Casual Encounters--22 Flash Games Worth Getting Addicted To
This Is the Only Level
A many-trick pony
Thirty identical levels. Sounds like a hoot, right? But an incredible variety of invention makes each level a thoroughly unique or stylized challenge. This isn’t about using different routes from entry to exit, but interpreting the word clue to fathom the trick to solving a given level. When you have to refresh your browser to unlock a level, you know this is something a little bit different, a little bit special, and worth several do-overs to earn faster times and fewer deaths. (http://armorgames.com/play/4309/this-is-the-only-level)
Icycle
Is this for total aerodynamics?
Riding along deadly ice caps, across crumbling mountains, through volcanic tunnels, and amid collapsing buildings is dangerous enough. Doing it in the buff? Weird. But “naked guy riding a bike” captures the attention quicker than “random dude on BMX adventure to collect frozen soap bubbles.” And it’s totally compelling as the scale shifts for each level—shrinking the character to a few pixels in some cases—as he overcomes the obstacles to make the exit. Some levels are cunningly challenging, others a ride in the park. Naked. (www.dampgnat.com/icycle)
Finwick
Beyond the call of the mailman's duties
Delivering mail seems like such a mundane summer-vacation student job. Not in Finwick, where helping the Royal Mail (evidently set in England) can be very dangerous. This side-scrolling platform and puzzle game is framed by a story told in quick dialogue blurbs between characters and set among beautifully drawn (if deadly) forests, factories, and construction sites. Controlling a second character adds further puzzle challenge as you set platforms in motion and create safe routes to deliver one piece of mail. (http://www.smallgreenhill.com/games/finwick/)
Canabalt
Free running
Now this is extreme parkour… in black-and-white, pixel-graphics form. You’re escaping (from what is unclear) through buildings, across construction cranes and rooftops, at blistering Usain Bolt–plus-plus speeds, hitting just one jump key to skip over obstacles or leap through windows and across gaps between buildings. Scored purely on the distance you make before face-planting into the side of a building, you’ll keep trying for that longer run, pushed by the pounding sci-fi movie soundtrack pumping in the background. (www.adamatomic.com/canabalt)