Flea World

Sometimes it takes no more than an innovative control scheme to make a game seem refreshing and new. For instance, here you control a small group of rotund, pastel fleas by waving your mouse back and forth rather than using primitive, barbaric arrow keys. It's so much fun you can almost forgive the lack of level passwords. But we never forgive a lack of level passwords. [L.S.]

Kitten on the Keyboard

The introduction provides a novella's worth of background information, so we don't have to go instead. Instead, we can head straight into observing that the cat in this game looks like the unholy offspring of "Snarf" from "Thundercats" and a Commodore 64. [L.S.]

Beat the Meter

Fantasy roleplaying takes on a new dimension, as you are whisked to a fanciful world where people pump your gas for you. Do people in the UK still get their gas pumped for them? Around here, you pretty much need to go to Oregon, where you're not allowed to pump gas for yourself at all. And in Oregon, they put the peanut butter and jelly on the outside of sandwiches and children have pictures of missing milk cartons on them. [L.S.]

No Brainer

Does Britney Spears wear underwear? Do helicopters stink? If you think you can answer those questions very, very quickly, you're ready for this simple and amusing game that asks nothing more of you than a quick mouse twitch indicating a nod or a head-shake. [L.S.]

Things Came Up to My Brain Museum

The nice thing about this whimsical point-and-click adventure is that nothing really has anything to do with anything else. It's the Flash equivalent of free association. Extremely free association. Yes, there's nudity in it, but seriously, if you're searching on "nudity," this isn't the sort of nudity you're looking for. [L.S.]

The Legend of Zelda and the Lampshade of No Real Significance

A simple adventure game starring everybody's favorite leotard-wearing elf child and more in-jokes than you can shake a Master Sword at. [L.S.]

Lust of Bust

It's odd, the genres and sub-genres the Web inspires. Not only do we have the comparatively ancient "stacking stuff" genre and the young and vibrant "hurting things for distance" genre, we now have the nascent "serreptitious leering" genre. In the same vein as "Look But Don't Touch" comes the better-made but more poorly-named "Lust of Bust." [L.S.]

Slot M

Most of the words are in Japanese, but the important ones -- "Stop," "Start," and "Congratulations" -- are in English. The object is to play the slot machine of cosplay and dress the shaven anime lady up in all sorts of revealing and/or disturbing outfits. For non-Japanese speakers, there's an added mental challenge in figuring out how it all works. Once you do, it just takes a little patience and hand-eye coordination to get the full frontal you so richly deserve. [L.S.]

Endora's Dream

Hey, what could be more fun than distorting the facial features of a dead sitcom star from the mid-Sixties? Lots of stuff! But that doesn't stop us from linking to this Java diversion starring Dick York from "Bewitched." The real question is, can you distort his face to make him look like Dick Sargent? [L.S.]

Anagrammatic by gamesarcade.net

A nice multiplayer word-finding game that provides the sense of satisfaction you can only truly obtain from totally kicking somebody named xXBaByGuRlXx's ass at Jumble. [V.B.]

Stackopolis by bloc media

Here we have a simple concept, a time limit, catchy music and stacks of colored blocks. If that's not a recipe for puzzle success, I don't know what is. Stackopolis is the methadone to Tetris' heroine: equally addictive, but better somehow. [V.B.]

Grow Your Chi

The site hosting this game claims that playing it every day will help build your self-esteem. No, seriously. Click on the happy faces and avoid the sad faces and somehow that reassures you of your rightful place in the grand scheme of the universe. Here at Little Fluffy Industries, however, we believe in presenting both sides of the story, so we'd like to point out that you're a pathetic grub-person with no appeal, sexual or otherwise, and your nose is a funny shape. [L.S.]

Bring It On

Another yeti-inspired whack-for-distance game, this one with the added advantage of being completely inexplicable. Apparently this is a biting satire of the gulf in cricket-playing abilities between the British and Australians, but really it could be comparing the nose-hair length of Norwegians and Malaysians, in terms of both comprehensibility and relevance. [L.S.]

J2O

Few companies have the courage to advertise their products with a stream of urine. Even products that actually are intended to be used in conjunction with a stream of urine, such as diapers, typically substitute a cup of sanitary blue water. That's why it's so remarkable that soft-drink manufacturers J2O have provided us with this bit of streaming media. Clearly someone at their ad agency has the golden touch. [L.S.]

Dodgeball

Trade schoolyeard welts for an aching index finger with this abstracted take on one of the most popular childhood diversions/instruments of torture. You control a constantly expanding, possibly pubescent sphere attempting to survive a continual onslaught of what are presumably government-issue red balls. Keep clicking those control and shift buttons to keep yourself svelte and able to squeeze through the gaps in the inflated assault. [L.S.]

Choose Your Life

The lesser of two tragedies is pretty funny in this toy that puts your self-esteem in a box, lets the dog chew on it for a while, then throws it into the street to be run over by a manure truck. [L.S.]

Maobot

Mao is a card game wherein it is against the rules to describe the rules. So we won't. [L.S.]

Dad N' Me

Remember back when every possible licensed character was put into a beat-em-up arcade game? One that mere mortals couldn't possibly beat without lots and lots of "CONTINUE GAME?" quarters? Return to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this game that puts you in the purple booties of the psychopathic child of a psychopath. Your task is to beat your way through screen after screen of helpless and not-so-helpless schoolchildren on your way to reunite with your father. Amusingly violent and violently amusing. [L.S.]

Pairs

What we have here is essentially Mah-Jongg with elfy crystal balls, but what the heck, we haven't reviewed a Mah-Jongg site in a while and it's a fun game. This version of it makes you realize why the tiles in Mah-Jonng aren't annoyingly similar photos of natural objects. [L.S.]

4x4 Rally

Direct your pickup truck -- available in your choice of garish colors -- along tracks ranging from a sketchily-drawn, low-friction snow level to sketchily-drawn, low-friction city streets. The tension of competition is heightened by an eerie silence. [L.S.]

Geosense

At some point you've got to quit with the aliens and mutants and colored blocks, sit down, and find out just how ignorant you are. Geosense helps you in that task, by asking you to identifiy cities throughout the world, even ones you don't care about. Plus, you learn things. Mongolia's in Asia? Who knew? [L.S.]

Rocketman VC

It's amazing how advertising althetic shoes can suck the charm out of anything. The minds who created Samarost have taken their approach to point-and-click adventure games, dumbed it down, swoosed it up, and added Vince Carter. The result is...well, it's no Samarost. [L.S.]

TylerK's Picross

A picross is a puzzle that uses simple logic to make equally simple art. To the left of each row, and at the top of each column, are a series of numbers telling you how many blocks in the row or column are filled in. It's a fun game for the puzzle-inclined, but the instructions aren't provided, and there isn't space to get into them here. Do a search on "picross." [L.S.]

Avoider by One More Level

Help! Some little spiky-haired monkey guy is after my cursor! Not only is the pointer-pilfering primate extremely agile, he also employs a variety of munitions and dirty tricks to destroy your cursor, if you're fast enough to avoid his lunges. Very simple, and very cute. [S.G.]

Grow RPG

In this worthy successor to one of the best and most original Flash games around, your job is to puzzle out the correct order to place such items as a castle, a forest, and some sort of tower thing to maximize their growth and help a little knight guy not end up dead. Not actually an RPG, but containing several clever references to classic computer RPGs. [L.S.]