Dominoes are those rare brilliant artifacts whose secondary use is far better than their intended use. Why play a game of dominoes when you can line them up and watch them knock each other down? Developer Tom Methven may have been in that exact frame of mind when he created the puzzle game Sky Blocs, the lovechild of youthful domino play and The Incredible Machine (and likely influenced by Pushover, circa 1992). Each level presents you with a starting block (bloc?) and an inventory of pieces to the left-hand side of the screen. Place the items, flick the domino, and watch everything come tumbling down.

Arrange your elements so that the initial toppling of the starting block causes a chain reaction that triggers the raising of a flag at the other end of the screen. After laying everything out press the "Play" button and then click the first block to set your Goldbergian contraption in motion. You have more blocks, balloons, bowling balls, and even a nuclear blast at your disposal to complete each stage.

There's a good handful of default stages included in the game, but a level editor with cut and paste codes allows you to create and share your custom stages for a real sadistic challenge.

Analysis: Sky Blocs is a great puzzle game in the tradition of The Incredible Machine, and it's just as addictive. The domino-like blocks being the main element makes the game that much more intuitive, since the physics of toppling dominoes is almost universal knowledge. It's very easy to look at the stage, look at the elements you have at your disposal, and begin to imagine a successful layout.

Easy to imagine, but not always easy to accomplish. The included levels are suitably difficult, though some I found relied more on size and repetition for their challenge rather than cleverness in design. Hey, that's what the custom levels are for, right?

One minor problem I had was the counter-intuitiveness of the starting block. Rather than clicking on the opposite side of the direction in which you want it to go (simulating the "flick" of a finger on a domino) you click on the the same side. It's small but annoying, something I kept occasionally doing wrong even after 9 levels or so. Maybe I'm just not that bright!

I also felt that for a game based on toppling dominoes, Tom missed the mark on one major design choice: speed. Most of the fun of watching a string of dominoes fall is the combination of the blur of motion and "clackety clack" of the bones hitting each other. What Sky Blocs really needed was to be greatly sped up, or at least offer a speed option.

Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed wracking my brain over each increasingly more challenging stage.

Play Sky Blocs

An updated version of the game is available to play at Tom's The First Door site.

An entry from Dom Camus (The Turtles of Time) into our 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, Ballrooms plays more or less like a standard table-top pinball game with an added element of exploration. Really, it's a pinball adventure game where you earn points, grab power-ups, and travel between boards via a network of warp holes. The end result is a pinball universe that's as much flipper pounding as it is exploration.

Ballrooms has several control setups available, one of which utilizes the [WASD] keys for flipper control and the [spacebar] for power-ups. The [A] and [D] keys move the left and right flippers respectively, while [S] activates special flippers and [W] bumps the table. Flippers aren't always placed at the bottom center as on a normal pinball table, but it's usually quite intuitive to see which key moves which flipper.

Bouncing around the various tables in Ballrooms, you'll hit the usual set of switches and buttons that will net you points. You'll also come across warp tunnels and power-ups, which is where things get very interesting. Green-rimmed holes lead to new tables, and exploring the whole Ballroom universe is absolutely something you'll want to do. Power-ups range from boosters, quick-save moves, point multipliers, and so on, all of which are activated with a tap of the [spacebar].

Analysis: With a solid concept and engaging presentation, Ballrooms doesn't skimp on entertainment value. After spending some time with the game, however, you'll begin to pick up on a few minor shortcomings that stand in the way of a better experience. My biggest issue was with the gravity. Some readers referred to the game as having "springy" walls, but it seemed to me as if I was playing pinball on the moon. The actual physics of the ball's bouncing and trajectory seemed spot-on, but the crazy ball just bounced way too high and with too much power. On a typical pinball table I can direct a ball with a fair degree of accuracy to a target, but in Ballrooms I was consistently frustrated by the ball flying like a rocket off a flipper to the exact same spot every time, despite my attempts at timing the shot differently.

I also felt that each room, or "table", was just too small, and some made it extremely difficult to hit all the targets. I think this may have boiled down to a limitation of the medium, but I would have really liked to see a more robust, almost full-size pinball table for each room, allowing for a truly epic pinball exploration bonanza. The rooms as they are now are simply too small and don't last long enough for me to develop any emotional interest in them (yes, you can develop emotional interest in pinball!).

