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Boxhead - More Rooms!

If you have read my previous post about Boxhead - The Rooms then you'll be pleased to read that Seant Cooper Games has recently released a new addition to the series.

Boxhead - More Rooms is the game's title, and all that it promises is to keep you occupied once again, killing zombies like no other time! The designer says:

"Jon Bambo is back and a new beast is out to get him. Equipped with even more weapons and equipment, the Zombie has become cannon fodder and the new Beast will take you down unless you get all the 90+ upgrades and perfect your skill!"

Note: This game requires at 512mb of memory and a fast processor – kill all applications before venturing into the unknown.

Link: Boxhead - More Rooms

Tower of Moai - Fun from Japan!

A wonderful game coming from the far east, Tower of Moai is another small gem made by the talented Japanese game designer Takahiro Miyazawa of team SKT. The game is pretty simple and completely mouse controlled.

This is how the story goes: Moai statues struggle on top of the tower that you control, trying to climb up on a swinging ladder on top of them. The tower bends sideways forced by the statues' weight and if they get close enough to the edge, they fall down. Moving your mouse on the tower's platform, you can affect it's movement and help the statues climb the ladder. Save 100 statues in 90 seconds, and you'll move on to the next level.

The game is pretty funny and that's where it gets most of it's value. It's Japanese, but with such gameplay, there's not a lot of things to figure out. At display level, I really liked it's 3D look. And at sound level, the game features good sound effects and cool in game music. Give it a try and you'll see, it totally worth your time. And if you can't get enough, try an older release: Nest of Moai.

Link: Tower of Moai

The Great Flying Mintini - Human Cannonball

A cool game coming from Altoids, based on the common idea of cannon shooting. Aim you cannon, determine the power of the shot and watch the results. The deference here is about the cannonball. Instead of the common ones, you will be shooting a funny flying guy :)

It's a nice game in general, entertaining and well implemented. Just another cool way to pass some enjoying minutes in front of your computer. The gameplay is pretty simple, but if you need any help, you can learn everything about the game by selecting the "Instructions" option when the game begins. Have fun!

Link: The Great Flying Mintini

Boxhead - The Rooms

There's so many games having a story based on zombies and people do not stop producing more! Asking my self the question "why zombies are so attractive?" I reach the following conclusion: Zombies cannot think, so it's easy to place them any ware without any reason. Zombies do not have a soul, so there's no problem to kill huge numbers of them. And finally, zombies hunt people and someone have to stop them.

Having the above conclusion as a motivation, someone can easily decide to create a game with zombies. I believe this is the case with Boxhead - The Rooms. It is a fine shoot 'em up title witch can totally absorb you. When you begin it will be very easy, a few zombies coming against you. No problem for your pistol. Before you know it, you'll be fighting for your life surrounded by tens of them, using a rocket-launcher to take them out!

The game features nice pixel-art graphics, with the characters having a funny shape like being made out of boxes. And there's detailed visual effects from gun fires and explosions to blood stains left back by killed zombies on the floor. Good sound effects are present too, but no in-game music.

The game is fully controlled by the keyboard: Arrow keys to move around, space bar to shoot and 1-9 keys to select weapons. Could be easier to aim using the mouse though..

Link: Boxhead - The Rooms

Nobuyuki Forces 3 - Japanese Style Shooter

Nobuyuki Forces 3 is a fine action shooter, borrowing it's gameplay and style from Sega's famous Virtua Cop series of games. The character moves through the game's areas in a predefined way, and all of the shooting action have to be performed by the player. I always liked this type of games, because of fast gameplay that keeps you in alert all the time.

The game's story is common. A super agent girl has to attack the enemy's headquarters, kill everyone in her way and take out the boss. Reminds me of many titles, with the first coming to my mind being Metal Gear Solid. Well, this one doesn't even touch Metal Gear's greatness, but it follows its path anyway.

Controls couldn't be simpler: press the space key to get in shooting position, aim with your mouse and press the left mouse button to shoot. When you run out of bullets you have to reload and you do so by pressing the left mouse button while in hiding position. Under certain circumstances you'll be awarded with various power ups like infinite bullets, shotguns and rifles. And be sure to check the area when the character moves from place to place. There's power ups spread around that you can pick up by clicking on them.

