Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a quiz game on this site (in fact it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed any game on this site). So here’s a fun quiz game from the folks at Buzzdash.com.

First select one of the categories for your quiz. You can choose from several subcategories within Entertainment, Sports, News & Politics, Business & Finance and Other. After selecting your area of expertise, a 15-question quiz will start. For each question you will get several multiple choice answers to choose from. The questions don’t ask about facts, rather, they ask about matters of opinion. For example, the game may ask you “Which of the following movies is your favorite?” You must answer how you think the majority of other players have already answered. So basically, don’t necessarily want to answer how you normally would, but rather, what you think the collective group of users have chosen as the most popular answer. After you answer each question, you will get a point if you chose the most popular answer others have given. You will also get to see the percentages chosen for all the other answers.

This fun quiz gives a little perspective on how others in the world think about things. Most of the time if you just follow your instincts, you’ll get the correct answers easily, unless you have totally lost touch with the pulse of the world. Give it a shot. The interesting questions often have illuminating answers at times. Although the quiz creates a fun diversion, the lack of bells and whistles and compelling game-play lost a few points from me, but you should still have some fun, especially if you enjoy second guessing what others have to say.

Review: I figure it’s time to give the old brain a rest and throw up another time killer. These sorts of games don’t require much thought or skill, just do one simple task and then do it again and again until you get tired and move on to something else. In this game you simply choose a time frame (5, 10, or 20 seconds). And then start hitting the spacebar as fast as you can. The application counts how many times you hit it and then displays a comical graphic with your score (this is the cutest element in the game, by the way).

Then you can try again and try to beat your own score. There ain’t much more to report than that. So next time you have a little time to kill at work and your co-workers aren’t around to hear you slapping your keypad repeatedly, give this little test of speed a try. Who knows, you might end up the spacebar slapping champion of the world and win a million dollars and get to meet Ryan Seacrest.

Review: For the geography hounds out there or for anyone who needs a little brush up on their U.S. States, this fun game is for you. You start with a blank map of the 48 contigious United States (no Alaska or Hawaii). The various states fall one at a time from the top and you must use your arrow keys to drop them into place. You have 3 levels to choose from. The easy level gives you the name of each state and places it with the correct rotation. The hard level doesn’t provide the names and the states must be rotated correctly to fit into place.

Even if you aren’t that great at geography, you should still be able to finish the puzzle eventually by closely observing the edges of the states compared to the edges of the map. Since the states fall from bottom to top, you won’t have that many choices as to where to drop it. The mechanics of the game are pretty good. The hit area for each state is forgiving as long as you have it lined up in the right column you won’t need to do any fancy maneuvering to get a state to land in its spot.

For those who are very familiar with the states, you won’t find this game much of a challenge. But for a bigger challenge, try completing the other versions of the puzzle featuring other countries or more specific areas. You can choose from Europe, Africa, France, Japan, Netherlands, South Carolina, and the United Kingdom