Puzzle

From a get-through-the-maze game to the abstraction of Tetris, puzzle solving comes in great variety. (Helpful movie concept: Labyrinth.)

The rating scale ranges from one to five, with three being "average" and five being "excellent" or "high".

Recommended Game: Frozen Bubble
Game download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fbe-win32/
Graphics / Sound: 3
Difficulty: 2
Replayability: 5
Summary: This is one of the most addicting games I've ever played. Based on the arcade classic "Bubble Bobble", you must shoot balls at a constantly descending mass of more balls. Match similar color balls in groups of three to make those balls disappear. Make all balls disappear to clear the board. You can play the predesigned levels or create your own with the included level editor. Note that this installation doesn't work perfectly - the icon's "working directory" value isn't set correctly. To run the game after installing, you must:

1) Go to the Start Menu and choose Run.
2) Type "C:\Program Files\Frozen-Bubble" and click OK.
3) In the window that pops up, right-click on the frozen-bubble.exe application and choose "Send To" then "Desktop".
4) An icon for the game will appear on your desktop called "shortcut to frozen-bubble.exe". Use this shortcut to run the program.

Recommended Game: Deadly Rooms of Death - Architect's Edition
Game download: http://drod.net
Graphics / Sound: 2
Difficulty: 4
Replayability: 3
Summary: You control a guy with a sword who must find his way through increasingly complex mazes without getting killed by roaches. Customizable levels add to the fun - create your own boards and share them with others, or download more boards for more variety. The built-in levels start out easy but quickly get pretty tough.

Recommended Game: Pathological
Game download: http://pathological.sourceforge.net/
Graphics / Sound: 1
Difficulty: 3
Replayability: 3
Summary: An abstract puzzle game where you control the flow of colored balls and must collect those balls in certain ways. The graphics and sound aren't impressive, but that's okay because the game focus is elsewhere. This is a great game for puzzle lovers. You can play the predesigned levels or create your own.