Best Of Indie Games: Reach for the Stars

[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 a new release from the developer of Cursor*10, an art game, a platformer with charming graphics, two puzzle games, and a frantic horizontal shooter made in under forty-eight hours by the creator of Don't Look Back. Game Pick: 'ClickPLAY!' (Ninjadoodle, browser) "ClickPLAY! is a short puzzle game that is similar to Nekogames' Hoshi Saga series, where players would have to find a play button hidden somewhere in every level to progress. This usually requires completing a certain task, solving a puzzle, or finishing an arcade sequence so that the play button is revealed for you to click on." Game Pick: 'Chaser' (Connor Carpenter, freeware) "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 gain 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." Game Pick: 'Cat Gets 100 Stars' (Yoshio Ishii, browser) "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." Game Pick: 'Polkadot' (Andrew Brophy, freeware) "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." Game Pick: 'Bullet Time' (Terry Cavanagh, browser) "Created in forty-eight hours for Mini Ludum Dare #9, Bullet Time is your standard retro shmup with the added bonus of a 'bullet time' effect thrown in. 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." Game Pick: 'LaserBox' (Dust United, browser) "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, eventually coming 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."