What happens if you are computer science student at Stony Brook, you're a serious fan of old NES and Genesis sidescrollers, you have a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and you have way too much time on your hands? Well, what happens is something like Sludge Crawler.

Arcade Puzzler with Unusual Gameplay
And at Three Smackers, Can You Go Wrong?

In Brent Anderson's Snowball's Chance, you play through a series of levels as a snowball. You start typically at one corner of the screen, and somewhere there's a goal you have to get to--sometimes by hitting switches and unlocking them first. The problem is that you don't move with the arrow keys; this game is somewhat billiards-like, in that you nudge your snowball with the mouse pointer, and can increase or decrease the force of your nudge. Some obstacles (like open water) cause insta-death, while wandering opponents can reduce your size. And you're slowly melting (more rapidly on some terrain than others), so you can't tarry.

MS Paint Meets Lemmings

In this ingenious little puzzle platformer, you need to guide a crew of little characters ("notes" whom "DJ Sonoro" is trying to steal) to the level's exit. You do so by painting--connecting ramps with orange paint, walls with red paint, jumping platforms with blue paint, and so on. But you have a limited quantity of each type of paint for each level, and have to be careful, particularly as DJ Sonoro (the enemy character) has a gun which he can use to destroy orange platforms (but not yellow ones). Painting is straightforward; select a color, hold the left mouse button, and draw.

Penguin Puzzler

The backstory of Storked has it that the stork inadvertently dropped scads of penguin eggs all over Antarctica, and using your crack crew of penguin specialists, you must rescue them. What it basically means is that this is a puzzle game, and in each level, your penguins must find an egg, and get it to the baby basket somewhere else in the level.

As typical in puzzle games, there are a limited number of obstacles and elements you must use to solve the level, with additional elements added over time so that you're gradually introduced to the complexity of the system. In Storked's case, you have four penguins, not all of whom appear in each level, each of whom can move and kick the egg (no hands so they can't carry it), but each of whom has some special ability.