Best Of Indie Games: Puzzles From Pandora's Box

[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 delights in this edition include three roguelike picks from the recent 7DRL Challenge, a new seven-day project from up-and-coming developer Alex Vostrov, a collection of minigames in the style of WarioWare, a unique puzzle platformer, a strategic arcade game by the creator of the Advance Wars-styled Battalion, and a puzzler based on the idea of plucking leaves from trees. Game Pick: 'Pandora's Gearbox' (IndieBird, freeware) "A physics-based puzzle game in which players must work their way through darkness, finding paths and moving machinery. At your disposal is a small flying robot which can shine a light through the pitch-blackness, allowing you to see the surrounding walls. Using this source, a ball must be guided through a maze and into the drop zone. It's interesting to see just how much the lack of light is a factor in these puzzles - simple switch flipping, bridge building solutions become so much harder when you can't see what you're doing." Game Pick: 'Tiny Trials' (TinyMania, browser) "A fast-paced minigame bonanza in which lots of small games are thrown at you, and the speed at which they are each completed will determine how good a score is achieved. At the end of each minigame you're given a star rating and a score and clearly the better you do, the higher you'll fly on the scoreboard. It's all wonderfully fun and definitely worthy of your free time." Game Pick: 'TetRLs' (John L. Greco, freeware) "TetRLs is a roguelike take on Alexey Pajitnov's classic puzzler, where players assume the role a prisoner forced to participate in a series of experiments inside the laboratory of a mad Soviet scientist. A new block is dropped at the starting point in each room with the press of a button, and it is up to you to shuffle it downwards and arrange them so that there is enough space to place the next one." Game Pick: 'Fruits of the Forest' (Ido Yehieli, browser) "Created for the 2009 edition of the friendly 7DRL challenge, Fruits of the Forest is a simple roguelike based on the idea of foraging food for the villagers in your town. Purple berries have to be collected and passed on to hungry villagers to feed them, but watch out for the bandits who are roaming around the forest in search of wanderers to murder and loot." Game Pick: 'The Favored' (Joseph Larson, freeware) "A loose remake of robotfindskittens with some changes to the original rules, created by Joseph for the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. The game involves collecting rabbits by walking over them, then depositing enough of the creatures at the exit point so that the passage to the next level can be opened. Of course, there's an element of danger as one rabbit has the ability to strike you down if you accidentally attempt to catch the all-powerful creature." Game Pick: 'Bloody Fun Day' (Urbansquall, browser) "A strategic arcade game where players control the Reaper as he ploughs his way through little critters. Everytime Death sticks his scythe into one of the creatures, he gains points but loses health. Destroying red creatures will bring his life back up. It's all about bagging as many points as possible before you run out of life." Game Pick: 'Leaf Blight' (Terrapin Games, browser) "A puzzle game where picking dead leaves off trees is the order of the day. Gameplay starts off fairly easy with only a couple of different colours to begin with, but the puzzles start to become more tricky as certain sets of leaves need to be removed at specific points to stop bad ones spreading. It's a nice little thought-shaker with some great ideas, there's plenty of levels to plough your way through, plus a level editor is included so you can make your own tree puzzles." Game Pick: 'Transmover' (Polygon Gmen, browser) "A platform puzzler based around the classic 'grab the key, take it to the door' scenario. Our little stickman can walk over obstacles which are just one block in height or depth, but to get past bigger problem areas, the zapper must be used. When the zapper is fired at one of the moveable blocks in a level, our hero and said zapped block swap places."