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Five Browser Games To Help You Survive Family Holidays
The responsible adults are jibber-jabbering about taxes or something similarly boring around the dinner table. The younger kids are running around causing trouble and making more noise with their new toys than you thought possible. That's all par for the course, though. That's not the real problem.
You forgot your DS charger.
The car ride out to Grandma's house in Moose Lake drained your handheld batteries, and the only electronics in Nana's place is an ancient e-Machine with a 13-inch monitor that your parents thought they could get the old lady to use for email. A few Jesus-flavored chain letters later, Grandma turned the thing off for good. Maybe it still works, though...
Success! The dusty relic still functions! That year of internet service that Grandma got for last Christmas isn't quite over. Sweet. This thing might not be ready to load up Left 4 Dead 2, but there are some pretty cool browser games out there, right?
Darn right. Below is a list of five that are worth slogging through slow-loading Flash portals to check out. A mix of old favorites and new discoveries, these are my current go-to time-wasters.
Elona Shooter (pictured above)
The deepest game on this list by a country mile, Elona Shooter is an action-packed defense game that puts you in charge of keeping wave upon wave of enemies away from a besieged town. Click to shoot, press number keys to switch weapons or activate items. Simple, right? Not when there are several pages of upgrades to buy between rounds, from new guns to companions or improved defenses. An achievement system rewards accomplishments with improved stats or other boosts to subsequent playthroughs – which you may well dig into since there are eight character classes to try. Silliness abounds, with your "little sisters" falling from the sky hugging bombs Dr. Strangelove-style and the ability to rob children for their lunch money. Elona Shooter is the best (non-tower) defense game not called Plants vs. Zombies, and it's free to play on Kongregate.
You know, hoops? This physics-based game won't have you doing any half-court dunks over Bill Clinton's head, but it's far more engrossing than the simple mechanic would suggest. Using the mouse to choose the angle and power of your shot, you rack up as many points as you can in two minutes. Unlike most Flash games, Basketball has a competitive online component. During a contest, you'll see your rank among everyone else currently playing between each shot.
There are some unfortunate bugs in this early version of the game, like failing to launch new rounds after completion and some weirdness in joining contests, but the gameplay hook is strong.
If you want a classic tower defense game, look no further than GemCraft. Thanks to alternate scenarios for each of the dozens of maps, GemCraft chapter 0 has replay value above and beyond most triple-A titles. Placing gems in towers or traps is the core of your defense; each color has a different special effect (poison, slow, armor-piercing, etc.) as well as a damage multiplier based on the its target's color. Combining gems merges the special abilities of two colors while watering them down, or intensifies same-color powers. Either way, upgrading your gems is the key to victory. Spending points on meta-abilities like faster mana gain, cheaper tower placement, and the like between rounds lets you customize your loadout even further.
GemCraft is as vanilla as tower defense gets these days, but it's a very well-made, well-balanced game that serves as a great reminder of why the genre is so beloved.
Bizarro Japanese games aren't limited to consoles. Nanaca-Crash tasks you with getting a guy to fly and bounce as far as possible after crashing his bike. Several different types of ladies and lady-looking dudes dot the landscape, and the key is to hit the ones who kick (or punch, or shuryuken) you farther along while avoiding the girls who slow you down or outright stop you. It's simple but engrossing. Each attempt takes between five seconds and a few minutes, making it easy to go for one more round to best your high score. There's very little depth here, but what little gameplay exists is rather amusing.
Merging traditional tower defense concepts with smooth, air-conditioned beats, Vector TD 2 is simplistic but polished title. Twelve tower types come in four different colors, and each have their own special attack form. Greens fire quickly and chain to multiple enemies. Reds either refract for splash damage, quickly fire randomly targeted rockets, or launch massively damaging missiles from extreme ranges. Purples do huge single-target damage and slow or stop enemies at higher tiers, while blue towers slow enemies more effectively but with less direct damage. The final blue tower "rewinds" enemies back along their path, making them run the gauntlet again. Everything can be upgraded all the way up to level 10, and the strategy comes from the mix of towers and upgrades that you deploy. Every few rounds, you'll face a boss level that nets you a bonus that can be spent for a boost tower that increases the range and damage of your other towers, or an increase to the interest you earn on unspent money between waves.
Without the boundless complexity of GemCraft, Vector TD gets by on charm and a much more pick-up-and-play approach. The original is worth checking out as well; it's not quite as deftly balanced as Vector TD 2, but people who dig the game's style will enjoy conquering its many levels.
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