Video games often get accused of encouraging brainlessness. They're usually comprised of a lot of shooting and jumping around, so they aren't exactly mentally stimulating. Those that are tend to get lumped into the dreaded "educational game" category that, at best, has included titles like Math Blasters and a few in that small group of games marketed toward people who traditionally don't like video games in the first place, i.e. games designed with mental or physical fitness in mind. There's something to be said for the ability of browser games to plug into the entertainment potential of thinking. October had some good brain games for free play on the Internet. Here are a few of the best.
Independent game designers Tim Fowers and Tom Mason run Gabob.com, a slick but unpretentious purveyor of clever distractions with a distinct artistic style. Last month they released the heavy learning curve logistics game Now Boarding and they hit the usual browser game circuit in October with the first part of their typing game Clockwords. In it, players have to dig deep into their lexicons to stop an army of mechanical spiders from stealing a genius scientist's secrets. Each word uses its letters as ammo, with certain letters packing more punch than others. The bigger the word, the heavier the barrage. The game has a few more layers to it, including the letter alchemy system that lets players create special, more powerful letters to use in later levels. Clockwords has a steadily increasing difficulty and it's part of a rare breed of flash games designed with word-nerds in mind.
The point-and-click adventure is one of the oldest kinds of graphical games, but there just aren't many of them around these days. On the Internet, the best of them come from Pencil Kids, a game company that makes friendly, free titles fit for the whole family. Cute but not too adorable, challenging but not cruel, the PnC games of Pencil Kids have been some of my favorites for years now. Their latest release, A Dralien Day puts players in charge of the well-being of a baby dragon searching for its mother in a hostile world. The bizarre creatures and foreboding atmosphere of the game pair remarkably well with the cuddly protagonist, an effect that has functioned well in previous titles like the incredible Bowja series. A Dralien Day isn't all that difficult, but it doesn't hold your hand, either. It's a pretty, endearing distraction from one of the finest independent game producers on the Internet.
Designer RobotJAM knows his way around a puzzle, especially when it doesn't look like a puzzle. His most recent game before Sniper: Year 2 was the incredible Panda's BIG Adventure, a rather challenging scavenger hunt puzzle game with a strong sense of style. As for the action/puzzle sequel to Sniper, it's really just a combination of an action shooter and a timed precision puzzle. The player is a professional assassin given a series of missions that require quick thinking a lethal aim. No two missions are the same and many of them make clever use of environmental elements to keep the game from being just a mindless point-and-shoot distraction. It's fun to time shots with the crash of thunder or get your target to open his window by knocking out his air conditioning. Sniper: Year 2 could use some better hit detection, but all in all it's a fun way to spend fifteen minutes.
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