One of the more interesting concept games I've played in awhile.  It is hard to describe without feeling like you've done would-be players a great disservice with your explanation.  GDN combines some quick action shooting with cool graphics and a CD's worth of great sound.  Very intense game with an ultra-cool background storyline that you should definitely not miss out on downloading.

I'm not sure where rhythm gaming comes into the equation other than the fact that a lot of the targets appear in time to the music, but this game is definitely addictive and zone-out inducing. I wish the levels were shorter, and I really longed for an increased rate of fire, but of course that's where the skill comes in - it's a sharpshooter game!

Think skeet shooting on futuristic acid. GDC takes a very simple concept and wraps it with a great theme and tons of polish. There is something primal about shooting things non-stop with your mouse that is just plain fun. The neat story line unfolding as you play really adds a lot to the immersion factor.

Generally speaking I'm not a fan of shooting gallery games, they're usually tedious after only a few minutes and lack the variety needed to keep me interested. However, GDN is a game that has kept my interest from the minute it was released until the last time I played it (just moments before writing this). The graphics are slick, the controls are precise but forgiving, and the sound and music is great. It also helps that the games' developer spent time of making sure you're pulled into the world in a believable way. I'm not ashamed to admit that the first few times I received [messages] in-game I thought it was real. I. Love. This. Game.

As Lua Lua is intended for kids it should come as no surprise that there isn't any real challenge or interest for adults in this one.  Still, I have young kids and they have plenty of games and though this one is interesting, it doesn't stack up well against the other titles they have.

This is a bit closer to how a kids game should be made, lots of color, large objects to interact with, perfect sound and music, and a wide variety of gameplay options. The mini games in Lua Lua have all be done in other titles, but the variety of games kids have to choose here from is excellent, it's great to find them all in one package. Unfortunately the biggest problems in the game relate to it's being a children's game. There's no lock down mode to prevent your little one from jumping back to the desktop with ease, some of the buttons in the games are about half the size of your cursor, and there's no on-screen option to exit a mini-game, you have to hit the escape key. On a final note, the demo restriction is almost insulting. You're limited to two minutes of gameplay at a time before you're asked to register and forced out of the game. Having to go in and out of the game to see what it's all about doesn't give one the desire to give the developers your money.

Finally a game for kids! The seven mini-games are suitably cute and colorful but don’t go beyond providing the minimum implementation for each game. I was a little disappointed there was no fanfare after winning “Pig-Tac-Dog” or “Thinky-Thinky” - the boards just reset without so much as a “well done, runt!” message. The input timing of La La Land felt like it could be made smoother. (Click too soon and it ignores your click)

This high rating is not so much for myself, though this game is at about my level of difficulty. it's really for very young kids. This presents a great environment for them to just get used to using a mouse without any consequences, but with lots of visual and auditory stimulation and reward. One thing I would've wished for would be an option to make the mouse far less sensitive, so really little tykes would have better control (note: I had no tykes on which to test it, however).

At its core, this is your standard breakout game. The twist of making the bricks aliens doesn't add much, but some other twists do: I love how they explode and take out their neighbors if you hit them while they're charging to fire, and I really had fun when I got the Super Multiball! Otherwise, it suffers from the same near-lethal tedium when you're down to the last couple guys as any breakout game, and the mouse control feels slippery.

If Space Invaders and Breakout had a love child this game would be it. Gameplay, graphics, sound and item placement are all ok but not quite enough to push the game into a ‘best of breed’ category. Being able to put body English on the ball by spinning it is a nice touch. Suffers slightly from the ‘hitting the last block takes forever’ problem.

I didn't enjoy this game in the least. It just felt like pure generic puzzle game, without any eye candy to alleviate the tedious gameplay. It could appeal to someone in the same zone-out way a hearty round of Solitaire can, but all I can say for myself is that it didn't do that to me!

Entering a world of futuristic flight simulator's with a twist, Starshatter leaves me looking to StarFox on the n64 with the same basic concept behind it. While enemy seem few and far between, the detail in graphics may keep your attention long enough to make this game worthwhile. With customizable controls allowing everything to become less of a hassle and more enjoyable, it all comes together nicely. If you're looking for a decent flight simulator for the new age, this is the game for you.

