The Vault
HELLO? Hello? hello?... ECHO! Echo! echo!...
The Vault is seemingly endless, which is awesome! It means there are soooo many fabulous games to revisit. It's like Washington's Library of Congress in here, only funner. And unlike Grandma's photo albums crammed full of awkward family photos, there are no cringe moments when you revisit some old time Flash games. So let's pull up our ergonomic computer chairs, grab our Manually-Operated User-Selection Equipments and enjoy an interactive look at this week's Vault offerings.
The Doors - You don't know where you are or why you're here, but you wish you knew who decorated the place. Ambient lighting, moody music, challenging puzzles and lots of clicking make The Doors a classic in the escape genre. Submachine-esque in its appeal, this is a game that has not yet lost its appeal. Maybe it's the unusual items to find or the shadowy atmosphere, or maybe it's simply because it's a beautifully made first-rate game that's prodigious in its gameplay.
Defend Your Castle - The humble stick figure has it tough sometimes. There are have been many games depicting violence against stick figures and this is another game that is unafraid to squish and obliterate them. To be fair, those stick-men just keep coming at your castle, and they are undeterred by the sight of their compatriots' blood. And boy, they move fast. The recipe for success is to click and hold on each stickman, lift high into the pretty blue sky, and drop for some bone-crunching, blood splattering results. Oh, and upgrades. Don't forget the upgrades.
Battleships - A short game of strategy, well as strategic as a game can be when you're pitted against Artificial Intelligence. The classic board game has been digitized, so you can forget all the fiddly placing of pegs or the messy ink stains on hands. You can also forget about cheating as well. C'mon... we've all tried our hand at cheating in a game of Battleships once or twice. Place each naval vessel on your grid, and try to bomb all the vessels on the AI's grid before it bombs all of yours. Simple.
While we welcome any comments about this weekly feature here, we do ask that if you need any help with the individual games, please post your questions on that game's review page. Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and rediscover some awesome!
Wow, you guys dug up defend your castle and the original battleships? Nice!
Defend your castle really hurt my hand when I last played it though...not sure if I should try it again.
I liked how you acronymed M.O.U.S.E.
The Doors was part of a widespread escape subgenre ... I won't spoil the ending, but at the time it was almost mainstream. It wasn't Submachine's, er, subgenre, though.
Oops, sorry. I was going to say, it was an exploration of what it meant to escape, or the word 'escape' itself. Almost reactionary to the flood of generic room escape games at the time.
Defend Your Castle is seriously old, man. I think it's the first "defend your castle" game. :P
What was the game from ages ago where you had to seat people around a table for a party. The people were different cards with a diagonal split. You had to seat people so the colours on their cards matched with their neighbours. That was a decent game.
[It's called RSVP, and you are likely to see it appear in The Vault. -Jay]
There's an iPhone App for Defend Your Castle. It can still make your hand and wrist ache, but it takes longer.
http://bit.ly/iDefendYourCastle
Something I've been wondering since... wow, since way back in 2005... who actually made the game "The Doors?" There's no credit page, no name anywhere in the game... it's like it just appeared out of nowhere.
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