Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Find five differences between two similar images.

Review: The concept for this game isn’t exactly new. You can find similar games all over, inluding children’s magazines like Highlights. But, never-the-less, this game still provides a lot of entertainment.

You are given two almost identical images and asked to spot the five details that are different in each picture. These differences can range from, missing or added objects; subtle changes in color or texture; or objects which have been moved slightly. Some of the differences are quite difficult to spot, particularly in the images with simple subject matter and clean backgrounds. As you discover differences, just click on the spot in either picture and the game will circle it for you.

The author of this game Teppo Pihlajamäki seems to have a good sense of humor as well. One image had a woman raising her arm and he added armpit hair to her underarm. Additionally, the timer you have to run against in this game is a fish in a fish tank. The water slowly lowers and you can only refill it a bit each time you get all five errors in an image correctly. Images keep coming at you until the tank runs out.

The game is fun and you can replay it several times. However after about 5 times of playing you start getting the same images again. I hope the designer continues to add new images into the mix.

Object: Destroy all human ships with your asteroids.

Review: Fans of the popular arcade classic Asteroids are in for a little reversal of fortune with this game. This time the asteroids are striking back. Tired of being picked on by laser armed triangular ships, Mr. Blue Asteroid gathers his rocky buddies together and strikes back.

You play as a large blue asteroid floating in space minding your own business. When a human-inhabited ship comes along and starts to shoot his puny bullets at you, you just crash into the ship and destroy it. Soon multiple ships, various mines and other enemies arrive shooting at you from all directions. After each level you are given a choice of power-ups: make yourself larger or faster, armor yourself, add more asteroids to your gang or spin your enemies out of control. Along the way you will learn new tactics and tricks to combat the enemies.

You can play with the arrow keys or the mouse to move your asteroid around, use the ‘z’ and ‘x’ keys to move your allied asteroids closer or further from you and the ‘c’ button or left mouse button to move away from your allies.

The sheer inventiveness of this game makes it a pleasure to play. Each level you get new goodies. And most of the early levels are pretty easy to complete, so new players won’t feel too stupid off the bat. The techno music is repetetive, but not distracting and you will have a lot of fun mowing down all the puny humans as you careen through the universe.

About: A trippy collage piece of famous faces. I’ll leave it up to you to determine what’s fake or not, but the video is fun to watch.

About: This piece by the same title demonstrates the fakery used in advertising. Very interesting to see how much faking actually goes on in a typical commercial.