Developer: Circular Logic
Genre: Puzzle
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Bontãgo is a single- or multiplayer puzzle game that involves dropping colored blocks from the sky. Though that might sound like a familiar premise, the game bears only a passing resemblance to the classic block-puzzle game Tetris. Instead, you play the game on a circular playing field over which your next block piece is suspended and onto which your next block piece eventually lands. Occasionally, you may drop a piece on top of a special "gift" piece, causing a random event, such as the appearance of an erupting volcano.

Not the neatest set of blocks, but it's getting to the center.

Instead of trying to get your pieces to fit together, you're trying to get your pieces to land as close to each other as possible without bouncing or flying off onto another part of the board. When you're successful, these pieces will form a continuous path toward your goal: a flag in the center of the board. You can place new blocks only on top of, or very close to, previously placed blocks. Bontãgo also has a physics model that causes poorly placed blocks to bounce off each other or knock down your earlier blocks, which may disrupt any path you may have built previously. The game's control scheme is entirely mouse-driven by default (you move your mouse up, down, left, or right to scroll across the game board, and you use your mousewheel to raise or lower your next piece), though you can modify your configuration. You're awarded more points for dropping new pieces successfully onto the board from a higher height, though doing so will often cause poorly placed pieces to bounce much higher than usual, increasing the possibility of knocking over your previous blocks and destroying whatever progress you may have made in forging a path to your goal. The game uses simple, colorful 3D graphics and features a looping piano concerto soundtrack.

Developer: Interactivestory.net and the Georgia Institute of Technology
Genre: Interactive Drama

Grace and Trip are a married couple with a few relationship issues that stem from the minor fact that they can no longer stand each other's company. In Façade, you visit the terrible twosome (ostensibly your friends) at their swanky apartment to catch up on some college memories, only to get caught in the middle of a no-holds-barred marriage explosion. Accusations fly, misunderstandings abound, snide comments are wielded like weapons, and you have a front-row seat for buried resentments and emotional distress.

These people are absolutely insane.

The key to Façade is your character's direct and indirect ability to guide the constantly flowing narrative based on what you say and do. There are no dialogue trees, branching paths, or menus to navigate as you interact with the couple by moving around the apartment and typing whatever you'd like to say. Relationship carnage will always happen around you even if you say absolutely nothing, frozen in the face of severe marital dysfunction--these two are determinedly bitter--but you can also take sides or serve as an intermediary. What gets revealed along the way is often subtly dependent on how you interact with the environment. If you happen to enter their apartment and then stand by Grace's atrocious collection of glass figurines, for example, she'll come over and tell you about how she's not happy with the way her decorating has turned out. Trip will insist that you walk over to another wall and admire his picture from their second honeymoon in Italy. Though the evening's ultimate outcome is pretty much inevitable, there's lots of variation along the way and all sorts of chances to tell your friends that they're both nuts, though they don't seem to mind terribly much.

If you're one of those lucky souls who know only sane, well-adjusted people and you'd like to get a taste of caustic irrationality and loads of drama, Façade is a perfect opportunity.