There were a lot of passing fads at my school. We had skipping ropes, yo-yos, Tamagotchis, the weird alien goo things that apparently got pregnant if you put them in the freezer, and one year we got really, really into conkers—the playground sport where you fling hardened horse chestnuts at each other until they smash into shards. The teachers weren't impressed with that one.

But one of the most memorable fads we had was the time when we all got intensely into The Mystery of Time and Space, an early escape-the-room game built in Flash. There were 20 levels, increasing in difficulty and clearly inspired by point-and-click games from the 1980s and '90s, but with a strange, surreal tinge. One early level had you trapping a moving, disembodied head in a floppy disk case, and the plot, as vague as it is, hints at cloning, aliens and time travel.

Escape-the-room games were an early staple for me, and probably many of you, too. And, like me, it was probably your gateway to what Flash and Java games eventually became: the indie scene we have today. Weird and wonderful things became possible with Flash and Java, which was cheap, easily available and easy to learn—much like Unity and GameMaker are today, allowing people other than trained computer programmers to craft their own games.

Like me, you may have played The Crimson Room and The Viridian Room—two escape-the-room games that were bafflingly translated and difficult to understand. But that's what made them so compelling, too: We would gather round in the brief minutes of classroom bustle, when the teacher was too busy to notice, and we'd whisper hushed solutions to each other, half-remembered from a French walkthrough we'd found the night before.

"You have to light the incense first, I think. And then maybe the skeleton comes alive? Maybe? I think that only happens if you've found the last piece of paper with the symbol…"

Newgrounds was a hub for all things Flash, and a place where many modern-day indie darlings cut their teeth.

Back when the internet was still finding its feet, it was all about these tiny pockets of the online world that you'd find through word of mouth. You might remember Orisinal, a website that featured small, sweet games with simple mechanics and cute animals, all made by the same guy, Ferry Halim.