All it takes is a few pounds of explosives to turn boring billiards into a blowout of fun! And deadly. Mostly deadly. As a safer alternative, we suggest trying Blast Billiards Revolution, a take on the table sport where you've got to pot the balls before time runs out and things start to get combust-y. There's not a lot of room for mistakes, but if you can become the king of the cue, you can have a lot of fun with the varied challenges this game provides.
Live Puzzle takes a Christmassy turn! Each uniquely designed jigsaw puzzle is a moving picture, and putting them together is as fun as it is tricky. Now, with ten new and adorable levels, Live Puzzle 2 Christmas Edition is the sweetest game in the series.
Classic jigsaw puzzles are fun and all, but this is the 21st century and we demand more! Which is why Pipkin Games came up with Live Puzzle, an adorable (and tricky) game in which you put together moving pictures. Now, with Live Puzzle 2, there are ten new levels to very pleasantly occupy your time.
Live Puzzle is a jigsaw game by Pipkin Games that presents players with a fun set of animated pictures to reconstruct, with subjects ranging from fish, to spirals, to planets, to cards. The animation is clearly a gimmick, but a cool one, and the developers definitely put thought into how different puzzles would be solved in different and interesting ways.
Our true loves over at The Podge have given one heck of a gift to us: Dibbles 4: A Christmas Crisis. When a Christmas version of an established series is released, it often turns out to be a level-pack except there with more bells on the soundtrack and sprites modified to include floppy red hats. But with new levels, new commands, and new animated ways to kill off your squad of helpers, Dibbles 4 is slightly-sadistic holiday fun for the whole family.
We've waited a long, long, long time, but the follow-up to Cliff Johnson's seminal puzzle game The Fool's Errand has finally been released: The Fool and His Money. Packed with logic and word puzzles of all kinds, and the whimsically confounding prose that made the original so enjoyable, The Fool and His Money is just the thing for players looking for a mental challenge.
Originally released in 1983 by Tim and Chris Stamper's Ultimate Play The Game, Atic Atac was one of the most heralded games for the ZX Spectrum. A top-down action-adventure game, it was the deceptively simple looking tale of an adventurer trapped in a haunted house, who must battle his way from basement to "atic" to find the keys that would let him escape. Now remade by Retrospec, it is now available to frustrate and addict a whole new generation of gamers.
Return to the same environment that started The Podge's addictive puzzle series, but this time with 33 all new problem-solving scenarios. As before, set action stones to command the dibbles and they'll lay down their lives in all manner of ways to ensure the king can safely complete his journey. Packed with puzzle fun, it's perfect for when you just can't get enough dibbles.
So Dibbles 1 wasn't enough for you and Dibbles 2 was too cold? Looking for something hotter to please sense of royal demandingness? Oh, and you want more challenge and new ways to order plucky red dibbles to their sacrificial demise? Then this next installment of the classic lemmings-style arcade game series is everything you command. By setting action blocks just so, in the right place and in the best order, you'll ensure the king is saved from his Desert Despair and you can rest easy knowing it was all for the greater good.
Chunkadelic, developed by Noel Berry and Chevy Ray Johnson for the Full-Indie 48-hour Game Jam is one third Atari, one third WarioWare, and one third discotheque. That adds up to a work that's 100% a love letter to arcade retro-gaming. Ephemeral, and a little heavy on the strobe-lighting, but overall an amazing spectacle.
If a snake eats a pellet in the forest, and no one is there to control the joystick, does it still score a point? There's no need to get philosophical with Netgrind's Snakes On A Cartesian Plane, but you do need to put your thinking cap on. Each level puts a twist on the classic snake game, like disappearing traps, weirdly warping walls, and twisted controls. How many points can you rack up?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right? Or, perhaps more accurately, the needs of the upper classes outweigh the needs of the plebs. No matter how you dice the words, the point is it's ok to sacrifice a few little guys so the bigger, more important ones can survive. The mobile port of the browser game Dibbles: For the Greater Good illustrates just that, providing a charming and intelligent Lemmings-like game that just might make you rethink this whole "needs of the many" business.
