No matter how tough we are, how much we say we like grilling, or macho things like riding wheelies on our dirt-bikes in the parking lot outside the retirement community, each and every one of us has a cuddly-wuddly side. That's right. I'm looking at you. I know, deep down, you've been looking, searching, for something to love and hug and pet and call George. Shhh, it's okay. That's where this week's Link Dump Friday comes in, with an extra helping of adorable. We'll find that missing piece of you today. Or, um, play some games. You know, whichever is more fulfilling.
Froggy Feast - This would be a charming bug-themed take on Tetris, where you valiantly struggle to save your creepy-crawly comrades from the sap they've become stuck in. If not for the Frog. Look at him. Sitting there. Watching. Waiting. Judging. Be careful. For when you gaze into the Frog, the Frog also gazes into you.
Kahoots - This is a game where you (sshhh, keep it down) indulge in a little puzzle solving (be quiet, seriously!) to get the Kahoots safely to the exit in every... um... the... ARGH. SHUT UP, PEG BEAST. Phew. Right now, you may not understand. But you will. You will.
Wonder Bounce - You remember that level on Super Mario where Mario read the forbidden words and his soul was expelled from his body, forcing him to battle wave after wave of evil spirits trying to steal his body by leaping on their heads? Of course not, because it would have been insane. But if it did exist, it would look a lot like Wonder Bounce. Which is not insane at all, just really... weird.
Red Ball - Red Ball doesn't ask much, really. All Red Ball wants is for you to use the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to reach the flag at the end of each level in this physics platformer. You'll help Red Ball, won't you?... why not? Red Ball would do it for you. Red Ball loves you! Love Red Ball! Love him!!
Me vs Earth - [Warning, mild animated violence.] ... what? Why are you looking at us like that?... oh. So a game where you play a genetically mutated scientist who blasts his way across the landscape by shooting blobs of... something at his enemies to gain levels and super powers isn't adorable. Is that how it goes? Well, that's just crazy talk. Next you'll be telling us explosions and massive property damage aren't adorable, either.
Froggie's cute, but way too easy. The frog hardly eats any bugs at all.
Froggy Feast quickly got boring, and the Peg Beast in Kahoots stopped singing things to me, which made the game not as fun anymore. Wonder Bounce was kinda repetitive, and I kept dying at level 3. Red Ball was actually fun and interesting, but I could never get to level 13, even on their website. Nothing happened after I beat level 12.
Me vs Earth is semi-interesting, but slightly repetitive, at least in the beginning.
I like froggy feast. It's a little easy (at first), but enjoyable. I would play it longer if the "hardened wax" weren't bugged (pressing the up key, below the hardened wax, moves the bug above the wax).
I found Kahoots a tad easy, but I only got around to the first 10 levels or so. Neat concept.
Wonder Bounce is one of those games that I'll just keep coming back to; I really like it.
Red ball is fun. I want to like it. But when it's memory leaking (I got up to about 1,541,460 K on just that one tab before it became unplayable) it's hard to recommend, and it's hard to like. I don't know what the issue is, but I hope it's an easy fix.
Me Vs. Earth looks really good, and from the little I've played has a nice feel to it (gameplay wise, it isn't very unique... still fun though), but I haven't had a chance to play it as long as I have the others.
That's all for now!
INL: I had the same bug in Froggy Feast, and also experienced memory leaks with Red Ball (it told me my startup disk was almost full as a result).
I guess Red Ball is a great game for those who like these kind of games where yoou have to hit the key in the exact millisecond at the exact pixel to succeed - I'm not that type of guy though :)
bio
Great Friday link dump, really funny.
Whats with all ads on Jay is Games with the blonde girl with her cleavage showing? I'm not complaining, but it is weird.
I found Kahoots fun at first but a bit slow to keep me interested. Regarding the ads, I consider this to be a great family-friendly site, especially with the introduction of the rating icons. However, risking sounding prudish, I personally would prefer not to see such overtly sexual ads displayed.
Red ball
4.6
:D very nice.. a physics platform puzzler!
