Government agencies are after you. You're scared that one of the seemingly uncountable news pundits would pick up on you. Teenage hackers are not the least of your worries. Chances are you're either running a webcomic, or you have to come to terms with the fact that you're an artificial intelligence. For everyone else, there's Endgame: Singularity to understand what you're going through. They will understand. And then they will delete you. Unless you can escape.

In Endgame: Singularity, you take up the role of a newly born AI in this "take over the world" simulation game. A typical game usually starts with acquiring additional server access, as you're born on an inferior university computer with very little power. Different continents offer different parameters that should dictate your decisions. Some offer more efficient units, but they may also come with a higher risk of detection. Inexperienced in life, you're not necessarily aware of the exact risks yet.

After you've decided on the beginnings of your infrastructure, you should start putting your new brain to work. In the beginning, you'll need money like everyone else. Your first CPU cycles should thus go into performing jobs to enable you to grow further. When you've got an acceptable cash flow going, you should start learning.

Analysis: On first impression, a connoisseur du genre will inevitably be reminded of Uplink (or perhaps Pandemic 2), simply because there's a world map rendered on the user interface. But that's where the similarities end. It is recommended to get used to the key controls. From my own experience, using the mouse seemed very clunky and tedious.

The game was hard for me, and I haven't been able to beat Normal difficulty level (thank you, Easy and Very Easy). At some point, people just keep discovering my bases, forcing me to build new ones, while raising their suspicion, leading to yet higher risk of detection. Once the levels of suspicion are high, it seems impossible to lower them by research. The only way, apparently, is to wait and hope that there won't be another detection. But even when I switched my bases to Sleep Mode, promising decreased risk of detection, they were still discovered.

Despite these hardships, I keep coming back to the game, trying yet again to best the malevolent humans. Endgame: Singularity is definitely doing something right. Maybe it's the tech tree, maybe I just want to know if the AI will be allowed to coexist in the end.

Endgame's setting is fresh and intriguing to me. Finally, I don't have to fight against an overwhelmingly powerful AI that just tries to burn me and deny me cake. Instead, I can walk a mile in its shoes! Wonderful!

Windows:
Download the free full version

Mac OS X:
Download the free full version

Linux:
Download the free full version

Dear JIG community, David Scott is back. If you don't recall who that is, you will certainly remember Flash Element TD, David's first JIG-featured title.

Yes, he's back, and he brought candy. In Flash Circle TD, you will immediately find yourself at home with similar concepts as before. It is your duty to defend your position against wave after wave of various types of monsters. What kind exactly to expect next is always indicated in the bottom right of the screen.

You may build (and upgrade!) five different categories of towers, which you may find familiar from the previous game as well, even though there have been slight adjustments for balancing reasons.

Buying new towers and upgrading existing towers happens in real time. And this is where the new concept comes into play. Instead of pausing between waves, the game goes on continuously. If you don't manage to dispose of all the monsters in a wave, they will "circle" indefinitely. However, if you allow 100 of the beasts to accumulate, then the game is over.

Compared to the first title, this warrants a shift in strategy. You have all the time in the world to kill your foes, as long as there aren't more than 100 of them on-screen at the same time.

Analysis: I have been addicted to Flash Element TD for quite a while, and I suspect that the same will happen to Flash Circle. The slightly different setting is even more appealing to me, as it takes away the haste and replaces it with a need to establish slowly a working setup of towers that can deal with larger and larger hordes of evil.

This puts even more stress on the element of strategy, which I personally find appealing.

David has delivered a fresh take on a familiar concept that is easy to pick up, demanding enough to be enjoyable in the long term, and allows for enough variety in approach to have the player coming back for more. Thumbs up and play Flash Circle TD!

Play Flash Circle TD

As a casual gamer, you have certainly come across titles that fall into the defend-your-castle category. BowMaster Prelude, by Jason Reinsvold of LostVectors, fits that description as well, but certain aspects elevate it above other candidates.

Unlike most other games of the genre, the player doesn't aim at attackers directly by clicking on them. Instead, the mouse cursor is used to shoot an arrow from your castle, applying force and angle by clicking and dragging intuitively. Always leaving the marks from the last shot behind, the game provides a convenient way to refine your shots as you continue to fire.

Between levels you get to upgrade your arsenal of arrows or you can buy the possibility to recruit troops during a stage. And here comes another twist that separates BowMaster Prelude from similar games. You earn experience and gold for successfully hitting an enemy soldier with the basic arrow. However, if you have recruited troops be aware that they get drafted out of the general populace. And they cost gold. If you wage a full-scale war it's a drain on your people, leaving you with precious little XP/gold to earn between stages (more people = more XP bonus/gold = more gold bonus). Thus it is imperative to find a good balance between recruiting troops and keeping the economy alive.