In total, the game performs very good and will keep you occupied for a while, especially if you like this type of games. Cool graphics and good sound effects tie together with fast gameplay to form an addictive game. In game music could be better though.

Note: The game could take a bit to load, be patient..
Link: Nobuyuki Forces 3

PaintBall - Tricky Puzzle Game

Paintball is a title that make most of us to thing of the game we play in the woods, using custom rifles with colors instead of real bullets. Well, this is not the case with "Paintball - the game". It's a catchy title though to receive more attention on your game. No mater what you first thought by reading the title, as soon as you start playing you will realize it's about a puzzle game.

A very simple puzzle game where your task is to make the small red ball hit the red rectangle. And to do this you have to draw lines. The ball follows the laws of gravity in a very basic way, always trying to move lower. By drawing lines on the ball's way, you can control it's path and make it find the way to the rectangle. It is not so easy as it sounds though. Some levels are very tricky, requiring you to predict the ball's path as it bounces on the lines. On other levels, your patience is the key of progress.

The game's visual performance is very basic. That's acceptable for a game of this kind, but I believe Claxor could had spent more time to make it look a bit better than a raw blue background, black outlined white lines and a red ball. At sound level, the game's features are very basic also. There's only one sound effect: the one that is triggered when the ball bounces on the lines. And there's a single track playing as background music, witch becomes boring after a few levels. Luckily, you can mute everything by accessing the game's options.

Not to forget, the game comes with a level editor also. Give it a try if the game's numerous levels are not enough for you.

Link: PaintBall - the game @ Insane Central Arcade

Johnny Rocketfingers 2 - Exceptionally Unique

Ryan Khatam, owner of CrackedAnimations.com has created this awesome point click adventure game. It's a sequel to the original Johnny Rocketfingers, go ahead and check it out if you like to have a better image of this extreme character before driving him in his new adventure.

The game reminded me of the time way back when I was playing the old classic Monkey Island. It's the same, good and tested gameplay of adventure games where you can click here and there to move the character, interact with other persons in the game, examine objects, collect, use and so on.

The best part of adventure games is their riddles. The harder they are, the greater the filling of satisfaction when you solve them. You'll have to search every corner and check twice if you've missed something, because this something is probably what you need to get the story go on. When all of the above of this is mixed with a good story about underground life and spiced up with the proper dose of humor, Johnny Rocketfingers 2 is what comes out.

Not to forget the wonderful artwork and the excellent in game music, given that this is a flash game. My only complain is about the game's length. When I reached the end and watched the ending scene, I got a strong feeling of incompleteness. Maybe I have to wait for the next sequel now..

Note: This game includes a lot of content inappropriate for youth audience.
Link: Johnny Rocketfingers 2

Guffy the Ghost: So Bite Me

You are Guffy the Ghost and you have some serious trouble! Pumpkin-headed juice-thirsty vampires are coming against you to suck your juice. Kick and punch as many of them as you can before they drain you empty.. For each vampire you take out, the Guffy meter on the right goes up a bit. When there is enough Guffy power, you can release Guffy's special power and take out every vampire around you, by pressing the space keyboard button. The higher the level of the meter, the more point you'll get for each vampire taken out with this special move.

So Bite Me is a good way to keep yourself occupied for a while, being enjoyable, fast and simple. It features nice flash graphics, satisfactory sound effects and raw background music. It is hosted at Big, Flat and Twisted website, where you can find more funny games in the same style, all sponsored by Capri-Sun.

Link: Guffy the Ghost: So Bite Me

Physics Centered Games

No time to blog at all! So just to say I posted something here, I recommend you to take a look at this post from Soldat Movies: Physics Centered Games. It's a list of links to games somehow related with physics. A lot of games to waste your time!

I'll come back with more game reviews as soon as I manage to finish all the pending tasks that are hunting me right now :)
Cheers..

