Thanks to all of you who voted for their favorite developers for 2007! The vote is now over, and the undisputed winner with more that one-third of the votes is… Bernd Mattiebe!

As I’m writing this, Bernd’s most famous site, Woggerworld, has been hacked and has been temporarily taken down :-( This is a bad news for the whole Wogger community and we should give him all the support we can and hope his site will be up and running again soon!

Paskapet finished second in the competition and Mateusz Skutnik and Rodrigo Roesler are third ex-aequo!

Congrats to all our winners and to all the nominees!

Final Results:

1 – Bernd Mattiebe	37.9%
2 – Paskapet	19.6%
3 ex-aequo – Mateusz Skutnik / Rodrigo Roesler	9.3%
5 – Bart Bonte	7.1%
6 – Stephen Harris	3.7%
7 ex-aequo – Federico Rutenberg / Yoshio Ishii	2.9%
9 –Joel Esler	2.7%
10 – Shawn Tanner	1.9%
11 – John Cooney	1.4%
12 – WeCreateStuff	1.1%

Cursor*10 is the latest puzzle game created by Yoshio Ishii, one of the three 2007 FreeGamesNews Awards winners in the category Puzzle games.

Your goal here is to reach the 16th and top floor of a tower. To do so, simply click the stairs with your mouse pointer/cursor to move from one floor to the other. Clicking objects gives you points or reveal new stairs.

You can use up to 10 cursors to reach the top floor: each of them has a limited-time life. All the actions performed with previous cursors are replayed in real time while you try to find your way with a new one.

With its very simple black and white design, Cursor*10 is a nice and challenging puzzle game similar in concept to Timebot.

Have fun!

A big thank you to everyone that cast a vote in the 2007 Best Developers of the Year.

We are pleased to announce that nearly 5000 votes have been cast since you started voting for your favorite developers.

Without further ado, here are the 12 finalists you picked as the Best Developers of 2007 in their category, ranked by total votes received!

Paskapet (Russia) – Best Developer 2007 (Room Escape games)

Paskapet is a very prolific Flash game developer from Russia, who has released six Room Escape games in the last eight months! After the release of Escape Library, Paskapet made five games in the “Colored Rooms” series, Escape Pink Room, Magenta Room, Green Room, Orange Room and Turquoise Room.

Rodrigo Roesler (Brazil)

Rodrigo Roesler is a Web designer and a Flash game developer from Brazil. He released Trapped – The White Rabbit last September, the first installment of a very promising trilogy of Point’n’Click adventure and Escape games. The second installment, The Dark, is now live!

Shawn Tanner (U.S.A.)

Shawn Tanner is the author of several popular flash games and the Webmaster of Afro-Ninja Productions. Shawn released three Room Escape games this year in his very popular Escape series: Escape the Car, Escape the Closet and Escape the Phone Booth.

Bernd Mattiebe (Germany) – Best Developer 2007 (Adventure games)

Bernd Mattiebe is a German artist and designer. He is also the man who gave life last year to Wogger, a cute red alien. Since then, he has created over 100 chapters for the Wogger Mini series that more and more people enjoy playing every week.

Federico Rutenberg (Argentina)

Federico Rutenberg released the first chapter of Esklavos last April. Esklavos is a Point’n’Click Adventure series involving two young aliens. Since then, he has created 9 more chapters and Esklavos is quickly becoming popular series.

Mateusz Skutnik (Poland)

Mateusz Skutnik defines himself as a Flash games architect and a graphic novel artist. His best known adventure/escape series so far is Submachine (with two new chapters this year, Submachine 4 and FLF). He also started two new adventure series this year, Covert Front and Daymare Town. The author is now developing “Submachine 5: the Root” that should be released in January.

Bart Bonte (Belgium) – Best Developer 2007 (Puzzle games)

Bart Bonte is a Flash developer from Belgium who has already developed successful games. More well known for his Room Escape games (the Bonte Room series, A bark in the Dark, Loose the Moose), Bart released several puzzle games in 2007, such as Fields of Logic, Chicken Grow and more recently, Factory Balls.

Yoshio Ishii (Japan)

From japan, Yoshio Ishii has been designing Flash games for several years now. He is well known for his Neko Series, a series of games involving cats. In 2007, he decided to focus on creating puzzle games, and released some very creative games such as Plupon, the amazing Hoshi Saga series, and more recently, Slidon.

Stephen Harris (New Zealand)

Stephen Harris is the author of the Bloons series and many other successful games. The original Bloons game was released last March and became an instant hit. Since then, Stephen has created Bloons World, a site dedicated to Bloons fans, two “Bloons” Tower Defense games, and a few other puzzle/skill games!

John Cooney (U.S.A.) – Best Developer 2007 (Action/Skill games)

John Cooney is very well known in the Flash gaming community for his Ball Revamped and Four Second series. He released many new games this year, such as Scribble 2, Luminara, Ball Revamped 5 or Ocean Explorer to name a few. Now working full time at ArmorGames, you can expect more creative games from this guy!

WeCreateStuff (Israel)

WeCreateStuff defines itself as a group of (young) nerds with way too much free time. They released Portal: The Flash Version last October, a awesome Flash 2D version of the first person action/puzzle game developed by Valve.

Joel Esler (Australia)

Joel Esler is a Flash game developer from Australia. Last September, he uploaded at Kongregate his first game, a physics-based platformer named Manifold. Even though Manifold was only a demo, it was an instant hit. After a few weeks, Joel released Fold, a full version of his previous game with much more challenging levels!

Slidon is a puzzle game created by Yoshio Ishii, the author of the excellent Hoshi Saga series.

