April 2004 Archives

Similar to South Park Studio's Create-A-Character, this little Flash avatar creator (from an unknown author) is a bit more versatile and has a few more options. Create a face of your own that fits your unique personality, then do a PrintScrn and paste into your favorite bitmap graphics program. For a larger face...

Play Create-a-face

Update: Thanks to Dave for reminding me about Mr. Picasso Head, another fine interactive Flash art 'game'.

Note: If you know who created this little gem, please let me know so I can give proper credit and also contact the author. Cheers!

Chris Hilgert has finally made the fourth game in his YetiSports series available online, this one featuring a flock of Albatross. The object of the game is to fly the penguin as far as you can along the Australian beach. "Get close to the wind, Luke". Play Yeti Sports.

Here's a great little Flash game of mini-golf that is very well done if you can overlook the rather simplistic and plain looking graphics. After all, it's all about the gameplay, isn't it?

Mini-Putt is from an unknown developer and features 18 holes of simple, straightforward mini-golf. Just click to drop the ball on the tee pad where you want it, and then move the mouse to aim and select power. Click to swing. That's all there is to it. Oh, that and you actually have to get the ball in the cup before you can move on to the next hole.

Play Mini-Putt

From the BBC show featuring the same Blobs comes this cute little Flash game that is actually a bit of a challenge. Similar to the classic Lunar Lander game, the objective of Blob Lander is to fly and land your spaceship gracefully.

Also on the BBC Blobs site, you can even play a QBert game with Blobs.

Play Blob Lander

Here's a beautifully crafted Flash multimedia piece by Drew Cope and Sam Lanyon Jones from their multi-award winning site called TokyoPlastic where they will be rolling out version two in May. Not new, I just think it's cool. Enjoy.

Play Drum machine

“Become the bounty hunter behind the visor once more and travel to a planet torn into light and darkness. Hunted by a mysterious entity and a warring race called the Ing, Samus Aran must explore the light and dark worlds of this doomed planet to discover secrets and augment her suit's weapons and abilities.”

Nintendo just released screen shots from its upcoming sequel to one of the best video games ever: Metroid Prime. This time out, Metroid will have multiplayer support and contain more third person gameplay elements than the first Prime did. We are very likely to see much more of this classic-in-the-making at E3 in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait!

Here's a Flash game about gene sequencing from the UK which is surprisingly fun to play. The controls took me a couple of games to get used to, then I caught on to it quickly. It's all about constructing genes by piecing amino acids together in the proper sequence. A very odd premise on which to build a game, but it works quite well actually. Be sure to press the [M] key to mute the music, as it gets a bit repetitious.

Play Gene Sequencer

Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that Square Enix producer, Takashi Tokita, has announced a brand new Final Fantasy game to be released for the GameBoy Advance. In addition, GBA conversions of Final Fantasy I & II are also scheduled for Nintendo's handheld, and possibly Final Fantasy III if reception of the first two are favorable.

There are also rumors circulating the net about a new Square Enix Gamecube title to be announced at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in May.

Happy Birthday, GameBoy. Since it's launch in 1989, Nintendo has sold over 100 million units worldwide, which includes all GameBoy devices—not including software(!) Thanks to Video Fenky for a nice piece describing some of the background behind Nintendo's decision to release the Gameboy 15 years ago today in Japan.

Another favorite of mine is this game by Squid S O U P. Snake delivers classic-style gameplay in a 3D Shockwave implementation. Very nice indeed.

If the above link fills your browser window and runs poorly as a result, try this one.

Play Snake

For those who appreciate games as an art form, Ferry Halim, creator of all things Orisinal (as well as the previously posted Cats), has created a site full of games that are not only fun to play, they're also beautiful to behold. In fact, with so many to choose from, you can literally get lost there for hours.

Chalk up another site worthy of a frequent visit, and yet another example of Flash making a big splash with a very talented and creative artist/game designer.

From Eyezmaze in Japan comes this fascinating Flash game called Grow. Such attention to detail went into every aspect of its animation, sound, graphics and gameplay. It's very simple to play: you drag and drop the "materials" icons over top of the GROW symbol, and then the magic begins to happen. It's truly a delightful little game.

Play Grow

Also from the same creator, check out Vanilla and Tontie. All three games are remarkably easy to play and possess a richness of gameplay and excellence in design that together make them accessible, challenging, and rewarding.

Still want more Grow? Play the entire Grow series of games (in order of release)...

• The original Grow (ver. 3)
• Grow RPG
• Grow Cube
• Grow Ornament
• Grow (ver. 2)
• Grow Nano Vol. 0
• Grow Nano Vol. 1
• Grow (ver. 1)
• Grow Nano Vol. 2
• Grow Island
• Grow Nano Vol. 3
• Grow Tower
• Grow (ver. 3) Remake
• Grow Valley
• Grow Cannon
• Grow Nano 4
• Grow Maze (NEW!)

Bubbels is a strangely addictive Flash game, like Bust-a-Move, from the Netherlands. There are actually five (5) different versions to choose from.

Cheers to Lodrelhai for the info about the other versions. =)

In January, 2004, Chris Hilgert created a Flash game called Pingu Throw, which spread across the Internet like wildfire and spawned an entire new genre of Flash game. The gameplay mechanics were simple and surprisingly fun: Bat a penguin with a Yeti to see how far you could throw him. Since then, Chris has created a trio of games featuring penguins, a yeti and other arctic mammals, and a fourth one is on the way.

Be sure to check out all the variations it spawned.

Play Pingu Throw

Yesterday afternoon, while out enjoying the sunshine, I went down to Borders to shop around for some cool books and found more than a couple. One in particular is a book titled "Flash Math Creativity" which looks very promising for getting up to speed with some very cool Flash math projects. The book is the culmination of contributions from about a dozen artists, thereby providing a rich diversity of interest and approach. The book was more money than I had on me, though I found the web site referenced in the book with all the source code. =)

The web site has all of the examples from the book, and most of them are really spectacular and interactive. And if you get bored with those, there are links to each of the contributors' web sites offering even more to explore.

One contributor, Manuel Tan, keeps a personal site that is especially impressive in interactive design, uncontrol. There he offers everything open source for anyone wishing to learn about the underlying code.

Another game for you to try, this one written entirely in Flash. Its presentation and gameplay are both simple and elegant. And the cats are so darn cute.

The control in this game is very simple: just mouse over a cat to change its behavior. If a cat is walking, it will sit down. If sitting, it will begin walking. The object is to make all cats copy what the currently highlighted cat is doing.

Cats was created by Ferry Halim and they live on Ferry's Orisinal games site with so many other beautiful games. It's a treasure trove for the casual game lover, and especially for kids. It is clear that Ferry puts his heart into the games he makes, and does so with exceptionally talented and loving care.

Play Cats

Why is this game so addictive?

Is it because it's easy to find at least a couple of words? It certainly can't be because I always end up at the bottom of the scoring list.

Play WEBoggle