Pixel Blaster - Intense Flash Shooter

Tom Thornton, author of ThorGaming.com and flash game programmer, has just released his latest creation. It's a shooter game named Pixel Blaster. Like in many other shooters, you take control of a ship and try to shoot down all the enemy ships coming against you in waves.

The most interesting thing about Pixel Blaster is it's extra fast gameplay. The enemy ships just keep coming, leaving you no time to rest at all. To survive you have to be on the alert constantly, shooting and collecting power ups left by destroyed enemy ships. There's two types of power ups in the game. One to replenish your health and one for your energy. Energy is used to shoot heavier blasts from your cannon and make more damage.

Move your ship around using W, S, A and D keys or the arrow keys of your keyboard. Aim your cannon using the mouse and fire by clicking the mouse button. To charge your cannon hold the mouse button for a while. The longer you hold it down, the more energy will be charged and the heavier your shots will be.

Conclusion: Pixel Blaster is an awesome flash shooter and the most of it comes out of the fast gameplay. Graphics are good enough for a game of this kind, sound effects blend good with every game event and there's cool Drum n' Base background music to get you in the mood.

Link: Pixel Blaster @ Thorgaming

SWFRoads - SkyRoads Remake in flash

It looks like game programmers who make games using Macromedia's Flash platform like to create remakes of classic games. You can verify this statement by simply performing a search on Google for the keywords "flash remake". I've just tried it and got around 36.000 links on result. Maybe a remake is the easiest way to start programming, because you don't have to invent a game yourself. Or you like the original so much and you want to recreate it in flash.

Anyway, SwfRoads is another flash game of the previously discussed category, being a remake of SkyRoads, a racing game released back in 1993. Your target is to lead your spaceship on the game's "roads" without falling into outer space, or crashing onto walls. The control of the spaceship is accomplished through the use of your keyboard's arrow keys. Up arrow to accelerate, down to decelerate, left and right to move towards the equivalent direction. You can also jump using the space bar or the shift key.

SwfRoads features very simple, yet enough addictive gameplay. Try a level and you'll realise that driving a spaceship on sky roads can be a very enjoying way to waste your time. On the graphics side, don't expect anything flashy. As for the music, thing aren't the same. The game has a nice techno soundtrack creating a "need for speed" feeling to the player.

Link: SwfRoads

Twin Spin III - Nice minigame

Twin Spin III is a simple and addictive minigame coming from GlobZ, a french game production company. Your aim is to pop all of the balloons on each of the game's 24 levels.

The interesting part is the way you move in the game. You control two smileys connected through an axon between them. To understand this better take a look of the picture on the left. At any time, one of the smileys is settled to the ground and the other one is rotating. Once you click, you make them switch roles. And this is the way you move around.

To pop a balloon, one of the smileys has to touch them. Some of the balloons can only be popped by the red smiley and others only by the yellow one. My description may be confusing but I'm sure you'll understand everything as soon as you start playing.

The TwinSpin III performs pretty good for a minigame, featuring nice graphics and addicting gameplay. I have to mention though that there's no in-game music or sound effects at all.

Link: TwinSpin III @ GlobZ

Chaos Faction - Senseless Beating

Dissolute Productions has created this extra-enjoying, crazy beat 'em up game bearing the name Chaos Faction. Those two words are enough to fully describe the game's theme. It's about beating up your opponents until only one remains standing on the arena.

If you're familiar with beat 'em up games, like Street Fighter, Mortal Combat or their younger cousin Tekken, then you'll find out that Chaos Faction's gameplay is in the same style. Choose a character, choose an arena, then start beating! Graphics are simple, colorful and funny. The game has good animation and is very fast. This is the reason why it won't let you let it so easy. Nice in game music will accompany your efforts to make your opponents rest in peace and clean, accurate sound effects will be there triggered by every game event.

You can try one of the game's three modes in total: Campaign mode, where you try to beat every enemy on all levels available, unlocking new characters and weapons on your success. Deathmatch mode, where you can set up a game with many opponents and on any level. The players that scores the most kills is the winner. The last mode is Survival, where you try to beat as many opponents as possible, before they beat you up. In this mode you are able to submit your score to the online highscore list hosted on the game's server.