I have to say that despite the game's flaws, it's fantastic fun to play. The concept is brilliant, and I think Dom was simply limited by the time constraints of the competition and the technical limitations of Flash. He did a great job of theming each room with beautiful background artwork, though he could have extended that to the foreground elements as well and it would have gone a long way. Dom mentioned working on a sequel, which is obviously a great idea, but I can honestly see this concept working as a complete PC or console title. That would allow Dom the freedom to include photo-realistic graphics, larger tables, and more robust and detailed obstacles.

Play Ballrooms

Ballonius, from first-time CGDC participants Aaron Cox and Graham Jans, reminds me of that old Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, and Martin Short movie Innerspace, but only in a superficial "I feel like I'm floating around blood cells" sort of way, and certainly not in a "cheated out of precious moments of my life" way.

Control a ship in a miniature-yet-epic battle against undulating bubbles and their mindless minions. Using the [left] and [right] arrow keys to steer and [up] to thrust (Asteroids-style), you must weave in and out of the bubbles in a race against the clock. Collect energy from shifting beams that connect two bubbles while avoiding being caught within the bubbles themselves or being hit by their bug-like drones. You have one defense (besides agility), and that's the ability to hit [spacebar] and fold up into an impenetrable ball while maintaining your forward momentum. Collect enough energy to fill your meter and you progress to the next stage.

Analysis: Ballonius is a fantastic action game that I was drawn to immediately and just couldn't stop playing until I had finished all of its stages. Aaron and Graham have done an excellent job of structuring each level as a sort of mini-puzzle. The main challenge is to finish each stage in the shortest time possible, offering you unlimited chances to succeed, thereby allowing you full enjoyment of the game itself without the stress of worrying about losing outright. Since you can't really lose per se, you can be more aggressive with your gameplay and really go all out to complete each stage in the shortest possible time. It's a winning formula.

The developers also did a nice job of introducing new elements at a steady pace with each new stage. The difficulty increases in a smart and interesting way, rather than just throwing more and faster enemies at you as you progress. Each level offers a unique challenge that requires some thought, quick reflexes, and just a little bit of luck.

Play Ballonius

Save The Planet by Rob Gray, an entry from our 4th game competition, is a simple shooter in which you aim with your mouse, and fire by holding the left mouse button and releasing after charging the shot with sufficient power. Use the gravity of the titular planet, as well as that of the attacking aliens and even your own prior shots, to defeat the endless waves of attackers. Keep in mind that you're more likely than not to cause your own destruction by shooting the planet you're trying to defend. Oops.

One of my favorite things about this entry, and I hope this doesn't sound like a backhanded compliment, is the title. Save The Planet is a loaded phrase that I think deserves to be a competition theme all its own. The most exciting games and movies pit one lone hero against ridiculous odds and then manage to convince you to suspend your disbelief just long enough to get you to the parking lot. Hopefully farther.

While this particular Save The Planet doesn't quite live up to that legacy, it does take an otherwise simple physics shooter and inject it with an implied story line that raises it slightly above the level that its gameplay alone could not have achieved. Maybe I'm reading too much into this title, maybe it's my childhood rescue fantasies focused too tightly onto this one game, but the thought that I was saving the planet kept me playing long after the gameplay itself might have deserved.

Although the gameplay itself may be mediocre, the experience it offers is beautiful and entrancing. If you've played Elektroplankton on the Nintendo DS and found yourself wishing there was an actual game tying it all together, then Save The Planet is the game for you. I don't feel the developer explored the idea to its fullest potential but the changing tones, colors, and music as you hit more and more enemies in a row are beautiful to watch and listen to. Going further along the Elektroplankton route, introducing different enemies at higher levels that have different tonal and visual properties would be the next step in this idea that I would love to see explored.

All in all Save The Planet is a fun, simple shooter that felt a bit unfinished to this reviewer. I feel somewhat the hypocrite though since I played it so much farther beyond what was necessary to write the review, so go decide for yourself.