I'll admit it, I haven't played as far into the Starshatter campaign as I would have liked to. Mind you, I've played it for a number of hours already, but this game has so much depth to it that I know I've only scratched the surface. What I have played of the game thus far is extremely impressive and gives me hope that one day people will stop associating the term "independent games" with "casual games." If you're a fan of space shooters you owe it to yourself to just go buy Starshatter. Don't download the demo, don't analyze the screenshots, just buy the download version, and buy it again once it's released to stores.

I found Raging Tiger to be a bit complicated with it's controls and boring all in the same. It reminded me only slightly of the board game RISK. With such limited functions and seemingly little or no imagination used in it's creation I don't see how anyone could find this game even the slightest bit amusing to play. It all just seemed a hassle and not worth my time. I thought that maybe as you went along things would get better only to find that wasn't the case with Raging Tiger. So as far as I'm concerned I personally won't be playing this game anytime in the near future.

Reading the first half of the tutorial came within inches of exploding my skull, and the game looks like Windows 3.1 MSPaint gone bad. I can see why real military commanders have to go through a bunch of schooling before they do this stuff. But I don't have the schooling and I don't want it. I can guess that this game will appeal greatly to serious war gaming buffs, but not being one, I don't think I can fairly judge this.

Those zany Chromates are back again! This game really grew on me, the sense of speed is great.. This demo packs a ton of game play, get it. My only beef is I had to disable my second monitor because the mouse wasn’t limited to the game’s screen. The two player mode is novel; you need to plug in a second (USB) mouse. Cool!

This game plays a lot like Stun Runner, one of my all-time favorites.  Chromadrome is a high-speed blaster that will keep you on your toes at even the slow settings.  Adding multi-player and some cool modes to go with dozens of original tracks filled with loops, spirals, jumps and even spiraling jumps kept me playing for hours.

Difficult to learn, certainly one of the poorest tutorials that I've ever worked with.  Tutorials should tell you how to play, this one just tells you to play.  "Ok, now make this shot without any instruction as to how to play."  Game has alright graphics and many modes of play that should make die-hards happy, but I'd MUCH rather just walk over to a pool hall.

This is a mixed bag. One the one hand it’s a very playable pool simulation with realistic physics. On the other hand it’s slightly buggy and missing a few basic things like being able to view the whole table birds-eye. Oh, and the room background art hurts my eyes. With some polish this could be a strong contender.

Due to my complete inability to play the game in real life I'm a big fan of pool games on the computer. I'm no connoisseur of high quality pool simulators, but I know a good one when I see it, 3D Pool Pro is not such a game. Stick and camera control is easy enough, but the very forgiving nature of the game means that you'll make most of your shots without much effort, it also means that if the AI ever gets a shot they'll usually sweep the entire game. Sub par graphic quality and poor collision detection doesn't make the game fun to watch as you're blown out either.

This looks, plays, and feels just like any of those free web games you can find. It also oddly refers to the mouse as a stylus. It also has a whole lot of instructions for such an unbelievably simple game. It also has very odd floaty 'physics' (which are kind of fun - this would be enjoyable with 2 players for a little while). It also costs $16.95. You're better off finding web games to play for free!

This game feels very similar to last year's Dungeon Scroll, but has quite a different twist to it as it focuses much more on moving about the dungeon.  I would have liked to have seen a little better graphics, though these do work.  Overall a very solid effort that I think those looking for a different type of puzzle game will appreciate.

This is a really solid word puzzle game, with a great dungeon crawl aspect as well (hmm, where have I heard of that before...?). My only real complaint would be that the mouse movement is very awkward, clicking on a destination would be much easier. I used the arrow keys normally, but switching between mouse and keys is also somewhat awkward! This is a very good game overall, that being a nitpick.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a children's game, or a game for adults with a kiddie flavoring. Whatever the target audience is, Pentagraph is a satisfying experience that can be shared by people of all ages. The concept of a dungeon crawling word game has been done before (Hi Seth!), but Pentagraph's tight focus (5 letter words only) and structuring makes it stand out. Navigating your character around the dungeon can be a real headache, and the graphics are inconsistently bad at best, but it's still an enjoyable experience. Now if they would just release a 4 letter version of the game.