In total I can say that this is the best flash game in this category I've ever played. Although, I have to warn you: before you start playing think twice if you have anything else to get done, Chaos Faction is going to reduce your productivity time considerably. At least for today...
Note: The game's size is about 6.5 MB, so take this in count if your internet connection is slow. It'll take over 10 minutes to load on a 56k modem. You can download it on your PC if you like, by following the second link below.

Link: Chaos Faction @ CrazyMonkeyGames.com
Download Link: Chaos Faction Download

Cluedo Cop Star- Investigate online

Hasbro is hosting an online version of it's popular crime fiction board game, Cluedo. This version is named Cluedo Cop Star and it went online on 22nd September. To play you'll have to register for an account, a process very easy and non time-consuming. The game is a kind of online contest, with big prices to be won from the top players. Check out the web page for information on this.

The game is very similar to the original board game, with the difference that the online version is divided into four episodes. There was one episode available to play at the start. One episode is added each week for the following three weeks. Once you reach the end of an episode, you'll have to make an accusation and you'll progress to the next one if it's available.You'll keep all the Inventory items and casebook notes you've collected from previous episodes.

The game in general is very good looking and professionally made. I got stuck playing it for about 2 hours before writing this review, when I finished the first two episodes that are available until now. At the end of the second one, after I made my accusation, a message box shown up saying that I will be informed by email when the next episode will be available to play. I can't wait for it! It's too cool, really. Well, maybe because I love Cluedo soooo much :)

Cluedo Cop Star's gameplay is in the style of point-and-click adventures, spiced up with the board game's storyline and special elements. Use the map to move around the mansion's rooms. There you can collect items to your inventory, ask suspects questions about the murder or about the items you collected or combine items in your inventory with other items in the room to find new clues. Everything you find is recorded to your casebook and you'll have to examine this information in the end of the chapter to make your accusation.

The only thing the game misses is in-game music and more sound effects. But I'm sure you'll enjoy it even like that. Follow the link bellow.

Link: Cluedo Cop Star

Online Games Directory has a new header!

I've just finished editing the blog's template and you can see the results above, at the blog's header. Actually, this is the only part of the template I've changed today, but it took me a lot of editing in Photoshop and Illustrator to make it the way I wanted. I'm satisfied and I can say I like it much more than the previous, lame header that I had.

This is the first blog I've ever created and the first site I've ever run. I have many other things in my mind about the site's future that I'm looking forward to carry into effect one by one. I've been pretty busy lately studying for the exams at the university, so I couldn't do many posts or anything else here. My last class exams are on next Friday. After this I will spend more time to bring you fresh game news and make this blog better!

Back to the header now. As I said, I'm satisfied of the result. But I don't know what my visitors think and I'm pretty curious about the answer. Please leave a comment and tell me, I'll appreciate your opinion.

Click Drag Type 3 - Brain teasers

A young computer science student at South Dakota State University, Andrew VanHeuklon, has made this wonderful collection of puzzles and collected them all in one release. If you like solving riddles, this is the case for you.
Click Drag Type 3 has 15 puzzles, each one entirely stand-alone and independent of the others. The release contain 10 puzzles from the previous 2 games with the rest being the new ones. There's no clues about what to do or where to start from, it's all up to you to determine the way of solving them. All you know is that you can click or drag items with your mouse and type with your keyboard.
Andrew also added a "Behind the Scenes" feature, with is enabled after you finish a puzzle and lets you know more about the game's creation. And there's a timer to count your total playing time. What I most liked in this game is the felling of self-confidence that you get after solving a puzzle. This is what made me go ahead and try the next one and then the next one and so on, until I solved them all! :) So there's a lot addictiveness involved in playing Click Drag Type and this adds a lot to the game's total value.
Nice work Andrew! Keep on providing the world with whatever else you have in your head, I'm sure it's going to be awesome!
Link: Click Drag Type 3
The game is hosted by HybridArcade.com