Play Save The Planet

Let me just come right out and say it: Ballistic Wars, by Wan Hazmer and team at Easy Only! Games, is like Advance Wars with balls. I mean that as a compliment! Thanks to the improvements to the initially submitted version of the game (improvements made based on reader feedback), Ballistic Wars is a fast-paced, turn-based strategy puzzle game that is one of my top favorites from our 4th Casual Gameplay Design Competition. The original submitted version even earned the 3rd place prize ($500)!

Work your way through 15 challenging levels against a mad professor bent on blowing up, well, just about everything. Click on your "troops", represented by camouflaged balls of varying sizes and special abilities, to launch attacks against the opposing forces. Infantry can only attack directly: click on the unit, set direction and speed by moving the mouse, then click again to set the ball shooting off towards your foes. Any opposing unit hit subsequently by ricochet will also be damaged by your attack. Other friendly units can attack directly like infantry or use their special ability.

Units with special abilities include: a sniper that can shoot from afar and send foes reeling; a panic tower that uses its ability to push all units away; and my favorite, the ice cream truck, which makes everyone come running (for ice cream, of course!). The final unit is a tank, which has no special ability but deals massive damage and can take a beating. It's also slow as molasses and the size of an elephant.

Each level poses unique challenges. Some involve simple brute force attacks to reduce your enemy's hit points, others require careful planning and clever use of the environment. The levels are designed more as puzzles to solve rather than as a more traditional war game, so be sure to inspect the level carefully before making your first move. The margin for error on some levels is razor thin.

Analysis: The developers of Ballistic Wars were clearly inspired by Advance Wars, and have done a wonderful job of paying homage to that great series while presenting us with a truly unique game that stands on its own. The presentation of the story, the animation when activating a special attack, and the background music are all minor elements borrowed from Advance Wars that contribute nicely to the rest of the game, which is entirely original. The wonderful character design and animation was by Daim, and Leenyin took care of all the interface design for the game.

Using balls as military units in a billiards-style turn-based war game is a brilliant use of the ball physics theme from the competition. It's also one of the most purely fun games in the competition. Some of the other entries are equally brilliant, creative, and well-produced, but few are this much fun to play.

As much as I love the game there is some room for improvement. Each level is carefully planned and some are very challenging, but somehow few of them are very satisfying. I enjoyed playing the game itself but didn't feel a real sense of accomplishment upon finishing a level. There is clearly one intended solution to most levels and I never felt like I was able to exhibit any creativity in solving them. The background music is a nice touch but never changes, and gets very repetitive. I was also wishing for more unit variety, both for my units and for the opponent's side. With the limited time given for the competition I imagine programming a challenging opponent AI would have been a tall order for anyone.

Despite these quibbles, Ballistic Wars is a standout entry from the competition, and will hopefully be further developed and granted a sequel.

Play Ballistic Wars

zxo - Anything reminiscent of Spybot: The Nightfall Incident has to be good, right? Right! Except for a few small usability issues (which were fixed in the update), Ballistic Wars is exactly what I look for in a casual game: easy to learn, heavy on strategy, and lots of fun! OK, so the strategies were made pretty obvious, but this move did allow more people to get hooked on the game. Easy Only Games has set the bar high for themselves, but I have no doubt that the sequel will be simply phenomenal, with more unit types, and more difficult and open-ended levels to pass.

Combine charming graphics and addictive gameplay with daredveil stunt-diving, and what do you get? Besides the occasional man-shaped hole in the ground, you get an entry from our 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition.

Paracaidas ("parachute" in Spanish) is from Scheletro, a very talented newcomer to our competitions. It's the tale of a dedicated stunt performer who is never satisfied until he has either safely missed his target, or mysteriously closed his parachute and plummeted to his death.

Using only the [spacebar] you must drop a skydiver from a passing plane, and again with the [spacebar] you must open his parachute at just the right time to achieve the target, taking into account the wind speed and direction. You get more points the longer your chute is open before landing, and a bonus multiplier for how close you get to a bullseye. For extra bonus points you can try to collect a shiny gold star that is randomly placed on the screen.

You can continue to replay the game as long as you continue to hit the target. Miss the target and the game is immediately over. You can also inexplicable close your chute with [spacebar] which almost always results in your death, and of course the game ends then as well.

