Games

So we may have completely neglected any Thanksgiving games last week, and that’s why we’re getting in early now. Ladies and gentlemen, the first game for Thanksgiving 2009 - Turkey Fling!

Turkey Fling works in just about the exact same way as every other game where you throw stuff - choose an angle and a velocity and see how far it gets. Two things make Turkey Fling stand out from the crowd, though - the fact that you can increase the turkey’s length of flight by flapping its wings and the absurdly long wait between crashing and finding out your score. Unless that’s down to our computer being an arse, which it could very well be.

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Trouble, as they say, starts with a T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool. Which has nothing to do with today’s Slackerjack Powerpool, but we’ve been watching a lot of musicals lately. Don’t ask why.

Powerpool, then. It’s a pool game. But different. For example, the table you play on is square and only has four pockets. Oh, and each of the levels has a mind-messing trick ball that’ll either eat the other balls, multiply the other balls, shrink them, shatter them or turn them into ghosts. We’re not joking. It’s good, mind you.

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Buggle Stars might be one of the simplest games we’ve ever played, but it’s got this weird intangible charm to it that means we haven’t been able to stop playing it for hours.

Buggle Stars isn’t even deceptively simple, it’s just simple. You play a little spinny cloud thing that races around a level collecting stars. That’s all there is to it. By rights we should hate Buggle Stars, but for some reason we just can’t bring ourselves to. It’d be like kicking a puppy in the face. A puppy that we love. God, what’s wrong with us?

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Oh, now this is more like it. This is as close to glorious as we think an online game can legally get. It’s Scenic, and it’s wonderful.

Scenic is a racing game that caught our eye for a number of reasons. Firstly Scenic just looks amazing - rich and deep and professional. Secondly there’s the control system - by steering with your mouse and accelerating with the space button, you’re presented with a challenge that’s easy to pick up but impossible to master. Thirdly… oh, look. Just play Scenic now. You’ll thank us for it.

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If we try and explain Jelly Towers to you, you might think that we’ve overdosed on cough medicine, taken a knock to the head and been struck down with night terrors. It’s berserk. But here goes.

In Jelly Towers it’s your duty to feed the Jydra some jelly. Not any jelly - the jelly must be exactly the size and shape that the Jydra requests or else he’ll get angry. Sometimes you’ll need to balance jellies on top of each other, sometimes you’ll need to battle through magic jelly fog to do it. But remember - the Jydra will only eat your jelly if it is perfectly still. See? We told you Jelly Towers was odd.

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Zilch is that rarest of games - a near-impenetrable dice game that nobody can stop playing. Explaining the rules of Zilch would probably take up the entire internet, so here’s the main thrust.

You have a bunch of dice and you throw them. Depending on the combination, you get points. You can bank some of the dice and throw the remainder, but if you throw a combination that doesn’t score, you lose everything and your opponent takes a turn. Whoever gets through the point barrier first wins. Understand Zilch? No, us neither really. But play it and you’ll be hooked.

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You know what we haven’t featured on here for a while? A transparent rip-off of a classic game that’s got a new name and hopes nobody notices.

So let’s fix that problem now by introducing you to Chargeball. Which classic game does Chargeball rip off? Break Out, that’s what. But Chargeball isn’t without its charms - for instance, you control the ball and not the paddle here, plus there’s some sort of berserk gravity thing going on in most of the levels. We’re not sure how much we like Chargeball, so feel free to have a go and make your own mind up.

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We can’t pretend we’re experts at these Storm The House games - in fact we think we’re coming to Storm The House 3 completely fresh. Which might explain why we’re so blown away by it.

Storm The House 3 is basically a siege game - you’re stuck inside a house picking off the ever-increasing number of weird zombie things that constantly charge at you. The more you kill, the more money you earn, and you can spend it on extra gunmen, new weapons, defence upgrade or towers. But it doesn’t matter how much you buy. You’re doomed. Storm The House 3 will always win. Or perhaps we’re just crap at it.

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You may not remember the original Starshine, but if you do, you’ll know it pretty much created the concept of games that look like they’re for children but are actually harder than nanoscience.

And Starshine 2 picks up exactly where that one finished - you have to fire a glowing ball into a group of stars, and each star fires of its own glowing balls into other stars and they do the same and you have to try to light all the stars with one shot. If that sounds complicated, it’s because Starshine 2 is a complicated game. You might not think so at first, but trust us.

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Ever since we saw Rocky 4 for the first time, we’ve wanted a robot. But, you know, not a robot that looks like it’d come into your bedroom and kill you in your sleep like the robot from Rocky 4.

Incredibots goes some way to realising that dream for us. Imagine Incredibots as a sort of online Meccano set that lets you do all kinds of crazy tricks, like build a tank or a car or a person or any manner of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions. It’s not quite as instant as some of the other games we’ve featured here, but Incredibots is certainly one of the most satisfying.

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