Onelargeprawn » Flash Games

Play This: Revenge of the Zombees

prawn1 — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:10:30 +0000

I don’t like bees. I’ve been stung on the nose and on the foot (not at the same time), so I keep a healthy distance for the bastards. They’re capable of ruining a perfectly leisurely picnic (the nose incident) or a walk on the beach (the foot fiasco). Thank goodness I haven’t met the killer variety.

The devastation that bees cause is clearly seen in Revenge of the Zombees. In this side-scrolling game from Adult Swim, it seems that a top secret zom-biological research facility has been conducting experiments on bees, and the tyrannous little buggers have escaped. You control this swarm of badly bee-haved insects as they go on a rampage, devouring people and cows, flattening buildings, and swatting superheroes and military choppers out of the sky.

The game warns of explicit 80s-themed gore and heavy metal violence, and takes place in four distinct settings. Hearing the sounds of the alarmed cows as they are engulfed by ravenous bees is half the fun. Play Revenge of the Zombees at Adultswim.

[via Lazygamer]

Play This: Angry Birds

prawn1 — Thu, 12 May 2011 07:30:38 +0000

Angry Birds is old news to some, but for the people who don’t have iPhones and Android devices and felt like pariahs, it’s a good day. You may still be a pariah, but at least you get to waste your life away by hurling bird munitions at pigs, all in the comfort of your web browser. However, there is a caveat – Rovio’s insanely popular puzzle game is currently only playable on Google Chrome.

If you’re using Firefox, don’t worry Chrome looks just like it, except it works faster. Download it from www.google.com/chrome and then get Angry Birds from the Chrome Web Store. And then formulate some good excuses as to why you did no work today.

UPDATE #1: If you’d prefer not to use Google Chrome, then head to http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ in Firefox 4 or Internet Explorer 9.

UPDATE #2: It appears not even a gang of Angry Birds are safe. The Next Web reports that a cheat (Javascript hack) enables you to access all the levels from the beginning.

UPDATE 3: Oh, in case you missed it yesterday, here is the catchy Angry Birds theme as covered by indie music duo, Pomplamoose.

[via 6000]

Can You Beat a Computer at Rock-Paper-Scissors?

prawn1 — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:42:34 +0000

The game Rock-Paper-Scissors (or RPS) is thought to have been created at the time of the Chinese Han dynasty. It was called shoushiling, roughly translated to “hand-command”. Its popularity has spread all over the world so much so there is even a world society dedicated to the sport and several officially sanctioned events.

Computers want in on the action too, and in this handy flash game from The New York Times, you can test how you would fare against a computer that is programmed to uses databanks of statistical info to mimic human thinking and to exploit the fact that people tend to stick to patterns.

Play RPS against the computer at The New York Times website and let us know how you did.

[via Neatorama]

We Preview: Dragon Age Legends

Fayyaad — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 07:15:41 +0000

It seems like a good many games coming out these days have a related Facebook game to try and get the fans excited about the coming blockbuster. Dragon Age: Legends is the companion game to the up-and-coming Dragon Age 2. Legends is still in closed beta, but here’s a preview of what you can expect when the game opens to the public after the jump.

Dragon Age: Legends is, to all intents and purposes, a strategy, turn-based MMO RPG that you play on Facebook. In much the same vein as other Facebook games, you can draft your friends in to accompany you on your quest. The really nice part of it is that they don’t have to be online to join you. So what is Legends all about?

Ostensibly, the story is the foreshadowing of the events that will take place in Dragon Age 2, and foretells the rise of the darkspawn horde. Again. Your character is the standard Adventurer type (in other words, your pick of warrior, mage, or rogue—one day I’d love to see a non-standard character archetype!) who embarks on a quest to explore the Free Marches, the area that Dragon Age 2 takes place in. The gameplay is divided into two distinct sections: quest and castle management.

The quest section of the game has your character going from encounter to encounter, fighting battles and progressing the storyline. There’s not much depth to the story itself, and the sequence of events are roughly as linear as a beam of coherent light. Once you’ve experienced an event, you can’t redo it, so character progression, it seems, is also similarly linear. Not all events are battles, and there is the odd event that serves to progress the story only, but you still get loot for those events.

To proceed to an event, you need to have enough energy for it. Energy replenishes over time, and this seems to be the standard way of preventing people from playing too long and finishing the game in a single session. If it seems like padding, then you’d be correct, and this must be the one thing about all Facebook games that drives me absolutely moggy. I hate this mechanic, and it seems like a lazy way to get people to play the game in short bursts over a long period.

