Badda bing, badda BLOONS

Screenshot of Bloons game

This game is driving me crazy! I CAN’T GET PAST LEVEL 15!!!

Somebody tell me how to wipe out most of the balloons with the boomerang, please, please, please?

Lovely side effects: a most satisfying popping noise that will pacify any bubble wrap addict. Yes. Bloons is fun.

BUT HOW DO YOU GET PAST LEVEL 15???

At least you can go back to the main menu at any time and replay a fun episode. I like this one best:

Screenshot of Bloons game

BUT SOMEBODY MUST KNOW HOW TO GET PAST LEVEL 15.

Tone Memory Game

I figure the years and years of waiting for piano lessons to finish have given me an edge on this game. Or maybe it’s the ton of money we poured into piano lessons. Or maybe it’s because I’m sticking with the simple 4 x 3 version.

Screenshot of Piano Game

Either way, it’s kind of like “Concentration”, only you try to match up notes rather than images.

Yowza, I just tried the Super Hard version. Somebody tell me they can’t do it, either!

Yaaay, DAD!

screenshot of Army Battle Game

I thought this was so sweet and cool.

My four year old son and I have a Saturday morning ritual where the two of us go our for a “special” breakfast at a local restaurant. While we are waiting for our food, Owen always draws a very exciting battle scene on the back of the paper placemat using the crayons provided by our server. This week’s battle scene was that of an army battle that involved a very large spaceship and a tank and some helicopters. Once he was done drawing, he asked “Dad, can we turn this into a video game?”. I answered of course I could!

The object is to have your tank blast the helicopters. Move the tank with the arrows on your keyboard and aim with your mouse. Click to shoot.

Stuff like this just melts me into a puddle.

The Idiot Test 3

Screenshot of The Idiot Test 3

I guess I missed Idiot Tests 1 and 2. No worries, though, because I’m NOT AN IDIOT. Hooray. I’m “almost average,” a step up from “dumber than dirt,” which is what I was really expecting.

It’s a tricky, tricky test, though. I got lost trying to remember if I was supposed to click the yellow button once or twice—which just goes to show you I can’t keep more than one thought in my head at the same time.

screenshot of my score

The brain likes me, and if that isn’t Twilight Zone I don’t know what is

screenshot of likebetter.com

Meet the brain. The brain is running the Like Better Game. The brain wants you to pick which pictures you like better.

If you play with the brain, it will reward you by guessing something about you. If you decide not to play, the brain will climb out of your computer screen and EAT YOU.

Okay, so I lied. It’s just when the brain goes all pink and pulsating, it reminds me of an old movie where a pulsating brain tries to eat a 1950s starlet, but she screams and faints and then the leading man has to beat it off with a stick.

But in this case a pink and pulsating brain really means you’ve picked enough pictures that the brain wants to guess something about you, like “You study/work better with music playing in the background.” or “If someone said you were an entrepreneur, you’d say: no I’m not.”

Give it a try and let us know what the brain guessed about you.

screenshot of likebetter.com

Blame it on M.G. Tarquini

I had absolutely nothing to do with this one. I was just minding my own business, la la la, not bothering anyone—and kapow! This shows up in my email box from M.G. Tarquini:

Nose hair game

That’s DISGUSTING.

Heh!

The rest of the site is a real treat. Click on the little curly-cue icon to wander around Nobody‘s world, but be careful! It can suck up lots of time better spent on rewrites and/or taxes. Eh, Mindy?

Word Shoot: Arrgh! “Emtpy” and “Bliss” got me!

Screenshot of Word Shoot game

Finally! Something I’m better at than my boys, and in a game they don’t turn up their jaded Wren noses at, either.

But I warn you: this is a blood bath, in a geeky, typewritery sort of way.

Those of you who can type well will have a blast with the “hard” setting. I tried the “impossible” setting but got overwhelmed by the HORDES of five letter words hiding behind the three letters, and oh, how sneaky they all were.

Type the “fullhealth” when you see it to give you some immunity when the HORDES come. “Detonate” will take everybody out except you. That includes any “fullhealth” buttons that were hanging around, trying to save your sorry hide.

Do NOT play this game to relax. No, no, no. I think I’m going to have to run around the block just to get over my post-battle shell shock.

Via Patrick Says.

Moai Shla-mo-a-ee

screenshot of Japanese text from the game

Allow me to introduce you to a bunch of blockheads. They keep climbing to the top of a building that tips and sways, and your job is to swing the building around so the ladder can rescue some of the blockheads without them sliding off.

(At least I THINK this is the point of the game. Seriously. I don’t know for sure because EVERYTHING IS IN JAPANESE.)

Sometimes big, heavy things land on the building and shake everybody off and that’s bad, or at least I think it is—did I mention it’s ALL IN JAPANESE?

At any rate the a cappella music is always happy and lighthearted even when everybody slides off into the abyss so there’s a plus. And sometimes you WANT to shake the heavy thing off even if a few blockheads go with it because it is obviously a bomb—and thank goodness I can at least understand that a bomb is BAD.

Sometimes surprising game announcements are made in Japanese, too, like this: screenshot of Japanese text from the game

Who knows what this means, but it sounds good and it LOOKS like a happy little announcement, so maybe I did better than you guys, hunh?

This Valentine’s Day, we’re helping James the Zebra!

Screenshot of James the Zebra game

No online games shooting heart-shaped basketballs through Cupid’s hoops for me!

Nope. I want to help James the Zebra save all the baby circus animals from, um—oh! Those nasty circus guys.

Screenshot of James the Zebra game
This little game gets “Bonnie’s Hoo Yeah Award” for having the most entertaining instructions I’ve seen in an online game yet, especially with those very attractive British accents. I like the music, too. It has a nice beat and I can dance to it.

(WARNING to all office workers: get headphones, because if you just turn the volume down you’ll miss on the fun.)

Dim and Tom are real brothers, by the way, and you can read about them here.

We be squishin’ tomaters

Screenshot of Domino Pressure game by GameDesignLet’s hear it for squishing tomatoes with dominoes!

Sounds like it is just my speed, and it is. Especially considering the high cold medication level in my bloodstream. Here’s to Sudafed-soaked sinuses!

I’ve been playing it all morning, but I only found the right domino to topple them all once or twice. I think it would make an excellent sobriety check.

Alert to all you cubicle denizens out there: Music and Sound Effects. And if you can’t do better than I can then you should stop spreading your germs around the office and go home.

Screenshot of Domino Pressure game by GameDesign
Via Amateur Gourmet