly attacked by the guardians of the sword until death. Holding down the mouse button unleashes the power from the sword, but you'll need to recharge every few seconds.

I really like this game for a number of reasons. The movement feels great and blasting the sword's beam at enemies so powerful. The way the beams seem to bend in a spiral is also pretty cool.

A nice little timewaster. Grab it from the Overbored blog. (direct download link)

Another Mini Ludum Dare entry and this one is a ton of fun. Time Warp is a Guitar Hero style rhythm game where small blocks fly at the screen along a path and your job is to take them out using your keyboard.

What starts off as quite a simple beat soon becomes more challenging and a lot of fun. Veterans of this type of game aren't going to find anything that difficult here, but since when was difficult enjoyable?

I went for the ASDF keys and it seems to work pretty well, although by the end cramp had taken over my hand muscles. I challenge anyone to beat my score of 750 (96%). For the Indie Games Time Warp crown!

Play it on Sophie's site.

Created in 48 hours for Mini Ludum Dare #9, Bullet Time is your standard retro shmup with the added bonus of a 'bullet time' effect thrown in.

It's a short but sweet experience. Everything from the action-packed playing area to the accompanying dance (by DestroySound and Kontinuum) beat make it all feel very hectic, and the rank-through-survival system works well. Strangely, the score doesn't seem to do anything at all and shooting enemies seems quite pointless a lot of the time - in fact, killing certain bad guys unleashes even more obstacles, so simply dodging around might be your best option!

It's over at Kongregate.

LaserBox is an interesting little puzzle game about guiding lasers through boxes in an attempt to uncover the hidden mirrors.

Lasers and 'Impulses' can be fired from one of four directions into the group of boxes and will proceed to bounce around and eventually come out somewhere else. Depending on where it pops out, you then need to work out where exactly it could have bounced and implement a Minesweeper-like removing/tagging strategy.

The number of boxes can also be increased to give more of a challenge for anyone finding it a little too easy. Give LaserBox a go at Newgrounds.

Paperworld

Lately I've been doing a bit of research on the entries submitted to this year's Swedish Game Awards, and had picked out a couple of notable submissions with interesting trailers that might pique your interest (or at the very least, amuse).

Bloodline Champions: Multiplayer action game.

Tomb of the Aztecs is a roguelike with raytraced graphics and real-time combat, a change from the usual turn-based tile movement employed by other RLs. You play an adventurer who is on a search for the Orb of Popocatepetl, rumored to be hidden somewhere inside the lowest level (sixth floor) of the legendary warrior's tomb.

There are no items, weapons or armor to pick up, other than ammunition for your fireball cannon stored inside treasure chests. You can regain some health by walking over a chest and plundering its contents. The save function is accessible by pressing the escape key and bringing up a pause menu, although players will always resume their journey from the starting position of a level immediately after restoring a save game. (source, forum thread)

If you've played Messhof's most recent and excellent free offering Party Boat and thought to yourself "I'm not entirely sure helicopters really control like that" (and you'd probably be right, unless it's a helicopter on a string) then you'll be reassured to discover that the not quite as free The Thrill Of Combat seems to offer a far more normal feel to the helicopter control. Well, providing you're in a helicopter that's spiralling towards the ground at high speed. In a disco.

As with Messhof's previous work, you can expect to be taken a little outside your comfort zone. Ok, ok, perhaps a lot outside of your comfort zone. It seems a simple, if reasonably bizarre set up at first. Fly your little helicopter around, shoot people, slice up their organs and dump the organs in your boat. You know it's not going to be quite that easy though, right?

Designed for two players but fully playable by one if you choose (as I'm sure most people will do), it's quite an incredible experience. I've never played anything quite so intentionally (and successfully) disorientating before for one thing. The combination of the pulsing background, the quite wonderful music, the glitch aesthetic and well, the entire world spinning around you as you to try to pilot your helicopter to harvest the organs is exhilarating.

Considering it was only a few days ago I was lamenting in the RPS comments section that Messhof's tricks have so far had little effect on me, it was enlightening to discover that 20 minutes after closing down The Thrill Of Combat I was still getting flashes of a helicopter seemingly burnt into my retina. I think we can safely say that it definitely worked this time round.

It's a punishing game for sure but one hell of an experience.

The Thrill Of Combat is $4.99. There's a video to watch of the game in action, but really, it doesn't do justice to the craziness you'll endure whilst actually playing it. - Oddbob

The objective of Cactus Poker is to win as much money as you can in under ten rounds of poker with three other computer-controlled players. At the end of the tenth round, your winnings will determine the cutscene shown as your reward for completing the game.

You can switch any or all cards in your hand before placing a bet, and cards are only revealed once the betting phase is over. The more chips you own, the more you can bet, but lose all of them and you won't be allowed to participate in the next round.

Constellation Chaos is an arcade offering from the editor of the MOUSE NO! blog. Using the Z and X buttons to spin a pointer, players must draw a constellation using the randomly-placed stars provided. Small, floating shooting and exploding thingys are everywhere trying to sabotage your attempt.

There's also the problem of completely missing all the stars and crashing into the side of the level, ending your run. It's good fun and quite addictive, egged on by a great little ditty to compliment the gameplay. I was quite pleased with my high score of 1505, so please don't tell me if you manage to beat me. It will make me angry.

Grab it here.

Astatine is an apocalyptic platform which focuses on exploration, combat and story. Astatine wakes up in a strange place and, with the help of a spirit, tries to remember who he is and why he is there.

It's pretty much your classic exploration platformer with quite an interesting story and lots of zombies and evil, unpleasant things to kill. The game runs in a small window but strangely for me didn't seem to have any sound or music, although one of the game's tips states that pressing M turns the music on and off, so it may possibly just be my system.

It's a nice little thing to pass away some time on a Sunday afternoon. Download Astatine here.