You have to remove pairs of identical tiles in Slidon, which is reminiscent of Mahjong. But unlike in Mahjong, identical tiles must be next to each other to be removed. To do so, you can slide any visible tile horizontally or vertically.

Hold your left mouse button when the pointer is over any tile to select it and then choose the direction to slide the tile. A sliding tile stops when it hits the edge of the board or any other tile.

Each board must be cleared in a limited number of moves to progress to the next stage. The faster your clear the board the higher the bonus points awarded. Don’t forget to use the delete option to get ride of unmatched tiles.

Slidon is a nice puzzler; my only grip is that there are only 10 levels available: the eleventh level is the same as the first one, the twelfth level is the same as the second one, and so on.

That aside, this game is certainly worth playing, at least once.

Have fun!

Here at FreeGamesNews, we love free browser-based games. The end of the year is coming soon, and it’s time for YOU to cast your vote for the Best Developers of the year in our first annual FreeGamesNews Awards.

Here are the 10 nominees in the category Best Puzzle games Developers of 2007, in alphabetical order:

Bart Bonte (Belgium)

Bart Bonte is a Flash developer from Belgium who has already developed successful games. More well known for his Room Escape games (the Bonte Room series, A bark in the Dark, Loose the Moose), Bart released several puzzle games in 2007, such as Fields of Logic, Chicken Grow and more recently, Factory Balls.

Damien Clarke (Australia)

Damien Clarke is a Flash game designer from Australia. Many of his games are co-sponsored by several major games portals, which is a sign of quality. The author has released two excellent puzzle games this year, Silversphere and Bloxorz.

Creative Units (Germany)

Creative Units is a German development and games design company that created Excit earlier this year. Excit is a very nice viral Flash game that borrows from RoadBlocks and its clone Orbox B heavily, but it takes the original idea to a whole new level!

GamePure (Japan)

GamePure is a Flash game design studio from Japan. GamePure has released many action games this year, such as Speed Cluster, Oshidama or the very cute Bound Bear series. They have also created a very unique Collapse-type game, Micro Art, impressive on many levels.

Stephen Harris (New Zealand)

Stephen Harris is the author of the Bloons series and many other successful games. The original Bloons game was released last March and became an instant hit. Since then, Stephen has created Bloons World, a site dedicated to Bloons fans, two “Bloons” Tower Defense games, and a few other puzzle/skill games!

Yoshio Ishii (Japan)

From japan, Yoshio Ishii has been designing Flash games for several years now. He is well known for his Neko Series, a series of games involving cats. In 2007, he decided to focus on creating puzzle games, and released some very creative games such as Plupon, the amazing Hoshi Saga series, and more recently, Slidon.

Taro Ito (Japan)

Taro Ito, the game designer behind Gamedesign, has released many games over the years, and this year was no different with four new puzzle game titles, Porolith Flash, The Four Color Problem, School Wars and Chat Noir.

Michael Le

When Michael Le from Canada released his puzzle game Jelly Blocks last summer, he certainly wasn’t expecting instant success. Jelly Blocks is so simple and absorbing that people can’t stop playing. And with 100 levels available to play, it can take a while to complete it.

Preloaded (U.K.)

Preloaded is a London-based Web design agency. After CDX, a multi-episode adventure released last year, Preloaded is back in 2007 with LaunchBall, a new addictive Puzzle/Physics Flash game created for the Science Museum in London their new Launchpad gallery.

Adam Schroeder (U.S.A.)

Adam Schroeder is the creator of the very challenging and delightful puzzle game Sola Rola. He also released the third (and final?) installment in his Asteroids Revenge earlier this year, and is now co-working on Argue (About Everything) with a fellow developer, a multiplayer real-time strategy game set for release next year at Kongregate.

After the success of Hoshi Saga, author Yoshio Ishii of Japan brings us a sequel, Hoshi Saga 2!

The concept of this new puzzle game remains the same: find the star in each of the 25 main levels and unlock 11 extra levels by completing rows and columns that appear on the main page of the game.

The graphics remains in black and white, and once again, if a lot of levels are easy to complete, a few of them are quid hard and difficult. An automatic save function allows you to leave the game and come back to it later.

If you liked Hoshi Saga, there is no doubt you will enjoy Hoshi Saga 2 as well!

Have fun!

Hoshi Saga 2 walkthrough (thanks Pechee and Xoke!)
Hoshi Saga 2 video walkthrough!

Hoshi Saga is a puzzle game created by Yoshio Ishii, the author of the previously reviewed Plupon. In Hoshi Saga (literally Search a Star in Japanese), your goal in each of the 36 stages is to find a small star.

Feel free to play any of the 25 unlock stages and complete any row or column of stages to unlock one of the 11 locked stages. Just use your Point’n’Click skills to collect the 36 stars.

The graphics, all in black and white, are just beautiful. A lot of stages are easy but a few of them are very difficult to figure out. An automatic save function allows you to leave the game and come back to it later.

Overall, there are many nice features in Hoshi Saga that make it a unique game, highly recommended for all puzzle lovers.

Have fun!

Hoshi Saga walkthrough

(thanks Revolver and Kudos to Kero!)

Plupon is a short action puzzle game created by the Japanese Yoshio Ishii.

Your goal here is to combine three falling blue balls with numbers to merge them and create sums of 10 or 20. Simply click a ball to select it and click again to unselect it (click the background to unselect all balls). Sums over 10 or 20 will decrease your health bar at the bottom of the game window. Sums below 10 simply create a new ball containing the sum.

Your health bar is also reduced by the number on each ball that crosses the dotted line at the bottom of the screen.

Nice polished, very simple and very short (6 levels only are available), Plupon is a pleasant way to fill a coffee break.

Have fun!

Update: if the original link doesn’t work, try this temporary link.