Fugdale’s Funhouse

Welcome to today’s Funhouse Picks! In the Game section we present a unique drag-and-drop experiment; the Fun Site of the Day will teach you how to make fantastic dollar bill origami; and our Video Collection features some amazing feats with quarters and ping-pong balls.

Today’s Picks

Grow

Game of the Day

5 Great Ways To Leave A Tip

Fun Site of the Day

10 Quarters

Video of the Day

Grow - Cue the Ball

Grow is part game and part experiment, from Japanese game makers, Eyezmaze. It’s really an original and refreshing point and click adventure. You have a large red sphere with the word “GROW” in the middle. You have 12 items that you can add to the Grow sphere in any order. As you add new items to the ball, older items start to grow, expand and interact with each other. The more they grow, the more points you get. Some items effect other items in specific ways, so the fun is discovering the proper order in which to drop the items on the sphere to get the most points. Each time the game plays out in strange ways.

Grow is a very interesting concept from very original designers. It also provides stress free gaming for those who just want to play around a little.

5 Great Ways To Leave A Tip - DESCRIPTION

This blog post features 5 sets of instructions or instructional videos which show you how to create really cool Origami (paper-folding) items out of dollar bills. You can leave these interesting creations for tips and put a smile on your wait person’s face.

For some extra Dollar Bill Origami, check out this post Cool Dollar Origami

10 Quarters, Ping Pong Kings, and Ping Pong Trick Shots

Today we have 3 amazing videos featuring very skilled people.

First, a quick little video featuring a guy doing something amazing with a stack of 10 quarters. In the spirit of the drinking game, Quarters, he bounces 10 quarters off the table at once and they land in 10 different cups.

The other two videos feature amazing tricks staged by a couple guys who have amazing skills with ping-pong balls. You’ll be amazed!

Support the Funhouse by purchasing products related to this post.

Want to dip your toes into another dimension or explore the spacious wonderment of history? Today in the Funhouse you can play a unique point-and-click adventure about Beethoven’s Life; or you can spend some whistful minutes in the strange world of the Tele-tubbies; or discover how to percieve yourself in the 10th Dimension.

Funhouse Picks of the Day

Beethoven’s Hair

Game of the Day

Boohbah

Fun Site of the Day

Imagining the 10th Dimension

Video of the Day

Beethoven’s Hair - Live Beethoven’s Life as a Bug

This masterfully crafted experience plays partly like a point-and-click adventure and partly like a flight simulator and partly like a shooter and more. It’s really a light puzzle which allows you to explore various historical moment’s in Beethoven’s life including his association with Napolean and his musical inspirations involving World War 2 and Nazi Germany.

The game starts when your cursor releases the spirit of Beethoven and turns into a fluttering butterfly. The butterfly moves using your mouse and can lift higher or lower with the up/down arrow keys. I noticed on some browsers, you can hold the keys continuously to raise, but on Firefox you must repeatedly tap the keys to raise or lower. (Take note of that if playing in Firefox otherwise, you will get stuck early in the game).

Once you guide your butterfly through the keyhole you will be in a wonderland of music, imagery and notes from Beethoven’s life. Question marks float along the pathways offering historical facts, but the story of Beethoven gradually gets told in a very atmospheric and original manner. The beutiful graphics and highly unique gameplay make this a good endeavour. If you stick with it past the first few puzzles, you can finish the entire thing in less than 20 minutes.

The exploration is interesting and all, but I found the controls with the butterfly to be kinda difficult to manage. The butterfly stubbornly flies past areas you want to stop at, but after playing for a few minutes, you get the hang of it and by the time you do, you don’t need the butterfly anymore. This game is definitely worth a look if for nothing else than its artistic merit.

Boohbah - Tele Tubby Fun

From Beethoven to Tele-Tubbies, what a segue. Normally I wouldn’t present a site for toddlers, but this website offers a great deal of stoner appeal. You land in a colorful rainbow land with floating bubbles and the Boohbahs. Click on the bubbles for psychadelic graphics you can manipulate and play with or follow the rainbow trail to the delightful gift in the center of the screen for random interactive activities, like jumping on a trampoline or shifting people’s bodies around.

Break out the psychadelic drugs and give yourself 15 minutes to play with this unique interactive site for kids.

Imagining the 10th Dimension - A Trip Into Multiple Dimensions

This fascinating video will give you a visual exploration (using a simple black and white cartoon) of the various dimentions of space/time beyond what we can percieve. Based on modern concepts such as quantum mechanics and string theory, this video will help to visualize what is difficult for most to put into words or even wrap their head around.

If you’ve enjoyed the classic piece of literature, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott, you will enjoy this movie, which uses many of the same principals discussed in Flatland and goes way beyond the book.

Support the Funhouse by purchasing products related to this post.

“Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket” pops to mind when thinking of this unique offering from Japan.

Hoshi Saga - Star Quality

This unique and beautiful game defies categorization. Part point-and-click…part puzzler…part meditation, its design and execution make it a top contender in any of those genres. It has a simple elegance to it. Incorporating beautiful grayscale graphics and effective appropriate sounds, Hoshi Saga, provides subtle and inspiring gameplay.

To start, you can choose from 25 available puzzles. As you complete rows or columns of puzzles on the grid, bonus puzzles will open up, making 36 in total. You will want to play every one of them.

In each puzzle you have only one objective…find a star. How you find the star varies greatly from each puzzle. I won’t give you any more information than that, because figuring each one out is all the fun. The puzzles come in various degrees of difficulty as indicated by the ’star’ rating for each. However, most people will not have too much difficulty solving any of them as most of the solutions seem very intuitive. You can usually find a star within a few minutes, although a few of the puzzles will take a little thinking to discover where the star lurks. While the game won’t provide any great challenge, the aboslute cleverness of the game will have you in awe.

I found Hoshi Saga extremely lovely and played right through it in one sitting. Even though it has little replay value after you’ve figured out all the solutions, you will want to let your friends know all about it.