Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Fanfiction often has surprising visits from other fictional places, although the fact that I’m here and not writing on that other lovely PC gaming site means it happens in real-life as well. Super Mario Bros Crossover 2.0 is the gaming equivalent of fanfiction, bringing characters from all over the Nintendo universe and having an office party with them in the Mario world.
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Last week there were a couple of games that brought up the question of what actually counts as a game. One of them shouldn’t have, because it turned out to be a passing ice-cream truck. The other was Katawa Shoujo, which occasionally teetered on the edge of that which people were willing to tolerate – that a reviewer could be bored by a slightly creepy visual novel about dating definitely-not-underage-at-all disabled girls without being some kind of illiterate, word-hating dunce. Which obviously John is, but that’s not the point. Luckily, you can now enjoy that experience in a brand new form – one in which you occasionally get to press some buttons.

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The gorgeous and utterly charming Windosill, whose gentle and sometimes dream-like interactions play out in what is still some of the best Flashcrafting out there, has just been released on iPad. And why, pray tell, would that be of interest to those of us who choose a mechanical pointing device over the dubious pleasures of poking at things with out fingers? Settle down and I shall explain all. In celebration of the game’s move into the touchy realm, it has been made available at a price of your choosing. You can still play the first part of the game for free but for a limited time the full version can be unlocked, to play online or as a download, for anything from a single cent upwards. There’s a short video below.

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It’s on days like today, when there is NO PC NEWS AT ALL, that I remember to return to Neko Games. The creator of the wonderful Hoshi Saga series has always created a new gem since my last visit, and it’s just as true today. Today there’s Ouka. It’s similar to the star-hunting antics of Hoshi Saga, in that you’re aiming to complete lots of very short Flash-based puzzles, but this time it’s all about clicking on the flower. How you can go about doing that is the unique puzzle for each level, with that unique Neko Games logic. And then, wait, oh my goodness, is that a new Hoshi Saga too?

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Somehow, despite The Internet having my phone number, a browser-based platform-puzzler in which the player controls a Victorian magician rescuing ghosts has existed since 2009 and yet I didn’t receive a call about it. Outrageous blaggardry of the first water.

The game in question is The Pretender and the release of a third chapter in the top-hatted trickster’s adventures and the diligence of Jayisgames has served to notify me of his existence. There’s a basic but pleasingly worded story and I’d say it’s worth going back to the start for the full experience since there’s much pleasure to be gained from the antiquated banter.

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If you know me, you’ll know I’m an adrenalin junkie. I can’t just sit still at a desk all day. I have to get up, leave the house, and do something death-defying, something all-out crazy. Like parallel park. But now perhaps I can combine both sitting at a desk and the raw octane thrill of neatly putting a car into an empty parking space, via Offroad Parking. A game I am absolutely delighted to report, is only but one of a series of parking games from Car Titans.

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Apparently it’s a Monday, which means Garfield is probably absolutely hating his coddled life somewhere, the comical ingrate. I’ll never get tired of his feline japes. To alleviate the start of another working week I bring you a browser game that is far more intense than it first appears. It goes by the name of Focus and is a Flash version of a downloadable game made by Jesse Venbrux, creator of the Karoshi series. Although it rapidly becomes rather difficult, death is a minor inconvenience, if you can abide the textual mockery that follows. Play here now.

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Fisher Diver is a Flash game about fishing. Fisher Diver is a game about shooting writhing wireframe abominations in the spine with a harpoon, waiting for them to bleed out and then collecting their lifeless fish-flesh to sell for a few dollars. Fisher Diver has an upgrade system. Fisher Diver encourages you to buy licenses so that you can dive ever deeper and confront increasingly dangerous creatures that thrash idiotically and blasphemously in the deepest trenches. Fisher Diver tells a story through diaries and dreams. Fisher Diver contains terrible nightmares and sinister diaries that are found drifting beneath the waves, or slowly digesting in the guts of the hungering horrors that lurk beneath. Play it here.

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Here, do you remember Rom Check Fail? It was a little IP-defying mashup that allowed you to goomba-stomp Asteroids as Mario and stab Space Invaders with Link’s sword. Kieron was hugely excited about it at the time. Today I’m excited about Megamash, which takes the concept and rebrands it for the modern flash gaming masses.

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Last night saw just the latest sign that civilisation is on a nosedive to hell, as the entire internet lost its mind over the prospect of seeing pictures of a new telephone. Subsumed by that news was far more interesting news for people who prefer their technology in a hot metal box: Epic have gotten their Unreal Engine 3 running in Flash. In theory, this means running the likes of Unreal Tournament 3 in a browser – as is demonstrated below.

WITCHCRAFT.
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Lots of people are talking about Wonderputt, even though it’s a Flash crazy golf game…wait, come back! It’s a Flash crazy golf game with alien abductions and rocket ships! I can’t help but notice that people are still walking away, pretending to have urgent appointments elsewhere, perhaps with more complex and worthy games. Well, forget those games for a minute. I made Wonderputt sound zany, didn’t I, with all that clamouring about alien abductions? It’s not zany, I promise you. Although the voiceover in the trailer below also makes it sound like it might be wacky, which is another thing it’s not.

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