Best Of Indie Games: Catch! But Don't Look Back

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days, as well as any notable features on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] 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 goodies in this edition include two music rhythm games, a stitching simulator from an IGF finalist, a challenging platformer from the developer of Pathways, an intense arena shooter with plenty of enemies to shoot at, and finally a new puzzler from the creator of (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors. Game Pick: 'Music Catch 2' (Reflexive Games, browser) "A simple browser game which asks the player to catch notes with their mouse. Reflexive Games have taken a great concept and improved on it in this sequel, adding a host of beautiful arrangements to listen to and making the game look and play a lot nicer." Game Pick: 'Sew 'Em Up' (Kian Bashiri, freeware) "A stitching simulator with an arcade feel to it, created by the developer of IGF finalist You Have to Burn the Rope. The game is surprisingly relaxing to play, and your performance is rated by the amount of thread used to stitch all the patterns." Game Pick: 'Death vs. Monstars' (GameReclaim, browser) "A Geometry Wars style blaster containing such gimmicks as 'Berserk Mode' and 'Bullet Time', plus it's great fun. The game even has a Boss battle to deal with at the end which is pretty challenging." Game Pick: 'Raycatcher' (Thinking Studios, commercial indie - demo available) "A unique offering from the fledgling development team which demands quick reactions and a sturdy music collection. Utilizing the ability to import all your musical purchases into the game, each song is transformed into an array of rays which must be caught appropriately. It's a simple premise and, for the most part, is pulled off fashionably." Game Pick: 'Don't Look Back' (Terry Cavanagh, browser) "Don't Look Back is a challenging platformer with quite an evil side. Everything from the dark visuals to the atmospheric soundtrack set the scene perfectly, and it has all the elements you'd expect from a platformer - pitfalls, speedy baddies and big boss fights." Game Pick: 'Exploit' (Gregory Weir, browser) "Exploit is a puzzler about terrorism through hacking. By using ports to fire packets of data, the objective of the game is to break the code and access the root node. It's a great little brain teaser which very early on feels extremely complicated, yet once the solution has been identified, it exposes itself as actually quite a simple set-up which makes you feel rather clever from figuring it out."