The Scoop: Frontier is a non-traditional RPG made by the almost-always-awesome jmtb02. The heart of the game is it’s trading system. Prices for goods fluctuate in realtime across the game world’s cities, and it’s the players’ goal to load up their cart with cheap goods from one city, and turn a profit on those goods elsewhere in the world.

When in transit, players will have the opportunity to engage in combat & other scenarios, including looting goods, helping strangers, and stopping (or getting ripped off by) thieves.

The “main quest” comes in both good & evil flavors, and consists of the fairly standard quests. Fetch this, go fight this guy, etc. Combat itself is a little on the shallow side. You take turns whacking your opponent, and based on the damage dealt & received in round 1 you’ll know who the victor will be.

What the game lacks in combat or scenario depth it makes up for with its excellent economic-based foundation. Starting from nothing and growing your operation to ultimately buy and sell huge numbers of diamonds is fun, plain and simple. Frontier also has some of my favorite music I’ve ever heard in a flash game, which certainly helps.
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Links:
Dev Blog
Kongregate Mirror

The Scoop: Demolition City from Joey Betz initially sounds like a physics-based action title not unlike Betz’s breakout hit Crush the Castle. Buildings frames are standing, and it’s up to YOU to destroy them, via strategically-placed charges of dynamite. The physics-based building-destruction gameplay is familiar, but where Crush the Castle is reflex and timing-based, Demolition City is more focused on strategy and puzzle-solving, making it a game more up my alley.

For every building, you’re given its starting height, the height you need to reduce it to (preferably as rubble), and a limited (usually 3-5) number of dynamite charges. That’s basically it. Place the charges, examine how the building collapses, and if it isn’t sufficiently demolished, modify your tactics accordingly and try again.

The package is a little bare, with a just-the-essentials art style, and just 20 levels to play through linearly. I still enjoyed it, however. It was fun working out just the perfect place to put my 3 charges in order to bring down a large building. It’s not easy, either. You really do need to think about how the building will collapse, in order to succeed.
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The Scoop: Remember how I said I really enjoyed a lot of what Bloons Tower Defense did, but I wished it just had a little more meat & depth? Well… enter the sequel!

The core game remains unchanged – you’ll place your monkey towers to destroy the waves of creeps. The hook here is the same as the first – since Bloons come stacked inside other bloons, you’ll need to have more towers spread out more evenly than in a typical tower defense game. It gives the game a good feel.

This time around, there are three difficulties to choose from. One nice detail is that the difficulty levels do more than just give you an easier/hard path layout to work with. The price of towers and tower upgrades is also adjusted, as well as the number of lives you’re given.

The sequel also adds new towers, and new types of bloons to dispatch. I found the primary new tower (Monkey Boomerang) to be pretty useless, but the addition of one-time-use tacks you can place on a stage to catch any stray bloons before they escape is a very welcome addition.

Overall, it’s a nice little sequel. More strategy and depth, more modes, more fun. It’s still not perfect – there’s no ability to fast-forward waves or save your progress – but NinjaKiwi is moving in the right direction.
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Links:
Kongregate Mirror
Armor Games Mirror

The Scoop: The first time I played Bloons Tower Defense, I wasn’t really too crazy about it. I felt the towers you placed and the creeps you destroyed lacked any real “weight.” I’m not really sure why – maybe because towers don’t snap into place on a grid – they can be placed anywhere. Whatever the reasoning, I’m glad I gave the game another chance, because the Bloons TD titles have become some of my favorite of ALL the free flash TD games. And that’s saying something, considering how many of them I’ve played.

The biggest differentiator between Bloons TD and other Tower Defense titles is that in Bloons, the “bloons” that you’re destroying in each wave will pop into MORE bloons, when shot. The first few waves start off with simple red bloons. Shoot them once, and that’s it. But then blue bloons are introduced. Shoot a blue bloon, and you’ll uncover the red bloon that was inside. Shoot a green, and a blue pops out. Shoot a Yellow, and a green pops out. And so-on. By the end, there are waves of white bloons. Pop a white, and TWO yellows appears. So a simple white bloon actually represents a total of nine bloons you’ll need to shoot.

This leads to different strategy than most TD games. Since the bloons are stacked inside one another, you need lots of towers spread out evenly across the map. It gives the game a nice change of pace.

Bloons TD is a little feature-light. Only one map, not many tower types, etc. But that’s something the sequels fixed (which we’ll be spotlighting soon).
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Links:
Kongregate Mirror
JayIsGames Review

The Scoop: Super Karoshi is the latest in Jesse Venbrux’s long-running Karoshi series, and is the second to be built with flash. We covered its predecessor earlier this year. Like all the other titles, the basic goal of each stage is to find a new and creative way to kill yourself. Usually with spikes.

Each stage is basically a puzzle. You’ll need to hit switches, solve riddles and overcome other obstacles to finally earn the right to throw your little office worker onto the bed of spikes & move on to the next stage. The big twist this time around is that in addition to finding a way to off yourself, many stages will include a handful of other office workers that also need to die in order for you to progress.

This is often accomplished through careful timing. Either hitting a switch at the proper moment to cause them to fall in the position you like, or something similar. It isn’t a radical reinvention of the Karoshi formula, but it is a solid step forward. Venbrux has created five Karoshi games now, and one senses the series might be running out of steam. Still, each of the five titles include unique twists and are absolutely worth playing through at least once.
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The Scoop:
Newgrounds Mirror
JayIsGames Review
Youtube Video Walkthrough
Kongregate Mirror

The Scoop: Turn Based Battle is the latest in a small-but-growing category of flash games that poke fun at various video game conventions. Other examples include jmtb02’s Achievement Unlocked and This is the Only Level.