Analysis: This is one of the simplest games I've played in quite a while, yet I found myself coming back to it again and again. The graphics are charming and delightful, especially the satisfying hole in the ground you make after putting away the chute too soon. I was initially unimpressed with its "replay" value, but had to give Scheletro credit after I had been "replaying" his game for about 20 minutes straight.

My main problem with the game is with the ability to close the parachute: it's completely worthless. It seems its only value is to quickly finish an obviously failed jump, and in that it excels. It would seem natural to be able to lose the 'chute and drop a few feet onto the target, if the wind were about to make you overshoot it, for instance. That doesn't even work though since a drop of only a few inches without a parachute is still instant death. It seems too intentional a feature to be so pointless, yet I fail to see its value. Perhaps Scheletro was also a victim of running out of time, as were a few other of our entrants?

Play Paracaidas

I think the very first game that I was ever addicted to had to have been Asteroids. I remember being very, very young and I just wouldn't allow myself to be torn away from this tiny little black and white TV that a friend was playing it on. I don't even think I played that time, I just watched, but I was hooked on video games for life.

Space Pilot, by Alex Kaplan, is the spiritual successor to Asteroids, featuring the same vector-style graphics, the same ship, the same control scheme, and even the same asteroids. It is also an entry into our 3rd game design competition held in June and July.

Use the [left] and [right] arrow keys to spin your ship and the up arrow key to thrust forward. The only way to slow down is to spin completely around and thrust against your forward momentum. Turning is similarly tricky, since the direction you travel and the direction you're facing are completely independent of one another.

This time rather than an endless barrage of asteroids bent on your destruction, you're tasked with navigating through asteroids and minefields, sometimes maneuvering through fenced areas and flipping switches to open passages in order to exit each screen. Each level is timed, and you have an unlimited number of replays to complete it; in some you simply have to survive until the time runs out, in others you must complete a few tasks along the way. Unlike the original Asteroids, the walls in this game are deadly to your ship, so don't fly out one end hoping to pop back in the other.

Analysis: Alex has created a wonderful addition to what we should go ahead and call the "Asteroids Canon". The additions to the original formula are sometimes inspired, and I'm looking right at you, mines, when I say that. "Safe Haven" in particular was one of my favorite levels. The graphics as well as spot-on perfect recreations of the original, and for that I am grateful. I was really tired of Asteroids itself decades ago, but picking this game up feels like I'm putting on a pair of old familiar boots and going for a stroll in a brand new town.

Alex missed the mark on a couple things though, probably due to time constraints preparing for the competition. The collision detection is off on the asteroids in particular: in some cases I was almost a full ship's-distance from an asteroid and was destroyed, in others I was almomst completely inside the asteroid before being destroyed. I also don't think that maze-like levels are well suited for the control scheme, and found them tedious rather than interesting. The replay theme implementation is also not particularly inspired, but it's there and it works.

I also just plain miss the music, although it probably would not have fit in well in this incarnation of the game, so I have to mark that down as a good choice on his part.

All in all it's a wonderful idea with a flawed implementation, but one that shows promise. Hopefully we'll see a lot more work from Alex in the near future.

Play Space Pilot

There is also an updated version of the game available to play over at Arcade Town.

Our most recent competition has shown some seriously inventive interpretations of the theme "Replay", and one of the standouts in that category is Carl Foust's Super Earth Defense Game. It's a typical side-scrolling shooter on its face but, in a unique twist, really shines once your ship gets destroyed.

Using the [arrow] keys to move and the [space bar] to shoot, you must avoid or destroy waves of enemies before making it to the final boss. The replay theme (or in this case, "REPLAI", Responsive Emergency Paradox-Limiting Aerospace Insurance System) comes into play once you are destroyed: it's described as a portable time machine that takes you back to the start of the level. You then fly and fight alongside your past self until the point at which you died.

You have only three replays available, but after you die the critter that killed you is colored differently than the rest, rendering it invulnerable so that it can stick around to kill your prior incarnation. This has the net effect of giving you an extra set of guns for a short period of time, hopefully making it easier for you to pass through the level.

Analysis: I particularly enjoyed the blocky, hyper pixelated graphics in this game, and it was instantly one of my favorites for that reason. I appreciate it when developers recognize that graphics aren't the final word in the quality of a game, and do so intentionally and with great care rather than by cutting corners.

