Life Is Hard is a very brief platform game offering an exploration of just how difficult life can be. Just use your left, right arrows to move around and up to jump. Take a moment to enjoy this entertaining, little game and let me know what you think of it.

Retro Sabotage – Retrogaming: classic games we know and love with a twist. Their latest hilariously sabotaged game is called Jumping and it’s quite silly.

In First-Person Tetris, the simple act of rotating a block actually rotates the entire screen, shifting your perspective 90 degrees. Yup, it’s played just like regular Tetris except, instead of the pieces rotating, it’s your view. It’s a fun perspective of fun game.

Life ain’t easy and life on the Oregon Trail ain’t any easier. If you went to grade school in the last 30 years, perhaps you were lucky enough to play this educational game and learn all about the hardships of life. In the game, you assume the role of a wagon leader guiding your party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon’s Willamette Valley by way of the Oregon Trail via a Conestoga wagon in 1848. Be sure you pick up plenty of supplies at the general store before you head out. (Don’t worry, you’ll lose most of it later.) If you manage to not get measles, snakebites, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, exhaustion, and diarrhea, you might just drown crossing the river. Good luck!

Play Oregon Trail and relive the feeling of dysentery and perhaps loose an oxen or two. The breathtaking ASCII landmarks are reason enough to play.

Continuity is a fun Flash tile-sliding puzzle platformer that reminds me a bit of the Atari 2600 Adventure game. For each level you’ll, use your arrow keys to move the puzzle around then try to navigate your little stick figure properly around the maze to get the key and then exit out the door. The key to the game is the name of the game. Thanks Ragtime Games!

Fragger – A physics-based game of brutality in which you must use your limited supply of grenades to blow up the targets in each level. Frag your way through 30 levels and get all 11 achievements! Fill your afternoon full of exploding fun. It’s a blast to play! (If you think the normal difficulty is tricky, wait until you try your hand at elite.)

Open Doors – Simply move the square to the X using your arrow keys. You’ll be moving through lots of doors along the way. This is a great game of very simple logic and patterns! It’s quite original and it’s actually a challenge. Can you beat the game?

The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting. When playing the game, you will learn about redistricting fundamentals, gerrymandering, the Voting Rights Act, and potential reforms. From the University of Southern California (USC) Game Innovation Lab, part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media Division. It was developed for the USC Annenberg Center for Communications a few years ago.

I’m no political junkie, but I do like challenging sim type games. Give it a try and perhaps you’ll learn something while you’re at it.

Starting to get hot outside? Here’s something to cool you off. Ice Breaker – It’s a physics-based puzzle game involving vikings, chunks of ice and frozen vikings. Just click and drag your mouse to slice through the ice in order to save the frozen vikings by getting them back to their longboat. Get all the vikings to the ship to complete each level. It’s a silly and very addicting game.

I was getting tired of all the basketball on TV, so I figured a little robot soccer would be a nice break. X-HOC is a lot like an indoor soccer game, played by robots. It might take you some time to get the hang of the game, but it’s pretty entertaining. Use the arrow keys or WASD to move. Press the SPACE to pass, shoot or tackle. If you’re like me, you’ll be smacking your keyboard feverishly in no time.