To give away too much would suck a lot of enjoyment out of the short little RPG, so I’ll keep this write-up vague. The game’s storyline and protagonist are very intentionally hackneyed as all hell – the bright-eyed hero, the veteran who knows nothing but combat, the sassy female sidekick… they’re all here.

The more RPGs you’ve played, the more enjoyment you’ll get out of Turn Based Battle. Bosses you thought you had defeated will suddenly whoosh back to life, revealing their “true form.” The ultimate weapon is a sword of truly ridiculous size. When a party member falls in combat, they’re “Dead. Or just unconscious, if you’re squeamish.” There are also several shout-outs to specific titles, which I’ll leave for you readers to discover on your own.

This game was clearly born from an individual that both loves and hates the classic jRPG formula.

If I had one complaint, it’s that I wished the actual gameplay itself had a little more meat on its bones. As a parody, it is absolutely spot-on. But as an actual game, there could stand to be a little more to chew on.
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Links:
Youtube Gameplay Clip

The Scoop: Avoid! (The Game) is a surprisingly stressful experience, considering that it features soothing music, and no zombies (or enemies of any kind). Maybe it’s just me.

The game is basically a handful of ever-escalating minigames, all of which involve… avoiding things. In one, blocks are falling from the sky, and you must use your arrow keys to avoid them. In another, a circle is moving at random across the screen and you must stay within its boundaries via the mouse.

Each game is passed after you’ve survived a certain amount of time. The rub is that as you play, not only to the rounds get tougher, but you also need to survive longer. Each time you fail to avoid whatever it is you’re supposed to be avoiding, a meter fills. When it’s completely full, it’s game over.

It’s a simple premise, and it’s well-executed. A little bell/alarm sounds whenever you’re failing at avoiding, and this sound eventually drove me a little crazy. I think my blood pressure rose 5 points every time I heard it.
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Links:
JayIsGames Review

The Scoop: Frantic is the first game TFG has covered since Death vs. Monstars that is so crazy, with so much going on, that I had a hard time taking a screenshot that didn’t result in my death.

Frantic’s first few levels will give off the impression that this is a standard (albeit polished) 2D scrolling shooter. Nothing special, but fun. It’s not until about halfway through that Frantic’s fast-pace and impressive enemy/bullet engine really make themselves apparent. There is a LOT going on, to put it simply.

Enemies are destroyed with a satisfying crunching sound effect and screen shaking. This sounds like a little detail, but it really does make things feel much more intense. When you’re tearing through waves of enemies and the screen is shaking like mad, it gives the action an intensity that is missing in a lot of the game’s peers.

The biggest fault with Frantic is that the levels get looooong, and often the boss at the end will be the most challenging part. So you might fight your way through a lengthy level, die on the boss, and then have to start the entire stage again. Frustrating.
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Links:
Youtube Playthrough
Kongregate Mirror

The Scoop: Cat Gets 100 Stars is a cute little Japanese puzzle platformer. Don’t worry – the gameplay is universal. The instructions are pretty self explanatory, and the puzzling gameplay will be familiar to all gamers, regardless of their nationality.

As the title suggests, your sole task is to collect 100 stars hidden on a single screen. The game isn’t the most fun or most clever thing I’ve ever seen, but what struck me about it is just how many hidden elements have been crammed into this single stage. Hidden passageways, invisible platforms, invisible blocks, misleading boundaries… they’re all here. It is reminiscent of Achievement Unlocked.

At the end of the experience, you’re graded on time, steps taken, and number of times jumped. I thought the jumping stat was especially cute, given that all gamers will instinctively jump around like a crazy person once they know there are hidden areas to be discovered. It has been ingrained as part of our psyche ever since we uncovered our first hidden vine in Super Mario Bros.
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Links
Youtube Walkthrough
Auntie Pixelante Write-Up
Technabob Write-Up
Indiegames.com Write-Up

The Scoop: When Pigs Fly is the latest game from Auntie Pixelante, the woman behind Mighty Jill Off which we spotlighted earlier this year. Like her other games, When Pigs Fly is very very hard. This is balanced out by there being virtually no penalty for dying, however. So I never got too frustrated.

The premise is pretty cute. A pig falls into a cave, and has to sprout wings and fly his way out in order to escape. Auntie Pixelante is a very very smart woman and most of her games are rife with subtext about the world and videogames specifically, but to keep things easy on myself and avoid having to do any true critical analysis, we’re going to keep this a strictly surface-level examination.

When Pigs Fly is basically a game about momentum-control. Your flying pig is extremely fragile. If anything, anything touches his (her?) wings, it’s a death. That, coupled with the finicky control set-up, makes this a tricky little game. But once you get the hang of the momentum your pig generates… once you understand the rhythm you’ll need in order to hover in mid-air… none of the game’s rooms will seem insurmountable.

The game will be too tough for some gamers to clear, but those that do will unlock a variety of extras, including a time attack mode, and a just-plain-evil “only one life” mode. It’s hard, but since you aren’t penalized for dying, it isn’t too scary. Give it a shot!
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Links
Truly Excellent Auntie Pixelante Interview
JayIsGames Review
BigDownload Write-Up
GayGamer Write-Up
Play This Thing! Write-Up