In Dibbles 2: Winter Woes, simply place commands on a field to order the little dibbles to create a path for their king... by killing themselves. Sound gruesome? Shhh. Look at the softly falling snow. All is right with the world. Just repeat "it's for the greater good" until it feels right.
In 1899 Steam & Spirit, you play a young Winston Churchill on a secret mission while traveling on a steamship in the Mediterranean. This episodic, old-school point-and-click adventure will have you solving puzzles and interacting with pixelated characters as you try to accomplish your mission. The game is written in DHTML (HTML + Javascript), so it may be played on some mobile devices.
In The Legend of Mulida, you are the brave, retro-style hero called upon to save the pricess. Can you get the powerups? Can you avoid the falling swords? Can you handle the mouse controls? Play this ode to classic 8-bit Zelda (complete with a robust second quest!) and find out.
Anyone who has ever played the classic PC game Lemmings will recognize the gameplay in Dibbles. In each level, a troop of marching ant-like critters (who I suppose are the eponymous Dibbles) must be ferried to the exit point with as little loss of life as possible, taking special care to spare the life of the chief monarch Dibble. The fun in Dibbles is in breezing through the levels and seeing what other gruesome tasks you can set your Dibbles to executing. All For The Greater Good, of course.
Though I am not usually a fan of turn-based strategy games, occasionally one comes along which is able to engage me with surface simplicity, and, before I know it, has me in the throes of complete addiction. Tic Tac Toe, a game created by Paul Neave as an apparent advertising tie-in for the popular breath-mint line, is one such game. A work that manages to reward cautious planning while retaining its power as a grim reflection on the nature of aggression, Tic Tac Toe presents an amusing challenge along with questions that cannot be easily dismissed.
Contrary to what you might think, police work has been made to look more glamorous than it is long before CSI and Law & Order stepped into popular culture. Yes, we shouldn't forget the profound contributions of Miami Vice. But the most realistic of the Sierra adventure games did not stoop to such base entertainment. Instead, all four games were grim thrillers with a penchant for making you walk through all kinds of police procedure (sometimes to a pedantic degree), all while hunting down drug lords, serial killers and satanic cults. Forget Space, Heroes, Kings, or Larry. This is Police Quest.
At long, long last, Jordan Mechner's (creator of the original Prince of Persia game) adventure gaming masterpiece The Last Express is available as a digital download! The game was first released in 1997 where, despite being an amazing interactive experience, it failed to gain much commercial traction. Its cult status survived the turn of the century largely due to the unique nature of the gameplay, the incredible writing, and a visual style that's more like an animated television show than a video game. No more tracking down rate copies of the original CD-ROM. Just download, install, and enjoy!
Monomaze, by Diffusion Games, is a futuristic arcade puzzler based around a remixing of the game of Dots. Place lines to complete loops and gain points, while gaining extra turns and exploding bombs. A game that cries for a multi-player mode, but is very good by itself.
In Flyde, you are trying to stay alive and earn points as you speed down a colorful, endless track. Move left and right to change lanes, running over special cells that zip you upside-down to the top of the screen while trying to avoid black cells that end your game. Try to get the highest score and be on top of the leaderboard.
Thomas Weibel's Backgammon is fun, challenging, rock-steady, and doesn't suffer from its super-simple presentation. The game assumes you are familiar with how to play backgammon, so novices might benefit from a quick tutorial found elsewhere on the Web. It's the classic game of Backgammon against a computer AI right in your browser.
With his egg-bound siblings scattered all over the level, Toki Tori has to harness the powers of bridge building, block drops, ghost traps freeze rays, teleportation and waddling to rescue them all in the return of this brilliant puzzle/platform game.
Borrowing heavily off of MoneySeize, Towards the Light is a skill testing, spike hopping, bullet dodging platform game. What sets this platform jumper apart from the rest is the nicely implemented ghost mode that, combined with nice level design, allows the player to explore conventional platforming in new and unique ways.
