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Orisinal games
Jan. 30th, 2004 02:00 amOof! I think I’ve just played every one of the forty-seven Flash games on the Orisinal site. Thanks a whole lot, Kazu, for linking to it!
Damn, these things are cute and charming, and almost every one of them rules on a pure eye-candy level. There were only a few that I though were especially clever or fun:
Bauns: This is the sort of thing I can waste hours playing. Sort of a combination of Tetris and Bubblet, both classic time-sinks. Every few seconds a row of colored squares drops down. Every time you hit a square, it vanishes, taking any connected squares of the same color with it, and squares above them fall down to fill the vacuum. The new element: You’re hitting them with a ball on a rubber band, that you’ve got to pull back and release. This means you’re controlling for both direction and distance with one elegant mechanism.
The Snowrider: Very pure, very simple. You’ve got a guy balanced on a snowball, rolling down a hill. You can click on the snowball to make it jump (to avoid rocks), and click outside it to speed it up. The ball gets bigger as you go, which makes it harder to avoid the rocks. You’re trying to finish the course in as little time as possible, without hitting a rock.
Swordsman: Wow, the design on this one is great — it’s both beautiful and minimalistically clever. You’re a samurai running through a misty landscape. Enemies jump out at you every so often. Click on them to hit them, click on your samurai to jump and avoid their attacks. It’s more compelling than I’m making it sound.
The Truth Is Up There: Another really clever one. You’re controlling a video camera, pointed at a sky. When a flying saucer goes by, you try to catch it on tape. Constraints: You’ve got limited battery life. Also, you’ll get more money for better footage, so you want to zoom in, but zooming makes it harder to keep the saucer in frame. At the end you find out how much you’re getting paid for the tape, and you get to watch the footage you shot.
Cats: I got bored with this one after just a few minutes, but the concept is clever. You’ve got a bunch of cats, all either sitting or walking. One of them (highlighted in gray) is the leader. You’ve got to make all of them do whatever the leader’s doing. Mousing over them toggles their state. The animation and the henry Mancini-esque background music are what make this work.
Snowbowling: You’re trying to knock skaters over with big snowballs.
The Perilous Voyage, Rainmaker, Windy Days, Pocketfull of Stars, An Early Spring — These are worth looking at for the pretty graphics (almost all the games are) but I found the game play frustrating or dissatisfying.
It Takes Two, What Comes Around, Friends, Hydrophobia — These are all conceptually interesting, but don’t quite work for me.
In just about all cases the instructions don’t tell you everything you need to know about playing, so expect to waste a game or two figuring things out.
And the link you want is http://ferryhalim.com/orisinal/. Some of the “Orisinal” and “Home” links at the bottoms of the game screens link to Orisinal.com which is just a placeholder page.
Damn, these things are cute and charming, and almost every one of them rules on a pure eye-candy level. There were only a few that I though were especially clever or fun:
Bauns: This is the sort of thing I can waste hours playing. Sort of a combination of Tetris and Bubblet, both classic time-sinks. Every few seconds a row of colored squares drops down. Every time you hit a square, it vanishes, taking any connected squares of the same color with it, and squares above them fall down to fill the vacuum. The new element: You’re hitting them with a ball on a rubber band, that you’ve got to pull back and release. This means you’re controlling for both direction and distance with one elegant mechanism.
The Snowrider: Very pure, very simple. You’ve got a guy balanced on a snowball, rolling down a hill. You can click on the snowball to make it jump (to avoid rocks), and click outside it to speed it up. The ball gets bigger as you go, which makes it harder to avoid the rocks. You’re trying to finish the course in as little time as possible, without hitting a rock.
Swordsman: Wow, the design on this one is great — it’s both beautiful and minimalistically clever. You’re a samurai running through a misty landscape. Enemies jump out at you every so often. Click on them to hit them, click on your samurai to jump and avoid their attacks. It’s more compelling than I’m making it sound.
The Truth Is Up There: Another really clever one. You’re controlling a video camera, pointed at a sky. When a flying saucer goes by, you try to catch it on tape. Constraints: You’ve got limited battery life. Also, you’ll get more money for better footage, so you want to zoom in, but zooming makes it harder to keep the saucer in frame. At the end you find out how much you’re getting paid for the tape, and you get to watch the footage you shot.
Cats: I got bored with this one after just a few minutes, but the concept is clever. You’ve got a bunch of cats, all either sitting or walking. One of them (highlighted in gray) is the leader. You’ve got to make all of them do whatever the leader’s doing. Mousing over them toggles their state. The animation and the henry Mancini-esque background music are what make this work.
Snowbowling: You’re trying to knock skaters over with big snowballs.
The Perilous Voyage, Rainmaker, Windy Days, Pocketfull of Stars, An Early Spring — These are worth looking at for the pretty graphics (almost all the games are) but I found the game play frustrating or dissatisfying.
It Takes Two, What Comes Around, Friends, Hydrophobia — These are all conceptually interesting, but don’t quite work for me.
In just about all cases the instructions don’t tell you everything you need to know about playing, so expect to waste a game or two figuring things out.
And the link you want is http://ferryhalim.com/orisinal/. Some of the “Orisinal” and “Home” links at the bottoms of the game screens link to Orisinal.com which is just a placeholder page.