Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: Here’s a fun ball and paddle game. Throw your three balls up into the air and then continue to juggle them by bouncing them off your paddle one at a time. Each time you hit a ball, your score increases by 10 points. Make it to 1000 points and you reach the next level. Each level makes things a little more difficult. For instance, level two decreases the size of your paddle a bit.

It’s fairly easy to keep your balls in the air. (I wish it were this easy to actually juggle balls in real life). The balls seem to come at you in a steady rhythm, so you won’t have to worry about having to hit two balls at the same time. I found that if you guide the balls close to one of the edges of the screen, they get a little easier to control. If your balls get too spread out, you can tap them back in line by hitting them with the edge of your paddle. When you lose a ball it will hit the ground and start flashing. You can relaunch it yourself or it will automatically launch after about 5 seconds. But beware, you can only drop 5 balls before your game ends.

Review: I figure it’s time to give the old brain a rest and throw up another time killer. These sorts of games don’t require much thought or skill, just do one simple task and then do it again and again until you get tired and move on to something else. In this game you simply choose a time frame (5, 10, or 20 seconds). And then start hitting the spacebar as fast as you can. The application counts how many times you hit it and then displays a comical graphic with your score (this is the cutest element in the game, by the way).

Then you can try again and try to beat your own score. There ain’t much more to report than that. So next time you have a little time to kill at work and your co-workers aren’t around to hear you slapping your keypad repeatedly, give this little test of speed a try. Who knows, you might end up the spacebar slapping champion of the world and win a million dollars and get to meet Ryan Seacrest.

Review: This charming progressive puzzler has all the charm of the popular Hoshi Saga Puzzles. In this series of 18 short puzzle levels, your simply have to destroy the Bobteds on each screen. The Bobteds take on different forms in each level, from water towers to stars to percentage symbols and other objects. Each level has a slightly different technique you must employ to get rid of all the Bobteds, but all of them involve dropping one or more silver pinball balls onto the course so that they bounce onto the Bobteds.

Sometimes you have only one ball to drop. When you drop it, it bounces or causes objects to move which help destroy the Bobteds. Whenever you have more than one ball to drop, you will place each of them somewhere on the course and all balls will drop at the same time after you’ve placed the last one. Many times you need to set the balls at various heights and locations so that they will interact with each other. If you time a ball to bounce and then bounce another ball off of it, it will arc just right to wipe out all the Bobteds. Most levels have pretty easy solutions, but some require a little playing around with first to discover ways to accomplish your task. I had a particularly difficult time with level 16.

All levels in this game have a visually appealing design, using simple pastel graphics and various objects you can bounce off of, turn or maneuver to help you out. The design of this game shows a lot of inventiveness. The game plays just once through progressively. Once you’ve solved all the puzzles, you’ve finished playing the game, but as quickly as most players will be able to make it through, they will also enjoy the fun and cool factor this game provides.