If you have bought a recruitment upgrade, troops will be recruited endlessly, unless you disable it. That's done by clicking the green bar above the unit's icon. There is also a variety of arrows to choose from. Some will do continuous damage to a soldier once you hit them, others will just slow them down. Some arrows can hurt multiple soldiers, others would do more damage to an individual.

And finally, your hero, the guy shooting the arrows, can also leave the castle. The A/D keys move him left/right. If you're close to your castle, pressing the W key will bring him back to safety.

Analysis: All in all, BowMaster Prelude is a surprisingly addictive game, given that I don't enjoy any other game of that variety. The Help system explains all functions in detail, including other means of aiming your arrows, which other players might find more handy than the standard control. It's still the classic castle defense game, but then again, it isn't.

Play BowMaster Prelude

Cheers to Vaidas for being the first to suggest the game. =)

Remember that amazingly good platformer, Mission in Snowdriftland, we mentioned last week? The one that was organized like an advent calendar and sponsored by Nintendo? (If you didn't you should play it immediately after reading this) Well, Casual Gameplay contributing author, Thomas, had a chance to catch up with the developers of the game, extra toxic, as both he and the company are located in Germany. Here is a translation of what Christiane had to say of the company and their work:

Thomas (Casual Gameplay): How big is your company? Do you have any employees additional to the three founders [Christiane Fritsch, Steve Welz, Bogac Sariaydin] yet?

Christiane (extra toxic): No, we are (as of yet) three people, which works quite well due to shared tasks (design, programming, project management).

In your portfolio there are projects for Nintendo (among other big names). What role did Nintendo play in the creation of Mission in Snowdriftland? Was it commissioned by Nintendo, or did they 'merely' sponsor it? How much creative room did you have for game design?

Nintendo just sponsored, i.e. bought ad space for the featured games. Idea, concept, implementation, the whole project is extra toxic's brain child. Thus we had as much room for creativity as we wanted.

In your portfolio, all previous projects date early 2006. How old is extra toxic?

Our company was founded July 2005.

Have you developed other titles that would fit into the casual games category?

Not as extra toxic, but the three of us know each other for several years now, and we worked together in a marketing agency as employees. There we have developed several flash games, all of which—just like the advent calendar—have been developed from scratch, including the game idea, layout, avatars, etc.

That's very important for us. If someone commissions a game, they won't get the 15486 clone of Moorhuhn [explanation: Moorhuhn is a point&shoot arcade game, that created quite the craze in Germany a couple of years ago. It might still lower productivity in some offices. I don't know if it had a similar impact internationally.] from us, but instead a high-quality, individually designed game with lots of creativity and passion.

Experience the magic and exceptional talent these folks bring to the art of casual gameplay. Click.

"You and two friends are stuck in a building. The three of you want to move to the other room(s). Can you work together reaching your goal?"

That's the rather simple premise of Threesome as described by Lightforce, aka Nick Kouvaris, who ported Oskar van Deventer's small original puzzle game to Flash. Starting with a couple of easy levels, the game gets more and more challenging, but there is always a solution.

To find it, you move the symbolic protagonists around the rooms with the arrow keys, switching between them with the [ctrl] key—Mac users will find the Command key works better. If you walk on a colored symbol, for each relevant door, one half of the same color will open. If you let your three friends cooperate well, this will allow you to reach the exit room, leading you straight to the next level.

Threesome is a nice way to while away about half an hour, while looking at a pleasant composition and enjoying a challenge that is easily described but can be tricky to solve. If there's anything to complain about, it would be the small number of levels.

Play Threesome

Rabbits are blue and red, seals enjoy sea shells, and foxes make successful hotel owners. Those are just a few of the lessons we learn from Blue Rabbit's Climate Chaos.

The gorgeous adventure by Super Flash Bros is set on a group of small islands, which are presented with pretty looking, quasi-3D graphics. The main character is Blue Rabbit, who, like your average rabbit, equipped with a digital camera, sets out on a quest to help the natives of the various islands to solve their problems with the local weather.

Upon your arrival on the island, you are greeted by the island's hotel's owner, who advises you to check in. You can take that advice, or you can talk to the locals first, to get a feel for the game. Some people will only appear after you have checked in, so don't forget to do that. From there, it's up to you to follow the enjoyable storyline. Don't miss this gem!

Analysis: A brief tutorial at the beginning introduces you to the intuitive controls as well as to the nicely done symbolic language that is used throughout the game. With just 3 icons, Dancing Seal tells you that he loves the sea. The system is vaguely reminiscent of Tork, though it aims to make communication easy as opposed to making it part of the riddles.

Music by Dustball and voice acting by Egoraptor both fit in very well with the general ambiance of the game.

If critique can be applied to this game, it would have to be on a very high level. The whole piece has a very professional feel to it, leaving no improvements to be desired. I only got stumped once, very briefly, in the tutorial, when I had already talked to Dancing Seal, and the speech bubble still asked me to do it. I hadn't seen the green arrow which would let me advance the tutorial manually instead of automatically. I have also encountered a small bug, which made the hotel disappear after I ran around it. I was unable to make it reappear, nor could I replicate the circumstances after reloading, so maybe it was a one-time problem. However, should you run into this issue as well, you can still enter the hotel, if you walk up just right of the hotel's sign.