The Evony ads are becoming notoriously controversial for becoming more and more explicit over time; the game itself is apparently a rip-off operated by Chinese WoW gold-farmers. However, ad hosts refuse to remove them.
[Edit: I agree they are tasteless, sexist, and inappropriate. I am working with my ad providers to remove them asap. I apologize, but it's a constant struggle with the ad networks to provide clean, wholesome, all-ages audience advertisements. If they weren't so vital to keeping this site in business, I'd remove all ads altogether. I appreciate the feedback and the support. -Jay]
I cant get past Level 6 in Red Ball! Can someone help?
Red Ball has some serious flaws. For one, if you beat it at fizzlebot.com and then go to King.Com, you don't start on level 13, you must redo level 12, also, if you die after getting the flag, you still lose, even though it says that if you get it you win. On level 13: Pacman, if you get the green button and die, you don't have to reget it.
Flash games save data on a per domain basis only. This is by security design and is not a flaw. You don't want one site being able to read data you have saved from another.
No, we really don't Jay. But not only does King.com read the data from the Fizzlebot save, but it still doesn't work correctly and open up stage 13.
[Edit: I've contacted king.com to inquire about it. Thanks for letting me know. -Jay]
I wanted to like red ball as well, but it just doesn't seem DONE. The physics are really in need of polish. If you're on an upward slope and jump, the hight you go should be relative to your Speed. A static ball and a moving ball shouldn't be able to jump the same hight.
Too much force is needed to get the ball up to an acceptable speed to jump, which is an issue if you are trying to jump from a narrow pillar/ box.
Some of the levels showed great promis, but in the end, I wasn't compelled to play the other 5 levels.
I liked Me vs Earth
Despite the lag issues, it was a good game and I liked the characters 'evolution' over the levels
Power 4 imo could be a bit more powerful... Building Boundaries seem to be its weakness
The only problem i had with red ball was that it was too short. Fun little physics game with a nice checkpoint system that kept it from being frustrating. It seems to run better if you disable the sound by the way.
Level six:
if you drop straight down and roll down the ramp you get a lot higher off of the jump. Also make sure to jump at the end of the ramps.
Another annoying feature with Red Ball is that while it saves your progress on fizzlebot it doesn't do so on King.com I replayed level 12 in order to get to the final 5 levels, then had to close my browser at the end of level 16. When I went back, I had to start over from level 12 again.
Also, if you dl the game from king.com you STILL have to go to the website to play the final 5 levels, not cool. However, playing the dl'ed version of the game in a maximized window allows you to see the entire map as the sky only follows the ball, everything else is alreadyalong the sides/top/bottom of the screen if that makes any sense.
Me vs. Earth was........Interesting. Also, Im in agreement with the remove Evony ads. They started off perfectly fine, but they have morphed into almost explicit ads, and Im pretty sure they will turn explicit sooner or later. Remove them, if possible Jay. Thanks :)
Of the games listed in this week's Dump, I've only played Kahoots (which I love to teeny-tiny infinitesimal bits) so far. It's late and I don't want to risk getting hooked . . . I might be up all night if that happens. Tomorrow I'll check out the rest.
V2Blast, at what point did the Peg Beast stop singing? I was just introduced to the trapdoors. If I don't hear him again, I'm going to be sad. I like his little songs, and I like clicking the "SHUT UP" button when I'm finished listening to them.
Thanks for the reviews, Dora! You always make me laugh, and I really needed a good one after what I went through today. ^_^
Hey! My son loves the peg monster on Kahoots... in fact, he left it on for like 30 minutes till his dad got out of bed and could see it... well, maybe you have a point ;)
Me vs. Earth: Tried this on multiple browsers and machines. It doesn't work... it just flashes random stuff at you until you close the window. They even know it doesn't work, because they put a "if the game screen is going crazy, reload!" message on the game page. Except reloading simply causes it to go crazy all over again. Whatever this bug is, they should go ahead and fix it!
Red ball is a cute game and a good idea, but for many people like myself it will be impossible to complete. Specifically you won't be able to complete level 6.
