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 inventive puzzler looks similar to multitudes of other puzzle games out there, such as Orbox B or Cubeoban. The difference in this is that you aren’t simply pushing a cube around, but have a ball that bounces off of cleverly placed angled mirrors. The ball starts on the square marked with an ‘S’ and you must maneuver the mirrors so that the ball bounces through the course and collects all the blue coins and then exits the course on the square marked with an ‘E’. On most courses you can start the ball bouncing around and then manipulate the mirrors to guide it where you want to go. However, some levels require you to map out the course in advance because once the ball starts all mirrors get frozen in place.

Each mirror rotates in one of two settings and you can change the angle right before or after the ball hits it to get it to go in a new direction. Some silver colored mirrors are permanently fixed in place. However, each level features unique ways of utilizing the fixed mirrors. In some levels, the silver mirrors stay put altogether. In other levels, a button my auto rotate all the fixed mirrors or they might just rotate on their own at random intervals. To add to the puzzling mix, you will sometimes have other obstacles, such as blocks that move in certain directions when the ball hits them. Each level has a seemingly different strategy involved in solving it.

This puzzler features progressively more difficult levels and each level comes with a passcode so you don’t have to start over next time you play. I found the first 8 or 9 levels pretty easy to get through and then things get a little tougher. The game mechanics feel smooth and responsive and the puzzles aren’t so tough or frustrating that you will give up right away. In fact, they sort of make you want to keep going. Because the courses are contained with boundaries, you don’t have to worry about flying off the edge of the course or ‘dying’. The ball will sometimes get stuck in a holding pattern, but on most levels you can just keep flipping mirrors until you get the ball where you want it to go. On those few courses where your ball gets stuck in a permanent loop, you can always start over by clicking on the start square. This will reset the course to it’s original position.

Review: If you’ve ever enjoyed the “Where’s Waldo?” Books or any other children’s book where you have to locate a specific object in a scene of several hundred objects, you will enjoy this game. The designers of this game put themselves into it as tiny little pixel art characters.

The screen has at least a hundred little characters standing around. You must move a huge technological arrow (that looks like a big computer chip) around the crowd, trying to pinpoint the one designer indicated at the bottom of the screen. All the other people will skirt and side step from underneath the arrow because they all apparently avoid technology. The lone designer will stay put. But this lack of movement doesn’t always make them any easier to spot. Often times the designer you seek will stand behind a group of people and make themselves quite undetectable.

Sometimes you can spot them right off the bat. But, this usually happens out of luck or the fact that they have a distinctive color shirt on. Other times, you will spend quite a long time milling through the crowd looking for that one person who doesn’t wander away from you. If you find the designer within the time limit allowed (which seems rather short), you advance to a new level. But, if you click on the wrong area or run out of time, you have to go back to level one. Luckily the game will allow you to continue searching for the designer even if the timer runs out. The levels don’t really increase in difficulty and often you will have to find the same designer several times in a row. If you have the eagle eye to make it to level 20, you will get rewarded with “God Like” status.

The game doesn’t have too much variety, so most players will tire of it pretty quickly. However, it definitely has the same appeal as a ball of string might have to a cat…irresistible to play with, but won’t capture the attention for too long.