Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: This very basic line-drawn game has one of the most clever mechanisms I’ve ever seen in an online game. The game really presents a challenge to climb from floor one to floor sixteen using a single cursor to click on the stairs to rise to the next levels. The cursor only appears on the screen for about 60 seconds, however, so you have to move fast. Mostly you will just click on a stairway to advance up a level, but on certain floors you will have to find the stairway hidden inside boxes or will have to push a button to make the stairway appear.

You will not be able to complete this challenge on your first try. It IS impossible. But, that’s where you will discover the inventiveness this game puts into play. You get 10 cursors. With the first cursor, you just move up as fast as you can until you reach your first obstacle and you will eventually run out of time. When you start the course over with your second cursor, however, a ghost of your first cursor will play alongside you, doing exactly the same moves you did the first time around. So use your second cursor to race alongside the ghost of your first until you reach the obstacle where you got stuck. Then your previous cursors will assist you through the obstacle and onto the next obstacle.

This may sound a little complicated and the first time you play it will seem that way, but you will quickly discover how you must utilize each cursor in order to help yourself out the next time around. For example, on one floor you must find a stairwell hidden under a box in a room filled with boxes. With just one cursor, this will slow you down, but, when you have the previous cursor opening boxes alongside your current cursor, you will be able to locate the stairwell much faster. Later on, you will sacrifice your current cursor in order to push a button to make a hidden stairwell appear. Then use the next cursor to rise up the stairwell. Each time you start the race with a new cursor ALL of your previous cursors will do exactly what they did the first time you played them, so by the 8th or 9th cursor, you will have a screen full of busy cursors and it gets a little hectic to keep track of your current one.

If you make it to the 16th floor you win! It might take you a few full games to meet the challenge, but if you keep at it, you will eventually figure it out and win. Along the way, you will discover a whole new genre of gaming delight, which hopefully other designers will explore. The game has the feel of racing your ghost in console games like “Mario Kart”. This time however, you aren’t just trying to beat your previous time, but are actually using your ghost’s path to your benefit. So think ahead!

Review: This sequel to the popular Stickman Madness original is a fun action shooter game using stick figure men. The background locations are all black and white line drawings, but have remarkable detail for such a simple concept. The game plays like a first person shooter, you see your gun in your hand and enemy stick figures pop up from various locations and try to shoot you. You simply aim with your mouse and try to splatter their brains before they plug you with too many bullets.

You reload your gun by hitting the space bar. You have a heart meter on the bottom of the screen which tells you how many hits you can take before you die. You only get one life so use it well. Along the way you can collect health repair kits to give you back your health. The game doesn’t have any fancy AI schematic determining the enemies location or spicing things up with variety. It will play the exact same way each time you try it, so remember the locations of the enemies and the order they show up and each time you play you will get a little farther. Remembering to reload your gun every now and then is helpful too.

The splashes of blood that splatter with each kill show up in red against the black and white background and give the game some edge. But after you’ve gunned down enough enemies and basically “learned” the game, there is little to come back and enjoy again later. There are a multitude of similar stickmen shooters out there (why most of the stick figure games are always bloody shooters I don’t quite understand), but this one has a slick design and plays very well so it’s higher on the list than most.

Review: Ahoy Matey! Grab your eye patch and parrot and take up arms as you command your very own pirate ship out on the seven seas. This elegantly designed game puts you right in the middle of a pirate ship battle. You get a bird’s eye view of the ocean and your ship. Beautiful water effects and clouds rolling by add to the ambience, as do the sounds of seagulls and a creaking ship. Steer your ship about the ocean playfield and fire your cannons to attack enemy ships. The enemy ships float into view one at a time (at first) and you must maneuver your ship so that you can fire cannons off of either side. You can choose which direction to fire (up or down) by toggling the V Key.

Use the space bar to fire all your available cannons at once and tiny black bullets will spew off the side of your ship toward the nearest enemy ship. Each ship has four number statistics next to it. The top number is how much gold the ship carries; next is the integrity of the ship (hit points); then the number of cannons the ship has ready to fire and finally the number of pirates on board. You must also watch your own statistics at the bottom of the screen. Make sure you maintain at least one pirate or the game will end. If you get close to a ship, you can dispense with firing cannons and go into hand to hand combat mode, in which case the ships will turn red and you will see the number of pirates dwindling as they battle away.

As you sink each enemy ship, you collect all the gold on board. After you have destroyed all enemy ships on each level you will proceed to a store full of pirate booty upgrades; which include a faster moving ship; a faster turning ship, more pirates, more cannons, faster reloads and other fun upgrades to help you out. The game proceeds in the nature of a simple RPG, in which you mostly do the same thing over and over to gain more gold and increase the strength of your ship.

I found the design of the game to have very appropriate graphics, mechanics and sound effects. The transitions between levels are smooth and fun to watch, but the game starts to hit the same one note repeatedly early on and I found too much randomness at play in determining which ship will prevail in a battle. Aim is important and holding off firing until you have a good shot will decrease your chances of firing off all your cannons prematurely. Also, strategic purchases between levels provide much of the strategy in the game. But, once out on the waters, you have little more to do than move about and shoot at ships and the game loses some of its steam after a few minutes of playing.

Like all the games reviewed at the Fun House, you will find something fun about this game and it’s definitely worth playing It will surely provide lots of fun for a certain cross section of gamers, so give it a shot and let everyone know how far you get in our comments section.