Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: This game follows in the tradition of similar collect and avoid games. You control Blobber, a cute smiley faced green bubble. Move him around the screen with your mouse and collect all the small green dots floating around the screen. You can also catch a somewhat elusive green star which appears briefly once per level. If you miss the star, you can still progress, but you will lose your bonus points.

What would any collecting game be without having to avoid something along the way? In Blobber, you must avoid a collective of mean baddies. Various numbers of them float about the screen. Some float randomly in ping pong fashion and others slowly follow you about the screen.

As you collect dots and stars, your Blobber will grow in size making it both easier to collect the other dots and at the same time, more difficult to avoid the enemies. After you have collected all (or sometimes most) of the green dots, some of the enemies will turn into friendly bubbles. When that happens you need to collect them as well. Sometimes enemies won’t change until you’ve collected other friendly bubbles and some enemies will never change to friendly bubbles.

This game proposes, on the main screen, that you won’t be able to play just one game of Blobber. Due to it’s cute graphics, nice sound effects and easy game play, I would be willing to agree with them. This game definitely has some charming aspects to it. Just make sure your connection is fast and you don’t have a lot of other internet related downloads going on in the background as it tends to slow the action down.

Review: This sequel to the popular Stickman Madness original is a fun action shooter game using stick figure men. The background locations are all black and white line drawings, but have remarkable detail for such a simple concept. The game plays like a first person shooter, you see your gun in your hand and enemy stick figures pop up from various locations and try to shoot you. You simply aim with your mouse and try to splatter their brains before they plug you with too many bullets.

You reload your gun by hitting the space bar. You have a heart meter on the bottom of the screen which tells you how many hits you can take before you die. You only get one life so use it well. Along the way you can collect health repair kits to give you back your health. The game doesn’t have any fancy AI schematic determining the enemies location or spicing things up with variety. It will play the exact same way each time you try it, so remember the locations of the enemies and the order they show up and each time you play you will get a little farther. Remembering to reload your gun every now and then is helpful too.

The splashes of blood that splatter with each kill show up in red against the black and white background and give the game some edge. But after you’ve gunned down enough enemies and basically “learned” the game, there is little to come back and enjoy again later. There are a multitude of similar stickmen shooters out there (why most of the stick figure games are always bloody shooters I don’t quite understand), but this one has a slick design and plays very well so it’s higher on the list than most.

Review: This game has a simple premise. You start with a double scale. One side of the scale has a few randomly sized weights sitting on it. You get three chances to balance the scales by placing three weights on either side of the scale. The fun part of this game lies in the clever way you make your weights. Simply click and hold your mouse button and a weight will start blowing up from your cursor like a bubble. You can make it as large or as small as you like and when you let go of the mouse, the weight drops into place. Then the scales move to reflect the current balance.

You get to draw three weights only on each level and you must balance the scales within a certain set number of pounds. For instance, on the first 4 levels you must get within 5 pounds and later the target amount decreases. If you happen to balance the scales evenly before you use your three weights, the game will give you a perfect score and move on to the next sub-level. If you don’t meet your target goal after the third weight, the game will end and ask if you would like to continue from the last level. Each level has 4 sub-levels, which you must complete in order to save your progress. After you complete the 4th sub-level you will advance to the next main level. At that point when you lose, you will not have to start the game completely over.

This game provides quite a lot of fun in a simple easy-to-use package. It certainly appeals to the physics crowd, but will also appeal to anyone who wants to kill a little time without a major investment in learning a new game.