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: 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 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!