Similar to Joakim's The Legend of Princess, Ivory Springs is an incomplete project that is short on length but packs enough content to entertain for about half an hour or so. The game is an enjoyable exploration platformer which features great background art and sprite designs, a catchy soundtrack, directional shooting, Mega Man-type slides, and memorable boss fights.

There is a special guest appearance included as a surprise, but if you haven't been following konjak's work for a while now you'd probably wouldn't even notice her cameo.

'Marcus' from Mega64 interviews Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany, developers of fl0w and Flower.

Eat eat eat eat eat.

JW and Robin's art game The Gutter is an experimental piece of art that is free to play, but by sending in a five dollar donation to the developers you can download the full version which comes with one additional feature. The story is about a man who wanders the streets at night, not knowing the fate that would befall him further down the path he chose to take.

This particular journey won't take longer than a couple of minutes to complete at most. (source)

Also: The Eggyard

There's an interesting article over on Kotaku discussing the use of in-game advertising as a means of making revenue for indie developers.

An interview with John Warner, who recently had a hand in the creation of Raycatcher, he talks about his disappointment concerning the level of piracy his game encountered and how a new project he is working on (under the name Greener Grass Games) will be 'a free, browser-based and ad-supported game'.

John and his developer partner Mitch Lagran explain:

"I don't want to do anything The Man-ish... but in order to make games consistently, we need to make money. Otherwise, we can't pay the rent. And if people pirate a lot, advertisements make sense."

But Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners, brings the other side of the spectrum describing in-game advertising as "a little bit of a disappointment".

"It's not lived up to expectations as a major driver of revenue. That was true even when the ad market was strong, and obviously there's an advertising recession going on right now."

It's a good read and may provide indie developers with something to think about. Read the whole article at Kotaku.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Just had to chime in here, since I agree with Jeremy's comments and I'm worried this piece is a little misleading. Unfortunately, from what I know of the in-game ad market, it's not generally that lucrative at current CPM rates -- unless you're talking about actual advergames.

So I think the 'free+ads' angle, which is promoted by a Vancouver-based, VC-funded portal here (sigh), is a little bogus. But here's some real stats from a successful set of browser games to get a good idea of the fact that, even for the Hunted Forever creator, ads are a small part of the equation. But you can certainly make money with web games, this article just seems... unbalanced.

-Simon C.]

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Radical Entertainment, Ubisoft and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Looky here, it's another of those 'use your own music in the game' games!

Turba is a match-3 game in which each level is influenced by the music you pick to accompany it. Effectively, you can choose any song on your computer (in a range of formats including mp3 and ogg) and the game will create a level from your chosen track.

Blocks are selected with the mouse and then destroyed with the beat. Turba will feature 2 different game modes, online leaderboards and special abilities to spice the gameplay up.

The Turba team are looking at a June release. Read more about the game on the Turba site.

A seven-minute long clip of Mari Yaguchi (Famitsu columnist and Japanese TV personality) trying out 2D Boy's World of Goo.

Also: The Painter's Sign (fan-made claymation video)

Striptease is a story-oriented puzzler with some inappropriate images that should not be viewed by younger audiences, although Stephen has made it rather clear from the title of his latest work. It also happens to be another one of his experimental releases which explores the use of gameplay elements in surprising new ways.

There are only three playable levels included. The game is available for both Mac OS X and Windows platforms. (source: auntie pixelante)

The Scene of the Crime is a typical escape the room game with very little story development, in which you play a detective who has to figure out events that had transpired inside a motel room just hours before his arrival. The investigation gets off to a decent start, but players might feel slightly disappointed by how short the actual adventure is.

Be prepared to dust for fingerprints, search the wardrobe of total strangers, peek under or behind their furnitures for evidence, and even rummage through garbage if you are to find enough clues to solve this murder mystery.

Panic Breakout is an arcade game that plays like all other Breakout clones, but in GameDesign's version you are pressured to destroy all blocks as quickly as you can. Blocks are pushed downwards continuously, and the game ends immediately if you run out of balls to use or allow any block to cross the dashed line.

Left clicking releases all balls in your possession, and any balls still in play after you've completed a level will be carried forward to the next round. Bonus rounds appear every fifth stage as well, with the first type conferring bonus balls while the second reduces your spare ball count.

Power-ups include those that increases or reduces the size of the circle you are in control of, barriers, extra balls, and stars that boosts the travel speed of all balls.

In Shift 4 you're in control of an astronaut whose ship was attacked by a giant squid, forcing our protagonist to make an emergency landing at the closest planet. Waking up to find your family members missing, you decide to explore a deserted facility nearby and search for clues about their current whereabouts.

This particular episode is a little more challenging than previous releases, since players are required to switch between two or more characters often to solve some of the harder puzzles. New gameplay elements such as gravity and contact-sensitive switches are introduced at a steady pace, which is a boon considering that the map is a lot less linear and there is a bit of backtracking to do as well. (mirror)

Beta footage of track 1 from upcoming gaming album No Quarter, called Hitlers Must Die, has been released and should give a good idea of how the physics shooter will play.

Ever wondered what a simple platformer would look like if it had a kind of Crayon Physics-style gameplay attached to it?

Max & the Magic Marker appears to be just that. Coming soon to WiiWare, players use the Wii remote to pause time and draw shapes on the screen to solve puzzles. These shapes can be used to dodge obstacles, reach ledges et al.

Looking pretty fantastic. One to stick in the calendar, me thinks.

ACE Team have announced that a sequel to the recently released Zeno Clash is already in the pipeline.

Along with the above new trailer for the original game, the team also gave a fair amount of details regarding the continuation of the Zeno Clash story. Carrying on from the original story, Zeno Clash 2 will again put players in the boots of Ghat.

Lots of characters from the first game will also feature, including Golem and Father Mother, along with a brand new cast. It would appear that ACE Team have also listened to any criticism taken from Ghat's first outing and will be expanding the world to feature more open-ended gameplay, featuring larger, explorable environments and even RPG elements.