Battles are a turn-based strategy affair. Protagonists appear on the left of the screen, and waves of enemies appear on the right. Some enemies are more prone to one kind of attack than another, so it’s a good idea to keep a decent mix of character types in later, multi-wave battles. During each turn, each character can use an item (most of which don’t end the turn), and attack (which usually does end the turn). When you defeat a wave of enemies, you proceed to the next wave until you’ve cleared the stage.

Your allies are any friends you’ve managed to draft into playing the game with you, and they retain any levels and spells that they have managed to achieve. Strong allies make for easy battles. If you have no friends playing Legends, then the game is kind enough to give you a small band of NPCs that you can use, because there is no way in any of the nine circles of hell that you’re going to be able to get through the later battles alone. As with any PRG, you also get to outfit your character with numerous weapons, bits of armor, spells, abilities, and so on. If you’ve ever played an RPG before, you should be well familiar with this bit.

And then Legends hits you with another artificial game-lengthener. Each ally you use has a recharge time (usually in the order of hours), and this means that you can only go through so many battles before you have to stop and wait a few hours before getting on with it. It’s not significant, but it’s annoying enough to warrant a mention.

The second half of the game sees you managing a castle. You’re only awarded a few rooms to begin with, and you have to decide on the functionality of those rooms. Each room type costs a small pile of gold, but they have very specific functions. The apothecary, for example, can generate more healing potions for you (once again in a magnitude of hours). For each person you want to have working on making things, you’ll need a set of living quarters. On top of all that, you can spend money (if you have it) to upgrade the castle rooms. This allows the room to produce different kinds of stuff that you may need on your quest. You can also expand the given space, once again with more gold. If you’re out of gold, you can spend real-life money in exchange for in-game gold to buy castle rooms, castle space, special items, weapons, etc. If you have the money to spend on this sort of thing, it can make the experience go that much faster.

The animations themselves have a certain kind of “cardboard cut-out” charm to them, and I love the graphic of (who I assume to be) Shale the Golem from Dragon Age 1 doing a bizarre dance on the loading screens. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but you don’t need to break ground to produce charm. The graphics serve their purpose and not much more.

Overall, the game is bite-sized fun. You’ll have to come back day after day (or every few hours if you have the time or inclination) to continue the game, but this seems to be the unfortunate trend set by many Facebook games. The only reason to keep playing this game long after the fun factor has worn off is to unlock the goodies you’ll get by linking the game data to Dragon Age 2, and I am extremely excited about that, given how much I enjoyed the first game.

Should you play Legends? Give it a try if you’re a fan of turn-based RPGs, and definitely give it a go if you’ve an interest in what happens prior to the events of Dragon Age 2.

Score: 6/10 (the other 4 points went with the different kinds of artificial padding).

Play This: Entangled

prawn1 — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:13:26 +0000

People who suffer from CDO (like OCD but in alphabetical order) should appreciate this little flash game. It’s called Entangled and plays on your insatiable desire to make order out of chaos. You need to take a mess of tangled loops on a tile board and restore perfect harmony to it. Give the game a try at Kongregate and let us know which level you got to.

[via Ingrid Sinclair on Twitter]

Play This: Give Up Robot 2

prawn1 — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 08:33:28 +0000

WAKE UP ROBOT!!!! It is time to DAAAANNCEEeeee (again). Give Up Robot 2 is being touted as possibly the best freeware flash game of 2010. In this 8-bit styled puzzle platformer from Adult Swim, you play as a robot who must jump and swing through a series of chambers filled with all manner of colourful things that could kill you. The trippy, epilepsy-inducing visuals are backed by equally stellar music, and some funny commentary along the way.

IndieGames loves it, Bacon and Games thinks it doesn’t suck, and Gamasutra put it on top spot of their best indie games list of 2010. Prove them right (or wrong), check out the 50 brain-melting levels from the original game and then play #2 at Adultswim.

[via Gamasutra]

Play This: One Chance

prawn1 — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 11:20:49 +0000

In the world of video games, we don’t normally have to worry about messing up. No biggie, we just simply restart the chapter or go to the autosaved checkpoint and try again. Indie developer, Awkward Silence Games, has crafted a deeply moving flash game with a twist – the restart mechanic does not work.

In the cautionary tale that is “One Chance”, you play the role of scientist John Pilgrim and your team has finally found a cure for cancer. The celebration is short-lived as the cure turns deadly and starts killing every organism on Earth. There are six days left to live and you must decide how to spend those days. Once the game is over, there is no replay feature, hence the title. You’re stuck with the decisions you have made.

