Sidescroller

Sidescroller. You are a repulsive drooling green guy, chasing a woman. Cops chase you; space-bar to kill 'em, up-arrow to jump. If they get you, there's a brief interlude telling you you're restrained and jailed for one year, then back to the pursuit.

When you "get" the girl, you're on to the next level. Tougher cops. The woman's baby is now a girl. Difficulty ramps up by level, you're still obsessively chasing the couple. Songs about love and incest. A definite story (with, apparently, multiple endings, although I only played to one). Weird sound effects, difficulty getting to the bullet-hell level (though this is no shmup). Disturbing. Smoothly executed. Hard to play (though the designer claims there's dynamic difficulty adjustment).

This is actually, in its own odd way, quite a polished game. Quite funny, with an uneasy edge to it, like -- wait, that's not actually funny.

Worth a play, yes.

Aubergine Sky is a simple, five-level sidescrolling puzzle, in which each level asks you to use different UI to solve the level. The text provides a clue as to what you need to do, though the developer also provides spoilers (in a Help link below the Flash window) if you get stuck.

Update: Star Guard is a 2010 IGF finalist in the "excellence in design" category.

"Guide the spaceman through the castle and defeat the wizard" -- can't get any simpler than that. Do you need any more reason to blast your way through nine levels of old-school goodness? Didn't think so. Star Guard is a refined, minimalistic take on those 80s run-and-gun classics; like its predecessors, it focuses solely on fun and hits its mark (in the face with a laser beam, I might add.)

Damn you Arvi! You stole the concepts for two Game Maker games I'm developing and merged them into one devious package. This man has got to have a time machine, I swear.** Like his recent forays with platformers, (G.E.N.E.R.I.C., FallOver, et al.) Addicsjon subverts the genre's tenets and drastically changes the way you travel within the XY plane. This time around he tackles drug addiction and player agency. Pity it lasts only five levels.

No, you aren't going crazy. Yes, that picture is accurate. That is Mario, and he is indeed fighting an MS Paint shit monster. I should add that a MIDI rendition of The Phantom Menace battle music is played throughout this scenario. I should also add that this boss fight is broken and obtuse, and so far I can't figure out how to pass it. I think this segment encapsulates the experience of Mario's Adventure for me, and is pretty fucking hilarious. Super Marco (Mario's autistic cousin) is also entertaining in the same MST3K kind of way, and is tantamount to playing a platformer made by Andy Warhol circa 1986. Today is an exploration of amateur design, a meditation on the earnest and unintended Shit Games out there.

I'll be honest, I hate Sonic. His games are one-dimensional and void of challenge; about the only thing they get right is their iconic cheery atmosphere. That, and the smug hedgehog's sense of speed. Because of these redeeming features there exists a subset of diehard fans that clings to the franchise, debilitating flaws and all. RunMan is what Sonic should have been -- a gamer's game. A game that gives you the same sense of speed as the Blue Blur, but also gives you engaging and fluid controls against a slew of superbly designed levels. A game that tests you, in the old-school way you grew up with and grew fond of. A game that's actually fun (and then some). The game you're envisioning right now most likely doesn't have blues, jazz, and other out of copyright tunes as a soundtrack, but yep, it's got that too.

Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe (or if you're a Lewisian philosopher, a possible world) that isn't too dissimilar from our own. In it, the Legend of Zelda series dropped the open exploration of the original title in favor of the side-scrolling action of its oft-maligned sequel. That, and fangames don't suck there. Legend of Princess comes from that universe/ontologicial mindfuck.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei; Latin for "the voice of the people is the voice of God." An odd title for a Flash game, but it's fitting enough. Not because this is a Marxist title by any means (it does channel some dystopian vibes from its gray industrial background, akin to Canabalt) but by virtue of the fact that the name is just as off-kilter as the rest of the game. You're a blue ninja attempting to save the woman who broke your heart from werewolves. You do so through stealth mechanics and by ripping the lycanthropes apart in a bloody fashion, like a Hunter from Left 4 Dead. Oh, and to top it off there's no background music. Say what?

It's been a while since I checked up on Orisinal, since Ferry Halim produces games much less frequently in recent years than he did earlier in the decade, when he virtually pioneered the idea that Flash games don't have to suck; indeed, Sunny Day Sky is the only thing he's produced since The Crossing, which we reviewed two years ago.

My first experience with games (and one of my first memories) was with the Ninja Turtle arcade game. I was standing on my toes, staring upward, and savagely mashing the attack button in ecstasy. I was Donatello, of course. There is some inherent fun to be had from decimating countless waves of foes via an intuitive control scheme -- which is what Sky-Whirling Geo offers. Cowabunga.