Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: As someone who doesn’t like to see animals harmed, this game has a certain edgy theme to it. It involves the running of the bulls in Pamplona. But since this is just a cartoon bull and it always seems to win eventually by goring the human, I will let my diversion to the subject matter slide.

In this game you play as a dashing young toreador who is running from a furious bull out of the confines of the bullfighting stadium and through the streets of Pamplona. You must jump over fences and crates and fruit stands. Run through crowds of other fleeing men and last as long as you can before the bull finally catches up to you and flips your butt into the air.

There’s not much more to the game than that. However, the graphics and steady drumming score make this game a lively and responsive few minutes of flurry. The game treats the subject with a certain sense of humor and no animals are ever harmed in the game. In fact, the bull doesn’t even have to jump over the obstacles. He just plows right on through. The humor of the game is apparent even from the loading screen where your main character prepares for his bull run by spraying his arm pits with deodorant.

Review: Let’s take a cosmic trip to outer space, shall we? You start out as a tiny meteor floating around in the cosmos. As you move next to smaller meteors, they will gravitate towards you. When you collide with a smaller planet or rock, your meteor will absorb it and grow a little larger. Eventually, your tiny rock will grow to the size of a small planet and you will be able to absorb planets that are a little larger. On later levels you progress to the size of the sun and even bigger.

You must, however, avoid the gravitational pull of larger planets (which tend to collect in the middle of the playing field. If you get too close to one of them, it’s gravitational force will start to suck you towards it. If you hit a larger planet you will revert to your original size and will have to start the level over again.

As a strategy, I found it easiest to float around the edges of the screen at first (near the white borders) and absorb as many smaller rocks as you can. Then when you have reached a medium size, start to move toward the larger planets. You will probably find that the gravitational pull of the larger planets will have you pressing the arrow keys very hard trying to avoid the sucking power. Just remember, you only need to press them softly and just avoid close proximity with huge planets until you can match their size.

After you have cleared all the planets on a level you will progress to further levels with even larger planets and stars to contend with. The game is little more than a collect and avoid challenge and you will find it’s pretty easy to pick up if you just take your time and move slowly around the screen. If you aren’t sure which planets are larger or smaller, just stop moving for a moment. If a planet is larger, you will start to move towards it. If it is smaller, it will start to move towards you.

Review: This game follows in the tradition of similar collect and avoid games. You control Blobber, a cute smiley faced green bubble. Move him around the screen with your mouse and collect all the small green dots floating around the screen. You can also catch a somewhat elusive green star which appears briefly once per level. If you miss the star, you can still progress, but you will lose your bonus points.

What would any collecting game be without having to avoid something along the way? In Blobber, you must avoid a collective of mean baddies. Various numbers of them float about the screen. Some float randomly in ping pong fashion and others slowly follow you about the screen.

As you collect dots and stars, your Blobber will grow in size making it both easier to collect the other dots and at the same time, more difficult to avoid the enemies. After you have collected all (or sometimes most) of the green dots, some of the enemies will turn into friendly bubbles. When that happens you need to collect them as well. Sometimes enemies won’t change until you’ve collected other friendly bubbles and some enemies will never change to friendly bubbles.

This game proposes, on the main screen, that you won’t be able to play just one game of Blobber. Due to it’s cute graphics, nice sound effects and easy game play, I would be willing to agree with them. This game definitely has some charming aspects to it. Just make sure your connection is fast and you don’t have a lot of other internet related downloads going on in the background as it tends to slow the action down.