Use Boxmen is a Flash game that requires you to solve each level by reaching the goal, which is a box that your Boxman must collect. You can run and jump like in most games like this, but your Boxman has an additional ability: he's able to spawn clones of himself which will continue to do whatever it is he's doing at the moment the clone is spawned. So, if your Boxman is standing still, the clone will forever stand in that place. If he's running to the right, the clone will continue running to the right.

The puzzles get fairly complicated, requiring multiple interactions between the clones in ways that are sometimes not intuitive.

Probably the nicest surprise of Use Boxmen is the soundtrack. The first thing I tend to do when trying a new time waster is look for the mute button for the game's music. In Use Boxmen, I found myself muting iTunes. That doesn't happen too often.

Graphics are Everything is a tongue-in-cheek name for a game that is anything but fancy graphically. The game involves bare-bones wireframe shapes on a plain white screen. You control a circle, and can make it bounce by clicking and dragging it in a direction. Releasing the mouse will send the ball flying in the direction of the cursor.

The goal of the game is to collect certain shapes while avoiding others. There are also special shapes that will interact with your ball by making it more or less bouncy, and other behaviors.

For such a simple-looking game, Graphics are Everything actually contains compelling gameplay, which I suppose is the point. It can be addictive trying to manage to writhe your ball through a small gap to successfully collect triangles or large circles while avoiding the squares. I realize how boring that sounds written out, but Graphics are Everything is worth a try.

Minim is a puzzle game where your goal is to deconstruct molecules until they disappear. This is done by sequentially clicking any two nodes of the same number that are linked by a single strand. The tutorial levels are deceptively simple, showing the mechanics of the games, but the puzzles become very difficult very fast. Luckily, the game is rendered in 3D, and allows you to freely rotate the molecule you are working on so that you can determine your best move.

Interestingly, Minim is the first free online Flash game that I've seen advertise that it has a companion iPhone version. This seems like a brilliant move - get people hooked on the free online version, then sell them a version they can take with them.

Minim is very pretty and quite challenging, two things that any good puzzle game must have. It's exceedingly satisfying to finish of a particularly complex molecule, and that is what will likely have you coming back again and again to play more Minim.

Mirror's Edge is a successful 3D first-person platformer where players take control of Faith, a runner who's job is to transmit messages without garnering the ire of government surveillance. If you're not familiar with the franchise, it doesn't really matter; Mirror's Edge 2D is still a fantastic 2D flash game based on Mirror's Edge.

In the 2D version, you control Faith by using keyboard keys to run, duck, slide, climb, wallrun, and jump. The style of the game reminds me of a classic version of Mission Impossible on the Commodore 64. The most charming element of Mirror's Edge 2D is the rapid yet smooth way that Faith moves. The game is all about maintaining momentum, and it's easily to see why after playing the game for only a few minutes.

Mirror's Edge 2D has both a story mode and time trial mode, giving it considerable replay value for a free online game. This game feels like what I wish side-scrolling platform games had been like in their heyday.

Boomstick is a Flash game where you move a stick-figure person left and right, and aim/fire a boomstick (gun). The object is to shoot the "bad guys," which are really just basic shapes that fly through the screen at varying paces.

When you hit the bad guys, debris falls like a candy from a piñata, and collecting this debris gives you more ammo to continue the cycle. There are two powerups as well: a nuclear blast that clears the screen of bad guys, and a speed boost that, you guessed it, increases your lateral movement.

The background music and sounds can be turned off, though the music is sort of like techno/house and made us want to shoot more bad guys.

[Via UberPike]

Grid16 is a unique combination of mini games for gamers with short attention spans (like us). You start out with a grid of 16 squares, each with its own game. All you need are your arrow keys and good reflexes as the game's "camera" moves from mini game to mini game.

For instance, you may start out playing a Brickout-type mini game for a few seconds, then switch to a game where you must move a small square to avoid walls. The game steadily increases the speed at which it moves you between mini games, which gets tricky since you pick up the games where you left off when you start the mini game again.

If you fail a game, that game's grid square is removed from your 16 squares. When you're all done (when you have no grid squares left), you get a fancy pyramid graph showing your percentage of three skill sets: prioritizing, timing, and reflexes.

[Via gddgb]

In Filler your goal is to fill 2/3 of the game board with "filler balls." Balls can be created by clicking anywhere on the board and their size is determined by how long you hold down the button on your mouse. The longer the you hold down the button, the bigger the filler ball.

The game has other balls bouncing around the screen which for the purpose of this explanation we'll call "bouncing balls." If one of those balls hits your filler ball while you're still creating it, then your ball pops and you lose a life. As you progress in the game there are more bouncing balls which make it more and more difficult to grow your filler balls without them being popped. Each level gives you a certain amount of lives, a certain amount of balls you can create, and a time limit.

