Most games put a misplaced focus on killing some manufactured bad guys. The real fun is in killing yourself, and finding creative ways to do it. From stabbing yourself with a stapler to wearing a piñata costume, you can inflict massive pain on yourself, but a pain no where near the pain of working in your cubicle, trudging out the same boring work day in and day out. So see if you have what it takes to put yourself out of your own misery.

Geek-Out Game: 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself)

The biggest trend in web games has been the desktop defense game. The best part is the formula works for dozens of games, each with their own twist on the model My favorite new twist is Tarnation where you care for a garden being invaded by an army of colorful bugs. By highlighting the seeds in your garden, you can launch them like missiles at the bugs, but be careful you don’t run out of seeds. The unique strategy makes for a new, fun challenge and maybe some gardening skills while you’re at it.

Geek-Out Game: Tarnation

Is it too early to call something next Portal? Well Shift is as close as I’ve seen to that puzzle magic. This side scrolling puzzler requires your running and jumping silhouette reach a door, but to get there, you have to shift from one background into the other, turning the world upside down. This allows you to reach new platforms and down others. There’s no cake, but it’s still a great game for that Portal-esque craving.

Geek-Out Game: Shift

Does a game with Too Many Ninjas need an explanation? Not really. There’s lot of ninjas trying to kill your ninja. You must kill the bad ninjas. Don’t let them kill you. Actually the game is very simple. You can’t move, just point and swipe your sword, blocking ninja stars and causing the ninja’s themselves pain. Try to survive as long as you can.

Geek-Out Game: Too Many Ninjas!

You can never have enough colorful block/ball puzzlers.  Flashxed, a clone of the Palm OS game Vexed, offers a huge assortment of puzzles where you moves various blocks around trying to clear the board.  Be care though, you only have a limited number of moves, making for a great challenge.  And with dozens of prepared puzzles, you’ve got lots to distract you from things like work and responsibility.

Geek-Out Game: Flashxed

Simple.  Build a robot. Move him around. Watch him kill people.  Build more robots.  It’s as awesome as it sounds.  This game with the overly long yet descriptive name is an addictive romp of destructive power with cute animations and a surprising amount of challenge.  You can unlock new robots and put together an army of robots to take out the cute little stick figures.  Destroy the stick figures.  This is what Flash was made for.

Geek-Out Game: Robot and the Cities that Built Him

It like a frog based immune system.  Flu Fighters puts you in charge of defending all the vital organs against a variety of attacking viruses.  These viruses will attach to the organs, slowly killing the host.  Your goal is to eat as many as you can and keep your host alive as long as possible.  While there is unfortunately no leaderboard or high score, the game is quite the challenge, with you pulling your frog-based immune system by his tongue, eager to eat and grow fat from all the delicious viruses.  So bon appetite.

Geek-Out Game: Flu Fighters

This adorable puzzle game puts you in charge of the development of a tropical island with hidden treasure.  Add new technologies to the island to help develop more advanced inventions and creating a prosperous little world.  The challenge is to add the technologies in the right order so each one levels up until maxed out.  With a mix of logic and trial and error, you can create the most advanced island on the web. 

Geek-Out Game: Grow Island

This simplistic flash game puts you in control of a growing amoeba in search of food.  Simple point and click controls allow you to lead your single celled organism around the petri dish, growing from the food you eat and avoiding murderous viruses.  Make it all the way through 23 levels of evolving challenges.

Geek-Out Game: Amoeba

Flash games have a way of simplifying complex issues, but the Campaign Game still gives players an excellent game of strategy replicating the presidential election.  You can choose between leading Democrats and Republicans (though the Republican list is very out-of-date) in a single player or multiplayer game over the inter-webs.  You and your staff try to take over large geographic areas (simplified), but the cute graphics and diverse strategy options make the game worth repeat and long play sessions.

Game-Out Game: Campaign Game