The Silver Lining is a fan-created King's Quest adventure game that got the unlikeliest support: the backing of publishing giant Activision. This ten-year old project has nearly been shut down twice by lawyers, but it has finally seen the light of day in the form of its first episode, What Is Decreed Must Be. But is it what fans of the series wanted? And what about people who never donned Graham's cap?
Check out this port of the arcade classic Asteroids by Doug McInnes. If you've never played Asteroids, or an Asteroids-like game, the goal is to pilot your deltoid spacecraft around the void of space, blasting large lumbering asteroids into smaller, faster, projectile-like asteroids, then blasting those into dust before they breach your hull and destroy you. Destroy or be destroyed is the only law against the impersonal Astroids.
Don the role of Gabriel Knight, bookstore proprietor and horror novelist at large. Explore the city of New Orleans, investigate a gruesome series of murders, and delve into the dark underbelly of voodoo in this classic horror mystery point-and-click adventure.
Maybe the most important thing that games teach us is to think critically and examine everything we see carefully. That's the strength of Spot the Difference, the latest offering from the dream team of Brian Mooney and Sean Hawkes. The game's story is subtle and engaging, communicated entirely through differences in the images you're given.
If you ever felt that making breakfast should employ at least a ball, some strong and a winding mechanism, The Incredible Machine is the most brilliant game ever made. It uses the idea of a Rube-Goldberg machine, an overly elaborate setup to achieve a simple task. The Incredible Machine has spawned its own share of sequels, nearly all of which are present in this mega-pack. The idea is simple: each puzzle presents you with a different challenge to construct an elaborate chain-reaction towards a goal.
Another World, or, as it's known in North America, Out of This World, is a stunning example of storytelling in a video game originally released in 1991 (and re-released with better visuals in 2006) by Eric Chahi. Built as a cinematic platform adventure, you take on the role of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist who is teleported to a barren alien planet while running an experiment using a particle accelerator. You soon make friends with one of the humanoid aliens and together work your way through the subterranean environments trying to escape with your lives!
Ever have one of those days where everyone thinks you're crazy, and you start to believe them? Waking up in an asylum isn't a good start, and it gets worse when you start to suffer increasingly vivid hallucinations about strange places and monstrous creatures. Is there a reason for it all? Or are you simply as crazy as everyone says? Sanitarium is the cult classic point-and-click horror adventure that shouldn't be missed by any fan of the genre.
What's in a dream? April Ryan, a struggling art student, doesn't think there's much to the strange nightmares she's having. But she's wrong. A classic point-and-click adventure of epic proportions, The Longest Journey is the story of two worlds thrown out of balance. Featuring stellar dialogue, memorable characters, a haunting soundtrack and rich environments, this is a fantastic adventure that shows other titles in the genre how to do it right.
Take a handful of classic Sierra On-line graphical adventure games, throw in a community chatroom designed around the same concept, and suddenly you have the equivalent of a retro adventure MMO. Well, sort of. Sarien.net keeps the golden age of adventure games alive, right in your browser window!
The godfather of 3D shooters, 1995's Quake, takes a leap out of monster-infested dimensions and into your web browser. And it's surprisingly well-done, despite the control limitations imposed by Flash.
It's a blast from the past in this remake of and tribute to the original M.U.L.E., one of the great pioneers of multiplayer gaming. Stake your claim on an alien world with three friends and make the best of your time and resources to come out on top at the end of the game. Just remember to keep an eye out for the wampus.
Yoshio Ishii, of Nekogames, succeeds in the ambitious endeavor to redesign Breakout. And while the game is still about destroying bricks to clear the board, what's gone is the boredom the game usually suffers from when trying to get that last brick or two. Instead, what we have is more of a twitch game where reflexes rule the landscape of a simulated (and antiquated) vector graphics display.
This version of Tetris is very friendly indeed. Bright, clear visual and sound effects accompany your every move. A three-tiered strategy guide and a basic history of the game are just a click away. Even if you think you're burned out on Tetris for life, give Tetris Friends a try. You might just re-discover what once made this your favorite game in the world.