Despite this announcement, the free DLC updates for the original Zeno Clash are still in developement with the next one to be released "during the following weeks".

[So we're doing an Indie Games Summit at GDC Austin this September, and we're opening lecture submissions, too -- so if there's any indies out there interested in submitting, here's the info. First speakers will be announced in the near future, too...]

Organizers of this September's GDC Austin have announced a call for submissions for the first-ever Independent Games Summit there, also revealing the Advisory Board and topics to be discussed at the two-day Summit.

Initial information about the September 15th-16th Summit is available on the GDC Austin website, with organizers noting that the Indie Games Summit will include "discussions surrounding business models and methods, promotion and marketing, deep game design techniques and inspirational case studies."

The Advisory Board for the Summit, which will be announcing its first speakers in the next few weeks, include local Austin-area independent developers Adam Saltsman (Paper Moon, Cave Story WiiWare contributor) and Brandon Boyer (editor of indie-friendly BoingBoing-affiliated game site Offworld.com).

In addition, the three main Advisory Board members of GDC San Francisco's yearly Independent Games Summit, Flashbang Studios' Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink (Minotaur China Shop) and IGF Chairman Simon Carless, are also helping to oversee the event.

The San Francisco version of the IGS -- held alongside the Independent Games Festival -- has hosted some of the most notable names in indie gaming over the previous years, from World Of Goo's Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler through Flower's Jenova Chen, Braid's Jonathan Blow, and many more.

As the GDC Austin Indie Games Summit call for submissions page explains, organizers are looking for the following topics, spanning both smaller one and two-person indies and somewhat larger independent console and PC game developers:

- Indie Business: "How to make money, manage teams, and run a company without going insane."
- Promotion & Marketing: "How to get noticed when the "Marketing Department" = you
- Design and Philosophy: "Deep dive into design techniques, for example: constraints, rapid prototyping, tools."
- Case Studies and Postmortems: "Inspirational talks that demonstrate what worked, what didn’t, what surprised you and made you wiser."

The submission deadline for presentation abstracts for the 2009 Indie Games Summit at Austin GDC is June 3rd at midnight PST, and more information is available on the official GDC Austin IGS website.

Learn To Fly is the story of one penguin's mission to prove once and for all that penguins can indeed fly... or not.

Launching said penguin down an icy ramp, players must tap the left and right button to angle appropriately and perfect the height-to-speed ratio, allowing him to fly faster and further.

It's not exactly a unique concept - this kind of game has been scattered all over the interwebs since the dawn of man - but Learn to Fly does have a number of things going for it. Firstly, the music is infectious (whether that be a good or bad thing, who knows). Second, strapping a glider and rocket combo onto a penguin can never be a bad thing.

Finally, trying to get the almighty 6000 feet at the end is incredibly difficult and took me a good 5 attempts. For anyone who is stuck at this point and cannot reach that elusive number, check out Tasselfoot's walkthrough.

Help Mr. Penguin Learn To Play over at Armor Games.

Storm Assault is a horizontal shooter created by the Storm Project development team as a tribute to Konami's early Gradius series. Everything from the classic power meter, upgrade capsules, and boss ships with specific weak points have been transferred and updated with slight changes for this loose remake.

There are two stages to play in version 0.2 and upwards. The second level features battles with Moai statues, which was originally never included in earlier releases. Joystick and gamepads are automatically detected, but you can use the keyboard to control your ship as well. (stage one gameplay video in the extended)

Swords & Sandals IV is a browser board game very much in the style of Mario Party. Players create their own warrior, move around the board collecting coins and sandals and play little minigames and duels to aid them on their quest.

Each character also has a level and a type and now and again will need to compete in RPG style battles with health, magic and luck to play with. It's all very nicely done, but unfortunately there are a number of bugs that riddle the experience, including characters randomly disappearing.

The game can be played against the computer or as a hotseat game against friends on the same PC. This is a demo version but features a good portion of the game. Play it over on Newgrounds now.

Angry Barry is a side-scrolling beat-em-up for the Xbox 360 Community Games and PC with a little bit of politicial parody and a big ton of crazy thrown in.

On Barry's quest "for the presidency of the United States", he must fight his way through an assortment of different characters over 9 stages. The first noticeable feature worth mentioning is the amount of enemies on screen - racking up those combos looks like pretty good fun.

The other is the seemingly fully interactive world - or should that be fully pickupable world? Benches, buses, buildings, giant shoes... that could potentially turn out to be rather amusing. Throw in there local 2 player and a price of 400 MS Points (price for PC still to be determined) and mindless button bashing awaits.

Check out more info at Arrogancy Games.

Taro Paint is a simple paint program with basic image editing options, designed to run on any Flash-enabled browser. Though the default language is Japanese, the interface should be familiar to artists who have been exposed to one professional graphics editing program or another in recent years.

Some of the features which can be used in this nifty application include layers, uploads, undo, brush size, and even a fully-functional colour palette. It might not replace your choice of image editing program any time soon, but Taro Paint could be useful in a situation where you have to draw something up real quick without resorting to downloading or installing any additional software. You don't even need to have the latest Flash Player installed to get it working, since the requirements state that Flash Player 9.0 will do just nicely.

Squid Yes, Not So Octopus 2: Squid Harder is an arena shooter created by Robert D. Fearon, featuring glowy graphics and eye candy that (at maximum setting) is guaranteed to push the limits of any computer setup you may have. A host of configuration options are included, allowing players to change screen size, toggle autofire, activate motion blur, or even enable the practice mode where novices could take the game for a spin without worrying about dodging bullets or colliding with enemies.

Joysticks and gamepads are automatically supported, although you could use the keyboard to play as well. The current version available for download is a beta release that will be updated with a fifth world sometime this week. (source)

Nekogames' Underworld Trip is a platformer created in a style that is similar to Terry Cavanagh's Don't Look Back, where players will attempt to figure out what has happened to them by journeying deeper into the realm of the dead.

