Alpha Core

In Orbitrunner, you control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets’ paths. The Sun’s pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don’t leave the screen or collide!

It’s an OK game, but it starts getting on the nerves after the gazillionth attempt to keep a bunch of planets with colliding tendencies on the screen. The first few levels are the nicest actually, because you can draw some nice patterns on the screen with them.

For all the fans of escape games out there: Jay is Games is having a new column since the end of June, called ‘Weekday Escape’. Every Wednesday they present at least one new escape game as an easy source for point and click addicts. Walkthroughs are also provided. So check it out next Wednesday or better do so immediately. You might have missed one already.

Don’t forget to also check out my post about Escape Games.

In another bold attempt to make you waste lots of precious time, I present to you Swinging Ball, a game by Kenji Sihan in which you… well, swing a ball around. It’s all pretty self-explanatory actually, but lots of fun!

It starts off easy, but after a while the levels get really tough. For me, the hardest was the insanely difficult ‘Final Fling’ level near the end. You’ll know what I mean when you get there.

For some mysterious reason, I always like a good tower defense game every now and then. They’re so immensely addictive and GemCraft is absolutely no exception here! In this game, you’re a wizard defending the kingdom against hordes of attacking evil creatures. The game is neatly themed and the whole wizardry thing is nicely integrated into the game, but nobody really cares about the story, right?

The general idea of the game is that you build towers along the path where the enemies walk towards their goal and in these towers you put crafted gems (hence the name of the game). These gems can be combined to create even more powerful ones. There’s lots of levels, upgrades and specials to keep you busy for hours with this game. Also very nice in this game is that there’s an overall skill point system so that you can spend these on several special skills that have an effect on all games you play from then on. This combined with a great game-play, makes this game a truly addictive and fun experience! For a more complete review, I would gladly redirect you to the Jay is Games article. Enjoy and let us know how you liked it!

Jay is Games is having their fifth casual gameplay game design competition. The game “Doggnation” by Bart Bonte is my favourite amongst the 21 entries. It is a puzzle game with 50 levels, in which you help a peaceful nation of ‘doggs’ upgrading their castle. For this you have to take care that the doggs carry the right amount of coloured blocks in the right order into their castle. Further instructions are available in the game. If you get stuck somewhere, scroll down for my walkthrough. Read more

Nobody might know it, but I just LOVE escape games.

In this kind of game you find yourself trapped in a room, often you don’t know how you got there and you never know how to get out of there again. Your task is then to look around in this room (meaning: point and click with your mouse) and to hopefully find things, which could be helpful for your escape. In a lot of these games you also have to solve some riddles or logic puzzles in order to get the next clue. Usually you can’t die in an escape game, but there are also some where you do, if you make a mistake. Most of them give you unlimited time, some don’t. I myself like the ones most where you can’t die, even if you try the most stupid things and take three days for it.

One really nice example (I think maybe the best I played so far) is the Escape Game [Vision], which I found recently. This game has very nice graphics, doesn’t require pixel hunting (searching for the tiniest things, which are almost unvisible for normal peoples eyes), but offers a lot of tricky logic puzzles and a reasonable storyline. It is not too easy, so I’d better give the link to the walkthrough as well.

If you want more afterwards, rest assured that there is an unlimited amount of free escape games online allowing you to escape from almost every scenario possible. Click here for a choice of the better ones and google for something similar to ‘escape game’ or ‘room escape’, if you played through all of these and still don’t have enough.

Don’t forget to also check out my post about Weekday Escape.

Claiming that you know a lot about geography? Then prove it! Here’s the game Know Your World, as found on Flabber a while ago. You get the name of a city or famous place and the country and then you have to pinpoint it to the map as quickly as possible. The closer you click to where it actually is, the more points you get. Easy enough, huh? Great game and even I (ahum) learned something from it.

David Scott created a sequel to Vector TD and calls it Vector TDx (here’s an alternative link without commercial). Because I’m so crazy about tower defense games, this game had to be posted on this blog as well. Enjoy! And if you get beyond level 27/50, let me know how you did it, please. These orange ones are so nasty in that level!

Armadillo Run is a physics game, in which you construct a path, using the materials offered and possibly not exceeding your limited budget, to help a rolled up armadillo getting to a blue sphere. But you’d better watch the movie to see what I’m talking about. The demo version is online as a free download, and even though it’s a lot more limited than the things the movie shows, it is real fun.

It’s been a while since there was a silly internet game worth mentioning. That’s over now! May I have the pleasure to introduce to you Sling, a game in which you control a little green ball of slime dangling, flying and bouncing around in 50 levels. The story is utter and complete nonsense and that’s great!

There’s also an easier Junior version of the game and soon there will be a sequel called Sling Fire. Enjoy!