Pixeljunk Monsters is a painfully adorable tower defense game available for download on the Playstation 3’s PSN network. You can see a little snippet of gameplay in the video above. Its design is simple, the music is rather soothing, and its difficulty is tricky enough to keep even a seasoned gamer like myself scrambling to patch holes in my defenses. But, in my opinion, what truly sets a game apart from others isn’t the ability to charm the likes of me into a 6 hour bender. It’s taken hold of my wife!

The poor woman is lost! I have never seen her so engrossed in a console game before. This trumps her Bejeweled and Zuma addiction with a vengence. The formula matches every criteria:

• Adorable graphics and sound design
• Brain teasing
• Casual gameplay without too much stress
• Nonviolent

Her demographics seem rather appealing. I may exploit them in a future project of mine.