Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: This site is a work in progress. As it develops it promises to be a fun online toy to play around with. It currently doesn’t even have a working title, so I am calling it Sketch. Basically, the premise is pretty simple. You draw a shape or line with your cursor and as soon as you release the mouse, your drawing transforms into a weighted, jointed figure and falls to the bottom of the screen. It reacts like a series of attached sticks might react when dropped from a height. The objects have a certain physics applied to them and the more you draw, the more the objects pile up. Use the space bar to clear the screen.

The concept is more difficult to explain than to just see it in action. Try it out. I can’t wait to see what new features the designer adds to the application in the future, but for now, it is a pretty interesting drawing program which allows you to play around with your sketches after you make them.

Review: This game falls into a certain niche of ball and paddle games where you have to draw the paddle or course for the ball to take. You need to reach the red rectangle by bouncing or rolling your red ball into it. Each level has an established course of lines already drawn. You accomplish your goal by drawing additional lines, ramps and bumpers to guide your ball in the right direction. You can pretty much do this fairly easily as you have no limit to the amount of lines you can draw, but in order to score high, you must draw as little as possible and try to finish the multitude of levels as quickly as possible.

The red ball definitely has a very persistent bounce to it and if it lands straight down on a flat surface it will bounce in place indefinitely. Some courses require a little creative thinking to get your ball to have enough momentum to move over obstacles. Also the sides of many of the courses often need patching up because the ball cannot bounce off the screen.

I found the game fun to play despite it’s relatively simple solutions, however, you must play through all the courses in order to get a score and there are a lot of them to play. If you stop midway through the game, it will not save your progress, so make sure you have a good half hour or so to play the game. The only drawback I found to this game lies in the drawing mechanics. Sometimes if you draw a line off the screen and release the mouse button, the line will continue drawing when you move your cursor. This can result in unintentional lines and having to clear the board several times. Fortunately, you are able to reset the ball when it gets stuck and you can clear all your drawings by hitting the ‘C’ key.

So give your right brain an artistic drawing challenge and your left side a physics based puzzle challenge and have fun with this cute little game. If you get bored playing the game, you can try out the level editor (in the options menu) and design your own courses.

Review: This drawing game may give you nightmares. Well, at the very least, you might have a heck of a time getting past the first 5 or 6 levels without a great deal of concentration and a steady hand. You have a course and a few moveable obstacles to work around or through. Use your mouse or graphic tablet to draw a path for your ball to follow, to make it to the star at the end. Then hit the space bar and send your ball forward on it’s path to the star.

If you only had to do that, you would ace every course, but each level requires you to work around lumbering obstacles. Some large objects obstruct your pathway several times. When you get around it one direction, you have to quickly move the object to avoid the ball later down the path. Other objects only move in one direction or only rotate.

You face three challenges on each level. First, you must determine your path carefully in order to take into account all the various obstacles. Second, you must use your very steady hand to draw a clean path. Draw your line as economically as possible because you can run out of ink before reaching the star. Finally, you face the challenge of keeping your ball safe as it travels along the path. If you come too close to a wall or object the ball will burst.

This simple concept makes for an excellent challenge and I do mean challenge. Prepare to die a lot, almost to the point of trying your patience. The background music seems lively at first, but after you’ve popped your ball for the umpteenth time, it starts to grate a little. Still, you have to give the designer(s) credit for coming up with a unique game, which truly forces you to earn your way through it. I still find myself stuggling on level 5. Tell everyone about your success.