Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw

Photo co. There, I Fixed it

Now that I have a PC which does not choke on the simplest of Flash games, I made an account of Kongregate, the social casual Flash games website. It is pretty much a blast. Taking a page from the MMORPG playbook, they keep you interested by assigning several quasi-arbitrary achievements (e.g.: “kill X zombies,” “fly Y feet”) of varying difficulty to each game. Your profile also has a level, and there are all sorts of challenges, usually consisting of getting a number of specific achievements on a number of games (e.g.: “get every 'easy' medal from these games which debuted this month.) Flash games have, over the last few years, grown rather complex in scope and capability, and now contain just as many features as the “501 Shareware Games” CDs with which I grew up. Being able to save a game in progress is now a standard feature, and each game is graphically distinct from the rest, no longer having that default “Flash game” look from the 2000s. Here are two games I have been rather fond of recently:

Miami Shark and Sydney Shark

The concept here is simple enough. You are an invulnerable shark on a populated beachfront. You crush, kill and destroy everything from fish to boats to passing helicopters and jet planes. The action, utilizing the directional arrows and one key for “bite” is nice and button mash-y. There is also a fair bit of strategy in achieving chain combos, and timed jumps for pulling down aircraft. Mostly, though, it's just manic action where the only goal is a high score and no worries about losing.

Infectonator: World Dominator

Everyone loves a good zombie game. Usually, you play the lone survivor having to tough it out in a world where every shadow around every corner is the mindless spectre of death incarnate. Sometimes you get the play the zombie, taking down the bearers of those delicious, delicious brains. In Infectonator, you get to play the disease itself. Every level is an almost overhead view of a city. You infect an area with a mouseclick and watch the disease spread according to rules resembling those in Conway's Game of Life. The early levels are simple, with only a few dozen people in a town, while later on you will encounter towns of nothing but heavily armed individuals, and cities protected by super heroes. In the lab you can work on making the disease more spreadable and the zombies faster and hardier. There are a number of special zombies you eventually obtain, each with their own individual and upgradable power. Unlike the action-orientation of the previous game, Infectonator usually involves making several placement decisions and sitting back and watching the action go while collecting loot around the stage with the mouse cursor. As the game progresses you get more and more options, but there is never any direct control.

Related posts:

1. The Most Insidious Prison of All
2. He Could Not Stop For Death
3. Jump, Jump!