Bars of Black and White

Yet another cool but brief experiment by Gregory Weir (The Majesty of Colors), Bars of Black and White stands in sharp contrast to it's predecessor. You use arrows to navigate around a sparse, crudely drawn apartment while solving simple puzzles and using items you find along the way to open up new areas of the game. Of particular interest is the game's main gimmick of using a bar code scanner to reveal hidden messages. A creepy little game worth checking out.

Chalk

The premise of Chalk is brilliant but simple. On a chalkboard come to life, you must guide the heroes Line and Target through six intense stages filled with monsters and environmental challenges, facing off against mini bosses to earn checkpoints and fighting incredibly imaginative end level bosses in each stage. You do all of this by left-clicking and holding while moving the mouse to draw lines through points on objects, between enemy shots and the enemies themselves to reflect the shots back, and various other actions which I won't spoil, as it's fun figuring this sort of thing out on your own. It's a beautiful but largely monochromatic game, keeping in theme with the setting, and all the artwork has a suitably hand drawn feel to it. The music is simple but upbeat, and the controls are perfect. I would pay money for this game on WiiWare. It's free for download on the website, and I can't think of a better way to idly spend 30 minutes than with this game.

Flow

In Flow, you play as a microscopic organism trying to survive in a seemingly primordial environment by devouring other creatures and filling up your health meter, represented by body segments, in order to increase your size and evolve. Certain "boss" organisms, for lack of a better term, leave behind special pieces of themselves that cause you to evolve in specific ways, possibly taking on characteristics of the creatures themselves. You pass through multiple levels of the watery environment and into darkness by devouring a red organism to go deeper, and a blue to go back up. This is a beautifully done game, with a clean, simple art style that makes it easy to figure out what you have to do next. Everything has a soft glow about it that looks even cooler as you progress into the darker levels of the environment. The music is ambient and sets the tone of the game very well, and is quite relaxing, even when things get hectic as you eat and try to avoid being eaten by some of the game's larger creatures. It might take you 30 minutes or so to reach the bottom, and once you do, your creature ascends to the topmost layer and evolves into a completely different form, allowing you to play through the game again, which is a very different, and much more challenging experience. One of the most impressive in-browser Flash games I've played, it's also available for a free download to play directly from your desktop if you have a slower connection speed.

Xiao Xiao

Xiao Xiao combines two of the best things ever, stick figures and kung fu into a series of short (but awesome) flash movies and interactive games designed by the infamous Zhu Zhiqiang. I remember seeing his work in one of my early Flash classes in college, shown as an example of just how fluid animation could be using the software. While all of the animated shorts a great, with each one exploring the software and premise a little more (the 7th and 8th shorts are actually a two-parter featuring *gasp* 3-d effects), the interactive games are hit and miss. Xiao Xiao No. 4 is definitely the best of these, as it mixes things up with on-rails shooter gameplay similar to Virtua Cop. A great way to kill a few minutes.

The Several Journeys of Reemus

Actually, there are only two chapters and a prologue so far, but what's there is great. Reemus lives in the bizarre fantasy land of Fredericus, looks like a washed-up Motorhead roadie, and travels with his sidekick, a purple bear named Liam. Bad things are afoot in the kingdom, and it is up to the pair of exterminators to make things right, or better yet, survive.
This is a very simple flash based point and click adventure similar to Zeebarf's previous game, the brief but wonderful The Visitor. You check for hotspots, and click to interact with objects. Solving puzzles boils down to clicking on things in the right order, and for the most part the puzzles will be common sense, with a few places where you might have to experiment a bit to figure out what you're supposed to do. Nothing's very difficult though, and like in most adventure games, it's usually something you missed. There is no inventory, and no list of actions to select from--once an object is selected, Reemus or Liam will automatically perform the neccesary action to solve that part of the puzzle. You can also click on each character to gain a vague hint about what you're supposed to do in each area.
The art style is great, with everything handrawn and animated, and the soundtrack is excellent, ranging from hair metal to spooky ambience. The adventure won't take you long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes for each episode, but it's very funny throughout, and with a little more time and some money behind it, could rival a some commercial releases available in the genre today.

I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors

The Majesty of Colors by Gregory Weir is a pixel based Flash game where you play through a dream as a Lovecraftian horror who is just seeing the world's surface for the first time. The goal, ultimately, is to let your curiosity and your own sense of morality determine the decisions you make when interacting with the tiny pixelated humans the creature encounters. There are 5 different endings to see depending on how you choose to act, ranging from tragedie to something a bit happier, all played out though colorful sprites. The text is short but well written, and you can tell alot of thought went into the story and game design. There isn't really anything to win in this game, no boss to fight, and no high score to beat, and you'll be done with everything in less than 10 minutes, but I found myself thinking about the game well after I had seen all the endings.