You have one chance. Play it and let us know what happened.

[via VinylDestZA on Twitter]

Play This: Effing Worms

prawn1 — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:59:57 +0000

For some reason, I thought today was next week Friday and was ready to offer a cup of celebration coffee to my Muslim friend, TyrannicalDuck. Luckily the terms and conditions of his religion prevented him from hurling profanities at me. In order to make up for my faux pas, I’ve decided to offer him something to eat, virtually of course.

In Effing Worms, the player assumes the role of a young giant sand worm who seemingly has just emerged from the world’s longest fast. It is bloody hungry and you need to quench its insatiable appetite for, well, just about anything. As you progress through the levels, visit the evolution center to help your worm reach its full potential.

Play Effing Worms at Kongregate.

[via SLACKERJACK]

Play This: Epic Coaster

prawn1 — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:49 +0000

If you’ve played Canabalt and Robot Unicorn Attack, you might just get a kick out of Epic Coaster. In this one-button platform game, you need to navigate your roller coaster from track to track and timing your jumps perfectly results rewards you not only with multipliers to your score, but also releases pretty shiny balloons into the sky. Joy!

There is even a nod to Adam Atomic’s parkour-inspired title – you get the “Canabalt Homage” achievement for scaring the birds. There are 80 achievements in total to unlock.

See if you can survive the most epic roller coaster ride and post back with your score.

[via The Awesomer]

Play This: Color Theory

prawn1 — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:00:06 +0000

A quick look on Wikipedia reveals that color theory to be “a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations”. It is shown to good effect in this similarly-titled retro puzzle/platformer where you play as a little pixel-man who needs to overcome obstacles in each level by using primary and secondary colours to aid his progress. Touching a red, green, or blue sign results in your man being able to pass through obstacles of that colour. Furthermore, through additive colour mixing, touching certain other signs will let you pass through obstacles of more than one colour, for example, a magenta sign would make the red and blue obstacles disappear.

Play Color Theory and let us know how you fared.

[via zefrank on Twitter]

Play This: Super Mario Bros. Crossover

prawn1 — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:27:16 +0000

When I was growing up all the cool kids had a Sega Mega Drive. I had a pithy Sega Master System. I never had a NES or an SNES and had to listen to my friends regaling their stories of derring-do in the Mushroom Kindgom. Bastards.

Super Mario Bros. is one of Nintendo’s most popular games seeing over 40 million copies sold since its release on the NES in 1985. That makes it the second-most best-selling video game in the world (Wii Sports hold top spot). It’s been re-released a number of times and spawned quite a few sequels. You can even play it from the comfort of your web browser, and this brings us to a Jay Pavlina’s tribute to the classic side-scroller.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover is a flash game that recreates the original 8-bit world of the Mushroom kingdom, but adds a whole new level of fun by letting you play as other Nintendo characters. Currently you can choose between Mario, Samus, Mega Man, Simon Belmont, Bill R., Link, and my favourite the bad-ass ninja Ryu Hayabusa. How awesome it that? But wait there’s more – each character plays as they would do in their own game, so Bill can shoot Goombas in the face and Ryu can climb walls and throw deadly shurikens.

Don’t delay, play Super Mario Bros. Crossover now!

[via The Awesomer]

Play This: Fault Line

prawn1 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:49:20 +0000

Remember those old Mad magazine fold-ins where you fold the sections on the page together to reveal a hidden image? Nitrome’s puzzle platformer Fault Line uses that folding technique at the core of its fun gameplay.

You play as a little robot who needs to reach the the exit of each level. In between you and the purple teleportation pad is a series of obstacles, which can be overcome by folding parts of the level together. You do this by joining nodes together with your awesome detachable arms.

It’s fun, puzzling, and totally beats working on Monday mornings. Play Fault Line.

[via My Gaming]

Play This: Doodle God

prawn1 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:17:19 +0000

They won’t teach you this in bible school, but at the dawn of time there was the Doodle God. This god was kind and had a penchant for casual games.

The premise of Doodle God is pretty simple. You start off with four basic elements – earth, water, fire, and air – and by mixing these elements together you begin to create the stuff in our world. From the initial pool of four elements, it is possible to end up with a whopping 115 elements!

Gotta create ‘em all! Play Doodle God and let us know how creative you got.