Throughout your adventure you will encounter numerous traps and obstacles which kills instantly on contact. There is no health system to allow for second chances, although you can restart from the beginning of a particular scene at any time with the use of the R key.

There are a total of eight stages to play and six single screen endings to discover, but you would have to replay the entire game starting with the first level in order to view another short end sequence. (ending requirements)

Markus Persson's Minecraft is a block-based sandbox building game originally inspired by Infiniminer, but one that requires no installation of any software to play. A Java-enabled browser is all that is needed, and though the current alpha version does not have multiplayer features yet the developer has promised that new single and multiplayer game modes will be added very soon.

You can add or remove blocks using the left mouse button. Right-click to switch between removing or adding blocks, and use the numeral keys 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 to change block type. Creative players can build anything from houses, mazes, towers and even castles with their own moats and bridges with just a little time spent on construction.

Minecraft development blog

We mentioned this game last month and now you can give the demo a gander along with the above new trailer.

The official site describes the game as "a sci-fi colony building simulation that tells the story of man's first expansion into the stars. A fun and challenging mix of colonization and combat set in the near future." If you find you have quite a thing for the demo, the full game can be pre-ordered from Direct2Drive with 25% off, making it $11.25.

Release date is the 4th June.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Blizzard, Blue Castle, Ubisoft and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Downfall is a horror adventure game created with Chris Jones' AGS engine, featuring hand-drawn background art and original soundtrack by Remigiusz and Michal Michalski. The story is about a couple who decides to stay the night in an old hotel before resuming their journey home the next day, although things start to turn weird when you wake up the next morning to discover your partner missing without a clue of her current whereabouts.

Normally this shouldn't bother anyone but after an argument that Joe (the main character) and Ivy (your partner) have had before retiring to bed, it is now your responsibility to find her just to make sure that everything is fine. Searching the hotel you will begin to realize that it houses a couple of dark secrets no one should ever discover, but to save Ivy you must leave no stone unturned, even when rational thought is telling you to turn tail and flee from the hotel as quickly as you can.

The game boasts a simple GUI interface that does away with complicated verb text, with all inventory items accessible by moving the pointer towards the top half of the screen. Examining or interacting with objects and characters require only a click of the left or right mouse button, while all conversation choices that Joe could say to another person are presented in a list at the bottom of the window.

Most puzzles require figuring out which item should be used to overcome a specific problem or obstacle, and thankfully there are no combination code, colour, symbol or sliding tile puzzles to be found anywhere in the game. A minor complaint is that one or two collectibles don't stand out enough from the background, and you could easily miss something if you do not carefully comb through each area with your mouse to find objects that will be of importance later in your adventure.

It should be noted that Downfall features a lot of violence, gore, graphic scenes, strong language and even some nudity. A short demo is available to download from FilePlanet, and the full game can be purchased from Direct2Drive.

Jesse Venbrux is back with the fifth chapter in the popular Karoshi series, and his second Flash browser game to feature everyone's favorite protagonist with the trademark blue suit. In Super Karoshi you not only have to figure out ways to commit suicide but occasionally assist other similarly-looking characters to do the same as well.

Unlike Karoshi Suicide Salaryman, nearly all of the puzzles to be found in this release are original and have never been featured in previous iterations. There are roughly sixty stages to play in total.

Duality ZF is a space shmup coming soon to Xbox LIVE Community Games. The trailer is just above.

What really attracted me to this game is how polished it looks, plus some of those game modes... 4 player dual control? 8 ships blasting around the screen at the same time? Bullet Hell mode? Erm... gimme?

If this is your kind of thing, it'll cost 400 MS Points when it's released.

In an interview with Colin Robinson over at Gamer Limit, indie developer Felix Bohatsch has claimed that the piracy rate for recently released platformer And Yet It Moves is a staggering 95.5%.

Felix explained:

"We currently have a bootlegging rate from approximately 95.5% which basically means for every game we sell there are 22 cracked version being played... our bootlegging rate is really very bad and worse than we expected. We think that this is mainly because of the price point."

Of course this rate is most likely less than estimated due to unforeseeable circumstances - for example, a legitimate player installing the game on multiple computers - however this figure is still very disheartening and trumps even the 90% piracy rate claim by 2D Boy on World of Goo last November (which, of course, they later changed to 82%).

Read the whole interview over at Gamer Limit and check out our review of this lovely little puzzler.

It's time for some Thursday balancing fun! Take your typical 'take all these objects and turn them into a tower' game, inject lots of cats and watermelons and hey presto, you're playing Cat Cat Watermelon!

Initially created as a Ludum Dare entry with fellow contestants haXe and physaxe, Cat Cat Watermelon is a must-play because a) fitting slices of watermelon between cats ears is just so darn cute, b) the victory music is too catchy for its own good and c) when you complete a level, your tittering tower of tabbies is demolished in the most satisfying manner.

Play it now on Lexaloffle.

Coming May 19th, Shift-4 is a platforming puzzler with a twist. Well... it's more of a flip.

And for all you iPhone/iPod Touch lovers out there, Armor Games will also be releasing the original Shift game through the Apple App Store on the same day for free! You can't say no to that really, can you?

SHEEP! is a simple yet addictive card game which is great for wasting a few spare minutes. Sheep cards are placed down 3 at a time with 3 fence cards underneath. The objective is to uses the fence cards to box in the sheep as efficiently as possible.

Fence cards with the same or higher number than a sheep card will remove that card - however, there's only a set number of fence cards, so trying to use as low numbered fence cards as possible is the main tactic. Cancelling out a sheep card with a fence card of the same number will also get you bonus points.

I'm sure I've seen this type of card game before but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. Alex describes it as a "sheep-y version of Solitaire" but I don't think it's Solitaire exactly... If anyone has any ideas, feel free to put me out of my misery.

Download SHEEP! over at Shen Games.

