Gorgeous Time Consumer
Posted on December 27, 2006
Winterbells is an absolutely gorgeous flash diversion. It falls into the same category as the other flash games that are unbelievably simple, but, at the same time, will devour your time as you find you are addicted to bouncing around on gorgeously rendered bells.
This mouse-driven game has you guiding a bunny as he hops from bell to bell. Each acts as a sort of trampoline to get you to the next one. You don’t technically need to bounce on the bells, you can bounce through them, too. Oh, and using birds as springboards earns you double points.
The game also records your high score, so you can, in effect, try to beat your own best score. Unless, of course, other people are also playing on your machine. Then you’d be competing against them.
The graphics make this flash game stand out, so much so that the first time you play you’ll be drooling. And the gameplay makes it stick.
Winterbells is from a website by Ferry Halim called Orisinal. Her other games are equally beautiful and playable. Thanks to Carina for the tip!
Filed Under Flash Games, Free, Happy Rating | Leave a Comment
Take this ticket to ride
Posted on December 11, 2006
Most times, board games translated into ones and zeroes don’t turn out so hot. Case in point: any console Monopoly game and The Game of Life for PC. But Days of Wonder, a prominent card and board game maker, managed to do with their javascript games that companies like Parker Brothers have not: made them engaging. Currently, I tend to play “Ticket to Ride.”
Basically, you try to claim as much of the available train track as you can. Okay, no. That’s pointless. You have to make very long continuous tracks while connecting destinations on ticket cards. Ticket cards ask you to go from city to city. In the USA version, it could be anything from a ticket pointing you on a route from Los Angeles to New York or one that requires a quick jaunt from New York to Miami. While the more ambitious ticket choices have higher point values, if you fail to connect the dots, the points are deducted from your score.
You can only set down trains if you have card colors that match the track colors and if you have the right number of cards to claim the track. Locomotives are like wildcards (I guess not all trains need them?), so they can be any color.
Of course, while you’re trying to hoard enough purple cards and locomotives in order to claim that long stretch of railway between two cities, someone might take it before you. Yes, I’ve cringed a few times at the computer screen when a fellow player (probably sitting pretty behind his computer console in some place interesting like New York or Paris) took my much needed route from Point A to Point B.
The game challenges its players to plan multiple routes for their trains so they don’t get trapped without a railway to their destination point. Or, and this has happened to me more often, I ran out of train cars. That’s right–you only get a limited number of cars to work with, and once someone has only one or two left, the game cycles into its last turn. Because of this, creative thinking is a must-have quality in the game.
By itself, the game is a great javascript version and will only take about 45 minutes to an hour of your time. An account on the Days of Wonder site is free. However, the folks at Days of Wonder hope it will entice you enough to buy the board game.
Whether or not you wish to invest in the actual, real-live board game (do they still make those these days?) you should definitely check out Ticket to Ride. It’s enjoyable, and, dare I say it? Fun.
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Falling Diversion
Posted on November 18, 2006
FallDown 2 is a game specifically designed for those people who need to sit in a cubicle all day and need a diversion from endless monotony. The basic gist is that you guide the ball with your left and right arrow keys and keep it from running into the ceiling. In essence, you need to fall to live.
Which is not something you should try in real life, just to warn any of you who have some problems determining between fantasy and reality. (Although, if you think you’re a black ball whose only goal in life is to see how far you can fall, you need some help. Now.)
In any case, FallDown 2 is good at what it’s supposed to be good at: being a diversion. Yes, it’s not the most spectacularly interesting game ever made, but it’s addicting, fun, and short. Very, very short. Unless you’re an uber-Falling Down master.
Filed Under Flash Games, Free, Happy Rating | Leave a Comment