Panic! Coin-op arcade style shooter

Got yourself too lazy and need a game to waste your time? Panic is what you're looking for. With it's simple coin-op arcade style, it's a good way to have some fun. The game's idea is very close to Astro-Panic, a game released for Commodore 64 back in 1984.
Your objective is to shoot down all the flying saucers in the screen before one of them hits your space ship. For every wave of saucers you clear, another saucer is added on the next level, faster and though harder to eliminate. The higher you hit a saucer and the faster it is, the more points you get. Panic features a highscore list also, a fact that could make you go for another game after you loose.
The game's visuals are following the arcade theme, so everything you see is made of back, grey and white lines, spiced up with red coloured particle effects to animate the destruction of a saucer. Background music is in the same style and so are the sound effects. Plain sounds combined, bringing a good result in sum. An option to disable music could be useful though, in case the player is bored to hear the same track repeatedly. There's an option to disable sound completely, but this way you will not hear the sound effects.
Panic has pretty easy gameplay and you'll get in the mood as soon as you start playing. To move around use your mouse. Click the left mouse button to shoot. And that's all.
A good game coming from Coin-Op Interactive, created by Sander van der Vegte.
Link: Panic!
Historical information: Astro-Panic 1984 review page A and page B.

What's wrong with my feed?

It started yesterday, and continues until now.. I don't know what's the reason, but from yesterday the blog's feed is down. If you try to visit my Atom feed on your browser you'll get an error page containing the text "Invalid request URI". And my Feedburner version shows up an error page saying that my feed is making a "clunking" sound. That's normal of course, if we consider that Feedburner generates the burned version from blogger's original Atom feed.
I've searched Blogger Help to see if I can find a workaround to the problem, with no results. So I sended them an email and now wait patiently.. :(
If you had or are having the same problem, I'd like to hear from you. Especially if you know how to fix it ;)

Zwok - Multiplayer madness!

Have you ever played Worms? The funny turn-based game where you control a group of worms armed with crazy fire-power and battle against another group of worms? Well, Zwok is very similar to it. Except that you don't control worms but only one funny guy, you don't have so many weapons to choose from and you can only play in multiplayer. The game has two teams, the Blooz and the Grienz. When you enter the game for the first time, you can easily create a new account for free, customize your character appearance and join one of the game's teams.
And then the action begins! You are randomly placed in a game with two members of your team and battle against three opponents of the other team. Gameplay is very simple: On each round you have ten seconds to move, choose your weapon, aim and fire. To move use the left and right arrow keys of your keyboard. Everything else is done with your mouse. The team that takes out every member of the opposite team wins. Zwok also features a ranking system where your rank is determined by the points you score during the games and by your shot accuracy.
Go ahead and try it out, it's totally enjoying! If you're bored to create an account, you can choose the available "I'm Lazy" option to check if you like it or not.
Link: Zwok game.

Final Fortress - Flash Strategy

Final Fortress is a "defend your base" flash strategy and shooting game. Like in most of games of this style you control a cannon and have the option to buy various upgrades and weapons to enhance your base's defence against the waves of enemy troops coming to take you down. At the end of each level, you are awarded with money depending on the results of your defending and shooting accuracy. You can spend the money to upgrade your base and repair your units. This is the strategic part of the game. If you want to survive you have to deploy new units in the right place and the same time save money for repairing them.
The visuals are good, with nice sprites used for the units, realistic images for the battle field and cool explosion animations. The sound is good also, every event of the game is accompanied by a proper sound effect and there's battly music in the title screen to get you in to the mood.
If you like this kind of games you'll enjoy playing Final Fortress and probably will finish the demo levels, but I personally wouldn't spend 14.95$ to buy the full version.
Click the image above to play the game in it's own window. If you're reading this post through an aggregator this will not work.
External link: Final Fortress

