The more you play ‘em, The more you love ‘em: online browser adventure games. These are not games to play at lunch, rather you sit down to play them and waste your evening, when there’s nothing on TV. Amazing what great games are available. Click on the links to play.

Harry Quantum: Episode 1

Get your own Inspector Gadget, the creator of this game must have thought. Well he did. And the first person you meet in the game is B.A. Baracus. What, a look alike? Shut up you fool! Harry Quantum is one of those adventure games which – they say, is different than other adventure games. I got stuck at one point, where you need to use an inventory item on an object, while I already lost it in another scene to another object. So this is one of those adventures which you can lose. The creators put a lot of humor in to the game, which makes this game very nice to play.

Create a crop circle, to attract an alien ship

Find all hidden TV-signals within 30 steps, minesweeper but now different

The Fog Fall 3

Very atmospheric adventure game. The art and sound effect really give an intriguing and mysterious feeling while you play. I didn’t have a clue what the objective is, which is a big positive point. The game is about finding out, what the game is about. This game has an autosave function, so that you can return at a later moment. Very cool feature!

In a mysterious house, just browsing..

Somewhere under the ground, you find a broken bicycle

The controls can be somewhat unnatural at times. However the story, the graphics and the way objects are hidden in the scenes make me really appreciate this game.

Morning Star

You crashed your spaceship onto the planet and you friend has been speared in the cockpit. Great game, with great graphics. The objective, as far as I’ve played, is to repair the ship, rescue the speared captain, and get the spaceship back in the air. I think. This addicting game has a save game feature, which is really useful.

Entered the engine room with an electric doll

The suit sealed the speared captain’s wounds

Cargo blocking your way

Here are a couple of very interesting pixel games. Pixel games are to give you a retro-nostalgic feeling. Click on the links to play.

Color Theory
Brilliant pixel platform game. You need to find your way through this, well, sort-of maze and get to some wormhole thing. The funny thing is, when you touch colored items in a level, the platforms change. Some platforms disappear and others appear, changing the rule of game.

Jump on that red plus-sign to get rid of the red platforms

Pixel
A very good chain-reaction clone. You pick your own avatar and then you shoot enemies. These enemies explode pixels, which can kill other enemies. The fun with this game is that it has continues play. Most chain-reaction clones give you one shot and you must kill a percentage of all enemies. In this game you keep on shooting. The level-transformation is smooth. While you are aware of the next level, the playing is hardly interrupted.

I played the footstep symbol in the center-right, dodging enemies and collecting pixels

Different colors, different enemies and a great mess of pixels to look at

One Button Bob

For your authentic retro-game feeling. It even has a C64 load screen! I’m not sure whether this game is for real, or it is a parody on the discussion that games should be even easier to control. You control the character with the left mouse-button only. In each level, clicking the button has a different function. In one level it the button is to throw a boomerang against a bat. In another level the button stops the player from walking, so that you can avoid a falling spear from the ceiling. Parody or not, this is a very creative game.

In this level, you need to press the button to start walking

An anonymous developer leaked that Microsoft is stimulating developers to migrate their iPhone games to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is helping with money, and giving out mobile phones. Microsoft has confirmed this news and explained even more how Microsoft is helping developers to switch to their platform.

However, the developers have a problem. iPhone apps are written in objective C, while Silverlight and XNA games are written in C#. A migration would therefore involve a complete game rewrite. Of course, if you can make money with it, this should not be a big problem.

Unfortunately, I haven’t heard that Microsoft approached Silverlight game developers with the same deal. It is my own speculation, but perhaps Microsoft’s interest in iPhone games is to get the developers to switch, and because the iPhone developers created games which proved to be commercially successful. I don’t know of any Silverlight game which became a large commercial success, but SL game developers have invented their wheel.

Particle systems are used in games for different reasons, explosions for example. The idea is to have some controlled randomness in the game, to get a better visual effect. However, particle systems may also be used as part of the gameplay, and that gets very, very interesting.

Music Catch
Absolutely my favorite in this article. A particle system is coupled with a sound equalizer. So particles are created on the rhythm of the music. While listening to calm piano music, the player needs to catch geometric shapes, which give points. If you catch yellow shapes, your score multiplier goes up, red shapes are bad which decreases you score multiplier. Many people love this game from 2008.

Sit back and relax, while you catch some random shapes

EON
In this game, large planets have some kind of energy, which you need to transport to smaller planets, using magnets. The planets generating the energy are coupled to an infinite particle system, while the magnets influence how the particles flow. Very nice game, with quite some tough puzzles.

Grumpy, those black holes in the middle mess up everything

Vector Effect
This arcade type of game is very nice visual appeal. You need to shoot the particles which seem to appear random in the game, and avoid touching them. The particle system seems to be random enemy creator in this game. Still, the game is very addicting.

Get away and shoot those shapes!

How does a game get you hooked? Well, it needs virtues.

Blastwave
Blastwave is a crazy but well done idea. It has very nice graphics. But what’s really good about the game is that it’s very original. You are God, and with your hand of God, you need to create whirlpools in the water, to attract floating people. You navigate these people through a hurdle of obstacles, while collecting bonuses. The nice thing is, each level introduces a new challenge for you to take.

The guy on the top-left, needs to go to that green thing at the bottom-right

Pixel Shuffle
Pixel games are for the older players, who think with nostalgia back to the eighties and early nineties, when graphics were simple and your imagination was part of making the game. In Pixel Shuffle, the player needs to shuffle the pixels in the playing field, so that they represent the target graphic. As you only shuffle vertical bars of pixels, the ordering is not very hard. Only you need to remember what the graphic was, which you try to recreate, which makes the game a bit harder.

How can such a nice game point the finger at you?

Up-Beat
Up-Beat is one of those music games where you need to play along with the computer. This time it’s piano practice. This game absolutely makes a good first impression. First level in category “easy” is “The Weekend” by Michael Gray. Now you get your first impression. Good graphics, fun gameplay and very cool music. I love that song.

I can’t wait for the weekend, to play this game all weekend