Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Run from the bull and stay alive as long as possible.

Review: As someone who doesn’t like to see animals harmed, this game has a certain edgy theme to it. It involves the running of the bulls in Pamplona. But since this is just a cartoon bull and it always seems to win eventually by goring the human, I will let my diversion to the subject matter slide.

In this game you play as a dashing young toreador who is running from a furious bull out of the confines of the bullfighting stadium and through the streets of Pamplona. You must jump over fences and crates and fruit stands. Run through crowds of other fleeing men and last as long as you can before the bull finally catches up to you and flips your butt into the air.

There’s not much more to the game than that. However, the graphics and steady drumming score make this game a lively and responsive few minutes of flurry. The game treats the subject with a certain sense of humor and no animals are ever harmed in the game. In fact, the bull doesn’t even have to jump over the obstacles. He just plows right on through. The humor of the game is apparent even from the loading screen where your main character prepares for his bull run by spraying his arm pits with deodorant.

Object: Avoid the baddies while collecting green dots and stars.

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.

Object: Sort the smiley faces from the frowny faces.

Review: Are you happy today or sad? Perhaps this game will help you sort things out a little. Your job requires you to sort the happy faces from the sad faces. Each emotion belongs on a different side of the screen. You have several rows of red lines which only show up when you run your cursor over them. Somewhere on each line a face sits. If the face is happy click to the right of it sending it to happy land. If the face is grumpy send it to the left side of the screen where grumpies live. If it’s a spider, squash the damn thing.

Sometimes you find faces with masks on them. You have to remove the mask before you can see their expressions, or you can just take your chances and send them one way or the other. Careful, though, you only get a few misses. Things start speeding up rapidly. New faces show up on cleared rows changing the row icon from blue to red. If all rows turn red or you sort 3 faces the wrong direction, the game ends.

The game is cute, simple and fun for a few tries, but if you don’t have a quick mouse and good aim, you will probably only last a minute or so. The challenge is keeping the board cleared as much as possible and trying to beat your own score. Hopefully the frustration of the red rows mounting, won’t turn your happy face into a frown.