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Created by a group of students at the Danske Akademi for Digital, Interaktiv Underholdning (Danish Academy for Digital, Interactive Entertainment), A Mazing Monk is a too-short puzzler in which you play a Buddhist monk seeking enlightenment, which is apparently found in little glowing stones on the ground.

You stand atop a Rubik's cube, and can rotate it Rubik's-cube style, but only in two of the three possible dimensions, and those two can only be rotated in a single direction. In addition to the glowing squares, some squares contain impassable obstacles, while others contain evil soldiers. If you rotate the cube in such a way that soldiers have an unblocked path to you, they machinegun you to death.

Nine enlightenment stones open a gate to the next level; there are only three, but a "hard mode" link below the game screen offers three more. When you complete the game, you become a Bhoddisatva, radiating enlightenment throughout the small world of the game and causing all the soldiers to become monks themselves.

It's cute, charming, and requires at least a little thought; it is too short, but on the other hand I'm not sure I see how the core gameplay could be extended to a much longer game. Still, it's worth a play.

Indie game designer Edmund McMillen (Gish, Super Meat Boy) revealed that Time Fcuk, his time-bending puzzle-platformer co-developed with William Good, has so far been played more than 3.5 million times since launching two months ago, with 1 million of those plays from Newgrounds.com.

To celebrate the game's popularity, Newgrounds.com added a feature to view user-submitted levels (nearly 7,000 created so far) by category and with thumbnails of their layouts. McMillen also published a postmortem on what he felt went right and wrong with Time Fcuk's development.

He begins by naming a recent high school reunion as a major source of inspiration for the game, especially its intro animation.

"I had recently attended my high school reunion, it was a very strange and depressing event. Lots of drinking, crying, and sadness mostly from people who never seemed to progress past that high school mind set, most complaining about how they felt stuck in a situation they weren't happy with. ...

I wanted to write about a man who was at war with himself over his future, one side of him wanted 'enlightenment' the other wanted 'comfort'. And that's is essentially what Time Fcuk is all about. Every bit of text throughout the game has substance and meaning to me, even down to the description."

One of Time Fcuk's features that McMillen didn't feel work out as planned was its use of alternative levels:

"Half-way through development, I came up with this amazing idea of having alt levels, so for each level you play, there's a chance you will play one of 2-3 levels, giving the game a more dynamic feel.

I came up with the idea late one night where I envisioned people playing the game and then trying to look up hints on how to beat a level only to find no one had played the level they are on, in hopes that they would feel 'crazy'.

Ihis of course didn't have the effect I wanted, maybe a few people had a profound 'OMG THE LEVEL ARE DIFFERENT FO EACH PERSON' realization. But really, it was just a lot more work for me that made things two times more confusing for us when trying to fix the difficulty curve of level progression."

You can read the rest of the postmortem, which also describes McMillen's goal for the ending and how he stumbled on the idea of the radio frequency theme at the designer's development blog.

Chiptune collective 8bitpeoples just put out two new chiptune EPs, both downloadable for free and space-themed! The first album, "Future, and It Doesn't Work", comes from New York City-based band Starscream, and is accompanied with some wicked cover art (pictured) and a terrific premise:

"In the not so distant future awaits the election of the first third party candidate to the White House- they will hail from the Space Party, a political coalition founded by astrophysicists, former Democrats and ex-NASA employees. In their 8bitpeoples debut EP, 'Future, and It Doesn't Work', Starscream tell a tale of victory, science, and potentially catastrophic foreign policy."

From across the country, Corpus Christ's IAYD supplies the other micromusic album, "Supergalactic", promising dance tracks and enlightenment:

"IAYD makes his 8bitpeoples debut with 'Supergalactic', an invitation to get punched in the face by light-speed melodies and sound barrier-breaching beats. Embark on a journey through the cosmos with six, powerful masterworks crafted from the dregs of shattered asteroids and the rusted husks of space vessels. Pushing forward and brimming with profound sonic vivacity, 'Supergalactic' leaves you with a greater understanding of the Universe."

You should note that these two are 8bitpeoples' 98th and 99th releases; I wonder what the label will put out for its 100th?