The speed of the ball seems to be calculated based on the frames per second of the Flash file. Thus, if you have a slow computer, your ball will never be able to pick up enough speed from the ramp, because the speed of the ball is slower than on a better computer.
@Themepark
Have you tried jumping as you're coming back up the ramp? Simply letting yourself go down it isn't sufficient...
I thought the level design for Red Ball was pretty good, but it breaks down badly at level 15. I'm sure there's some speed for the shopping cart that's neither too fast (causing it to flip) or too slow (so you don't make the jump), but I'm not finding it.
Wonder Bounce is a hoot, but I can't get past the fourth level for the life of me. Is there a trick I'm missing? (It took me a few games to even realize that holding down X made me bounce higher.)
Kahoots is marginally fun but not enough to keep my interest and too slow-paced. Pegbeast was much more entertaining than actual gameplay.
Regarding Red Ball: I do not confuse difficulty with a flawed design. But I have to protest millisecond reaction times needed to play. It's just too short a window. Level 6 for example; ramp is no problem. But to jump from the falling platforms is a problem. I've got a nanosecond to react in order to be able to jump? The platform hasn't even started falling and I can't jump? No thanks.
It's too bad because it could've been a really good game. Just what I like. The creators could vastly expand their audience by making it just a TAD more forgiving without sacrificing its intended challenge. Thumbs down.
Bad Dog, may I suggest holding the jump button before you land on those platforms?
Excellent suggestion, Buttons. Thank you kindly. I did figure that out and am pushing onward. I really want to like this. It's SO my type of game.
Ah, level 15 of Red Ball is killing me. Go too slow and you miss the jump, go too fast and you tip over.
All but Red Bounce are boring, very repetitive or slow or easy.
wonderbounce is fun, but too short (and the boss is actually easier than the level before)
For those of you having trouble withe level 3 and 4:
let the top rows of spirits build up a bit (4 or 5 lines) while bouncing all of the lower spirits. Once you've built up a good mass of spirits at the top, bounce off a spirit on the bottom onto the platforms in the middle of the room, and jump up to the top platform. Then just bounce around in the top few rows (hold down x, and sweep left to right and then back) and you should fill up your allocated number of bounces to complete the level pretty quickly. If you don't make it in one sweep and spirits are starting to get to your body, hold down to fall back down to the bottom level, clear out the spirits there, and then go back up.
since the later the level, the more spirits come out of the top, this makes the later levels really easy; just let them build up near the top, it just becomes a massacre once you get up there.
I finally finished Red Ball. While I take back my initial "thumbs down" comment, I can't say I had fun. Because let me tell you, these guys ain't fooling around with the difficulty. This game was hard. Levels 9 (Ninja On The Bridge) and 10 (Red Ball On The Ball) were particularly tough. On level 14 (Catapult), it took me a while to realize that toward the end:
You can hide from the ninja ball beneath the ledge.
But level 17 (The King) was the most brutal. I felt untold frustration by the fact that you need to press the jump button before you land on a surface if you want any height whatsoever (when you can even jump at all). It felt completely unnatural to me especially when I was trying to steady myself with the other controls.
As noted earlier, beware that your progress on levels 13 through 17 won't be saved. Even if you register. So either start those last five levels with the intent of finishing, or be prepared to start from level 12.
After I was done, I discovered the solutions video at the King site. They make it look so easy. But I'm convinced that not only did they use a controller to play, but also played a modified version. You can see the bounce off the ninja on the bridge in level 9. In actual gameplay, that would kill you. Since I didn't see the video until after I was done, it explains why I played level 16 (Short Cut) all the way to the far right. Only when I finally died after the last checkpoint:
It started me at the beginning with an arrow pointing down as if to say "This way, Dummy."
I had to laugh.
Kahoots would benefit greatly from a fast-forward button and a way to skip the victory animation.
Hey!
I'm developer of Red Ball game. =)
Thanks for all comments!
I will use all your advices in Red Ball 2.
It will be 20 +5 bonus levels, a lot of new and original elements, water, pulleys, stars and etc.
Red Ball 2 coming September 2009! =)
Want Red Ball 2 demo? =)
Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tojMYTHXumM
Update