This game does has a few flaws though that render it only an average shoot-em-up.

Carl made the choice to slow down the rate of fire, but I found that frustrating rather than challenging. Send about four times more enemies at me and let me rain near-constant death upon them!

The final boss has also been criticized for being too easy, and I heartily agree. I tried Jay's tactic of just hanging around at the top of the screen and I barely had to move. Either juice up the boss's tactics or just lower his hit points so I don't have to spend too much time dealing with him. The aforementioned rate-of-fire boost may have solved this issue as well.

The ship was also very slow to control, and this too was really frustrating. This may also have been a design choice to heighten the difficulty, but that choice was at the expense of the excitement. Shooters should be fast, noisy, and hairy, with little time to think. Can you imagine if Defender had a REPLAI system?

Despite my snobbish comments I can't say that I didn't have fun playing. He's made a good game that with a few small improvements could be a truly excellent experience.

Play Super Earth Defense Game

Jay - The first time I fired up Super Earth Defense I was a bit skeptical. It seemed like so many other games I had seen and played before. It wasn't until my first ship died and I clicked "Continue" did I realize the very clever design within. All of a sudden, as an epiphany, I saw the potential possible within a game that actually requires you to play well 3 times to muster up enough fire power to beat it. Unfortunately, Super Earth Defense isn't that game. But it is a brilliant design with enormous potential nonetheless. I'm hoping to see this idea fleshed out further with better level design and more devious boss fights. Exceptional idea, Carl!

One of my first ever "favorite" games was a little isometric action puzzler called D/Generation, where you led a little delivery guy through successive floors in a building by stepping on switches, opening doors, and collecting weapons. Does anyone else remember this? My friend and I had such fun playing this game that years later I tracked down a copy on ebay and gave it to him as a birthday gift. Yes, I am that cheap.

Timebot by David Durham is in a similar vein to that old chestnut, but with one noteworthy exception: his interpretation of the "replay" competition theme. Using the arrow keys you must guide a robot throughout several levels. The key mechanic is to roll onto switches that open doors or materialize platforms, but the doors and platforms block your progress again once you move off of the switch. What's a player to do?

In this case hit [spacebar] to jump back in time to the start of the level, allowing your "current" robot to wait patiently while your "past" robot once again heads over to the switch to open up the door and let you through.

Have I blown your mind? There's more: you must accomplish this before you run out of energy, while simultaneously collecting little gold gears for extra points. Had enough? Good, because that's about it. The game itself is fairly straightforward, but the levels obviously get more and more difficult as you progress. You're allowed only a certain number of "time jumps" each level but usually end up using them all, sometimes overlapping your robotic instances so much that your brain threatens to explode from the combined effort of temporal distortion.

Analysis: The replay mechanic in Timebot turns what would otherwise be a simple platform puzzle game on its head and creates something truly outstanding. Not only do you have to know which buttons to press in the right sequence, but you have to mentally track your past movements over several iterations of your robot, replaying in your mind how each one will move and when it will land on each switch. It caused a real brain meltdown for me around level 8, where I had to hit the comments for some help.

The graphics are nice and remind me of a more refined update to the graphics in the aforementioned D/Generation. I think the lack of music is always a good choice in games like these since you could wind up spending so long on a particular level. Unless the music or background sound effects are truly superb, it's better just to do without them lest you drive your audience mad.

My only quibble with the game is very minor. You gather the gears for points, but I'd rather see the gears be put to another use. I personally have never been driven to gather anything purely for points or achievement, though I know that those gamers exist. Perhaps they could bump your energy up to give you more time (and for particularly evil level design, some could actually cost more time to fetch than they give you)?

The game as it stands doesn't really need much refinement, but it would be great to see it further developed with more obstacles, more levels, and eventually maybe a level editor? That's a lot to ask, I know. For now I'll just enjoy what David's given us.

Play Timebot

Jay - David's creative interpretation of the replay theme here applied to a puzzle game fits like a glove. He focuses on a few core concepts and keeps it relatively simple; the end result is a game that is lot of fun to play. Timebot feels like a complete game, polished in many respects and yet there are a few rough spots, too.

