Welcome to your Friday! Specifically, your Link Dump Friday, where we've assembled for you a fantastical conglomeration of some of the 'net's Link Dumpiest games. You want ninja? We got yer ninja. You want weaponry? Yeeeeah, boooy-eee, we got yer weaponry! You want a game with dozens of hours of engrossing play, unlimited replayability, and some of the hottest achievements you'll ever unlock? Well, too bad! We'd like a pony, but it ain't gonna happen! Geez, we had a good thing going together here, and you had to go and get greedy, didn't you? Some people!
Number Ninjas - Crouching number, hidden mathematical problem! In his entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project numbers theme, Peter Groeneweg taps the pulse of today's youth with a stylish game of... math! Woooo! Actually, while not without its issues, this oddball little game where you throw different shurikens to solve problems as a sneaking, leaping ninja number is surprisingly stylish and certainly worth a look.
The Gun Game - As a proper, refined lady, I am typically only interested in gun games if they involve the application of weaponry upon the undead. By contrast, this physics game has no shambling zombies for you to unleash your (wo)manly rage upon, but it does boast a variety of detailed weapons, achievements to earn, and an admirable attempt to make every weapon behave realistically, down to recoil and reloading. Learning is fun-damental!
B.C. Bow Contest - Hey, Nitrome! Long time no see! A really long time, if the cavemen are any indicator. Designed to be played solo or with a friend, Nitrome's latest offering is a game of prehistoric skill where you compete against various stoneage champions to prove who has the best unibrow of them all. I mean, archery abilities.
Cat Got Lost - It's hard to nail down precisely what about this little pixel puzzler is so weirdly interesting. Pick up the right keys in the right sequence to unlock the doors leading to your cat across twenty levels. It'll probably only take up about five minutes of your time, but we dare you not to crack a smirk at the progressively more plaintive one-liners that crop up between each level. It's fast and strange, but I like it. (Perhaps because of my inherent kinship with the "strange" part.)
Bubble Guinea Pop - This is a game about guinea pigs who kick butt and chew bubble gum. Actually, wait. Apparently, they just chew bubble gum. And they do it to save zoo animals by flinging themselves around the screen and blowing bubbles of the sticky stuff. Obviously. I mean, what else would a guinea pig be doing with bubble gum? It makes so much sense! Thank you, Longanimals! Now I can finally sleep at night.
Cat got lost is a fun, simple little puzzle. I wish there were more games like that.
For Number Ninja: level 2 is bugged. I don't activate the marker when I reach the end, and I end up trapped in the level forever.
The gun game was really impressive. I had fun just playing around with the way the different guns behaved. Although requiring you to only beat the challenges with an expert rating to unlock certain guns is way too steep. The Veteran rating is tough enough for most of those, and with some of the "Skill Challenge"s, the physics are so touchy it would take ages to make it work with the number of bullets limited to the expert rank. Which is a shame, since I would've loved to play with all of them.
zbeeblebrox: You have to have transformed into the correct number to end a level.
BC Bowmaster would be far more fun if you didn't have to wait for ages for your opponent to aim. Sometimes they take take 30seconds a shot (on my pc anway) which is doubly frustrating when you are miles ahead on points already and just want to get on with the next level!
Can I just say I love you Dora. I'm glad I'm not the only "proper, refined lady" here :)
Cat Got Lost is so adorable.
ok... i'm feeling very dumb right now... how do i play the gun game? i can just move about, that's all.
Cat Got Lost was awesome. Played The Gun Game yesterday or so when I found it on my own, seeking a way to avoid doing homework; pretty much beat the basic stuff, most of it using the first pistol (didn't know how to switch at first). Number Ninjas was interesting at first, but then too many numbers got involved. B.C. Bow Contest got repetitive, particularly after I was beating the other guy by a decent amount. Bubble Guinea Pop was a lot of fun, but eventually got stuck.
I don't know about anyone else but one of the banner ads on BC Bow Contest made the game run so slowly it was almost unplayable...did anyone else have this?
I am always happy to meet another lady of good taste, brokenrecord!
Devron, if you're still having issues, make sure you're in the right area of the screen when you're playing the game. You need to be in the area all the way to the right to be able to fire. (A bit frustrating since every other game and its grandma plays from the left, but, eh.)
It's rather sad that the really good game Number Ninjas gets awfully hard and damn annoying because the jumps from platform to platform usually have to be extremely exact that I fall down like every second time.
I'm also having trouble with 'The Gun Game' - I can move the gun, but it's faded-out, and I can't seem to fire. =?
The scorecard makes BC Bow Contest seem like it a best 3 out of 5 event, but I would lose whenever I lost a round, even if I was ahead in points overall. Combined with the slow pace and Mochi tie-ins, that's enough to make it one of the rare unplayable Nitrome games. Quite disappointing.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the guinea pig game. i was hooked for a good long play on it. really well designed, good middle of the road difficulty- as the simple thing it's trying to be, it really works. lots of these types of puzzlers are clumsy, but i got right into the bubble gum bubble blowing, zoo saving rodents. really addictive and fun.