Farmer Joe's is quite a simple easy to get going on puzzle matching game. Easily comprehended by all ages, it could bring joyous hours of play or even just something to fill up some free time in your day. It was fairly well put together and the puzzle's weren't too complex leaving the frustration level at a minimal. On a quest to help Farmer Joe collect all the things he'll need in his day of farming you come upon some obstacles and work your way through them in this world of puzzlers. A good time for children all ages, and even some adults if they can find the time in their busy schedules to sit down with the young ones.

This one had some technical issues for me - sound and music didn't work at all, and the line connecting two objects would go crazy and glitchy if the objects were falling, as well as smaller issues like text that didn't fit in its box and that sort of thing. Basic tile matching game play otherwise. Strange thing: I couldn't discover a way to fail at any of the levels in the demo! They weren't just too easy, there didn't appear to be any way to lose at all!

When I first played this I thought it was one of the most frustratingly difficult games I had played in recent memory. Getting two blocks of the same type placed together was a real challenge, especially when it turned out that it was impossible to do so. Once I realize the blocks don't have to be next to each other, and can actually be on opposite sides of the board, the game turned out to be disappointingly simple. Strolling through levels doesn't make for a fun game, and lackluster presentation means there's no motivation to see what's next.

It's kind of fun to be quizzed on general knowledge, but this game is brought down by the poor english (in a quiz game, that can be a big deal!), and some tweaky visuals in places (like the points you earn for the question are in ugly white blocks). If you want a quiz game though, this could be fun to play, and the occasional picture question spices things up a little.

I love trivia games. I'm not very good at them, but I do enjoy seeing what questions turn up, and how often. Quizland is a decent attempt at a PC trivia game that introduces some nice variety, namely the visual questions, but falls flat of satisfying me. The scoring system is strange in that if you answer three questions incorrectly you lose, instead of having you play rounds. The developers state that the game has 1500 questions, which is not very impressive when you consider how many you can go through after just a few days of playing. In the demo it wasn't unusual to see the same questions come up several times, the visual questions are particularly bad about this. There's a lot of good trivia games out there with more categories and questions, Quizland just doesn't stand up very well in comparison.

Enter a world of Greek history and lay tiles with Pixelus, the god of tile art. This bright playful puzzle solving game pushes itself above the rest in it's field with a breath of fresh air in the way it was put together. While holding some challenging puzzles within it maintained a certain level of grace with it's easy maneuverability and simplicity in design. With a soundtrack to match the feel of the game it makes you want to just go hop into your chariot and start a tile laying business all of your own.

This game has all the polish and nifty fun feedback with flashing lights and sounds you'd expect from a Popcap game (not to mention Nuclide's previous high quality game, Penguin Puzzle). Unfortunately, it doesn't have very interesting gameplay. It's a very rote type of puzzle, with each level being purely more of the same, no new twists or tricks. There's definitely a place for straight up logic puzzles with no funny business, but that place isn't on my PC. Also pet peeve: won't start up without an internet connection active.

Pipeline is a reincarnation of an old BBC Micro game – from the 80’s back when games were unforgiving and you didn’t need no stinkin’ tutorial levels. Until you find the laser gun, expect to die a lot. If you can look beneath the somewhat crude exterior there is a neat game here.

I will now review this game using only the word 'Bad' followed by single words. Ready? Go! Bad: graphics, levels, control, sound, menus, enemies, design, music. I think that pretty much covers the entire game. There is a level editor you can play around with, but it really doesn't help things much.

Another clone of past games, what else can I say.  Dropping pieces from above to build some sort of super machine just to send it over to your neighbor's side and watch their demise. While you excel, the other team gets royally screwed leaving them no outs. Watching your score amass as the other's screen is cluttered with whatever you decided to send their way by surpassing their skill and zoning in on victory.