It's time for a new thread of little flash games to pass the time at work

My first game of the new year:

Goblin War Machine - a fun game that's little more than driving your vehicle over humans and cows. The highlights are the humor, the nice visual design (for a flash game), and the upgradability of your vehicle.

Man In Gap - the type of game that has a simple gameplay idea. You merely find one of two pockets that won't crush the little guy. And you listen to metal, apparently.

Sorry, that Man in Gap sucks.

Yeah, it's not the best game in the world, but fine for around two minutes of play.

There's nothing that says how much time I'm going to help you waste here

3D Quick Pool - One of the many flash games that are just about exactly what the name says. Get the balls in the pockets as fast as possible without sinking the cue ball.

Hopefully this one will be up to the high standards Bruno has set for me

I'm just as bad at 3D Quick Pool as I am with real pool

Ha! Don't worry, you're not alone. And I had a pool table in my basement growing up.

Monster Mover - A puzzle game. Get the good monsters in the portal using gravity and the removal of elements from the screen. Most of it is pretty easy, but the last level is devious. The one gripe I had is that it was difficult to tell what level I was on, and I had no indication how far I'd progressed in the game. I'll spare you that and tell you that there are 20 levels, and the web is the last one.

Click PLAY 3 - a little like an untimed Wario Ware, it's just a series of little minigames where you need to figure out a sequence of events in order to reveal a "play" logo. The objective is to use as few clicks as possible. I did terribly the first time because I didn't read anything about the game before diving in, so I didn't even know what I had to do There's some fun puzzles.

Sorry, Matt, but that was awful.

Really? I found it kind of pleasant. I guess it's a game for a very specific type of person. Maybe just me

Was it difficult or something? I sailed through all but a couple of them...

No, it was easy, except for the bomb level, which was just a gigantic pain in the ass. For what was ostensibly a puzzle game, it required more twitch gaming for me than any sort of deduction.

Heh, I liked that level too

Ah well, I'll try to do better the next time My sources have been a little dry lately for some reason...

Ray Ardent, Science Ninja - A very fun side-scrolling run and jump game. You really have to keep moving, and you can go into levels with abilities you select. Once you get it down, you can start doing some pretty neat stuff.

Tower of Heaven - I'm hesitant to recommend this one, because it's one of those "you're going to die a WHOLE LOT before you get it right" games. But for some reason I like that I played it. The addition of continuously adding rules to the game was a neat gameplay element, too, even if it drives you absolutely bonkers at a couple places.

I think it will help your frustration level to know going in that there are 11 levels total. So if you're on the 9th, wondering if you should go on...well...just know there are only two more...

Sugar, Sugar - I've always loved those falling sand thingies (not sure what to call them), but I always wished there were a game about it. This one gets pretty close to making the game I would want.

Hourglass?

I think t would look better if the individual flakes didn't wiggle like snowflakes as they fell. Neat concept, needs a little play balancing and level design work.

Cactus McCoy: Possibly the most fun I've had playing a platformer, ever.

Thanks, Bitt! That's a seriously fun one! I've only beat the first four levels so far, but that's because I've been trying to beat all the challenges and find all the secret treasure, so I've played each level about 5-10 times. I started the train level about 20 times, trying to get that damn 50-hit combo. Turns out it was challenging because I had upgraded my hitting to level five by then, so I was actually killing my enemies TOO quickly, so I'd have to pick up a low-level skill weapon and make sure I picked another one up mid-combo when the first one wore out. It was frustrating, but it was fun figuring that out.

There's also a ton of variety in the game, so I really appreciate that. I'm also starting to see some really good gameplay ideas that seem far too good for a free flash game. For example, in level four with the chickens, there's a secret chest that requires a chicken to get to. Getting the chicken to the point where you need it is well designed.

In terms of the quality of platformer, for me this doesn't quite out beat Cave Story. There's also much bigger budget console games like Mario Galaxy (the first one was really freaking good). I also have to think back to the Mega Man and the Mario Brothers games.

But to be honest, perhaps is just the "recentness" of this game, but I might have to agree with you Bitt, that this was one of the most FUN platformers I've experienced.

Thanks for linking to it, Bitt!

Are you talking about hourglasses in general (in which case yes, I'm familiar with hourglasses), or a specific program?

