It's Delightful, It's De-Lovely, It's... Pretty Damn Strange

The Noks is about the weirdest game I've seen this year. I'm tempted to call it "indescribable," except we need to describe it, eh?

Partly, it's a game of collectibles. There are several hundred "Noks" in the world at present, and the developers plan to add more over time. You can think of Noks as something like, say, Magic: The Gathering cards, except that they aren't cards. They're animated 3D avatars with backstories. Some of them sing songs or perform music. And most have something to tell you about the game itself, or the backstory of the Noks universe. To understand that universe, you'll need to collect--well maybe not "them all," but lots of them.

Control Winds and Currents with the Mouse

Set in the world of Homeric myth, The Odyssey is a level-based casual game in which you have to guide your ships from one end of the level to the other in the face of monsters, storms, and other obstacles. What's interesting (and innovative) about it, however, is the control scheme--you move your ships by holding down the mouse button and drawing in the water to create currents, and by changing the direction and strength of the winds by moving the mouse within a wind-control region of the screen.

Go Meets the Arcade?

Tilelander is certainly unusual: Sometimes playing it feels like playing Go, sometimes like playing Space Invaders, and sometimes like playing Brickout, but fundamentally it's a puzzle game, with each level requiring some thought to solve.

How's that possible? In each level, you control a sprite that starts at a fixed location on the screen (your base). Your objective is to (as in Go) capture territory by encircling it. You move your sprite in the four cardinal directions with the mouse, laying bricks behind you, and when you've enclosed an area, it fills with bricks (not incidentally eliminating any opponents within the encircled area).

Fighting with Rag-Doll Physics
Slamdance Guerilla Games Festival Finalist
IGF Finalist for Design Innovation

One phrase we love to use but don't often get to is: You have never seen a game like this before. Yea Toribash.

In Toribash, you control a jointed 3D model. You select a joint, and tell it how to move. When you've issued your instructions, you advance the game, one or more frames at a time--and when you want to change the motion of your character, you change the forces at various joints.