If there is one thing we know about sports, it’s that they can be very dangerous, especially to us frail computer geeks. This includes the vigorous sport of foosball, a competitive game where players recklessly twist pole mounted soccer players at break-wrist speeds. Many professional foosballers have had short careers do to overextended wrists. Others have become visually handicapped after taking a rouge ball to the eye.

Thankfully, technology has given us what we need, a safe way to play this life-threatening sport.

Miniball’s simple controls and varying difficulty settings make this a great time waster for people of any skill level. The game is built in to the website so it shares the integrated streaming music that cycles through a mix of interesting tracks rather than looping the same song over and over, a refreshing change in web gaming.

While the simplicity of this game makes it easy to pick up, it does limit how long you can play the game before you start to get bored. This game is a great way to waste some time, and you can even drag a fellow unproductive co-worker to your desk for a few rounds while the boss is out getting a Brazilian bikini wax.

I remember back when I was in high school, I rented Super Bomberman on my SNES. I was expecting just the classic gameplay of the NES incarnations but was surprised to see the rental included a 4-controller game tap. Playing Bomberman in vs mode with a bunch of friends while slinging some beers was great fun back in the day.

Bomb It has taken that basic gameplay and bundled it into a lightweight web game, with great (if a bit cutesy) graphics and challenging AI. Each level has 4 bomb-dropping robots that are trying to blow each other up and become the winner by being the last man standing. You can take on 3 AI bots, or have a friend jump on the keyboard with you and make things more interesting.

The sounds in the game are pretty classic, to match the game style, and the music is very cheery and not too hard on the ears.

If you want to kill a few minutes while you are waiting for the bathroom to free up, this is the perfect way to do it.

[ Play Bomb It ]

One of my favorite puzzle games (yes, being one of my favs MEANS SOMETHING DAMN IT!), PROXIMITY mixes Othelo with math, and damn me if the AI can’t add better then me (not that that’s saying much).

You start out with random tiles (1-20) giving to you, turn by turn, and try to place them to better defeat/capture the AI’s tiles. Choosing the quick set up, placing a tile next to your own increases your surrounding tiles by 1 point (the max being 20) while placing a tile higher then the AI’s next to it turns it to your own with same numbered tiles against each other doing nothing. The game ends with having more overall armies, depending on if you chose quickset up or if you think you’re a badass and go into the game setup, which gives several options to make the game harder/easier.

For coming out over 2 years ago, PROXIMITY still offers great game play which, to quote Othelo, takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master, unless you cheat like I did when first playing it and set the AI to beginner, haha.

[ Play PROXIMITY now ]

Coded by Evan (FrostedMuffins) Greenstone with art/animation by mindchamber, Red Baron has the eye candy were use to from Jose with some great coding mixed in to give bloody fun for the whole family. The enemies were designed for a contest held on the mindchamber forums.

This is an interesting level-based platformer/shooter/brawler game where you play as a glowing monkey on a mission to protect the world from the Dolly Lamba and his army of sheep.

Glow Monkey has various attacks including banana tossing, tail whipping and gun blasting. His tail can also be used to swing from items in the background in order to reach higher levels.

The gameplay is relatively simple and overall it’s a fun game. Each level presents you with a challenge such as collecting banana or slamming sheep, and bosses are just waiting to take yo down.

The art is good, but nothing overtly impressive, and the level art is very repetitive. The sound has a classic feel to it, and the music starts to get annoying after a few minutes of repeating the same loop over and over.

In spite the creativity in the gameplay, it does get stale after several minutes of doing the same thing over and over, and the control scheme was somewhat frustrating using space to jump and A,S & D for other actions. Still, it’s a great way to waste some time while you wait for your porn to finish downloading.

[ Play Glow Monkey Now ]

Award-winning game designer, Edmund McMillen, with the help of a promising new talent named Komix, has brought another strange creature to life in the world of the Badlands.

Tri-achnid is a very innovative game full of gorgeous art and effects, with a ton of technical merit behind the engine. In this game, you play as a 3 legged creature who must escape from harsh conditions in order to find a home for it’s young. The creature can scale almost any surface in the game allowing the players to explore impressive landscapes in their search for survival.

The controls are simple enough, use the mouse to drag the feet as you crawl around, and the A,S,D and W keys to shift the creature’s mass around for further control.

With the simplicity of the controls the game is pretty easy to pick up and play, but the constant dragging and and elasticity of the legs can be frustrating. Unless you want to spend a good bit of time mastering the gameplay you will find progress in the game to be a little tedious and slow.

While there are many innovative uses of various physics tricks, I can’t help but find the game to be a little gimmicky, and almost too reliant on the physics. I think with a little more focus on speed and simplifying the interaction a little more the game could have broken through the glass ceiling that has it feeling like another ‘physics crutch’ game.

This game is probably not going to appeal to casual gamers, or people looking for something simple and traditional, but if you have the time to get into it, you need to try it out. Like all the badlands games, Tri-achnid has disturbingly fantastic art and a rich world that is definitely worth exploring.

[ Play Tri-achnid Now ]