Best Of Indie Games: Shark Attack In Bat Country

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include an exploration game created for the Ludum Dare development competition, a multiplayer open world game rendered using ASCII characters, a browser-based puzzle game, a difficult platformer that'll offer a bit of challenge, and a horizontal-scrolling shooter that features bats, giant spiders, and a gargantuan shark. Here's the highlights from the last seven days: Game Pick: 'Time Pygmy' (deepnight, browser) "In Time Pygmy you play as a caveman who discovers a time portal inside his cave on a rainy day. Being rather inquisitive he decides to jump into the portal without thinking twice, and finds himself teleported to a cozy house sometime in the distant future. Our protagonist is also given only four minutes to make as many discoveries as he can, before he is forcefully returned to his own timeline to reflect on the amazing adventure he's just had." Game Pick: '64pixels' (asiekierka, browser) "64pixels is a multiplayer open world game that offers a comprehensive set of tools for constructing just about anything a player can dream of. Best described as an ASCII version of Minecraft, this versatile program has a crazy number of features for you to play around with." Game Pick: 'Monomaze' (Diffusion Games, browser) "Monomaze is a clever puzzle game that's about creating closed boxes by drawing straight lines from one dot to another. Players can only draw a line between two of the nearest dots, and each time you do so the moves counter will be reduced by one." Game Pick: 'Bat Country' (Greg Sergeant, browser) "Bat Country is a horizontal-scrolling shooter with four levels to play through, featuring silhouette graphics and imaginative enemy designs that'll keep you on your toes from start to end. The story is about a pilot named Thompson who must fly deep into enemy territory to rescue a group of stranded soldiers, even when the odds heavily stacked against him and his copter is well and truly under-equipped for such a mission." Game Pick: 'Spikes Tend to Kill You' (Noxious Hamster, browser) "Spikes Tend to Kill You is a hard-as-nails platformer, with spikes and bullets all over the place and tricky jumps to make. Each level has dialogue describing the scenario and how you're probably not going to beat it. The first dozen levels aren't too difficult, and you'll most likely breeze through. Then the game declares 'the first real test', and things get ugly."