Zero Point Software have been working on Interstellar Marines for quite some time now with little word on how it's all going. The last trailer for their upcoming FPS, Sci‐fi, action and adventure game was released waaay back in 2006.

Now a new update to the official site is coming this Friday which will add a community 'enlistment' feature. There's no word on whether this will be a simple community site or something more - for example, beta sign up - nor is there any update on a release date.

Set in the future, it will feature singleplayer or up to four players cooperative, custom game modes featuring arcade, RPG and tactical elements, a "captivating storyline with heavy focus on realism" and non‐linear gameplay.

It looks like graphically Interstellar Marines is shaping up rather well - well, that's from the 3 seconds of gameplay footage in the above recently released trailer. If you're looking to get more of a feel for the game, try the original trailer.

Be sure to check out the site on Friday for what's going down.

Extremely odd trailer ahoy! Critter Crunch by Toronto-based developer Capy is coming this summer to the Playstation Network and the team have just released the above trailer for it.

Critter Crunch is to be an arcade-puzzler based around "an original and award-winning “food chain” puzzle mechanic, which is all about feeding critters into each other until they burst.".

It'll be single-player, multiplayer and co-op, with lots of lovely trophies for you people who crave shiny things. Check out the Capy site for all the info.

In Miracle Witch you assume the role of an apprentice magic caster named Polfe, chosen by her peers for a quest to defeat the evil king Yeah Walusa and his invading party of monsters. This involves going around the island dispatching creatures, acquiring new spell books and searching for treasures to loot.

Health is regained automatically by standing still at one spot for a period of time, and switching spells is possible by clicking on any spell book at the bottom of the screen. Players start out with the basic magic missile spell, but can unlock flame, ice and lightning spells by opening treasure chests that contain magical tomes within them.

Note that a couple of treasure chests are invisible at first, and will only appear once you've fulfilled certain requirements. Some trees can also be burnt with the flame spell as well. There are two control schemes to choose from, and you can select between them by pressing the space key at any time. (video tutorial)

Citeremis' Aztaka was released just under a week ago and we all cried out for a demo so we could do the whole 'try before you buy'.

So would you believe wishes sometimes do come true! There's a demo available right now... but only for one day right now, since it's a 'Release Candidate' and the final demo will be coming soon! So grab it while you can. [EDIT: Explained the one-day DL issue!]

ACE Team promised free DLC for Zeno Clash in the future and so here goes with the first hit. It's Zeno Clash... in Garry's Mod!

The 'Zeno Clash model pack' features 49 character models, 14 creature models and 8 weapon models from the game to play around with. I've personally got quite a thing for the old Gmod, so I'm looking forward to giving Ghat's face a little... surgery.

[Overall, here's news from our GDC colleagues about the expanded GDC Austin board. But you'll also note that it confirms a new Indie and iPhone Game Summits for the show this September - watch out for lots more news on this next week.]

GDC Austin organizers have announced an expanded Advisory Board for the 'connected gaming'-centric September event, adding Nexon, SOE and EA/Mythic notables to the filled-out board.

The event, to be held September 15th-18th, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center in Texas, has added advisory board members including Nexon's Min Kim (MapleStory), EA/Mythic's Eugene Evans (Warhammer Online), Sony Online Entertainment's John Blakely (DC Universe Online), and Hangout Industries and former Disney exec Mike Goslin (Pirates Of The Caribbean Online), as well as Schell Games' Sheri Graner Ray.

They join existing board members such as BioWare Austin's Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton (Star Wars: The Old Republic) Metaplace's Raph Koster and Zenimax Online Studios' Matt Firor.

“The online gaming space continues to change and expand. GDC Austin addresses the latest trends and challenges in connected gaming,” commented event director Izora de Lillard in relation to the appointments and the main portion of GDC Austin, which will take place Wed-Fri, September 16th-18th.

In addition, GDC Austin will feature both existing and new 2-day Summits. Firstly, the Game Audio and Game Writer Summits will continue their long-running association with Austin.

It's also been revealed for the first time that two new Summits - an iteration of the breakout successful Independent Games Summit and the newly introduced iPhone Game Summit, will also debut on September 15-16, 2009.

Initial advisory board, lecture and submission details for the Indie and iPhone Games Summits at Austin will be revealed next week.

Online registration for GDC Austin opens in early June, and for more information on GDC Austin and the advisory board, interested parties can visit the official GDC Austin website.

A preview clip taken from their early alpha build of Shank, Klei Entertainment's (of Eets fame) upcoming 2D action platformer. No news about dates or release platforms yet, but judging from the control scheme seen in the first few seconds of the video the game is probably made with the Xbox 360 console in mind.

First Shank Preview (The Shank Blog)

Both Newgrounds and GameJolt could be making you some cash right now, just for creating games. OK, so you're not going to become a millionaire from making 'Attack of the Flash Game 4', but every little helps, right?

TIGSource spotted Newgrounds' new Revenue Share scheme which, while it has been around for a while now, is now open to all users. Users can earn ad revenue from posting up games, audio samples and even a blog onto Newgrounds! Cashback!

Of course, not everyone does Flash. Gamejolt is a fairly new independent gaming site which deals with not only Flash games but freeware too. Their new Ad Revenue Sharing plan will go into closed beta very soon, at which time every member who has signed up to the site and uploaded at least one game will go into a hat to join the beta and start earning a whopping 50% of the ad monies.

And that applies to the people who don't get into the beta too! Every developer who signs up right now will "get 50% of the ad revenue from your games... for life!" according to the Gamejolt site.

Again, don't expect to become wildly rich off of any of these schemes, but still... it's cash, right?

You control a robot with the ability to build turrets in CannoDash, a tower defense game where enemies appear from each side of the screen in turn and will chase you down relentlessly. Tanks which hit a turret will get stuck to it until either one is destroyed, but paper planes have no such limitations by travelling through air.

The W, A, S and D keys are used to move the robot around the room. Placing a turret with the enter key deducts ten points from your money counter, but you earn back half of that for every enemy tank or plane destroyed.

