Confession time! During the second half of the Super Bowl, I totally stopped paying attention because I started playing Windosill and then Jet Set Radio on my laptop. I'm thinking that turned out to be a smarter bet than most people in Vegas made that day. You can make some good moves of your own too, with this selection of strategy, sports, and point-and-click titles from the JiG Vault!
- Villainous - I love me some tower defense, but I have to admit that I do feel a certain sympathy for those mooks, sent knowingly in waves to their inevitable arrow impalement. But what about that first minion that actually manages to breach the castle walls and set off the looting? Does Goblin #379/600 feel like he's having the greatest day of his life? I might be thinking about these things a little too much, which is probably why I'm so charmed by the 2011 strategy game, Villainous. Cellar Door Games (of recent Rogue's Legacy fame) has a particular skill for making fun games out of a switched perspective in storytelling and this "Tower Attack" is no different. With an army of darkness ready to walk down winding paths at your command, and 20 villages to pillage, those limited-range fortifications don't stand a chance. It's good to be bad!
- Mini-Putt - Much flashier golf games have since been seen on the interwebs, but PsychoGoldfish's Mini-Putt, released all the way back in 2001, and covered on this site in 2004, definitely deserves credit for getting there first, and getting it right. Mini-Putt doesn't have a gravity-bending, decoration-crammed course to play. That almost makes me like it more, though, calling to mind my high school Friday-night excursions to the local putt-putt palace with the batting cages and the neon-blue water hazard with an unidentifiable smell. But I digress: even 13 years later, Mini-Putt is a golf game well above (under?) par, and even on a computer screen, a hole-in-one feels like quite the accomplishment.
- Galves Adventure - An Eyezmaze classic, 2007's Galves Adventure was originally created to celebrate the birth of a friend's child. Hopefully, the kid has hit enough developmental milestones to be cognizant of the awesomeness on display here. One of the more difficult of the Eyezmaze canon, filled with red herrings, multiple endings, a GrowGame-inside-a-game and a final boss battle where a baby punches a lion. Tough as it may be, the trademark quirky creativity will make players push through the frustration, and I assure you the rewards are worth it.
While we welcome any comments about this weekly feature here, we do ask that if you need any help with the individual games, please post your questions on that game's review page. Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and rediscover some awesome!
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