Best of Indie Games: From Beat Hazard Ultra to Shank 2

This week on "Best Of Indie Games," we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include the release of the much-anticipated sequel to Shank, a student project that pays tribute to Visceral Games' Dead Space series, a first-person dungeon crawler for XBLIG, plus a pinball simulator styled after video pinball classics like Epic Pinball and the 21st Century Pinball series. Here's some recent highlights from IndieGames.com: Game Pick: 'Hacknet' (Orann, freeware) "A 'terminal-based hacking game' with multiplayer options, HackNet follows the story of a recently expired Hacker by the name of Bit. If you're someone who has even dabbled with command-line programming, you're going to find something to like here." Game Pick: 'Noxious' (Full Sail, freeware) "Developed in five months, Noxious is a brief experience but an impressive achievement nonetheless. The game sees players engaging in combat with waves of violent creatures while attempting to escape a locked down research facility." Game Pick: 'Shank 2' (Klei Entertainment, commercial indie) "Klei Entertainment have spent the last 18 months busy working away on a follow up to their beautiful but brutal sidescrolling kill 'em up, and have now unleashed it on the world. This sequel comes with an all new coop-survival mode that supports local and online play, a redesigned weapon system, and lots of baddies waiting to be cut, stabbed, shot, punched, chainsawed and even shanked." Game Pick: 'Dark Delve' (Checkmark Games, commercial indie) "Dark Delve's gameplay offers a Wizardry-like mixture of exploration and turn-based combat. The game boasts a six-hour campaign, and includes three character classes and over 100 unique items." Game Pick: 'Ragdoll Blaster 3' (Backflip Studios, commercial indie) "In the Ragdoll Blaster games, players complete levels by launching floppy ragdoll characters at a series of bullseye targets. It's a simple but effective formula -- ragdoll physics can theoretically add instant hilarity to pretty much any situation." Game Pick: 'Hardboiled Pinball' (Stryde Games, commercial indie) "Styled after video pinball classics like Epic Pinball and the 21st Century Pinball series, Hardboiled Pinball presents a single overhead-view table with a crime noir moti." Game Pick: 'Cell: Emergence' (New Life Interactive, commercial indie) "Cell: Emergence is something along the lines of Innerspace: The Game, where you take control of a nanobot injected into a poorly girl, tasked with eradicating the infection that's the source of her illness." Game Pick: 'Beat Hazard Ultra' (Cold Beam Games, commercial indie) "Previously released for PC platforms and the Xbox Live Indie Games service, Beat Hazard Ultra scans a user's music library and produces enemy waves of varying intensity as tracks play."