Just a few weeks ago, indie game developer Foley weaved together the soothing, enjoyable platformer Along Came a Spider onto the Xbox LIVE Indie games channel. When I first heard about it, I watched a gameplay video of it, and it instantly reminded me of those simple, artistic, relaxing platform games you can play in between some of your more brutal gaming endeavors.

I got a chance to download the full game and try it out more extensively; it had a lot more to offer than I was expecting. With 20 levels and 4 bigger boss fights, it’s one of the lengthier indie games out there, though it does come with a price: 400 MS Points, to be specific. The levels quickly set the pace for increasing difficulty as you move onward with each level. It of course understands many gamers’ need for collection, so whilst you’re rolling about, grasping onto silk, pandering to gravity and weaving your silken web lines to the end, there are 3 flies per level fluttering about to be eaten, collected, whatever you want to call it! But they don’t just sit and flutter, they get scared and run when they see you coming as you progress, and lead you through a tangled new path of their own before you’ll be able to catch them. A lot of it requires timing and strategy to outwit the flies, and also to get to the end of each level.

It’s charming and attractive, though not for everyone. Check out the gameplay trailer below to get your eight silky legs wet with Along Came a Spider.

Along Came a Spider - Xbox Live Marketplace

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Those of you who know me know that I am a point-and-click Adventure junkie. I have been salivating recently over the announcements that LucasArts is re-doing The Secret of Monkey Island for XBox 360 and PC, and that TellTale Games is doing a new episodic game, Tales of Monkey Island, both coming this summer. Those of you who are like me know that it can be hard now-a-days to find a quality Adventure game, and even harder to find one that’s in the true spirit of the traditional LucasArts games. In other words, one that has a sense of humor.

Well, the good news is that two guys over at Zombie Cow Studios have created two hilarious point-and-click adventure games that will have you laughing all the way through, especially if you are fans of the genre. Their first game, Ben There, Dan That, is completely free. Although it’s short, I highly recommend it - especially because, well, it’s FREE. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard playing a game before. Zoom over to their website now and give it a download.

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Blueberry Garden breaks free from a mold I’m used to playing from and proves refreshing in doing so. It shrugs off things commonly thought of as essential, such as a HUD of any sort, some elaborate description of the goals you’re setting out to accomplish and an explanation of what powers the fruits strewn about the game imbue the player with. While avoiding these tried and true methods it also manages to pull the player in far more deeply than you would have ever thought when selecting New Game from the innocent menu.

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Dyson is described by its creators, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May as an “Ambient real-time strategy game with abstract visuals.” A description recognized as very modest by those that have spent some time with the game, or an inordinate amount of time as the case may be. The game originally spawned as an entry in the Procedural Generation Competition, this is a pretty amazing thing to consider while playing what seems to be a perfectly planned and thought out level. There lies a deceptive depth to this RTS game, hidden behind the clean minimalist visuals. Hopefully that depth will soon be exposed to a larger market.

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In the midst of all these new fully three-dimensional, high quality texture, life-like shading, high-definition video games, sometimes it can be hard to look back at what a lot of us grew up on. We’ve played it all before, been there, beat that or even got tired of playing and looked up the spoilers on Wikipedia. (She dies, your best friend is your enemy, the boss isn’t really dead, you really are dead, you saw yourself when you were dead and because of it you created a pime taradox and ended up living, etc.)

It’s never new, but come on, old school games are always a nice break from this new fang-dangled stuff. But then what do you do when you actually want something new, but retains that old-school charm? Well my friend, we have the internet and free independent games to play, not just 5 minute flash games. Here, let me Google that for you.

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