Well, it’s almost Halloween. And what could be scarier than a fat cat with a craving for donuts?  Add in a spooky house, and you’ve got a cute animated adventure that’s fun for the whole family. Both Garfield’s Scary Scavenger 1 and Garfield’s Scary Scavenger 2 games are set up with the same sort of gameplay.

You have to search a spooky mansion for clues and donut boxes. Get all the donuts and solve all the puzzles and you’re free. But watch out. Garfield is sort of a scaredy cat. There are lots of scary ghosts and ghouls who jump and scream. If Garfield’s “scary meter” gets too full, he runs away in fear, and you start the game over again.

In Scary Scavenger 1, you have to figure out a way into then out of a haunted mansion. In Scary Scavenger 2, you start out in the dark basement of the mansion, and have to get out. With great music, cool animation, scary sounds, and some familiar faces, this is one game that’s funny and scary at the same time.

Go ahead and play, if you dare. I know I wasted some Halloween time on this fun game.  I even made my kid play with me - and we had fun! Truly frightening.

Grow Ornament is another of the cute puzzle games from Eyezmaze. Try to place the objects on the tree so that all the levels are at maximum. Get it wrong and you get booed. Get it sort of right, and it almost works. Get it perfect, and there’s a very cute holiday ending that will make you go “awww.”

If you need help to finish this perfectly, go to my hints page here.

If you want to play other Grow games, try Grow nano vol2 and Grow RPG.

I’ve already admitted that I’m not addicted to Sudoku, which seems to make me one of the few in the world. For some reason, the numbers fluster me. Something to do with the trauma that math has always brought to me. However, Dracosoft has released Christmas Sudoku, a twist on the traditional game. With holiday pictures and images, as well as easy, medium and hard modes, this is one sudoku I can get into. 

The concept is the same - don’t repeat the same image in a row, column or square. With santa, bells, snowflakes, gingerbread men, candles, presents and more, you’ll soon be in the holiday spirit. And with the free hour-long trial and the $5.99 pricetag, Dracosoft is making sure you’ll want to add sudoku to your gaming stocking. For the trial and to buy, click here.

Continuing with my Christmas game theme, here’s Mahjong Holidays 2006. It’s a traditional mahjong game with 2 differences:

1. Of course, the the tiles all have holiday and winter pictures. They are actually very pretty, and remind me of old-fashioned card illustrations. The music is also seasonal, and (surprise!) is actually soothing and not annoying. Of course, there’s not much of it, so if you play a lot, you’ll notice the looping.

2. The second difference is that a lot of these puzzles are user-created. When you start the game, you are connected to the Big Fish Games mahjong server. There, you can play user-created puzzles or add your own. The games range from simple to mind-bogglingly hard, based on the number of tiles. These additional puzzles gives this game a major re-play factor.

I enjoyed this take on the classic mahjong. To get into the holiday spirit, download or buy Mahjong Holidays 2006 here.

A Christmas Tale is a holiday gift to all puzzle lovers. The object is simple - help Santa get from the starting point, through a path, and to a tree to light it. You can use presents and ice blocks to help Santa navigate the different levels of the game. Use the arrows to go forwards and backwards, and the up arrow lets Santa jump. Hit the space bar so that Santa can pick up presents or slide ice blocks. Simple, right?  Well, for the first three levels, it is. Then, things get tough starting on the fourth level. There are 30 in total.

Making it more complicated are 2 things: 

1. You can pick up and drop the presents. But you can only slide the ice, and it keeps going until a present or something else stops it. So you have to be careful not to slide the ice until you want to. Also, you can’t slide two blocks together.
2. More problematic is that there is no “undo” feature in this game. So, if you make a mistake (and you will) you have to restart. That’s ok for the lower levels, but for the complicated levels, starting over gets frustrating.

The game is cute, though, and has some nice touches. There are solutions for all the puzzles, so that if you get stuck, you can finish. Also, although the music is annoying, there is an option to turn it off.

Although there are some drawbacks to the game, I used up my full hour of free trial time, and am getting ready to buy it. The puzzles are clever and I had fun solving them. It’s a semi-relaxing game for the holidays. Click here for your free trial or to buy.

What would life be like if websites disappeared? It’s A Wonderful Internet is an interactive story that’s a modern take on a holiday classic.  If you liked the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you’ll love this interactive flash book.

What is a flash book? Well, first of all, although the picture is of an old-fashioned book, this one has sounds and is narrated. Secondly, if you hover over objects in the illustrations, you get some funny animations and sounds. And lastly, you need to click on the page arrows to find out more and to turn the pages.

 If you liked the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you’ll love this modern take on a holiday classic.

Are you afraid of the dark m&ms? Just in time for Halloween comes a game that’s deliciously scary! Althought it’s a blatant product placement for candy, the designers obviously have a love of movies and a twisted sense of humor.

There are clues to 50 horror (or dark) movies scattered throughout the picture on your screen. Click on a clue, and type in the answer (For example “The Haunting”. If your answer is right (and spelled correclty) the answer turns green and the clue turns dark.

Some of the clues are easy, some are hard, and a few are very clever. The picture on the left is one of my favorites. It took me a couple of hours to finish this. Not a bad way to spend a fall evening!