Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: This game provides a really unique mechanism, which I haven’t seen in any other online game before. The concept has a similar feel to other progressive puzzlers. You must make your way through a series of increasingly difficult courses and pop all the balloons you find. You accomplish this feat by maneuvering two little smiley faces called Globz. The two faces are joined together by a string. When you click the mouse one of the Globz anchors itself to the ground and the other one spins around it. You wait for the spinning glob to aim the direction you want to travel and hit the mouse button again. It then anchors itself and spins the other Globz. You have a red and a yellow glob and each of them can pop the blue balloons, but you must also pop multi-layered balloons and each Globz can only pop a layer of it’s own color.

You will soon discover that many of the walls on the courses are secret passageways to other areas of the course and you will also discover hidden bonus hearts and other obstacles and traps as the levels progress. The game play is unique and fun, but the fact that you must pop all balloons in under a minute on each course can make for some frustrating and frantic gameplay.

This game is simple and effective and a lot of fun. But don’t get on my case if it bursts your bubble.

Review: It’s another hectic stressful shooter for all you gamers who need to take out a little agression. This one has an inventive setting and structure. Basically, you wander down the photo-realistic streets of what looks like Manhattan. The quality of the video is quite good, as if you are watching a film. Hovering in the foreground of the picture is your hand with a finger pointed like a gun. Every once in a while you stop and all sorts of devilish cartoon characters rush out of doorways and sewer drains and start running towards you intent on smacking you. You must shoot your finger at them in order to kill them before they hit you.

Each time you take a hit from one of the critters, you lose one of your hearts, and you only have four hearts to start with and those toons are ruthless. The variety of characters coming at you include speedy fanged cats, bobbling gumdrops and snakes with cannons for eyes. The controls feel a little wonky and aiming can be a bit tricky. As you progress little cardboard boxes appear which give you power ups, like devil horns. You can also save your progress at certain points throughout the game and even challenge a friend to play with you. I found the game a little difficult to master, but kind of cute and original in it’s unique design and gameplay.

If you hit the space bar it activates a flying duck, but I haven’t been able to figure out what purpose the duck serves. It just flies across the screen quacking, but you can neither shoot it, nor does it appear to help you destroy the enemies. Maybe I lack enough focus to figure out what purpose the duck serves, but I’m sure gamers who enjoy this type of challenge will have no problem discovering what is probably obvious.

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.