Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Move your frog across the traffic and floating logs to the goal. Rinse and Repeat

Review: Everyone from my generation will remember the arcade classic Frogger. This game reached the peak of popularity in the 80’s when all the kids used to pump their allowances into the video arcade machines instead of towards the latest Xbox release. The object seemed simple enough. Move your frog from the bottom of the screen, through 4 rows of traffic and across 4 rows of floating logs into one of the 5 lily pads at the top of the screen. If you managed to get all 5 lily pads filled, you would progress to a more challenging level.

However, if you played at all like I did at that age, you rarely, if ever made it past level 2 or 3, because the game packed quite a challenge. So, now that we have reached the age where these classic arcade games have become quaint and antiquated, along comes an all new take on Frogger. In this version you don’t get the bird’s eye view of the traffic, but you must still use the same controls to accomplish the same task from quite a different perspective.

You start in front of several rows of moving obstacles and must move through them in a 3D environment. As you pass a row of traffic or floating logs the row in the foreground becomes opaque so you can still see what lies ahead, but now you can’t always see what objects will come moving in from the sides of the screen as easily as the original game. As you move side to side, the screen scrolls with you giving you different vantage points. Although you might assume the new version would provide you with more sophisticated controls along with the updated visual effects, you would assume wrong. Your frog still jumps quickly in one of four directions and you will have just as much of a challenge getting him across without him splatting or drowning as before…if not more so.

Despite the modern feel, the game still has all the charm of the classic version and having it in 3D now allows new players to experience the challenge for the first time.

Object: Create and eliminate lines of blocks in a 3-D Tetris environment

Review: Fans of the classic game Tetris will no doubt have seen about a million different variations of the game pop up over the years. This one has an interesting twist which I haven’t seen before…3D.

The game plays just like Tetris. Use the arrow keys to move your piece right or left or drop it rapidly into place. And use your space bar to change the rotation of the pieces. Drop pieces into empty sections of the stack and try to form horizontal lines across the screen. When you do they are eliminated. Eliminate 4 lines together and you’ve formed a Tetris.

This game has all the appeal of the original Tetris with the addition of a 3-D playing environment. The direction of the playing field slants upward in a forced perspective. This complicates the game slightly because visually it’s more difficult to determine which column your piece is lined up in.

I had to dock the game a few points for a few reasons. The biggest being that the game doesn’t end when you’ve reached the top, it just sits there. You must refresh the browser to start a new game. Additionally the very repetitive techno loop gets completely annoying after about a minute. But this new take on an old classic deserves a little look see.

Object: Work your blue ball through a maze of three dimensional lines.

Review: I’m a big fan of mazes, so I really enjoy finding wonderful gems like this game. Using a simple graphical interface, this game creates hours of fun maze solving.

When you start you will be presented with a randomly generated cubical maze of white lines. You move a blue ball along the white lines trying to reach the red ball elsewhere in the maze. Use the arrow keys to rotate the cube in a way so when you press the space bar you move forward. You can only move forward, so the trick is getting the maze rotated in the correct direction to move.

Because the white lines are so thin and the angle of the cube is the only thing that provides visual clues regarding depth, you must turn the cube several times to discover the proper pathway to take. At first I found the controls a little confusing. It felt like the cube doesn’t exactly turn the direction you expect it to when you hit an arrow key. However, I quickly noticed that if you just tap the key in the direction you next want to head, the cube will rotate so you can move that direction even though it doesn’t always look like it. Also trying to turn a corner at an intersection can get difficult if you don’t align right on the corner. So I suggest tapping the space bar lightly, inching forward, until you are able to turn.

The simple look of the mazes is definitely misleading. It takes a good deal of investigation to get through the maze. Each game is timed, so work your way through quickly to try and beat your previous times. How fast can you get through?