Some people experienced difficulty grasping the concept of time travel (myself included), and I believe the choice to describe it as such represents a fundamental flaw in the design. After all, the player isn't doing any time travel, but rather establishing a program for subsequent bots to follow as the player continues along the same time continuum. This burdens the player with a paradigm shift, necessary to experience before the game can be played as it was intended.

And for a game that is entirely keyboard controlled, forcing a mouse-click between levels causes unnecessary additional effort. Also, the lack of a save mechanism to store progress reduces the likelihood that the player will come back to finish if the game is not solved in one sitting. I would have liked to see a keyboard hotkey (spacebar perhaps?) to advance to the next level, and a level select screen with perhaps levels unlocked as the player advances.

All things considered, Timebot is one of 4 entries I had chosen as personal favorites in this competition, and it is a game design with enormous potential. I'd love to see David develop it further with all the polish of a game afforded ample development time. It is an exceptional idea executed almost perfectly, and it is indeed a pleasure to have it included among the other entries. Well done, David!

Admit it: you've wanted to slap someone silly at least once today. Just haul-off and give them a good hard smack across the cheek. Those tourists that walk four abreast and block the whole sidewalk. That guy who double-parked in the street when there were plenty of parking spaces. The women of the house that offer you no respect after your rich nobleman husband died.

Enter Rose & Camellia from Japanese developer Nigoro. Reiko has married into a noble family, but shortly afterwards her husband Siyunsuke dies. The women of the house do not respect Reiko, and she must beat them all in successive slap fights.

Each fight is turned-based, and each turn is timed. You must first click on the "Attack" button that appears in the lower right hand corner. Then move your mouse in a curving arc to the left across the other woman's face. Do this as many times and as quickly as you can before your turn passes on to your opponent.

During your opponent's turn, you must click the "Evasion" button, located in the lower left, then move your mouse in a curving arc to the right. If your dodge is successful, you will be presented with a "Counter" button in the lower right. Click there and do a quick slap back to the left to get in a counter-strike.

Note that there are screen shots of this on the game page if you scroll down, though the instructions themselves are in Japanese.

Go back and forth like this until one of you loses all of your flowers (representing hit points, of course) and you move onto the next, more difficult, opponent.

Analysis: As silly and simplistic as this game sounds, I found it to be a challenging and interesting fighting game. My description of how to fight may sound complicated, but once you've tried it you realize that the buttons are actually placed perfectly for the assigned actions. The combat takes on a graceful quality like a dance. With slapping.

The graphics are superb and detailed, with rich colorful artwork and nice details that enhance the action. The sound effects do their job, with critical hits echoing satisfyingly, letting you know you've landed a good solid hit. The background music is very well done too, evoking the atmosphere of the noble family and also the tension of the game's events.

Don't over-analyze this game, but enjoy it for what it is: a simple, silly, and quick fighting game with stellar production values.

Please note: a proper mouse is absolutely critical to play this game. Jay reported some slowdown issues on his laptop as well, but I don't know what the minimum requirements are. Give us some help on that in the comments!

Play Rose & Camellia

Thanks to Daniel, Thomas, and Dahnyull for suggesting the game, and especially Jakev for sending this in and for doing some legwork on the translation!

I always approach advergames with healthy trepidation. The focus of development is usually on the "message", i.e. what they want you to buy, rather than on the gameplay. It's hard enough to develop a great game, much less a great game that also incorporates marketing elements.

Temple of Zoom by Inbox Digital is a great platformer that manages to use its product's features (the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 digital camera) as integral elements of the game rather than as tacked-on graphics and splash advertisements. The shutter is the exit to each level, the zoom lens is a rising platform, and the hot lava is... I guess the hot lava doesn't come from the camera.

Using the arrows to move and the [spacebar] to jump, you must first find the Wide Angle Lens, which opens up the playing field so that you can then find the Exit to the next level. There are of course bonus points and multipliers to tempt you to more hazardous areas of the stage, as well as tried and true features that you would come to expect from the genre, such as high-jump platforms.

There are 25 levels in all, and you actually get a 10% off voucher just for reaching level 10. If you're in the market for this or any other Lumix camera, that's like free money just for playing the game.

Analysis: This is of course a typical platformer with all of the expectations that label implies, but this game has a lot of nice features to set it apart from others.