You kids these days with your Halos and your Gear Wars and your Half Lifes... you don't appreciate what we had to work with! Back in my day, we didn't have no fancy-schmancy high-end graphics in our shooters! No complex storylines, neither. We didn't even have a jump! You know what we had? We had Doom.
An arena shooter even casual gamers can enjoy, a sort of mash-up between Asteroids and Space Invaders where you pilot a tiny craft against waves of incoming enemies (which happen to be aliens and geometric shapes). Power-ups appear from time to time to give you a hand, but otherwise its just you and your reflexes keeping you alive.
Japanese Mahjong is a completely different game from the tile-matching Mahjong Solitaire. A cross between Gin Rummy and the fictional Dragon Poker, this is one game that will definitely take a while to learn, and even longer to master.
Think of the classic Space Invaders mixed with a dash of Galaga and you'd have a pretty good understanding of what Titan Attacks! is all about. The classic "aliens descending from above" scenario is showcased with a stylish, blocky pixel motif featuring a richer move-and-shoot routine than classic predecessors. Titan Attacks! took the golden age concept and loaded it with a variety of new action elements and ship upgrades.
If something considered "retro" gets remade, is it still considered retro? Such is the question to ponder while playing Arcadia Remix, the juiced-up retro remake of Gamelab's multitasking classic, Arcadia. This newer version adds to the retro insanity with more mini-games and gameplay features to make your head explode in a neon rainbow.
Proximity is a classic turn-based strategy Flash game that is somewhat like a cross between Risk and Go. It is surprisingly simple to learn and takes about 5 minutes to play. You can play against the computer, or against a friend at the same computer.
You all are in for a treat. King's Quest III is a classic from the early age of graphic adventure games. Originally designed by Roberta Williams and publisher under Sierra Online, the game has been completely re-made by Infamous Adventures in the Adventure Game Studio engine and released as a free download. They even have a voice-pack! Somebody canonize these people as saints.
BrettspielWelt is a free, online board-gaming community based in Germany but open to players from around the world. Many excellent board and card games, ranging from casual fun to serious strategy can be played online in one place: BrettspielWelt ("board game world").
Mythic Marbles is an action puzzle game of skill that is very simple to pick-up and play. It offers an engaging and rewarding experience to anyone that can appreciate the simple and subtle strategy of a good game of marbles. And even if you've never played marbles before, you're in for a treat. :)
Torus Games from Jeff Weeks and Geometrygames.org is the name of a free downloadable set of 8 simple games for Windows and Mac that, rather than being played on a 2-D plane, are played on the surface of a torus. Here you will find a twist on classic games like tic-tac-toe, pool, Minesweeper (called Apples here), and even a bizarre version of chess.
A brand new game from varStudios, the creators of Neon Wars 2, has recently graced the internet: Abstract Sea. Using simple but stylish visuals and a nice electronica soundtrack, the game puts you in control of an armed ship at sea fending off enemy attacks. The game has a very visceral feel to it with screen-shaking explosions and a few power-ups floating atop the deep blue sea.
Jussi Kari at ooPixel has just finished a new update to his version of the classic game of the same name, Samegame. And while this is essentially the same game as Samegame, there are some improvements that make this version even more addictive than the original.
For those who prefer a single-player experience, or at least one to practice with to hone one's skills in preparation for a heads-up match against another human opponent, and if a little Japanese text won't scare you off, then give Taro Ito's GameDesign Flash implementation of Hanafuda a try.
Doctor Who Cyber Assault (or Cyberman) is a Risk!-like game from the BBC that incorporates several minigame-like elements into the main game. Move your units around the board to conquer new territory, then try and outwit your opponent with rock-paper-scissors-type fights. And when you take a territory with an enemy base, get ready for some gun-firing action.
In Flatland, it is your mission to destroy wave after wave of... things. You get points. OK, the idea isn't completely original, but the design is quite interesting. At first you start off in a tiny ship with litle armor and a miniscule weapon. Destroying enemies will cause them to explode in an array of large blocky pixels, the collection of which upgrades your ship. The interesting bit is that collecting an odd number of them gives you an odd shaped ship until you gather more and regain composure.