"I can move the gun, but it's faded-out, and I can't seem to fire"
You need to be in the rectangle to the right to fire.
That bow game is the most boring game Nitrome has ever made.
In B.C. Bow Contest, I can see the menu button, but not any text on it, and I can't see the points. It's frustrating 3:=
Playing Cat Got Lost made me really happy. :] It's a good game to play if you're feeling the blues.
Cat Got Lost makes me want to find a copy of Rescue Rover - I played that game waaay to much.
OH-NO Number ninjas wont load =(
The Gun Game is really, really cool!!!!
Cat Got Lost no load :(
O! Pls disregard previous comment. Just downloaded flash player and all is good.
Cute game :)
What's at the end of Cat Got Lost after
Cat, you are the best cat in the whole world.
?
I thought it was the end, so I closed the window, just as the screen was changing to some more text... D:
On B.C. Bow Contest, nothing appears on the score card and none of the upgrade arrows are ever unlocked. Is this normal?
For Number Ninja, use keys 1-4 to change your projectile (+ - * /), I did not see this written anywhere and thought level 2 was not passable as well.
IMO B.C. Bow contest is the best nitrome game in a while. It incorporates a fun mechanic, has a decent learning curve, and allows for replayability, especially with winning items. The graphics are nice, and all in all the game comes out with a lot of shine. I think B.C. deserves a full review.
@joye:
i suspect it might just be the instructions/controls screen (the one that tells you how to change the volume or something like that...) because i think when i played it yesterday, i was switching between the game and some other tab in my browser, and i kept seeing flashes of the controls screen for a split second or so while changing between tabs... so i suspect it might be what you thought u saw ^^ think it's a bug with the game or something? :P
number ninjas won't load for me either :(
@Joye, snowmoon: yeah, that's exactly it. Any time you click outside the Flash field, the game displays the pause menu. It's not a bug, just an unusual way to present it (especially since there's no time limit or enemies chasing you)
@E-Rock: I missed that as well. It's written on one of the steps in level 1, which I probably jumped over rather than landing on. It's a great idea, terrible jumping functionality though. I think in this case, I'd actually rather do math than platforming. And that's sayin something!
What's up with B.C. Bow? After every round, it shows what appears to be a blank scorecard. Are they supposed to show me something, or is it just hiding a loading screen? The levels seem to unlock fine..
And speaking of Nitrome+many other game hubs: Does it happen to anyone else where audio ads on games that load quickly will continue playing the ad's sound all the way through, even though the loaded game has chosen to start? I see this happen quite often. It's kind of annoying.
The meowing noises in the game made my cat hunt around for the cat that was meowing! I had to turn the sound off to finish my game :S so adorable.
For those of you that were having trouble with the text in B.C. Bow Contest I can confirm this has now been fixed! You might need to clear your browser's cache and reload the game to see this. Also if anyone had problems playing on a Mac with Firefox we've fixed it now so that you can let go of the mouse outside of the screen.
Me too Katherine. Every time I got to the end of a level and the cat meowed, my cat looked at me with daggers, so I had to turn the sound off. Such a cute game though.
Number Ninjas was a bit too buggy for me. There was a point where I couldn't not be seen and still stand in a position where I could shoot the enemy.
A nitrome game on a link dump? This is just as bad as when JIG 'dumped' Off the Rails into one of these, and nobody gave it any acknowledgement that it was even there; they were too busy playing the flash version of Portal. Sure, I do hate waiting for my oppents to shoot their arrows, and B.C. Bow Contest may not be that great of a game, but I would like to applaud Nitrome for only giving us payment options for extras, rather than levels (which they did when they wanted us to bu half the game of Twin Shot 2). I am a huge Nitrome fan, they are the reason I found JIG in the first place. Because I expect more great games from them, I will buy the bonus material with mohicoins. Thank you Nitrome, for letting us play the entire game for free. I will now go to your site and bask in the light of your flash games. Cheers!
-Zack
Number ninjas does not appear to load in chrome.
The puzzles for Cat Got Lost seem to be randomly generated. Starting with level 13, I had to reset the level any number of times because the puzzles were literally impossible. Eventually, though, it would give me something solvable.
I'm playing The Gun Game. There seems to be a couple of flaws in it. Notably, I see no way to unlock 3 guns - I need to get more novice, veteran and expert medals to get the last 3 achievements, but I don't have enough guns I've not got the medals with already...
Anyone know how to unlock the Walther PPK, SMG PK2 and the P90?
@rik re the gun game,
definetly no flaw , I've unlocked everything an achieved all 'ments' except expert on M1A rifle speed challenge :(
Anyway I'm not sure what your missing specfically so I'll list some confusing aspects it took me little while to work out, maybe will help some folks.
1.Under weapons there are choices at the top to click for pistol rifle smg etc showing many more gun varieties to try.