There are also two difficulty settings to choose from, and players can beat the game by surviving all fourteen waves without letting any of the enemy units touch the robot. (source: 0stage)

Dad Would Be Proud is a short one-screen platformer consisting of only a handful of levels, centered around a gimmick that would be used repeatedly by the player so that they could reach the exit located on the other side of each room. Objects and traps are introduced at a steady pace as to not overwhelm the player with too many confusing elements, but your dependency on the time manipulation ability will make it seemingly difficult to complete a stage without this particular trait.

Links to some of the interviews with prolific or high-profile indie game developers of today:

Felix Bohatsch, Broken Rules (video)
Good old Anthony chats with the developer of And Yet It Moves on this week's Bytejacker episode.

Swords & Soldiers Preview (video)
The name Ronimo Games might not be familiar to most, but perhaps their student project de Blob (now a Nintendo Wii title) ought to ring a bell.

Interview with Erik Svedang (text)
Blueberry Garden should be released sometime this month, according to the game's information page on Steam.

Interview with Terry Cavanagh (text)
A major spoiler about Don't Look Back is revealed in this interview, so it's best not to read article until you've completed the game.

An Interview with Crayon Physicist Petri Purho (text)
Petri interviewed by John Teti just after his GDC '09 talk for a special AV Club feature.

A Talk with Rudolf Kremers and Alex May (text)
Dyson creators speaking to the Charge Shot crew about their unique space colonization game.

A Talk with Daniel Remar (text)
Also on Charge Shot, a rare interview with the developer of Iji.

The Happy Medium Interview: Anna Anthropy (text)
Game designer dessgeega voicing her concerns about stereotypical characterization in games while revealing her plans to change the status quo.

Braid, Jonathan Blow Speaks (text)
Always a pleasure to highlight any interview with Jon as the participant.

Interview with Jakub Dvorský (text)
The possibility of a third Samorost game discussed.

The man behind the wonderful world of Gravity Bone (text)
Rather outdated, but a good read nonetheless.

Gravity Bone Creator on Sequel, New Game (text)
Brendon talks about the possibilites of a sequel, and reveals some information about his upcoming strategy game for the XBLA platform, titled Atom Zombie Smashers.

A Prickly Situation for Cactus: Going Casual (text)
Braid-Damaged Toon Underworld isn't actually abandoned, you know. (same goes with the third Mondo game)

Zen Bound for iPhones (Secret Exit)
More articles from the same source. This time we have creator of the Dismount series chatting about Zen Bound and plans to release Stair Dismount for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Microsoft Game Studios, Ubisoft, NetDevil and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Originally titled Yellow Goo Love, Crazy Over Goo is a mouse-controlled platformer with fifty playable levels. The game is sort of a follow-up project to Banov's Assassin Blue, another Game Maker creation released several months before.

You control an elastic ball who is after the love of his life, both looking suspiciously like a gaming royalty couple from the early 80's. To clear a room, simply make your way past the traps and touch the red flag to progress. None of the challenges are particularly hard, but to unlock everything you will have to complete the entire game without skipping any stages. (source, download instructions)

In Pizza City, you play the role of a delivery boy who has to help Uncle Tony distribute five hundred tasty pizzas to his customers around all parts of the town. This requires going back and forth between Tony's pizza place and the destination of each delivery, with occasional stops at the gas station to fill up the fuel tank of your car.

Money earned from completing jobs can be used to purchase newer rides, which will come in handy when you require more space to store multiple pizza orders. Be mindful of civilians and other vehicles while driving on the road though, as crashing into them could damage the pizzas in your car, incur a score penalty or even attract attention from the cops.

The game ends if you lose all of your job security from delivering stale pizzas or getting caught in the act of vehicular homicide, but you can restore the faith your manager has in you by making delivery milestones and climbing up the ranks. (gameplay video)

We've seen a little bit of this before, but now Edmund McMillen has posted shots from the intro to new game 'Hitlers Must Die'.

The first 'track' on gaming album No Quarter, Hitlers Must Die looks to be a platformer involving many, many Hitlers for us to kill. Would you expect anything less from Edmund and Alex?

Check out all the screenshots on the Cryptic Sea blog.

As the Internet makes collecting money from gamers exponentially easier, independent game creators are starting to experiment with new monetization models.

Apart from the obvious 'microtransaction for items' model that many free to play MMOs are using, there are other possibilities. Indie studio Flashbang recently discussed with the Wall Street Journal a plan to ask for a six-month subscription for enhanced access to a suite of games.

Moreover, Gamasutra expert blogger Darius Kazemi has just penned an editorial about developer Daniel Benmergui, who has published his latest Indie Games-featured art-game, Today I Die, under a patronage-based model.

In addition, Benmergui "is pursuing a variable patronage model for his next game" on his website -- with different amounts of donations giving rewards spanning from a mention in the game's credits to a customized version of Daniel's previous games.

Coincidentally, as Daniel launched his game, we were preparing an interview with new website Kickstarter, which provides an easy to use, formalized structure for donation-based art projects of all kinds, and has just attracted its first indie game project to its site.

Thus, we sat down with Kickstarter's Perry Chen to discuss the intriguing question of why independent games might join the place of other indie media currently using patronage models for funding:

Dejobaan Games have released a public alpha of their in-development freefaller 'AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity'.

The game involves diving off building, collecting points mid air and dodging an intricate tangle of girders before coming to a stop, broken bones or otherwise. From Rohit of the Dejobaan team:

"The alpha shoves you off of floating skyscrapers in eight levels set over an alternate Boston, MA, and ends with an upsetting "thank you for playing" speech by the studio."

So what are you waiting for? Go give the alpha a try now.

Now this looks like it will be quite a pleasant surprise. Aztaka, to be released tomorrow through Direct2Drive, is 'a veritable new universe for Action/RPG fans to explore' by Citeremis Game Development Studio.

