Web-based 3d games are really starting to take off thanks to the power and stability of Shockwave. Nanoquest is a cool 3d adventure came that was developed in ireland of all places. This game uses mission based platforming, but also has a lot of incentive to play as a collection game. You play as one of 2 characters, and the premise is that you are somehow shrunk to a sub-atomic scale. You need to build yourself a ride so you can get where you need to go in order to be brought back to normal size.
The art is pretty decent, a similar quality to what you would find in many high-end n64 games. The actual design of the levels kind of gives them a Tron type look.

The music and sound effects are well produced and work really well with the game. It’s just too bad there was no voice work, you will end up doing a lot of reading.

The gameplay is pretty basic run-and-jump platforming stuff, very easy to pick up. The controls are a tiny bit slow to respond at times, and the character takes a few seconds to get up to speed when running. Still, it’s not so bad that it’s terribly frustrating, and it’s kind of fun hauling ass at full speed and jumping from platform to platform.

Apparently collecting items can really pay off, as users with the highest scores are eligible for some great prizes, so if you are ambitious you can get a lot of replay value from this game.

I did find the sheer number of loading screens at the beginning of the game to be annoying, especially since I just wanted to play the damn game, but if you have a decent net connection, it’s not so bad at all.

All things considered, Nanoquest is a fun game, and is worth the initial wait… but you may find yourself skipping all the text-narration.

[ Play Nanoquest ]

Xtreme Cliff Diving, with art by Luis and with code by Kenny is great holiday fun. Wait, no it isn’t, YOU’RE DIVING TO YOUR DEATH AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

For a quick time waster, it’ll do. Controll yourself with the arrow keys, IF YOU CAN! I like the learning curve with trying to floating about. Makes it ALMOST seem life like. Could’ve been tweaked a bit more in my opinion, as in sometimes you go faster when you shouldn’t, in certain directions. Seemed a bit off to me but a worthy challenge.
More of a mini game then anything, comes complete with hi score bored and nice music/effects.

Definitely could and should be expanded upon. I like to play it and pretend I’m diving in the toilet, avoiding giant dingle berries while collecting pee coins, but maybe that’s just me. Over all, good waste of your 5 minutes.

[ Play Xtreme Cliff Diving ]

More of a gadet then a game, THIS will help you decide who to root for in the NFL post season if you’re team didn’t make it.

I played it several times, and the 5 questions it asks you are random and hilarious so there’s some fun replay value in it.

Some people have had trouble playing it in Firefox so you might wanna use IE for this one.

Being a hardcore Raiders fan I could’ve used this the past SEVERAL seasons =P. With the great voices and questions this makes for a great time waster and decision maker haha.

[ Play NFL Bandwagon ]

This game, pardon the pun, is a hidden treasure, especially for anyone looking for something quick and simple to play.

Pirates & Treasure, by Tim Drew, is basically a small collection of mini-games bundled together with a very funny story of one pirate captain’s quest for rum and riches. Fans of games like WarioWare will want to check it out.
The art is very simplistic and stylized, but very well presented, and fits the lighthearted nature of the game quite well. The sound is pretty good, mostly ambience and effects, but they fill the silence of your lonely, lonely life well enough.

The gameplay isn’t anything spectacular. It’s mostly simple point and click or arrow reaction type mini-games, but the overall variety of play makes this game so much fun.

The only bad thing I have to say ’bout this game is it’s too short. When you beat it (in about 10 minutes) you will unlock the minigames gallery, which has all the games you just beat, plus one new sliding square puzzle.

Even though it ended to fast, and there’s not much replay value, the first play-through is a lot of fun, so give this game a go right now, or ye’ll be walkin’ the plank matey!

[ YARRRR!!! ]

Last week I reviewed a game called Hovertanks. I was impressed by the fully rotating 3d play field (wich is a good accomplishment for a flash game) but mentioned the game was pretty choppy due to low framerates.

Holiday Snow Wars uses a similar 3d engine and has fixed the framerate problems in hovertanks, wich is a step in the right direction, but then takes 10 steps back in the actual gameplay.

The art in this game isn’t too bad, but like hovertanks lacks any detail on the ground. Edmund McMillen lends some last minute art to the game due to the original artist bailing out just 2 days before x-mas. But given the crunch time, you’ll notice the art isn’t what it WOULD have been had the award winning designer had a bit more time.

