Spring Falls

Wow this is beautiful.  The puzzles are so satisfying, with new game mechanics introduced so smoothly.  Make sure to play with the sound on.  Occasionally tricky, then it clicks into place.  You'll  want it to never end.

Framed

It's really pretty, totally clever, and has a fantastic noiresque soundtrack.

Baba Is You

You have to experience this fun game mechanic!  Who you are,  whether walls stop you, if water sinks you, and even what the goal of a level is -- they all change when you rearrange triplets of noun-verb-noun.  Simple.  Tricky!

Osmos for iPhone & iPad

Osmos is simple.  You're a floaty-glowy bubble, squirting around in space.  You can absorb smaller bubbles, adding their mass to yours in the process, while bigger bubbles can absorb you to death.  In a representative round, the goal is to "become the biggest."  Off you go, absorbing bubbles to get bigger, which allows you to absorb larger bubbles, and so on ... and then you look up and an hour has passed.

The physics are great, and the gameplay is super smooth.  But the other winner is the soundtrack -- fricken excellent on headphones -- transporting you into a world of groovy bubbling grooviness.  The replay value is excellent .. so if you don't have a chance to listen to a level's music the first time through, you'll have plenty of other chances when you come back for more.

Braid for PS3 (PSN)

Braid poses a time-traveler's dilemma, what if you could go back and undo all your mistakes?  In this side-scrolling world, you can.  Biffed the timing on jumping those koopas?  Back up in time and get it right the next time.  Oh, but it's not that easy -- some things aren't affected by your time travel.  It makes for mind-warpingly interesting puzzles that involve overlapping, but not concurrent, time lines going in different directions.  Weird and wonderful!

Critter Crunch for PS3 (PSN)

The launch of Critter Crunch was less than impressive -- the trades should've been heralding "The next PopCap" or something like that. This is an action-puzzle game, where the rules are simple, the controls are dead simple, and everything is just cute as hell. Plus, the music is catchy, and the goofy noises things make as you catch 'em with your tongue and spit them into the waiting mouths of predators higher up on the food chain add a cutsey percussion to the whole thing.

Oh, and there's actually a part called the "Puking Tutorial" where they instruct you on regurgitating rainbows. Kris plays several-layers-deep strategically, while I mostly mash buttons, and we both love it!

Cogs for PC (Steam)

I saw the developer of Cogs playing it, at E3; it looked moderately tricky even for him. Basically you line up the pipes and gears to make the machine run and/or avert doom. There's a free demo ... try it!

Zuma for PS3 (PSN)

I guess I'm a little late to the party, but I'd never played Zuma (from PopCap Games) on any other system. I love it! It's one of those action puzzlers, which I'd compare to Tetris, where you have to match up pieces that are coming at you, making them disappear, before they stack up and bury you.

You see, while I spent my wasted college leisure-time playing NetHack, kids these days play games with graphics and sound. So if you're a thirty something, you'll find Zuma to be plenty of fun, just like Tetris was, and you'll play it compulsively until your eyes bleed. But the *real* treat is to kick back with a beer and watch a twenty-something play it ... they totally go matrix-mode. And it's a trip to watch them actually apply strategy rather than just shooting madly until the game ends in disaster.

Hey, spectacular cut-scenes and multi-million dollar production budgets must look really impressive when you present them to the executives, but maybe with a couple extra supporting charts and graphs (and executives with some vision) you could get the management to greenlight more of these types of games. Please?

Cuboid for PS3 (PSN)

Cuboid proves once again that the future is inexpensive, downloadable, casual games. It's a puzzle game, played on a track of one-by-one tiles. You have to topple a one-by-one-by-two playing piece around the board, and its oblong dimensions make it tricky, some directions progressing by one tile, others by two -- it's hard to explain, watch someone play.

It's totally addictive. Screw with your friends; invite them over and let them try it. If you partake on your own, without a buddy, be careful!