The application I was thinking of is something that I used to play around with about 5-6 years ago. I found it in some old backups just now and it's still pretty fun, though it's definitely not what I'd call a "game" per se. Well, you be the judge.


Unfortunately much of the gameplay relies on being able to split a single stream of "sugar," so I'm guessing that's why they wiggle, so you get a wider stream.

As for "play balancing and level design work," I really didn't see any problems there. Are you sure that's not just a way of saying "it's too hard?" I was able to finish it, and while there were a few levels that weren't much fun, in general I appreciated what he was doing. There's a definite way to get past each level, and sometimes the hardest looking ones ended up not being very challenging (but were usually still rewarding).

From Beyond - a VERY quick little game (can take as little as around two minutes to finish). All you do is hurl stuff at a planet to destroy things. The goal is to destroy everything. That's it. Weirdly, my very first try I wasn't even sure what I was doing and I destroyed everything and obtained the highest rank. I tried three more times and did much worse...

It's not the best I've posted, sadly. I haven't stumbled across too much good stuff lately, so I apologize for the slowness in my recommendations

This must have been shared on this board before (because it's been around for so long), but today I noticed they've got sections for information other than vocabulary. Kinda cool.
I imagine Bitt would soar through the grammar section.

http://www.freerice.com/

This probably doesn't fit here, since it isn't a Flash game that you can play at work, and it isn't free, but you can definitely waste a ton of time with it.

Universe Sandbox is simply amazing. Makes me wish this was available when I was in school, rather than doing everything by hand. Like I said, isn't free, but there is a timed demo and it is only $9.99 on Steam, so pretty close to free.

Hey, if you can waste time with it, it's a "Time Waster (TM)"

I've played with that little sandbox game I linked to for quite a while before, and found it more fun that some actual games.

Faultline - Pretty fun. It's a little like what would happen if Portal were a very simplified side-scrolling platformer. Except in this one you're folding the environment across its self. Not terribly challenging, and the last level was pretty quick, with little to no payoff, but it was worth playing

Siegius - I posted about a similar siege game in last year's thread, I think. This one is similar but on multiple plains, and frankly it's not nearly as hard as the other one was.

The only criticism I have of it (other than it being a little easy) is that I can't figure out how you ever unlock other types of each troop. What I mean is, when you're placing a troop on the battlefield, first you click on the troop type (archer, melee, cavalry, etc), then it brings up three boxes you have to select from, but it only ever has the first one unlocked! I can't see anywhere to unlock the others. I find that to be poor game design, because it means that for an entire campaign, you end up clicking TWICE as often as you need to. I don't think it makes the game unplayable, but it got annoying after a while.

I finished the Caesar campaign (I think, there wasn't much fanfare when it was dond), and now I'm a few battles into the Vercing campaign, but that's about when I'm getting bored with it. Probably because I'm playing it on a netbook...

Goin' Up - I debated posting this. I hate this game but I can't stop playing it.

- it took me at least 20 starts before I got out of the pit
- it took me at least 50-60 starts before I got to space
- I have no clue how far I've gotten, because there's no indicator of progress
- it's ridiculously easy to die

Despite hating this game, I still keep playing it. I'm obsessed with reaching the top, but I simply don't have the skill to get there. I've gotten extremely high, to the point where it seemed like I spent more time in space than below it, but I can't seem to get to the end! I bet it doesn't end, and the developer is screwing with me...

So I apologize if you start playing this and can't stop. I don't know why I can't. I also completely understand if you start four times and simply quit. It's extremely frustrating...

Yeah way too hard for me.

Again, a non-free game and this one probably won't be in everybody's interest here, but what the heck. Frozen Synapse is a tactical simulation. It has very Tron-like graphics, and you control a squad of good guys against any number of bad guys inside a randomly generated building. Each type of unit has different attributes (range, speed, engagement speed, etc) and you spend as long as you want planning out what you are going to do for the next 5 secs (and replaying that as many times as you want until you commit to a move). The trick is, the opponent is doing the same thing, trying to guess what you are doing while you are trying to guess what they are going to do while countering them. Then the computer calculates what happened by moving both sides simultaneously. There are some crazy options for multiplayer, like play-by-email and the like that haven't been around very much lately.

It can be pretty questionable, the second mission in the single player campaign has you against a group of unarmed researchers. Like I said, not for everybody.

Impasse, a cool puzzle game.

Ultimate Assassin 3, a top-down stealth game.