Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Find the selected designer in the crowd in the time allotted.

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.

Object: Find five differences between two similar images.

Review: The concept for this game isn’t exactly new. You can find similar games all over, inluding children’s magazines like Highlights. But, never-the-less, this game still provides a lot of entertainment.

You are given two almost identical images and asked to spot the five details that are different in each picture. These differences can range from, missing or added objects; subtle changes in color or texture; or objects which have been moved slightly. Some of the differences are quite difficult to spot, particularly in the images with simple subject matter and clean backgrounds. As you discover differences, just click on the spot in either picture and the game will circle it for you.

The author of this game Teppo Pihlajamäki seems to have a good sense of humor as well. One image had a woman raising her arm and he added armpit hair to her underarm. Additionally, the timer you have to run against in this game is a fish in a fish tank. The water slowly lowers and you can only refill it a bit each time you get all five errors in an image correctly. Images keep coming at you until the tank runs out.

The game is fun and you can replay it several times. However after about 5 times of playing you start getting the same images again. I hope the designer continues to add new images into the mix.