The pixelated graphics are incredible, at the same time ridiculously simple yet with beautiful effects that really immerse you in the game. Imagine playing a game with graphics like Pitfall! on a modern computer, and you might start to get the idea. Temple of Zoom's swinging rope completes the analogy nicely.

The game takes too long to ramp the difficulty up to a very interesting level, but around level 9 or so you should be sufficiently hooked to want to finish the game. If you're looking for a nice diversion to fill 15 minutes between the endless march of meetings at work, you can't go wrong with this one.

Play Temple of Zoom

You might not know this, but I have 21-month-old son. He's not quite old enough to show any interest in baseball, but he sure does love it when I sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." The song captures the essence of the sport beautifully and makes me long to be sitting in a stadium cheering on my favorite team.

Luke Whittaker's latest game Baseball does exactly the same thing. It's a stripped-down baseball sim where you simply bat and run, which—if we're being honest with ourselves—is all we really want out of a baseball video game anyway.

You're given a choice between Arcade mode and Bottom of the Ninth mode. In Arcade, you're given 10 pitches to score as high as possible by trying to hit the ball close to a target in the field. Bottom of the Ninth mode is the real nail-biter, in which it is naturally the bottom of the ninth inning, and you're down by several runs and must use your superior batting and running skills to climb out of the hole and win the game.

In each game mode the basic hitting mechanic is the same: once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand you're presented with a cross-hair target that indicates where the ball will cross the plate. Using your mouse move the circle to the cross-hairs and click on the left mouse button, timing it just right so your bat meets the ball over the plate. By aiming higher and lower of the center of the target you can try to hit a line drive or a fly ball, and by aiming left or right you can hook or slice the ball the opposite direction. A red "landing zone" indicator gives you some guidance as to where the ball may land in the field.

Once the ball leaves your bat, you run automatically to first base. When you get close to the base you're given a "Slide" button near the runner that you can click to, you know, slide. Once you're safely at the bag you can click a "Run" button that pops up if you want to keep running. The computer automatically fields the ball of course, and will try to throw you out at the nearest base.

Analysis: Luke Whittaker's Baseball is easily one of the best online baseball games I've ever played. The gameplay mechanics do a perfect job of capturing what it feels like to be several runs behind in the final innings of a ball game, and have only three outs to fashion a miraculous come-from-behind victory.

The graphics are superb, and even better is the sound. Luke has included many different cracks-of-the-bat sound effects, and you can very quickly get a feel for the strength and effectiveness of the hit from the sound effect alone. Your heart sinks when you hear the weak "crunk" sound of the ball hitting near the handle of the bat, and watch in dismay as the shortstop plucks the ball out of midair. You similarly cheer inside when hearing a good, solid "THWACK!" and you know your hit is headed into home-run territory.

My only problems with the game are minor. First, it's hard, at least at first. The first few times I played I felt like I could never get a man on base, much less score. Second, I came across somewhat of a bug, or hopefully an unusually rare occurrence.

At my fourth at-bat (you can get further at-bats if you tie the game: the computer gets an imaginary "at-bat" in which it scores more points, giving you another scoring target to hit) I tied up yet again, with two outs still left, then cracked a good solid high line-drive to left field. The left fielder overran the ball and wound up at the outfield wall, while the ball bounced a couple times and stopped in the middle of the grass. I kept running, rounded second, kept running, heading into home, and scored! I won! Except I realized that no one had chased down the ball. No one. Since no one chased the ball, no one threw the ball back to the infield. The game never ended. I won, but the game wouldn't advance to the "You Won!" screen. The ball had probably landed on that magic pixel in between fielders where no one wanted to chase it down.

I don't think that ever happens in real baseball.

There are also a few liberties taken with the rules of course, which given the nature of the game doesn't really affect your play. The fielding is also sometimes quirky (see above), but that seems to be a necessary compromise to keep the game simple, fast, and fun.

A couple of suggestions: play once on "Easy" so you can get a feel for where the strike zone is. That's all you'll need. Move up to Medium or Hard after that, where you're given a higher score to beat. Overall I wasn't too enthusiastic about Arcade mode, though I guess that's a good place to make and compare scores. Also, you can press the [spacebar] as an alternative to pressing the "Next Pitch" button, as Luke himself points out in the comments. Let's play Baseball!

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