Pleasant tidings to you, beloved reader, and welcome once again to your Friday! If you should find yourself laden with an ungoodly amount of poultry or pastry this morning, well, allow me to give you the post-Thanksgiving fist-bump of solidarity. The rest of you, well... I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me being all sluggish and complacent. The good news is I've rolled from my den to pen you this article, which brings you another kind of feast; platformers, puzzles, launches, and quizzes. Enjoy!
- Sleep Walk - Gamystar continues their tradition of strange animals stuck in stranger situations with this point-and-click puzzle game about a sleep walking penguin and all the obstacles between him and a good night's rest. While a bit more interactivity and brain power might have pushed this one into gold territory, it's still cute as the proverbial dickens. I'm... not entirely sure where that saying comes from, or why it exists. Have you read Dickens? Now that's some depressing stuff, but I guess if you're a terrible person, starving street urchins is sort of cute.
- The Undead Survival Test - [Warning: Not suitable for children, or anyone who hates jump scares.] Good news! The Parasol Syndicate (oh-ho-ho!) would like to evaluate you. After the evaluate there will be a party with non-threatening ice-cream. This parody/homage to by-now familiar "How well would you do in this situation?" type quizzes combines minigames, surprisingly well-thought out questions, and polish with a bit of cheek. The minigames themselves aren't what you might call deep, but the whole thing is surprisingly more robust than most others of their ilk. I don't know about you guys, but I already know what I'm doing when the zombie apocalypse hits; frantically trying to cover up the fact that I was probably responsible for the virus spill to begin with.
- Super Pixel Knight - Regular pixel knights are for suckas. You, my friend, need a super one. This Ghosts'n'Goblins-sy retro arcade platform game suffers from slightly awkward controls that don't respond as quickly as you might hope they do (not to mention jumping I'll technically call rather slow and drifty), those of you who come from a more hardcore generation will enjoy this return to a simpler, stabbier time. A time when knights wore giant helmets with cross-shaped visors and had an infinite supply of swords. (I bet the princesses all wear big cone-shaped hats, too. Those are awesome.)
- Blow Things Up - I don't know about you fellas, but I'm a literal person. I like people to say what they mean and mean what they say. Like this game. The title is exceedingly apt; you place dynamite to blow things up and send all the targets flying off screen. It's a simple concept that's cute and fun, except for the fact that the physics are... unreliable. Any situation wherein you can blow a spherical object into the air so it falls straight back down and balances perfectly on the tiniest edge of a platform without wobbling at all should probably be reevaluated. Or at least have more dynamite applied. Nothing you can't fix without the generous application of further explosives, I always say.
- Polar PWND 2 - PENGUINS. Who needs 'em? Not I. (Forget what I said earlier about them being cute.) Smug little special-occasion-attired birds. That's why I'm perfectly willing to support the polar bears in this puzzle game. Build ramps and place bombs to launch your ursine followers at those stuck-up birds in this polished little title. If you played the original, you'll feel right at home here. You know, up until the bears turn on you and eat your face. (Come on; they're bears. What did you expect?)
I don't think 'dickens' is actually a reference to the author. I always thought it was one of those 'replacement curses'. Like saying 'heck', 'darn', 'crap', etc.
Jumping in Pixelknight is really frustrating.
SleepWalk was cute!! A bit less logic than yesterday's SnailBob, but consistent... And simple without being pointless.
Did I just see a ad about conspiracies?! "Leave the Matrix", goverment secrects and such.
I had no problem with jumping in SPK. SPK is awesome.
I haven't visited this site in wa while because pf the links to kongegrete and i want to sign up UT THEY WONT LET MEH I !# YEARS OLD~!!!!!!!! DUMB KONGENGRETE
I cant get past the loading screen of tutorial 4 in Polar PWND 2. Anybody with the same problem?
Me too, sam. I've tried about 3 times!
Won SPK. The final boss was surprisingly easy.
Sorry, no cone hatted princesses.
I concur with Dora (but then, I usually do): That physics engine in Blow Things Up is pretty badly broken. Neat idea, but unbeatable / unplayable in its current, malfunctioning state.
If you're going to have a walkthrough for your game, maybe you should make sure that the solutions posted therein actually work at least 1 time out of twenty tries on any given level.
Most of them are OK, to be fair, but the handful that aren't pretty much reduce you to "Click", "Reset", "Click Again" fifty or sixy times until the posted solution actually feels like working. Not fun.
The Undead Survival test was fun, but there is a problem with the zombie knowledge portion. I've read so many different stuff on zombies, that I didn't know what type of zombie lore to adhere to! Like Walking Dead zombies are way different 28 Days Later zombies.
Anyway, it was still fun! I got a bad score, though.
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