Some tips we picked up when playing:

• You can move your filler ball around while you're growing it to avoid being popped.
• The filler balls react to each other, and to being hit by bouncing balls...so where they fall isn't necessarily where they'll stay.
• You can grow balls specifically to move others and create "safe areas" for you to grow bigger ones.
• If you completely squish a bouncing ball with filler balls it's not gone forever...they reappear in the top right corner.
  

We played this engineering game for the first time almost a week ago, and have yet to make it past level one. Now we've decided to ask our dear readers to help us out on beating this thing so we can get back to more important things like blogging.

The idea behind the game is fairly simple. You're given a little island. There are eight different types of engineering you can bring to the island and you decide which order to activate them in. Each development will affect the others you've already activated in allowing the island to grow so it's important to pick the right order. The ultimate goal is to get each advancement level maxed out (developments max out at 9 or 10 levels), and then you proceed to the next level...a level which we have never seen.

The Choices are Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Applied Chemistry, Aeronautic, Marine and automotive engineering, Architecture, Environmental Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. We've managed to get pretty far: our island dwellers have fell in love and had children, built rocket ships that travel to the moon, and created robots that build tunnels and bridges. Right before we select our last thing to add however an alien like creature always comes out of the volcano on the island and drips some sort of hyperactive sludge on our community. Our final numbers usually include maxing out 3 or 4 sections but then being at level one or two on others.

Some things we've learned: If you have people living in your house and don't activate "Environmental Engineering" then your little man walks outside, doesn't have anywhere to throw away his trash and in retaliation goes on a tree cutting down spree that seems to end in his death as well. If you activate "Applied Chemistry" too early then the volcano trembles and breaks your beaker before you can do anything with it...maybe there's a way to stop the volcano?

So we beg you: help us. If you figure it out tell us how you did it.

[Thanks (we think) Jay]

Man, oh man. If ever there were a time waster with a name that could evoke innuendo and double-entendre, it's one called Balls. It's excruciatingly difficult not to comment about playing with them or that this game scratches a real itch. Staying strong, we'll steer well clear of commentary like that.

Balls is a very simple game in which you play the part of a little grey ball, trying to touch a large hollow ball until it disappears. Complicating matters is the black ball, which chases you and when it catches you, makes your small grey ball grow. This in turn makes it harder to evade the black ball, and the walls which are continuously closing in on you. The game simply repeats over and over again with this simple formula, making it seem a bit like a bad dream. But somehow it's an enjoyable and addictive bad dream. Try it and you'll see what we mean.

Momentum Missle Mayhem is a Flash-based arcade shooter with a funky physics concept and great action. You play the part of the Gravity Launcher, which is basically a fixed structure. You can shoot out different projectiles in a slingshot fashion, and hit the attacking machines and either damage them, or push them around. The goal is to defend the left side of the screen from the waves of attackers coming from the right.

Of course there are all sorts of upgrades available as you move on, giving you different weapons to deploy and the ability to use some alternative strategies. One tip when you're getting started is to note that more damage is caused by the attackers colliding with the sides of the arena or even each other than by taking direct hits. So it's valuable to aim as if you're playing pool - make the attacking machines bounce into each other, and you'll cause far more damage.

Finding Time Wasters to blog about should be considered a high-risk activity. While there's no doubt that it's a fun way to spend our time, the truth is that our productivity takes a serious hit every time we start testing out possibilities for inclusion as daily time wasters. Some are worse than others in this regard, but recently Blocky has been stealing a ridiculous amount of our time.

Like all really great games, the concept is simple - draw a rectangle around any set of squares where the four corners of the rectangle have blocks at them of the same color. It's colorful and lively, with a countdown timer that keeps you mindful that if you don't hurry up and find a set of blocks to remove, your game is going to be over. And the level of challenge goes up just right as you start to get the hang of the game.

As always, don't say we didn't warn you.

Bloxorz is a game with a silly name, but great gameplay. While there are millions of puzzle games out there, few come close to matching the fun and challenge of Tetris. Though Bloxorz does.

Now, to be perfectly clear, Bloxorz is not a Tetris clone. In fact, the gameplay in Bloxorz couldn't be more different. The Tetris comparision is simply to point out that we think the game is that good, especially as a little web-based timewaster.

The hero of Bloxorz is, well, a rectangular block. Your job is to move the block by flipping it sideways or end-over-end through the maze of square tiles and arrange things so that your last flip slides your block through a single square hole. At first the game is a bit frustrating, but the learning curve is shallow and within 5 minutes you'll probably find yourself a few levels in, and having fun.

Who doesn't like a quick little Flash distraction? The more addictive the better, I say. Paper Pilot delivers, on both counts.

In Paper Pilot, you get the chance to pick from three different paper airplane designs, then modify the weight of the paper, the amount of lift created by wing flaps, and whether or not to include "winglets" on the sides of the wings.

Once you've designed your masterpiece, you move to the field where the objective is to fly the plane as far as you can. Once you've practiced enough to feel up to it, you can challenge friends to see who has the best paper airplane flying chops.

Okay, now get back to work.