Physics Games
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In my last post I highlighted a few top-of-the-line flash games made in the past couple years. Arguably the most innovative genre of browser accessible games is the physics game category. While a number of console and PC games rely on an impressive physics engine to make the game smooth and pretty, like Valve Corporation's Source Engine, flash physics games make hard science the core of the game itself. Here are three physics games that'll test your ingenuity.
Colin Northway's engineering-centered puzzle game challenges players to guide a pink shape (sometimes it's a circle, sometimes a square or triangle) into a shaded "goal" zone. In order to do so, he provides players with the parts necessary to build a machine that can drive, carry, or even toss the shape home. What makes Fantastic Contraption so clever is the fact that it isn't overly complex. There are a grand total of five types of pieces available for your machine. Three are balls, one that's stationary and the other two that drive in one direction or the other. The other two are rods, a liquid rod that can overlap with pieces and a wooden rod that trades flexibility for structural integrity. Early levels allow simple drive train devices to do the job, but later levels get tricky with hills, obstacles and inconveniently-placed goals. There's a fairly impressive online community showcasing their own complex inventions.
Color Infection, like most physics games, is much simpler than Fantastic Contraption. That doesn't mean it isn't challenging and winning levels isn't rewarding. The series is another physics game by Tapir Games, a frequent purveyor of noggin-scratchers. Rather than piecing together a machine, Color Infection gives players three different colored balls. All yellow balls need to be turned brown by touching one of the level's brown balls, while players must avoid infecting green balls with the brown. Along the way, players have to face a number of slopes, barriers and destructable environments to achieve this task. Color Infection is a combination physics, timing and sequence puzzle. The only thing missing from Color Infection 2 is sound. Even an unintrusive song would make the gameplay feel complete.
Loaded Die Games put together this simple but innovative physics game. In Pyro, the goal is to slingshot a fireball around a closed stage to light a target number of torches. The fireball bounces off walls and floors, but soon runs out of momentum or falls into a pit. In some levels, special colored flames can be picked up to extend the fireball's tracking trajectory, make it more bouncy or shrink it down to fit in tighter spaces. In addition to setting your fireball's angle and the amount of power behind it, you have to account for a number of wooden boxes strewn around the level. The boxes can help you by burning down like fuses, or they can get in your way by obstructing the path to a torch. Pyro's sound and visual design are both no-frills, but what is there is pretty good. Whereas a lot of physics games are intricate and time consuming, Pyro can be picked up and dropped off in a relatively short amount of time. No mid-level saving is necessary and there's no pulling out your hair because of an overlooked detail.
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