Puzzle Farter

In fifty levels of Flash platforming, you guide your little aviator-goggled cat from entrance door to exit door, avoiding long-legged bird things, other cats throwing paper airplanes at you, something like sea urchins, and a variety of other enemies. Arrow keys for movement, with the "up arrow" to jump.

A completely straightforward, if competent platformer; the "innovation", if it can be called that, is that by pressing and holding the up-arrow once in a jump, your character, um -- expresses gas, giving himself additional velocity. In essence, you can fly for a brief period of time. However, the reservoir of your bowels is apparently limited, and the once the episode of flatulence passes, you begin to fall. Thus, just as one must time jumps, one must also time one's, ah, farts.

Now perhaps it is a reflection of the immaturity of games as a medium that the fart joke, which in other contexts is expressive largely of the immaturity and lack of intelligence of those who tell and/or chortle at them, here seems fresh and almost amusingly transgressive. Doubtless this is just a function of the current moment in time -- e.g., Blazing Saddles when released was considered hilarious, but today, viewing the "farting cowboys" scene merely makes you wince; in film, farting has passed from the transgressive to the embarassing. It hasn't happened in games yet, however, so for at least today, yes, Puzzle Farter is worth playing.