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1 - FANCY PANTS ADVENTURE
Fancy Pants Adventure is a shockingly lovely game that you'll have played for 10 minutes before you even bother looking at the instructions. Beautifully animated and executed, and possessing a genuinely fancy pair of pants, every element is dripping with detail. Essentially it's a platformer with generous helpings of Mario and Sonic thrown in, but nobody ever asked what the Mona Lisa's purpose was, because ultimately it was just so much fun to stare at. This is the same.

2 - BOMB BILLIARDS
Bomb Billiards is a pressure cooker of a game and certainly not one for anybody with anger-management issues. The task requires you to pot all your balls before the timer runs down and they explode. As the levels ramp up, the time slips away, obstacles are introduced and hair gets torn out. Usually frustrating, but always compelling.

3 - ZOMBIE WARS
Zombie Wars does exactly what it says on the blood-smeared tin. You wander around a small landscape fending off hordes of zombies. The more you kill, the better weapons you get, until you're building bases with turrets and fighting off the devil himself. Expect destruction, gore and giggles. As a side note, the developer was once a designer with the late, great Bullfrog studios, creators of Syndicate and Theme Park among other landmarks. If that doesn't convince you to play this, nothing will.

4 - THE LAST STAND 2
Our second zombie offering, The Last Stand 2 gives you 40 days to cross a zombie-infested US and catch the last boat out. During the day you forage for new weapons, search out survivors and lay the traps that'll keep you from becoming zombie-food, but when the moon rises the dead walk and it's up to you to man the barricades and survive the night. It's a fantastically structured game, equally tense and action packed as the levels progress. Much like life at PC Pro actually.

5 - STUNT DIRT BIKE
The game that's caused the most swearing in the PC Pro office, Stunt Dirt Bike requires you to traverse an obstacle course with either a dirt bike or quad without sending your poor rider crashing headfirst into the floor. In the words of our esteemed laptop reviews editor, it's "devilishly tricky" and only gets trickier when your

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goal switches from completing the course to completing it with a good time. Definitely one for those who don't know where the brake-pedal on their car is.

6 - DESKTOP TOWER DEFENCE
Desktop Tower Defence turns your humdrum desk into a battlefield under constant siege from creeps, which you must fend off with a range of death-dealing towers. Killing the swarm brings gold which can buy new towers and upgrade existing ones. Before long, Desktop Tower Defence will have you thinking like a roomful of generals, strategically placing towers, creating killzones, and laughing manically as your plans for desktop domination come to fruition.

7 - WAY OF THE NINJA
Way of the Ninja is quite simply the coolest game ever created. Fact. The aim is to collect all the gems on each level to progress to the next. But the real trick is to do it with as much style as possible. Backed by impressive physics, your little stick-figure ninja will bounce off walls, glide through the air and generally saunter about looking brilliant, even despite your cack-handed attempts to control him. Play this game. Be cool.

8 - CHRONOTRON
Chronotron requires Thought, yes that's Thought with a capital letter. You play a time-travelling robot solving time-travelling puzzles to escape levels. Walk over to a switch on the floor and a platform will rise. Head back to your Tardis, press space and another version of you will appear and perform exactly the action you've just executed, while you trundle over to the platform you've just raised to reach the previously unreachable level. Later levels require half a dozen copies of your little guy, working with clockwork precision to solve problems. Heap on top of that paradoxes and you've got one of the most startlingly original and compulsive games of the last few years, and it's free. Hoorah.

9 - THE HELICOPTER GAME
The Helicopter Game is designed with one purpose and one purpose only; to completely ruin your life. At first glance all it asks is that you guide a little helicopter through an obstacle-ridden cavern. There's no end and no enemies, just a tiny counter in the bottom corner racking up the distance you've travelled, and believe us, that counter will swiftly become your whole life. Crashing 10 yards short of your record is like watching a bagful of puppies being bludgeoned to death, while beating that record will require the sort of commitment usually reserved for Olympic events. For those interested, the office record is 4,522 yards. Beat it and we'll send the boys round.

10 - BOOMSHINE
Boomshine is the internet equivalent of watching an aquarium for half-an-hour, while squeezing a stress ball, during a massage. The task is simple: set off a chain reaction of floating coloured balls, with the number of balls you need to explode increasing each level. It's deceptively simple, but gets tricky very quickly.

It could be frustrating but by sporting a nice line in mood music and a gentle pace, the only thing you'll be stressed about is the stack of work piling up by your desk as the minutes tick away.