The sound effects are pretty minimal but mostly fitting, and the music is nice and wintery. Normally I would complain about there being only one music track, but you will get bored of the game before you get annoyed by the music.

As I mentioned earlier, the gameplay is sorely lacking. It seems without a game designer directing the development, Florian Himsl (aka Komix, programmer on Triachnid and Blockhead) has a hard time taking an engine and making it into a real game. The 3d play field and the camera rotation works perfectly, but the movement of the characters is extremely slow. The battle mode had 2 characters (Santa and Jesus) racing to snowball each other’s snowman. Basically it’s like a race… whoever gets to the snowman first and shoots a snowball wins.

And then there is the race mode. If they replaced the Santa and Jesus sprites with 2 snails, it might not be so bad, but somehow the cpu player can actually go a bit faster then you can. I don’t know if this is just buginess or if there are some controls to speed up that aren’t mentioned in the instructions.

The speed isn’t the only failure in this game. When you shoot a snowball, you can’t see it. I’m not even sure that I’m even shooting ANYTHING half the time.

Once again I just can’t believe that this is the same kid that programmed Triachnid. Between this game and Blockhead I am seriously starting to question Komix’s programming ability, and wondering if the parts of his games that do work well may not be borrowed source code from open-source flash demos.

Before any of you indy-game fanboys try starting shit with Komix, I want to say on the record that I don’t see anything wrong with using open source code at all. When I got started, I learned a ton from some of the old flash samples on flashkit. I even made some open-source engines myself back in the day that a ton of people used. I’m just disapointed by these latest games from Komix after all the great things I had heard about him.

Maybe next time….

[ Play Holiday Snow Wars ]

JAMES IS BACK! This time you must help him get away from a scary monster while avoiding rocks and collecting very =| looking starfish.

Controls are easy, just having left, right and up to help guide you to hi score glory. There’s a slight lag in the controls, making it a bit difficult to maneuver. Not sure if that was intended or not but makes a nice little learning curve on an otherwise easy game.

Graphics and sound go well together and who really cares IT’S A ZEBRA IN DIRE NEED OF SAVING !@#$%$#%^!

There’s also two mini games that you can play, both with hi scores, that are unlocked after you play all the way through the main game.

Pictured to the left is my fav out of the two, where you must dive down and collect air bubbles and avoid the rocks, which make you lose air. The other is a simple button masher, to see how much air you can hold.

Overall, great lil time waster once again from the Super Flash Bros, also sponsored by Armor Games.

[ Play James The Deep Sea Zebra ]

Yawn, another defend your crap you say? LIES!! This is a great defend game with a nice twist. Deflector by Free World Group has a nice little space station to defend BUT you have no weapons, only a deflector (I wonder if that has anything to do with the title) which you use the mouse to draw to intercept incomings.

What I instantly got some morning wood off of it was the classic invaders feel/look to it. Had the stupid song going through my head the whole time. DUN…DUN…DUN…BWEEEW….DUN. Luckily the music wasn’t like the classic and went well through out the game. Oh, and has just a bit better graphics then invaders ; ). The effects of the enemies charging up before shooting will save you much hair pulling and cursing so pay attention.

What’s not to like about this game? It gets !#@$@$# hard! Although there’s power ups, if you don’t hit them you ain’t getting ‘em. While this makes for a nice feature it does make it a pain untill you get used to how the projectiles will bounce of the deflector. With 3 difficulty settings and the great level designs you’ll be playing this for awhile, if you don’t punch a hole through your monitor first haha.

[ Play Deflector ]

I was filtering through my e-mail the other day, marking 90% of the crap that poured in as junk, when I noticed something I hadn’t seen yet: AN ACTUAL REQUEST TO REVIEW A GAME!!!!!

Not just a simple request from a fan either, but a full-fledged press release. Apparently, someone thinks our opinions MATTER!

Anyway, before I get into the review, I think it’s worth posting the actual press release as it gives us some great insight as to what Orama Technologies was hoping to accomplish with their new game, Blokkos.

Orama Technologies releases Blokkos

Orama Technologies has announced the official release of its latest game, titled Blokkos. The game is currently available in a free web version, with commercial versions for mobile phones scheduled for release during the remainder of the month.

