Thanks to a handful of referrals from my girlfriend Jordan, I've been exploring several top notch point-and-click games. Since my original enthusiastic post in September, I've taken a little time to familiarize myself with this world of indie gaming and I'm consistently impressed by the imagination and artistry that goes into these titles. What follows are brief reviews and links to three fun projects that we've found.

Kim Köster is a Berlin based painter who revels in using bleak industrial architecture as a canvas on which to render a variety of surreal creatures. 99 Rooms (pictured above) is a flash-based piece that invites the viewer to wander through a sequence of rooms that Köster has enriched through his painting. Unlike other escape the room titles, the emphasis in 99 Rooms is not so much about solving puzzles but absorbing the stark ambiance in each of the scenes. The paintings that drive this photo-based work are complemented with a clean unobtrusive interface and excellent sound design. Be sure to check out Strahlende Orte, a project in which Köster participated that sent a handful of European artists to the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat to paint murals to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster.

Chasm is a playful puzzle by the Australian based Transcience collective. The game revolves around a platypus protagonist who is attempting to restore the (blocked) water supply to his hometown near the El Chorro Gorge in Spain. The gamespace in Chasm is loosely based off photo documentation of a trip to El Chorro and this rugged terrain is explored through frequent use of dramatic oblique and aerial camera angles. Chasm won the best game award at the 2004 Flashforward festival. For a little background information on this game take a look at this link.

Hoshi Saga is a sublime project by Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames. The game is comprised of 36 mini-games in which the player has to find a star. This simple task is explored through a series of idiosyncratic flash interfaces which are articulated with a sense of wonder and rendered as gorgeous grayscale illustration. The game is quite delightful and some of the effects rank amongst the best flash animation that I've seen. Hoshi Saga was released this past spring and Ishii has already released a sequel. You can learn more about Yoshio Ishii's work from the fine folks at Jay is Games (an excellent casual gaming resource).