Fugdale’s Funhouse

Review: This game has a pretty original concept. You stand in a deserted wasteland. You resemble a stick in the ground or a tree stump of sorts. Below the screen you have a limited number of growth spurts you can choose from on each level. Each growth spurt grows your tree in different ways. For example, one button grows all branches straight out; another splits each branch off into a fork; and others only grow the right branches or the left branches.

Floating above, you will find several gold rings. You need to grow the branches of your tree in such a way that you can capture all the rings by moving your branches through the center of each ring. You only have so many moves you can make on each level to accomplish this task. The first 5 levels won’t give anyone too much trouble, but after that, things start getting more complicated and the game starts throwing obstacles in the way as well, such as sparklers which ignite your tree and burn it to the ground. Luckily you can restart any level if you mess up or if your tree burns down. And you don’t have a time limit to complete the task so you can take your time and try to figure out the best combination of moves to make to captures all the rings.

The game has 16 levels and as long as you play using the same browser the game will remember your progress when you come back. Give this unique puzzler a twist. It’s great for arbor day fun.

Review: I might have a difficult time describing this game. It’s one of those you just need to play once or twice to understand how it works. But let me do my best. You start with a six by six grid which contains various sized blobs of green goop. The blobs come in four sizes–small medium large and full. You have 10 ‘drops’ in your tank. You use a drop, by dropping it on any one of the blobs. When you do this, the size of the blob increases one step. When you drop on a full sized blob (a large circular blob) it will explode sending liquid in all four directions. The liquid that moves across the board hits the next available blob and increases it’s size by one.

So you must use your drops effectively, trying to make combinations of popping blobs to help you eliminate the remaining blobs faster. You receive bonus drops each time you complete a combination and when you clear each level.

The game actually plays very simply. Once you try it, you will understand it quickly and have fun with it. It doesn’t require a lot of mental figuring out. You mostly choose full blobs which are adjacent to growing blobs and try to work your way through the board. The first time I played, I easily cleared four levels before running out of drops. I imagine with a little planning, you can keep going indefinitely. I haven’t quite run across this concept in a puzzler game before, so I enjoyed the fresh game mechanics this game provides.

Review: This charming progressive puzzler has all the charm of the popular Hoshi Saga Puzzles. In this series of 18 short puzzle levels, your simply have to destroy the Bobteds on each screen. The Bobteds take on different forms in each level, from water towers to stars to percentage symbols and other objects. Each level has a slightly different technique you must employ to get rid of all the Bobteds, but all of them involve dropping one or more silver pinball balls onto the course so that they bounce onto the Bobteds.

Sometimes you have only one ball to drop. When you drop it, it bounces or causes objects to move which help destroy the Bobteds. Whenever you have more than one ball to drop, you will place each of them somewhere on the course and all balls will drop at the same time after you’ve placed the last one. Many times you need to set the balls at various heights and locations so that they will interact with each other. If you time a ball to bounce and then bounce another ball off of it, it will arc just right to wipe out all the Bobteds. Most levels have pretty easy solutions, but some require a little playing around with first to discover ways to accomplish your task. I had a particularly difficult time with level 16.

All levels in this game have a visually appealing design, using simple pastel graphics and various objects you can bounce off of, turn or maneuver to help you out. The design of this game shows a lot of inventiveness. The game plays just once through progressively. Once you’ve solved all the puzzles, you’ve finished playing the game, but as quickly as most players will be able to make it through, they will also enjoy the fun and cool factor this game provides.