Snake Classic takes this simple game mechanic and gives it new life with catchy music, tons of gameplay options (how many dots to grab, sound effects, etc.) In addition you get to choose what colors your snakey protagonist will have using a grid of dots that looks like something out of a kid's dream box of marbles.
Wired is a classic-style puzzle game the author, Vlad Kvitnevski, has taken and molded into something new and entertaining. The concept itself is one that you've probably seen before: Connect wires from one location to the next. It is a casual game perfect for a rainy day, as it's something you can get hooked on and complete without the hairs on your head going gray, or being ripped out.
Halloween Hangman is a simple, cute, and rather amusing Halloween-themed game of hangman. Choose letters from the tiles on screen and try to guess the mystery word or phrase. Make a wrong choice and the smarty-pants skeleton hanging from a rope will hand you a snide comment or two.
Spheres of Chaos is gorgeous in motion, with extremely smooth animation amid literally hundreds of enemies and explosions (and up to 8 simultaneous players!). Far more than just a nostalgic tribute to Asteroids, SoC is a fascinating, unique and memorable classic in its own right.
Featuring a couple of new and more difficult enemies, and controls that allow for more variation in gameplay, Neon 2 succeeds in taking this very enjoyable idea to the next level. Ali has done a fine job at updating an already excellent shooter and making it not only better than the original, but also into a somewhat different experience. Sure it looks similar, and yet it feels different.
Sudoku Craving is a great resource for sudoku addicts looking for their daily logic fix. The interface is clean and elegant and, in addition to keeping track of your personal performance on each puzzle, comment boards and high score charts encourage community participation and competition.
Panic is a simple and stylish arcade game made in homage to a classic on the Commodore 64, Astro Panic. Made in Flash and sporting an impressive new soundtrack as well as eye-pleasing particle effects, Panic plays like a cross between Space Invaders and Pang.
Classic style arcade gameplay recreated in Flash, SwfRoads is an absolutely brilliant fast action driving game with simple controls, great minimalist visuals and an energizing soundtrack. Take to the sky in your spacecraft and navigate the geometric terrain of each of the game's 18 selectable roads.
Skatefall is John Freeborn's tribute to one of the earliest platformers, the Atari 2600's Pitfall! With a bodacious new skateboard, online scoreboard, bonus items and powerups, 2D platforming has a new name: Skatefall Harry. As a homage, Skatefall is extremely effective and faithful; the graphics and sound are perfect and the difficulty, while formidable, is appropriate.
Three Degrees is a variation on a classic casual game, and it is played by clicking on groups of the same color to eliminate them from play. Of course, the larger the group the more points awarded. It is a very simple game to pick-up and play, a nice variation on a classic, and one that you will likely find yourself playing again and again.
Hunt the Wumpus, by Gregory Yob, was one of the very first ever computer games back in the days of mainframes and punched cards. This version was created by Rod McFarland in Javascript and is based on Yob's original BASIC source. So it's time to relive this bit of early computer game history and play the classic, Hunt the Wumpus.
Jussi and Marko, Flash game developers at OOPixel, borrow a little gameplay from several classics and wrap them all together into one nicely polished and addictive game. Asteroid Adventure is an arcade action game that will be both familiar and new to anyone that has played Asteroids before.
Nethack is a classic singl-player (randomly generated) dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of platforms, and yet each implementation uses the same game engine. But whether graphics or text-based, emphasis is on discovering dungeon detail rather than just killing everything in sight.
Chris Benjaminsen of Cosgames has come up with a simple and yet intensely effective multiplayer version of the classic arcade game, Asteroids, playable in any browser with the Flash plug-in. Each player (up to 16 in a room) pilots a ship in an all-out deathmatch, melee style, with the objective being to rack up more kills than deaths. Mad multiplayer mayhem, classic arcade style.
A stylish Flash Breakout clone from GameDesign, Block Kuzusi demonstrates a great deal of respect for its roots while offering just enough originality to feel fresh. It is one of the better versions Breakout I've seen online, and well worth a look.