Blokkos is a puzzle game, aimed at the mobile and web platforms. The objective behind it was to create an addictive game, which would fit both platforms and appeal to a wide group of players. The web version is now available to be played for free at http://blokkos.oramatechnologies.com. The game will also be released for mobile phones, in both commercial and free ad-supported versions.

“I’m quite happy with the final result on Blokkos and the initial feedback we’ve received is extremely promising. Both casual players and gamers find it fun and addictive and the comments we receive also indicate that it was successful in being a family-oriented game: both parents and sons are playing and enjoying it.”, said Pedro Amaro, the lead developer for Blokkos. “This is definitely a game I’m proud of”, he added.

Blokkos was created under Orama Technologies’ typical virtual team development method, with elements from three continents – Europe (Pedro Amaro: Game design and programming), North America (Paul David Bergel: sounds and music) and Asia (Iris Kwan: graphics). According to Pedro Amaro, the team’s mixed cultural background helped in making Blokkos appealing to a larger audience and made working in this game a more rewarding experience.

Since Orama took the time to include us in this press release, I figured the least I could do was really dive into the game and give it the best review I could.

The art on this game is kind of average. The puzzle blocks are pretty standard, but the background and character art isn’t exactly breathtaking. For a game that is intended to reach a wide and mixed audience, the presentation really is only going to appeal to girls and little kids.

The music isn’t too bad for a puzzle game, but considering they are hoping to push multi-format versions of this game I really hope they have more than one music track because after so long you really get sick of hearing it.

The sounds are as average as the art, with pitch shifted voice clips that have the same kiddie cartoon appeal as the art does. These start to get very annoying after a while since the characters only have like 3 or 4 phrases each.

Blokkos impressed me by being unlike any puzzle games I have ever played (That’s not to say that there isn’t any other games like this, I just haven’t seen them). The “color matching to clear blocks” is familiar enough that anyone who’s played a modern puzzler can pick it up right away, but the gameplay itself is pretty innovative.

You start each level with a stackof colored blocks on top of a hollow tube type thing. Using a magnet you can pull any block from the left side and it will slide into the tube. If you fill the tube with one single color, the blocks will be cleared, otherwise your mis-matched row will rise and the whole stack will shift up a level. The goal then, is to keep the stack from hitting the top of the game screen, and to clear all the blocks before your time meter is depleted.

Sounds easy right? Well…. it is. The game doesn’t even BEGIN to be challenging until about 4 levels in, so a lot of casual players may get bored by the lack of challenge and quit playing before they get to the real fun levels. The simplicity of early levels and the sluggish decay of the time meter don’t relay any sense of urgency to complete early levels. Again this simplicity is going to appeal to kids, so it seems like the goal Orama had of reaching a big audience may be a bit of a stretch. Unless of course they meant a big audience of 10-year-olds.

If you overlook the kiddie art, mute the sounds, and put at least 30 minutes into the game, Blokkos is really quite fun. Make sure to write down your passwords so after you get through the lame beginner levels you can just START playing at the fun part.

[ Play Blokkos ]

Santa’s Sweat Shop by Orange Fox Games is a great RTS parody for the seasons with easy but challenging game play. Definitely read through the instructions for this one.

While not one of the best RTS out there it’s very much worthy of a play through. Myself, I would’ve liked more actions from the workers, as in when their “attitude” would worsen they’d visible show it, instead of having to cycle through the workers to see how they’re doing. Also, seeing them turning ill/mad/ect would’ve been a nice artsy touch.

Overall good graphics and sound with progressively harder levels makes this a must play if you’re into RTS’s like this. There’s some great games on the site, too, so make sure and check ‘em out.
[ Play Santa’s Sweat Shop ]

Snow Line by Miniclip is a great edition to all the line riding games cropping up now a days.

You play as santa having to retrieve presents through all of Europe. With 12 levels that progressively get harder with more and more obstacles to grind up santa, this’ll keep you going for awhile.

For those who have never played a game like this before, it’s fairly simple. Draw a line and hit the play button. Just remember, you angle up to much and not have enough speed, you’re not gonna make it to the flag.

All in all, this is the most stable line riding type game I’ve seen so far, with great graphics and sound you’d expect to see from miniclip. Just needs a free play mode so I can do loops haha.

[ Play Snow Line ]