Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Press the spacebar as many times as you can in the allotted time. Then try to beat your score.

Review: I figure it’s time to give the old brain a rest and throw up another time killer. These sorts of games don’t require much thought or skill, just do one simple task and then do it again and again until you get tired and move on to something else. In this game you simply choose a time frame (5, 10, or 20 seconds). And then start hitting the spacebar as fast as you can. The application counts how many times you hit it and then displays a comical graphic with your score (this is the cutest element in the game, by the way).

Then you can try again and try to beat your own score. There ain’t much more to report than that. So next time you have a little time to kill at work and your co-workers aren’t around to hear you slapping your keypad repeatedly, give this little test of speed a try. Who knows, you might end up the spacebar slapping champion of the world and win a million dollars and get to meet Ryan Seacrest.

Object: Protect your castle against angry villagers by squashing them.

Review: This fun little stick-figure game is great for releasing a little agression. You have a castle which you must protect from angry stick-figure villagers who run on and start bang at the door with their fists. As they make contact with the castle your defense meter lowers and if it reaches the end, the villagers break through and storm the castle.

In order to get rid of the little pests, you must grab them, lift them high into the air and then drop them or fling them and they come down and splatter in a bloody pulpy mess. Kill off an increasingly larger number of them each round in order to earn bonus points, which help you build a larger castle, replenish your defense meter or build other weapons to help squash the villagers. After each level you can save your game as well.

You can sometimes convert angry villagers into storm troopers and employ them to defend your castle and as the game progresses, different types of villagers will come at you with their own little tricks at getting inside your castle.

The game is enjoyable for a while, but sometimes picking up the little men can be a bit annoying. You have to grab them right on the head and the ‘hit’ area is small. Also the men tend to stick to your cursor even after you’ve flung them and you waste precious time getting them unstuck. Because of this slightly clunky architecture, it’s difficult to master the higher levels.

Object: Earn money by flinging villagers to their death.

Review: This game, by xgenstudios.com, the same team that brought us Defend Your Castle, is actually a prequel to that game. Before the villagers could get angry enough to storm your castle, something had to have pissed them off a little. In a hilarious prologue to this game a couple of large hands are sitting inside the castle from Defend Your Castle wondering why the villagers are so angry with them.

In Pillage, you play as a disembodied hand hellbent on killing as many villagers as possible. Using the same flinging mechanics as Defend Your Castle, you pick up various types of villagers and hurl them into the air. The details in this game are much more realized. No more stick figures here. The villagers each have their own characteristics and sound effects, the deaths are gorier (including bones and blood) and sometimes maimed villagers will crawl along broken and bruised trying to escape. You can even pick up huts and drop them on the villagers to squash them.

Your main objective is to keep the villagers from escaping off the sides of the screen. This gets increasingly more difficult on each level. When you squash a villager, coins will fly out of their pockets which you can collect to earn bonus features. You can choose from several bonus features when you can afford them. Choose neutral bonuses (like increasing your mana level quicker); pacifist bonuses, (like killing with lethal injection instead of squashing); or antagonistic bonuses (like large anvils or force-field barriers).

Each level takes place in a different global village and gives you a mounting number of villagers to kill. The villagers each have special tricks up their sleeves. Some will break out parachutes or wings when you fling them, requiring you to destroy their mechanisms first. Others will try to climb up to your money stash and steal coins from you.

The game provides great visual appeal. The sound effects are really fun too, particularly the dramatically scored interludes between levels. But, the game still suffers from slightly clunky controls. The villagers are tricky to target and don’t always fling off your cursor easily, so be prepared for several of the little buggers escaping on you. Also, by the time you hit level 12 or so, there are so many villagers under each hut that it’s next to impossible to get them all. So working your way up to using most of the bonus features gets very challenging.

Object: Kill people with a giant magnifying glass

Review: This isn’t really much of a game as you don’t earn any points and you can’t die. You just simply kill some time by killing some people. Harmless family-friendly fun.

‘Member when you were a little kid and you discovered that you could focus the sun’s energy through a magnifying glass in order to light ants on fire? Oh come on, Princess, you know you did it. Well, perhaps not everyone has had the pleasure, but regardless, now you can do the same thing to a bunch of ant-sized corporate executives walking around downtown.

You play this game by hovering high above a modern metropolis. Use your giant magnifying glass to burn people, dogs, cars, trucks, and even helicopters. Watch and listen as the tiny folks burn in agony and flounder to their death. This is a very satisfying application when you just want to play God a little. The magnifying effects are a nice touch. You will probably play around with this long enough to destroy a few of each type of person or vehicle and then you will show it to your friends and move on to something else. But it’s defenitely good for all that.