Phantasmaburbia for Windows sounds disturbing. It aims to take the tropes of RPG design and give them quite the shake: no NPCs, no shops, just one town in the game, a lack of grinding, and spatial manipulation puzzles that require logical thinking. I've seen some rather polarizing comments on the game from consumers and developers and wanted to start a discussion here on it.

I'm not a big RPG gamer, but I do love platformers. So I became intrigued with Phantasmaburbia when platformer-intensive developer Kyle Pulver told me he really enjoyed it. "It felt like an arcade style JRPG. Progressing in the game is quick and streamlined, and I never felt the looming grind that I usually experience in typical RPGs."

This week on "Best Of Indie Games," we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a level-based multitouch puzzler for the iPad, a PlayStation 3 and PS Vita cross-playable action game, an Android game that aims to capture the spirit of imagination, plus the upgraded commercial edition of Turtle Cream's IGF China 2010-winning title Sugar Cube.

Here's some recent highlights from IndieGames.com:

Game Pick: 'Help Volty' (Tvndra Games, commercial indie)
"Help Volty takes place within a wooden box filled with deadly traps. Players must use the series of gears, knobs, wires, and other tools presented in each puzzle in order to get Volty to the exit safely."

Game Pick: 'Kung Fu FIGHT!' (Nostatic Software, commercial indie)
"Originally released for the Xbox Live Indie Games service last year, Kung Fu FIGHT! is an autoscrolling platformer in which players must jump and slide to avoid obstacles and enemy attacks."

DigiPen USA students David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard are preparing to launch Super Space ____, "a couch co-op arcade shooter about competition, cooperation, communication and the democracy of physics."

Named as a finalist title in this year's IndieCade, Super Space ____ bills itself as "a loud and wild pickup and play party game" in which two players pilot an oddly-shaped spacecraft and shoot incoming asteroids throughout a series of randomized waves. The twist: each shot produces recoil that propels the ship, and players must carefully coordinate in order to avoid asteroids and collect power-ups. It looks fun, in a friendship-straining sort of way!

Super Space ____ will be released for Windows this winter.

While most edutainment titles seem to be a case of hit or miss, Tourette's Quest looks like it might be a genuinely interesting offering from one of the makers of Defender's Quest. Inspired by the likes of Spleunky, FTL and the Bindings of Isaac, Tourette's Quest will be a procedurally generated Zelda-like dungeon crawler with an emphasis on resource management. Interestingly, the central things to monitor here are the character's stress levels and Tourette's symptoms. The goal with the game is to make it as far as possible without dying, something that can be made difficult by the fact that each floor unlocks a new, randomly selected Tourette's symptom.

There's a fair deal more to read on the developer's website and a rough prototype for those interested in tinkering with the nascent ideas can be found here.

[Guest reviewer Colin Brown profiles each game in The Harvest Bundle currently running on IndieGames' co-created site Indie Royale.]

I often find myself pleasantly surprised with my second impressions of video games. Way back when it came out, I booted up Renegade Kid's scrappy underdog platformer Mutant Mudds and wasn't overly impressed. It felt too sensitive, a wee bit unforgiving and home to a handful of 3DS to PC port issues. In my haste to finish it, I focused on what I felt the game gets wrong about platformers. But after opening it for a second time as part of this wave of Indie Royale posts, I found myself charmed by how much this homage to the portable games era gets right. It may not be a perfect platformer, but Mutant Mudds is certainly worth a look.

CLARK is an action-packed, puzzle-adventure that will probably make fans of Disney's WALL-E rather pleased. Featuring an industrial bot with an obsessive love for keeping boxes in good order, CLARK will have you attempting to save your fellow robots from the landfill and battling against next-generation cleaning bots. CLARK also looks rather spiffy. Scheduled for possible release sometime in January next year, CLARK will apparently sport arcade-style controls, complex spatial puzzles and over 30 levels.

For more information, check out their IndieDB page here.

From November 9 to November 17, indie developers from around the world are taking the game genres they hate and making something they actually respect and enjoy. Ian Bogost, Zach Gage, Fernando Ramallo and Rami Ismail speak in the above keynote for Fuck This Jam, encouraging developers to embrace that which they hate, much like Zach Gage did with word puzzle games for SpellTower.

Over 1,400 developers have signed up for this jam, and more are invited to do so. Needless to say, we're all looking forward to what comes from the frustration, hate, and ignorance these developers break through.

Korean Indie group Turtle Cream has released a Steam version of Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory, an upgraded commercial edition of its IGF China 2010-winning title Sugar Cube.

Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is a puzzle-platformer in which players flip each level's background tiles as they cross them. Some flipped tiles will reveal platforms and other helpful objects, while others may hide deadly traps. The game features over 90 levels, and buyers will also receive a downloadable soundtrack.

Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is regularly priced at $6.99, but is available for $4.99 until November 14th at Steam.

ACNE Play Team aims to capture the spirit of childhood play and imagination in its latest release, the Android action game My Little Hero.

In My Little Hero, players control a cardboard box-wearing, wooden sword-wielding young protagonist, who is out to save the world of dreams from the evil Boogeyman. The game offers four distinct worlds infested with deadly enemies and "stuffed toys have been kidnapped, lost and gone mad." That's...kind of disturbing!

My Little Hero is priced at $3.14.

Well, Thrash Lab and the video posted above do seem to think so despite my strong objections. A subculture, you see, would imply a common set of beliefs, ideologies, lifestyles, themes and maybe even work ethics, but I do digress. This mini documentary shot at the 2012 Indiecade Festival is expertly done, manages to show off the wild variety of genres and ideas of the indie world and is definitely worth watching; maybe even having one of those Halo-minded friends of yours watch it too.