Samorost 1&2 - Weird Adventure games

Samorost is a point and click adventure game with the story going on at a strange meteor-sized planet. You control a funny guy who's the habitant of this tiny planet and help him to get past his troubles. The game in overall is very clever, demanding from the player to solve various riddles. You cannot distinguish those riddles for their complexity or difficulty, but you can certainly do for the smart way they affect the story's progress.
The game's graphics consist of very good looking artwork spiced up with fine animation. I really like the extraordinary theme used to compose the game's world. And there's cool background music helping you to get in Samorost's atmosphere. Of course, the game is armed with the necessary sound effects to accompany every event.
Everything in the game is done by pointing your mouse clicking over the items on the screen. That's why it's called "point and click". So, to progress you'll have to find where to click next in order to activate the next event in the story. Some times you'll have to click at certain time periods or in synchronisation with other events. Experiment a bit and you'll find the way.
First I found and played Samorost 2, after finishing it I wanted more so I tried the original. Both of them are pretty cool, but the second one is a demo version where you can only complete the first chapter of the game's two in total.
Links:
Samorost
Samorost 2
Game created by Amanita Design.

Tontie ver.1 - Crazy "Hit the Mole" game

Tontie is a game coming from Eyezmaze, a talented Japanese game designer who has created a series of beautiful games like GROW and Vanilla. Check his site and you'll understand what I'm talking about. All of his games have a special Japanese style, from graphics to level up features.
This one, named Tontie, is in the style of those "Hit the Mole" games. But, while the majority of those games are mouse controlled, Tontie utilizes your numeric keyboard to achieve the same goal. All of the game's controls are done using the numpad and you'll realize that as soon as you start the game.
Eyezmaze injected his level-up system in Tontie by using coins. When you hit one of those "moles" sometimes they'll leave a coin or more behind them. Hit the coins to collect them. When you have enough, hit the store(witch appears in the same way the "moles" do) and a menu will become available for you to spend your coins. You can by health, new hammers and power-ups to make your life easier.
I really liked playing this game because of the variety of "moles", the previous mentioned level-up system, the funny in game music and sound effects and it's fast gameplay. In total, the game can stand as a complete flash game and I believe it worth a try. Possibly you'll get addicted for a while.
Here's the original page. Click the image above to play Tontie in it's own window.

Sycolux - Innovative block clustering game

Block clustering games are very popular and fun to play, with the category counting numerous titles. Bright examples are Tetris and Puzzle Bobble(or Bust-a-Move). In this kind of games the player's target is to cluster blocks of the same color, or create lines of blocks or various other combinations in order to clear the games panel. New blocks are falling from the panel's top and the game continues until the panel fills with blocks. There's no more space left so the player looses.
The innovation in Sycolux is that the panel will randomly spin and flip, or even zoom in or out. This makes the game more challenging, because the player have to focus on the new state of the panel each time flipping occurs. Another feature of the game is it's splitted game panel, with blocks coming from each side and the ability to transfer a block between them. And there's a Laser Gun mode where instead of clustering the blocks, you simply shoot them. This mode is unlocked if you manage to cluster three "special" blocks of the same color.
The game's graphics are alright, but the sprites have a blurry look and could be better. At sound level the game performs pretty good, having clear sound effects and cool background music.
Here's the link: Sycolux @ Gameshot.org.

Smashing - Arkanoid Flash Variant

Arkanoid is an arcade game with a great history and since it's first release at 1986 by Taito, it was ported on many platforms, including gaming consoles and personal computers. A lot of other games are inspired by Arkanoid and Smashing is another one. Of course Smashing is not the first flash game based on Arkanoid's idea. I've seen other games in the same style and I believe this is the best.
The game's rules are as follows: You have to break all the bricks on each level to move on to the next one. To do so, target the little ball on them by using the pad at the bottom of the screen, witch is under your control to move sideways. If you miss to bounce the ball on the pad, the ball will get out of the game's screen and you'll loose a pad. When you run out of pads, it's game over.
Various power ups are hidden inside the bricks and when the ball hits them, you can pick them up and make your task easier. Beware though, because some of them are not power ups and have negative effects, like reducing the pad's length.
To conclude, this game is a good variant of Arkanoid but I believe it could be better. Sometimes you can't predict the ball's direction after it bounces on the pad. In other games the ball's direction depends on the point of the pad it bounces on. That's an issue reducing the game's overall gameplay value.
To try it out yourself, click the image above(game will open in it's own window) or follow this link to Totebo Online Games. To learn more about Arkanoid's history, you can read this article from Wikipedia.