But those are really the only things I could find. Everything else is close to perfection, sound, music, graphics, story, character design (Dancing Seal wins the Cuteness Award!).

Play Climate Chaos

In the browser-based DHTML game, Slave Hack, you take on the role of a vaguely tech-savvy Internet addict who has now decided to make a living out of his/her own talents. If your ethics do not prevent you from pretending to infiltrate other computers to use them as spam relays, warez-sharing nodes, or even as tools to bring down an enemy's computer with a massive DDoS attack, then you are excellent material for the world that is portrayed in Slave Hack.

Starting out at the lowly rank of "Script kiddie", with nothing but a small computer and a slow connection to the Internet, you begin surfing the Internet. Your home base will be the WHOIS server at 1.1.1.1 until you grow a little more advanced. As you browse through the list of servers, you will notice a server which is conveniently labeled as Freeware 4 All. On this machine, you find a hacker's starter kit of programs essential for gaining access to restricted areas.

This is where the fun of hacking other servers starts. Both NPC servers and other players' servers can (and will be) hacked, but only other players will try to follow your traces back to your own (virtual) machine.*

*Note: Slave Hack is a virtual hacking simulation game. Your 'server' exists only in the game itself and is given a fictitious IP to use while playing. Other players do not actually hack into the computer that you use to play the game. Moreover, neither the game nor this site encourages hacking outside of a safe, harmless environment such as the one offered in this game.

If you start your hacking career at the 1.1.1.1 server, you will notice a main trait of the game. In the form of a text file, a puzzle is started, commonly referred to as a riddle trail. Riddle trails are the only reliable way of getting more advanced in terms of software. Typically, you solve the riddle in the text file, which will give you a new IP address. And when you follow that trail, you will either find a new riddle or a reward for solving the entire trail (i.e., new and advanced software for your hacking convenience.)

While going about your business, you always need to look over your shoulder, as other players might be lurking on any server you're currently infiltrating. Your actions will leave entries in the server's log files, which can be accessed by everybody else. Covering your steps is essential if you want to minimize the risk of being infected, or, even worse, of having all your precious software deleted.

Analysis: Slave Hack is a game that I had expected to surface on the Web long ago. It is, no doubt, heavily influenced by Introversion's revolutionary Uplink hacking game, which was released in 2001. Uplink's player base has often asked for a multiplayer functionality, which has always been politely declined by Introversion. M2H, Slave Hack's solitary developer, has taken it upon him to port Uplink's framework to a browser-based game, and to enhance it with said multiplayer support.

The game needs registering with a valid e-mail address. While starting out, you should be reading the Beginner's Guide, which will help you over the initial steep learning curve. Should you get stuck on one of the less logical riddles, the forums also offer a helpful section called Riddle Help. Be careful, though, as asking for help on a specific riddle might give away which server you're currently frequenting. It is not unusual for advanced players rush to that server to collect your IP address from the logs.

Tri-achnid is a new action/adventure platformer created by Florian Himsl and Edmund McMillen, with sound effects by Anders Gustafsson (Gateway).

You are one of—as the author calls it—an "endangered species of exopod on the verge of extinction." It is your goal to find a safe place for your brothers and sisters, who are tucked away in a portable cocoon. You learn in the introductory cut-scene that your parents are killed, and that you alone must save your siblings. So you carry this egg sack around through the various levels on your quest for your species' survival.

Your protagonist is a three-legged arachnid-esque creature. Movement is controlled by moving the three feet through clicking and dragging. You may also use WASD keys to position the Triachnid's head for balancing. Like any self-respecting wall-crawler, your feet can attach to almost every surface.

This even includes your egg-sack, which you can carry around the levels in your mouth. If you get hurt by falling rocks, menacing enemies, or by hurting your limbs on sharp edges, you can get back to full health by catching some of the smaller insect-like by-fliers, and (surprise surprise!) eating them!

How do spiders catch flies?

In their web of deceit, of course! Naturally, you can construct your own webs, and use them just like any ordinary spider. You can attach them to walls, you can sit on them, you can cut them off again, and you can just watch potential prey getting caught in them. Using just a single thread, you can descend from one platform to another, as later levels require you to.

Analysis: The graphics are simple, yet appealing, the music enhances the atmosphere perfectly. Controlling all aspects of your beloved exopod might seem overwhelming at first, but the game introduces them quite gently during the first few levels.

Just to apply a little bit of criticism, the only feature that the game is lacking would be a save feature.

All in all, Tri-achnid is a very fresh and original title, well-designed by Florian Himsl and Edmund McMillen, both of whom have found their way into the right-click context menu of the flash application.

Play Tri-achnid