Dice Wars is a unique new turn-based strategy game from Japan. Using nothing but dice and a randomly generated territory map made of hexagons, the game is similar in gameplay to that of the board game, Risk, though much simpler and quicker to play. The objective is to conquer all territories and eliminate all your opponents by attacking them with dice.
Rainbow Wars is a retro-style arcade shooter available as a free download for Windows, and it is one of those rare finds that becomes an instant favorite once you see it in action. Sporting similar controls to that of the classic Robotron, in which two joysticks are used to control movement and firing separately, this game captures the essence of a classic arcade experience in a well-developed albeit small package.
You may remember the name Hannu Pelkonen as the creator of the infectiously addictive typing games, Letters and Words, both of which were previously reviewed here. He now has a new game that was recently added to his collection at 2addicted, and this one is based on a familiar classic arcade hit from days gone by.
Almost twenty years old, Woody Pop isn't as visually stunning or innovative as recent titles such as BreakQuest, but the collision detection and level design is solid, and the bright, chunky pixels still look good.
SameGame (pronounced sah-meh-gah-meh) was created in 1985 by Kuniaki Moribe and has since appeared on devices as diverse as the Super Famicom, several Texas Instruments calculators and even home tv recording unit Tivo. This Flash implementation created by Jussi Kari plays very smoothly and the stripped down aesthetic suits it well.
BreakQuest is great fun, and it raises the bar to a dizzying height for future Breakout clones. The presentation and attention to detail is top notch, as are the pleasing sound effects and visuals that include some very impressive particle effects. Most importantly, the wide variety of levels is so compelling you will actually want to unlock and experience every single one of them.
Breakit 2 is a brand new game from Terry Paton in which he takes classic casual gameplay elements from Breakout and Arkanoid, and energizes them with stunning Flash graphics and a high-tech soundtrack. The result is a gorgeous game that is a lot of fun to play.
This Java applet game impressed me with the old-school charm of its scrolling tile-based worlds, its quirky characters and dialog, and its addictive gameplay. And yet the moment the game begins you realize that this is no ordinary Web game. Immediately you are teleporting back to the glory days of the SNES, and from there your task is to seek out the one last sprout, which is the one item you need to open the final gate.
Hot on the heels of our Massively Multiplayer Pong review, Plasma Pong, a downloadable Windows game, takes the old favorite table tennis formula and fills it with liquid plasma. Using fluid dynamics you can push the ball around the screen or charge for a cannon shot. The game ends up playing more like a visual experiment than a serious Pong clone, but it's worth a few minutes of playtime nonetheless.
Zork is a text adventure, which is a form of interactive fiction, like a cross between a novel and an RPG with some escape-the-room type puzzles thrown in. Originally conceived in the late 1970's by a research group of MIT, the first game of the Zork series has been ported to PHP for your gaming pleasure.
One of the first playable games available from the promising Dot-Invasion studio, Meteor Busters is a simple and beautifully designed top down shooter. If you're already a fan of shmups or retro pixels, you'll probably appreciate Meteor Busters. The graphics are lovely and extremely polished and the gameplay is fun while it lasts.
With apologies to those on Macs and non-PC computers, I simply had to follow-up the jaw-dropping visuals of Triglav with another creation by the same team. In fact, it was this captivating clone of classic Breakout gameplay that led me to the SmokymonkeyS site to begin with.
Take a trip through the history of games with a brand new Flash game offering from the MTV Obsessed website. MTV Obsessed: The Game contains roughly 20 mini-games that are organized within levels called "eras" that must be unlocked by playing through the Time Travel mode of play.
Klax 3D is an action strategy game in which the object is to catch colored tiles as they fall off a conveyor belt and stack them into horizontal, vertical, and diagonal rows. A fun an addictive casual game that has been around a few years, this Flash version is actually an adaptation of a classic Atari arcade game from 1989, also called Klax.