From the official site:

"Inspired by Aztec legend, Aztaka will casts you into the middle of a war between the Gods and Mankind. Who will prevail? As Huitzilo, heir of the Sun God, skilled in both the arts of combat and magic, only you can save your people from the wrath of the Aztec Gods."

So you'll be customizing your character by training skills and abilities, embarking on optional side-quests to acquire valuable items and gold and enhancing your character over 'twenty-one unique and detailed levels' with a promise of 'graphics of a quality never before seen in a game of this type'.

That's a tall promise! Hopefully there will be a demo released as well tomorrow so we can see if it holds true.

Gum Drop is an XNA-developed space shooter which Elbert has been developing for quite a while now. Recent chopping and changing saw the game undergo a drastic design shift, with the addition of the SMASH mechanism.

Players grab the SMASH ball and use momentum to swing it around their ship, before planting it firmly into the hull of an enemy ship. The momentum building looks like it's really well done and could potentially be good fun.

Elbert will be releasing the 'near-final build' version he submitted to PAX and Indiecade on May 9th for public use.

[UPDATE: Due to high demand, the free GDC Vault lectures were temporarily unavailable for some time last night and this morning - sorry about that. They are now accessible for all once again, so check 'em out if you didn't have a chance.]

Game Developers Conference organizers have made free streaming video of two major Independent Games Summit lectures, the Indie Game Maker Rant and Jason Rohrer's talk, as well as the main conference's Game Design Challenge, available as part of the newly launched myGDC Vault service.

The myGDC Vault website allows GDC 2009 All-Access Pass holders to view hundreds of specially video-recorded sessions from this year's Game Developers Conference, with synchronized slides and easy one-click viewing.

In addition, organizers will be making select GDC lectures available for free to the general public, and the first set of GDC 2009 lectures are now available. These include the following talks:

- The Indie Game Maker Rant
One of the most explosive and entertaining lectures at the Indie Games Summit earlier in GDC's week, a multitude of indie game makers assembled by Fez creator Phil Fish rant, using slides and examples, about everything from game demos through Roger Ebert.

Some of the highlights of the Pecha Kucha-style rant session, recapped at indie site TIGSource if you'd like a key to the order and background of speakers, include Steve Swink (Minotaur China Shop) on ethical game design, thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago (Flower) on changing the game biz, and an amazing finale from Crayon Physics's Petri Purho.

The sequel to Oddbob's arena blaster Squid Yes! Not So Octopus is coming in a couple of weeks time.

Titled 'Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!: Squid Harder', the game will be freeware for Windows and maybe the answer to all your shmuping needs.

If you've not given the original a play yet, now is as good a time as any - it's pretty addictive.

Oh, and while you're downloading it, check out the latest trailer for Squid Harder just below.

Twisted Pixel, creators of last year's The Maw, have released a trailer for their next big release 'Splosion Man.

As you can probably tell, it's a platformer based around the idea of exploding over and over again. To be released soon on the Xbox Live Arcade, Twisted Pixel reckon it "will assuredly 'splode your face off." Nice.

Mars TD is an excellent tower defense game created by Taro, developer of the unfairly difficult platformer Super Ear Man Bros. The objective here is to build turrets around the map and protect your base from the incoming alien invasion, because every enemy that reaches the base will steal some gold from your resources. You will lose if you run out of gold at the end of a wave, although players are allowed to continue up to three times from the level they last attempted.

Three options are available to you whenever you click on a friendly unit on the map. Selecting the first choice upgrades the turret by one level, up to a maximum of five. The cost of upgrading a unit depends on how much experience points it requires before the level counter is automatically increased by one.

The second option is used to switch the location of two turrets. No cost is incurred if this action is taken in-between waves, but the amount of gold required to switch units during battles will be indicated inside the selection box. Turrets and walls can be sold by choosing the third button.

You're definitely missing out on something special if you let the lack of English text for menus and descriptions prevent you from playing one of the best tower defense games ever made. (screenshots)

Daniel Benmergui's Today I Die is a puzzle game created in a style that fans of his works should already be familiar with.

Similar to I Wish I were the Moon, the adventure is a short one and shouldn't take longer than a couple of minutes to play from start to end.

You'll be interacting with objects using only the mouse, but what you do with your surroundings is something that you'll have to figure out for yourself. The game also features multiple endings to discover. (source: Edmund McMillen)

W*H*B is a puzzler that resembles Damien Clarke's Bloxorz in many ways, although this version features configurable button settings, great chiptunes and lovely retro graphics that the original had never offered. The game also doesn't punish you as severely for making mistakes, with the screen flashing red if your next move could cause the block to fall off the map.

An emulator may be required to play W*H*B, assuming that you don't own a working ZX Spectrum anywhere around the house. ZX Spin is a free emulator that works well enough with the game. It is also recommended that players reconfigure the key settings to their preferences before starting the first puzzle, since buttons are placed too far away in the default configuration for one hand to handle.

There are forty levels to play in total. (screenshots, level passcodes)

W*H*B download page

Paneroku (Click Panel) is a browser-based board game for four players, where the objective is to guide your avatar to the destination in the middle of the screen before any of the other computer-controlled characters reach it. Instructions are only available in the Japanese language, although with a bit of trial and error you should be able to grasp most of the rules after a couple of sessions.

The round begins with each player taking turns to either place roads on the board or draw some cards from the two decks. You can place as many roads as you like before drawing cards or ending your turn, but a card cannot be placed if it causes any other path already created on the board to lead to a dead end. Players are not allowed to set any more cards on the board after drawing a card from the deck as well. You can only draw a second card or end your turn so that the next player may make their move.

Roads can be drawn from the blue deck, while effect cards are obtainable from the red deck. Using the red X on the board will deny other players from placing a card on that space. The red arrow nullifies an effect, and blue arrows can be used to remove existing roads from the board. Starting from the second round, players would first have to roll the dice to move their avatars before they can place roads or draw cards from the deck. To end your turn, simply click on the blue button at the bottom of the screen.