[via SLACKERJACK]

Play This: Coma

prawn1 — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:35:17 +0000

You may notice something different today – the blog is alive again. It was down for most of yesterday, its feeling were hurt when the data centre it lived in decided to fall over. We’re back now and just wanted to send our apologies if you’ve tried to visit but got bitch-slapped by a nasty error. Anyways, back to the normal programming…

Nick the squirrel over at Lazygamer tweeted at me:

@onelargeprawn If you don’t post that last flash game that I just linked to on your website, you are doing an injustice to humanity

You’re in luck my man, I looked at my calendar today and no one has penciled me in for doing any type of injustice to humanity. The game Nick is referring to is an amazing trip into the subconscious. In Coma your character Pete is stuck in the construct that is his mind and you need to help him find this way through this strange, whimsical place.

The creator spent a year crafting the experience and it’s really well executed from the visuals to the soothing soundtrack to the funny quips between the characters. You must play Coma, you must play it now!

[thanks Nick]

Play This: Toxic Sonic Zombie Massacre

prawn1 — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:56:00 +0000

The mist has descended around our offices, it’s all eerie and shit, a perfect time for an 8-bit zombie apocalypse. Illustrator Manning Krull pays homage to 8-bit games from back in the day with Toxic Sonic Zombie Massacre. In this action side-scrolling platformer a siege of undead lie between French rock band Toxic Sonic and their gig. You’ll need get the trio there before time runs out.

It’s Friday so let loose, bust heads, and glug beer mindlessly in Toxic Sonic Zombie Massacre.

[via Abduzeedo]

Play This: “Guess the Accent” Game

prawn1 — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:25:36 +0000

Are you a cunning linguist? Have you watched enough re-runs on the Travel Channel to distinguish a Lithuanian accent from a Latvian one? Then you might like this little flash game. It contains clips showing a handful of people from around the world reciting lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”. You need to guess which country each person hails from.

Try to guess the accents correctly and let us know how you scored.

[via PS3ZA]

Play This: Portal Defenders

prawn1 — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:59:01 +0000

As any person with pets will tell you, you never really own cats. It’s really the other way around, and deep down you know it too. They hog all the space in the bed, rip you to shreds when you try feed them medicine, and merrily take their shits in your manicured garden. If cats has opposable thumbs, we’d be in for a world of discomfort – fur balls would be deposited in our shoes and cat-sick would rain from above.

If you live in an abusive relationship with your cat, you might like Portal Defenders. It’s a side-scroller that has you running about beating up baddies, some of which happen to be felines.

Play Portal Defenders at Kongregate.

[via Slackerjack]

xkcd’s Tetris Hell Now a Flash Game

prawn1 — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:01:10 +0000

Randall Munroe from the webcomic xkcd clearly has some influence. Last month, he posted a comic about how hellish the game of Tetris could be (see here). It went viral and after a couple of days, the first Flash game based on said comic hit the Internet. I only spotted it now, what can I say I’m not the quickest of cats.

With a curved bottom and bouncy physics, the game is probably a Tetris fan’s worst nightmare and pretty much an unwinnable. Play the first implementation of Hell by kaolin fire or try the newer one by Banthar.

Let us know how you did failed miserably.

[via LDuPlessis]

HATETRIS: A Mean Game of Tetris

prawn1 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:54:32 +0000

HATETRIS is a Tetris clone created by a sadistic programmer named Sam Hughes. In HATETRIS, the AI is programmed to spawn the piece that is least likely to help you, so you’ll get a lot of S pieces. You’ll need to trick the AI into thinking you’ve messed up and use the resulting piece to complete a line. It’s a little easier said than done though. Also, there is no gravity in the game, but as the author says, it’s the least of your worries.

Play HATETRIS here. Hughes has top-scored with 5 lines. Let us know how you fared.

[via Boing Boing]

Robot Unicorn Attack!

prawn1 — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:50:25 +0000

Have your ever dreamed that you were a beautiful robot unicorn bounding about a purple landscape with the sounds of Erasure’s Always gently caressing your ears? It’s OK for you to admit it, we won’t judge you. In fact we’re here to tell you, you don’t need to dream anymore!

From Adult Swim comes an addictive flash game where you can act out your equine fantasies. In a similar mechanic to Canabalt, Robot Unicorn Attack tasks you with running as far and fast as you can, collecting butterflies and avoiding obstacles along the way.

Now run my friend, run free like the majestic unicorn you’ve long yearned to be. Play Robot Unicorn Attack now!

The game make take a moment to load so be patient. It’s been played 27,964,553 times so it’s a teensy bit popular. When you’re done, drop us a comment with your top score.

[via SLACKERJACK]