Bloomin' Gardens is a strategy puzzle game in which the object is to line-up rows, columns or diagonals of five (5) or more matching flowers to eliminate them from play. The more flowers that match, the higher the score awarded. The game is actually a clone of Lines, and it has the feel and appeal of a classic casual game: it's easy to pick-up and play and yet difficult to master.
An action puzzle Flash game played by using only knight moves from the game of Chess, Troyis is a simple yet challenging casual Web game for people of all ages. The objective is simple: fill all of the white squares of each level by landing on them with the knight.
Another one for the classic games section, I made a reference to this game when reviewing Swarm due to the way the enemies swarmed onto the play field.
Galaca is a Java applet 'clone' of the classic action arcade game Galaga. Originally created by Namco and released as a coin-op amusement...
As a tribute to the classic Atari Centipede arcade game from 1980, Emil Korngold has attempted to recreate the game in Flash. The game is still in beta form, and yet his attempt seems to capture much of the action and addictive gameplay of the original.
Other than using the mouse...
There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.
There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.
There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.
This Flash remake of Taito Corp.'s now classic Puzzle Bobble (called Bust-a-Move in the US) looks and plays just like the original. Use the arrow keys to aim, and press the space bar to shoot. It's just that simple to play. The music is a bit repetitive, but otherwise the game plays great.
A Worm's Life redefines the classic game of Snake and turns it into a fresh new experience. The game features an array of elements that change-up the gameplay formula of the simple arcade game and transforms it into even more addictive, fast action fun.
This version of the classic game of Snake is remarkable in that it comes with source code and a complete tutorial explaining the code by its author, Strille of Sweden. Available on his website, the tutorial is a great way for anyone to get started programming games in Flash. The...
It shouldn't be surprising that from the world's smallest website comes the world's smallest games. From British game and Web designer Alan Outten comes this very tiny website, only 18 pixels wide by 18 pixels high, yet it is packed full with games such as Pong, Pacman, Footy, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pinball, and others. Everything old is new again.
File this under: Games as an art form. While I do not often find myself playing Chess (read: I suck at it), I do like to play when I find a game that offers something besides the mere basics. Thinking Machine 4 is just such a game. The authors state that the goal of the piece is not to make an expert chess playing program but to lay bare the complex thinking that underlies all strategic thought.
This simple and elegant Flash game looks like a work of art: minimal design paired with maximum gameplay. While not an original concept, Gridlock features classic sliding-block puzzle gameplay that will surely exercise your brain. A well-executed game in the genre, and a very beautiful game to behold.
This Mr. Driller clone, created in Flash by Max K., is a decent version of the original game by Namco. Driller uses the arrow keys for movement, and the space bar for drilling. The object is to drill down through the blocks as far as you can without running out of air, or getting crushed. The level of difficulty determines how many rows of blocks y...
This pair of Flash games, hosted on Nobelprize.org, teaches you about the physics of liquid crystals while playing.
Crystallite is an action puzzle game, similar to Tetris, where you position the falling blocks by rotating them before fitting them in their place. Use the right and left arrow keys to position the blocks, and the up and down arrows ...
The 1982 classic arcade game of Q*bert, re-created in Shockwave for online play over the Web. The object of the game is to move your Q*bert around the play field, hopping onto each square to turn it to the target color shown. While the default keys to use for movement are U, K, H, and M, the game does allow you to change them to suit your preferenc...
The classic game of Qix, released by Taito in the arcades back in 1981, and brilliantly reproduced in Flash by Drunk Men Work Here. The objective is to claim portions of the play field by drawing Stix, or block areas, with the cursor marker. This Flash version of the classic game is very close to the original design and captures the essence of the game well.
The Sonic experience recreated in Flash by a fan who loves Sonic games. The game contains an extensive list of features including 4 playable characters: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Cream, with 2 more to unlock. Everything about this game is polished, though the game window is quite small.
VirtualApple is a website that boasts over 1100 disk images of Apple II, IIe, and IIgs games and other software. Through the use of an ActiveX application and an Apple IIgs emulator, you can now enjoy Apple II software from years gone by, and do it all online using Microsoft IE and Windows—though, ironically, there is no current support for M...
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