2.You can do all three challenges with each gun.
3.A hint I read elsewhere for at least one of the skill challenges , the luger I think, to get it in expert involves shooting as the boxes are still falling when doing reset- in short hit R and shoot the right spot before the boxes settle- the right spot =trial and error.
Now has anyone managed to get expert in the speed challenge with he M1A Rifle?? if so how please - can't see a way to do it without a reload and just taking one second to long with one :(
oh nvm last part of comment- got expert just needed to shoot better quicker- shouldnt of let frustration get me :D
Here is an image link which shows rewards for achievement, marked as spoiler as an alert not to look if you'd rather unlock them yourself
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/48/thegungame.jpg
ps.some guns become much easier to use once certain rewards unlocked and expert on some challenges may be much easier to achieve once this is done, though this isn't always possible.
@Rik
If you mouseover any locked gun, text pops up telling you what you have to do in order to unlock the gun.
@Bramble
I actually have expert on the M1A rifle speed challenge. I started shooting the top target and continued down. After having shot five targets I had to reload. While reloading, I positioned the rifle at the bottom of the screen. After the rifle reloaded I quickly shot as many bullets as I could, while still keeping the rifle in the same pisition, hoping that the recoil would lift the barrel high enough to hit all three targets. And it worked! Maybe you should try something like that.
If that doesn't work, try to lower the visual quality of the game. For some reason, that helps.
B.C Bowcontest is a real... Let down, actually. After ages of no Nitrome, they come with three... yes, I think three, suckish games in a row. Where did all the creativity go, guys? And really, Nitrome should really stop trying to make games where you have oponents with an individual turn just like yourself.
Anyone remember Mutiny? Yeah, those things were bugged. Took ages to finish and were too good in aim. Same in BCBC. They take ages to shoot one of their arrows, and they get three arrows. THREE I played this game while playing another, writing this review, and talking to people on MSN. Because they take that long to aim. Seriously. This is not a 5 minute game, guys. Remember to open a second Tab and do something while you play this rediculously slow game.
Other than that, the characters and their descriptions make me laugh... Sort of. And why can't you play a girl?! You can play one unibrow, another unibrow, and a baby unibrow, but not a girl?! C'mon, guys, we aren't that bad.
Also, another one of those 'buy-to-play-fully' games. I know Nitrome deserves some money, but I can't unlock (Atleast I think so) any, and I mean ANY other weapons save for the normal arrows...
Cheers, ninti! =)
Gotta say, 'Cat Got Lost' is v. fun, supremely quirky.
As is usual, I found the hover text seconds after posting... d'oh. I have now completed it all...
More hints for the game - Do what you need to unlock the guns - you need to unlock the guns to be able to complete the challenges. You will need to do accuracy challenges repeatedly because there is the element of randomness in them. There is a couple of them where you need to bounce the round off the back wall before hitting the boxes. There are also a couple where you need to shoot before the boxes land initially.
As for the speed challenges - just practice I'm afraid.
The bonuses of increased ammo and less recoil are helpful, when you get them - remember that the accuracy challenge is targets hit, not rounds fired - 30 targets from a 35 shot magazine isn't as hard as 30 targets form a 30 shot magazine :)
B.C. Bow Contest is just not as much fun as the game it appears to be ripped off... uh, inspired by: Bowman 2. The aiming mechanism is less precise, the challenges are less challenging, and the opponent is stupider and slower.
I love the concept of Number Ninja, but my number is not very agile... Firefox/Mac issues, maybe? Anyway, after dying 16 times on what ought to be a simple jump onto a moving platform, I gave up.
Cat was very easy, but very cute. Made me tear up a little bit, though, as I remembered cats of mine who have moved on to a higher plane of feline existence.
In The Gun Game, how do you
improve the reload time on the Kar 98k?
I don't see how I can hit 4 seconds on the Speed Challenge given the current reload rate (even after bouncing the first shot off the back wall)...
And of course, as soon as I post my previous question, I succeed.
I hate it when that happens. :-D
I've been playing B.C. for a little while, and I must say it is sort of a disappointment. This is because the game is not about skill. I can get bullseye on every shot and still lose a level to an AI that misses 1/4 the time. Why? Arrows like the huge, invincible arrow, the bomb arrow, and the point multiplier arrow allow them, with a few bad shots, to completely outstrip the perfect shots of a human player. Honestly, I'd be more happy if the AI was perfect at aiming like in mutiny. At least I'd stand a chance...
RE: The Gun Game
Has anyone got expert on the Luger skill challenge? Any tips would be appreciated.
In The Gun Game, one rifle (the one you unlock by completing the "M1A Martyr" achievement) has a reload time between shots such that the speed challenge for it is nearly impossible. :( Help please?
so im stuck on level nineteen of cat got lost. wtf, it seems imposseeebleh
On B.C. Bow Contest, on the Fire Cup round 3, you should release during the earthquake so it pushes your arrow firmly across the nothing surface.
Update