Dynamic Systems is a physics-based puzzle game. As is common for this type of game, your goal is to get the ball into the goal. In this case the ball is metal, and the goal is a cup. You move certain objects into place and rotate them into the correct orientation to allow the ball to roll, bounce, or otherwise be moved into the cup. Thankfully, unlike most puzzle games, Dynamic Systems offers solutions to each level's puzzle right in the game.

The feel of the game is somewhat like Collider, with floating metal bars and dirty industrial graphics everywhere. The background music in Dynamic Systems is relatively soothing, but as the game gets more challenging, the repetitive nature of the music becomes pretty frustrating. Thankfully, you can turn it off.

The difficulty in Dynamic Systems grows slowly but steadily, making it a fun game to come back to.

Icycle is a "capture the stars" style game where you control a naked (yes, naked) character. Instead of stars, your character is trying to collect frozen bubbles. Since he's missing his clothes, and if you ride him into a hazard and he falls off his bike, he freezes, or dies in numerous entertaining ways.

While the game play is solid, the physics of the game are pretty limited when compared to other side-view bike or car games. But Icycle isn't trying to be a physics-based game; instead it focuses on lush visuals and simple but challenging gameplay that requires memorizing the location of hazards and bubbles. Rather than scrolling as many games of this type do, you ride through multiple screens, which means that you don't get to see what's coming. It's admittedly a retro-style game, as the game's creator Damp Gnat freely admits.

Go Home Ball calls itself a physics game, but is really more of a time-based puzzler. Your job in the game is to get the red ball from the top of the screen, where it rolls out of an opening in a tree, to the bottom of the screen where an opening in the top of a tree trunk awaits, ensuring to collect all the gold stars along the way. Your tools to move the ball along vary across the levels, but they are typically a stick that you can temporarily lay to allow the ball to cross gaps, and a hand that you can use to nudge the ball in the correct direction.

Don't let the simple and cute appearance of the game fool you; the timing and placement for each move is crucial, and your skill with a mouse will play a big part in the success you have at the game.

(after the break, Happy Gilmore weighs in with his thoughts about balls going home...)

In Cargo Bridge, your goal is to build a bridge that will support the weight of your workers, and the cargo they need to go and bring back to the hut. You have a limited amount of money with which to build the bridge, and limited materials - walks and connectors. Walks are the only surface your workers and their cargo can travel on, while connectors are beams that allow you to reinforce your bridge.

Bridge building games are not new, but the implementation in Cargo Bridge is well done; the graphics are fun and smooth, and the actual bridge-building part of the game is relatively easy to use. This is the best kind of physics game, where playing the game actually helps you to learn about how various shapes affect the strength of objects.

Unfortunately the game tells you what the cost is of each beam as you are placing it, but not the length, while in planning mode you are given distances between objects. It would be much easier to make symmetrical bridges if you knew the lengths of the pieces you are placing. Also, it would be nice to have a "speed up" function for when you run into a particularly difficult level and are making small changes and re-running tests.

Even including those downsides, Cargo Bridge is a very fun time waster, worthy of your coffee break.

Ninja Roll 2 is a simple ball rolling game that has you drawing a line for your "ninja ball" to roll and bounce down. The goal of the game is to collect all of the stars on each level.

The game has a very sparse look, and the physics of the ball remind me of the superballs that I played with as a kid. It's actually frustrating how bouncy this ball is. Sometimes it's hard to maintain momentum because just as your ball is about to ascend a ramp, it hits some tiny bump and bounces off in an unexpected direction. To be fair, part of the fun of playing Ninja Roll 2 is watching the ball make crazy moves.

Some of the levels appear physically impossible at first, but that's where your ball's incredible bounciness becomes an advantage - you can make it perform moves that you would have never thought possible.

My only gripe with the game is that for some reason it was choppy to the point of almost being unplayable when running in Firefox, but in Safari it is perfectly smooth.

Downhill Snowboard is a physics game with a human dimension. You play the part of the snowboarder, and your job is to successfully navigate down the hill, while pulling off tricks over the various jumps you encounter along the way.

The game is very similar to side-scrolling car-based games that require you to maneuver over jumps and other obstacles, but in this case you do not have an engine, and must rely on the power of gravity to pull you down the hill.

My favorite part of Download Snowboard is how your character moves on the screen. Though you only have very limited control over his movements, somehow the developer managed to make the snowboarder's body move in a relatively natural way, particularly with how the knees flex when landing from a jump.

As mentioned, the controls in the game are limited; you can lean your snowboarder back and forth, jump, and grab either the front or back of the board while in the air. While the graphics in the game are simple and repetitive, there are a wide variety of courses ranging from shallow and long high-speed courses to steep and short hazard-ridden courses.

Kinetikz is a simple shooting physics game where the goal is to shoot discs at a ball and manage to move the ball into the goal tile. Getting the ball into the goal replenishes your limited supply of discs, while running out of discs ends the game.

Figuring the angles is reminiscent of playing billiards, but the variously shaped game boards coupled with hazards like small blocks and levers complicates matters somewhat. The levers in particular add an element of interest to the game; some levers are unpowered, and can be moved by shooting discs at them, while others are motorized and move of their own accord.

If I had to describe a recipe for this game, I'd go with one part playing the angles, one part timing, and one part frustration when the first two parts don't work out perfectly. That being said, this game certainly has a challenging, addicting quality.

Here's another physics-based time waster. In Roly-poly Cannon your job is to kill all the cute little Roly-polies, using as few exploding cannonballs as you can. The levels include exploding TNT barrels, moveable objects, and various materials like wood, rock, ice, and metal.

This one is on the brain-dead side as far as physics puzzle games go. If you get frustrated, just start shooting a stream of cannonballs, and in all likelihood you will succeed. Interestingly, it seems that if you shoot enough cannonballs unsuccessfully, you will be mercifully taken to the next level. This one is perfect for when you're up late at night and you don't know why but you can't or don't feel like going to bed but you can't really think anymore and everything's just getting to you and nothing's going your way and you just want to do something mindless and killing cute little characters makes you feel powerful in your pathetic and meaningless dreary existence. Or is that just me?