This release is the prototype version, so players should naturally expect to encounter a bug or two when playing.

For this year's Game Developers Conference, those at IndieGames sister blog GameSetWatch decided to try a little journalistic/interactive experiment

(NOTE: This wasn't really a promotional deal, for the skeptical, the author had carte blanche to write anything about the event, and we didn't tell the main GDC organizers we were doing this!)

We recruited Canadian author and game creator Jim Munroe, whom, as his Wikipedia page explains, is a former editor at Adbusters Magazine and a HarperCollins-published author ('Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask').

In the game field, he founded the Artsy Game Incubator project, and his poignant illustrated text adventure, 'Everybody Dies', took third place at IFComp last year and picked up a number of other media honors.

So, we got Jim -- in exchange for a press pass to the event -- to write his experiences at GDC and what he finds out, and use that as inspiration to write a text adventure with some kind of Game Developers Conference theme, and that's just what he did.

Here's his brief explanation before you get into playing what is, intriguingly, more of a social simulator (very befitting of GDC!) than a traditional IF work:

"I wanted to try something that was more of a "text game" rather than "text adventure game". Think of it as a round of cards rather than an immersive and colourful narrative. If you don't like the hand you're dealt, you can always reshuffle with a restart. If you find you're playing "guess-the-verb" (IF's most infamous minigame), restart and read the beginning carefully."

You can now play 'GDC: The Game' in your web browser using Java [UPDATE: If you don't have Java, try this Parchment link], or, if you'd like to download the Z-Machine file to play it on your computer, here's 'GDC: The Game''s zcode file - go check out the IFGuide's Wiki for info on an interpreter.

In addition, if you'd like to read the process whereby Jim experienced GDC, thought through the game creatively, and then made it, we've archived his GameSetWatch.com posts made during the event and afterwards, with lots of insight into what he considered, and how that birthed the game.

Spewer is a new physics-based platformer created by the prolific Edmund McMillen and Eli Piilonen, featuring music by Gravity Hook and Meat Boy music composer Daniel Baranowsky. You are in control of a test subject named Spewer, who must escape from the clutches of a scientist by surviving all fifty-five rooms inside a maze-like laboratory, one level at a time.

Spewer's ability to regurgigate and consume bodily fluid will be called upon frequently, as you attempt to make it past the traps and obstacles that had been placed cleverly to halt your escape. The first few stages also act as sort of a tutorial, where you will be put through your paces under the watchful eye of your observator. Note that there is a limit to how much fluid your body can store and spew out, so if you empty the tank completely then you'll have to eat food or even your own vomit before being allowed to regurgigate any further.

Due to the heavy use of liquid physics, the game might probably run a bit slow on some browsers. To counter this problem, Edmund has included a link to the download version on the title screen which should work better on older machines.

A secret chapter with additional stages is unlocked automatically once you've completed the original five story chapters. The game also features a map editor that can be used to create and share new levels of your own design with other players. (source, preview, direct download link)

Play Spewer at Newgrounds

Extremine is a challenging variation of Minesweeper that forces players to think fast, created by Tommo Zhou for the friendly Ludum Dare 14 competition. The goal of the game is to detonate mines instead of just marking them, and if you don't act fast enough you'll find that the mines will start to box you in as the board shrinks ever faster with each passing second.

The number of usable markers is limited in every game, but you can restore the marker count by unmarking tiles or detonating marked tiles correctly.

Paper Moon is a short platformer originally created by the Infinite Ammo team and Adam Saltsman for the Gamma3D competition, then remade recently with new art and music for Flashbang Studios' Blurst web site. The aim of the game in both browser and the original competition version are essentially the same, where players are required to grab apples, bananas and cherries for points before time runs out. You start with five minutes on the clock, but the time limit can be increased by collecting time bonus items for extra seconds.

The installation of Unity's Web Player plugin is required to play the Blurst release of Paper Moon.

I've been playing too much of Lazy 8 Studios' Cogs lately, up to a point where it's starting to affect my writing responsibilities. Michael had reviewed the game a couple of weeks ago, but I must also add that Cogs is a game that everyone should try regardless of whether they're fond of puzzle games or not - simply because it's one of the best puzzlers of its kind to be released in the past few years. (possibly since Alexey Pajitnov's Pandora's Box)

The sheer satisfaction of solving a puzzle on your own was one of the things that Jonathan Blow wanted players to experience when playing Braid, and it is that same exact feeling you get in Cogs when the tiles click into place and contraptions whir to live.

The game hardly gets any press on other sites, and concerns of having Steam installed to play the demo is warranted of course, but not trying Cogs out because puzzlers aren't the sort of games you are into is sort of inexcusable. Nearly everyone got addicted to Puzzle Quest, didn't they?

Perhaps you're concerned about the difficulty of the puzzles, and Michael did state that it could get complicated in latter stages, but you don't have to play the puzzles in any order nor solve every one of them to unlock all fifty levels.

The game is great, and I urge you to give the demo a go.

Review: Cogs (IndieGames)

Normal Tanks is a single-player overhead shooter with plenty of heavily armored combat vehicles, turrets and mechanical creatures to shoot at. There are only four playable levels included in this demo version, but no time limit to restrict you from replaying the game at higher difficulty settings.

Weapons can be upgraded by collecting red stars, and you can switch between the two weapons at any time by pressing the right mouse button. It wouldn't be surprising to hear that some players would even attempt to input the Konami code during the title screen, considering how much the overall theme, level designs, and boss encounters resemble the original Contra game. (direct download link)

A preview clip from cactus' upcoming 3D platformer game. (source)

The next Flashbang game is to be released today and so we've been blessed with a trailer for the game so we know what we're up against.

Paper Moon will be released over on Blurst.com probably at about 5pm PST if past releases are anything to go by.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Raven Software, Infinity Ward and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include: