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: This game of skill presents you with 24 progressively more difficult obstacle courses to work your way through. You must move your ball through each course by turning the entire course clockwise or counter-clockwise. Gravity pulls the ball downward on the screen and propels your ball onward. Watch out for menacing spikes, flames and other obstacles which line the walls of most courses.

The game does a great job of giving you pointers on how to advance past certain types of obstacles and the first 10 courses will move along pretty nicely, but then things get increasingly more difficult and this game may have you pulling your hair out. It even warns that it won’t be responsible for manaical homicidal tendancies resulting from frustration. I imagine that the game won’t have you actually killing people, but it does present quite a challenge. Luckily it will save your progress automatically, so you can come back when you have cooled down a bit.

The mechanics of the game feels smooth and responsive and the challenges seem surmountable eventually, but I dare say most players won’t be able to reach the end in one sitting. This game has similar physics to games such as Wone and Everybody Panic both reviewed previously on this blog.

I just love these physics-based obstacle course games and I hope to see more versions on the theme in the future. For now, this game will give you plenty of game-playing pleasure and will turn your world upside down.

Review: This game definitely falls in a certain genre of puzzler. Many similar games such as Orbox B share the same basic principle. You guide an object around a course of blocks, walls, traps and warp stations to reach a goal. The edges of the course lead out into oblivion, so you have to carefully plan which direction to send your object so that it hits a wall and lands where you can guide it to it’s next step on the path. With Road Blocks 2, designer Mike Gannon has come up with several unique obstacles, which I haven’t encountered in other iterations of this sub-genre.

His traps include goopy orange pits and endless tube loops which you can get stuck in. The objects and obstacles he provides include, ice cubes which crack each time you hit them and eventually break up; diamonds which move one step in whichever direction you hit them; sticky circles which stop you from moving in any direction; and random target-like warp pads scattered about some of the courses. These obstacles provide new and fresh ideas to this type of game and keep players on their toes.

The game includes 4 different play modes, including a wild space mode in which you have large gangly devices which move around when you touch them and impede your progress through the course. The first 5 courses on each mode won’t give most gamers too much trouble, but some of the later courses really provide a puzzling challenge. Like most games of this genre, starting over after dying is quick and easy. So if you don’t give up, you will eventually discover the correct pathway. Luckily on many of the courses, you have several options available to you, and often more than one goal can be reached. The ball you move about has a certain rubbery quality to it and the animations and sound effects really add to the complete design. I really enjoyed moving the ball around the screen even when I couldn’t quite discover which route to take. For those who get stuck, a single password will save your progress on all four game modes, so make sure you write it down before you close out of the game and you can pick back up where you left off next time.

Road Blocks 2 may not win any awards for break-through game design, but it definitely is one of the best of it’s type out there.