I’m not going to give away the secrets to this one, see how far you can get before the game out smarts you. I got to level 67.

~play it here: http://www.addictinggames.com/i-dont-even-game.html

What is Paris 26 Gigapixels?

Paris 26 Gigapixels is the name of the biggest assembled panoramic image of the world. It shows Paris in a very high definition. A gigapixel is 1 billion pixels! The image is a stitching of more than 2000 individual photos. Paris 26 Gigapixels was shot on September 8th, 2009 and you can view it here http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com.

Seriously, this is well worth the visit. The amount of detail is just mind blowing and you’ll soon find your self zoomed in and panning along the many Parisian bedroom windows for a glimpse of life inside. From afar the human race is kind of charming.

If you enjoyed the it you should read the ‘about’ page for more interesting facts about the project.

Just as an aside, FLASHISM may broaden its horizons into all types of free gaming and other things flash in general. Animations, randomness … anything related really.

Stay tuned.

Second part of the “Colour my …” games review coming next week.

This is a cool little promotional feature on the Swedish Armed Forces website (seriously), that tests your mental faculties with a series of puzzles at increasing speed. You can play with 3 other random anonymous people from elsewhere in the world, or if you have 3 friends in an IM conversation or chat room, then the site allows you to generate a unique private url to share so that you can connect and play with them.

You are allocated a colour and a corner of the screen automatically to complete your individual puzzles. The neat thing is that completing the puzzles quickly doesn’t add more time to you to continue, but instead to your comrades. This means that you are relying on each other to get through.

Once your time has ran out because you or your teammates are failing on too many puzzles or not completing them quickly enough you’ll be told whether you’re above average or not. The scoring system is not greatly developed, but the key thing is really how long you last. I found that most of my games were between 2½-3mins if I was playing with people who were awake, with my best effort topping out over 4mins.

This is a cool little time waster for half an hour or so, and probably even better to play with friends (I haven’t had the chance yet, bawwwww), and whilst it doesn’t quite seem fitting to rank it out of 5, I will do anyway.

It’s really well put together; pretty minimalist design, cool voiceover and really gets your brain working under a bit of pressure. It’s worth a bit of your time if you’re bored. Ultimately, although I bookmarked it and the puzzles and overall concept are nicely done, it’s unlikely that I’ll come back to it many times. YMMV.

3 out of 5

The Swedish Armed Forces need YOU!

Take the test here.

This series of games has been submitted to Newgrounds and Armor Games by a contributor called SilverStitch, and seem to have been inspired by a special someone in his life. All together now, d’awwwww. The thing is, I’m actually a little bit in love with the games. They’re not testing in anyway really, but it’s something akin to being inside an interactive poem at times. One man’s beautiful is another’s hackneyed schmaltz, I know that, but I think that there’s really something here. They certainly touched a nerve with me.

There’s 5 total. I’ll write a bit of an intro and look at the first 2 here, and follow up with Part 2 looking at chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the series.

They’re designed in a high contrast sketched out black and white, and as you progress through the games you will find you need to work a little to bring a bit of colour into the world. And that’s a part of the message at work here. The scores to all the games are written by SilverStitch’s apparent collaborator Coin, and they’re perfect. Simple melancholic piano loops that fit so well with the style and intent of the games.

Anyway, let’s look at them. There’s a story at play, so if you’re going to play them, you should probably do it in order. And I would recommend they are played at night, when you are relaxed, with headphones.

Colour my Heart (title links are clickable)

You’re the little dude there. You see him? He’s on top of the building by the vents blowing out love heart smoke rings. In Heart your little guy is indeed little. It’s simple platform stuff and an easy puzzle to solve, but it’s a nice first look at the universe you’ll be in.

This game is really short, but you’ll want to play the others after and maybe think of it as an introductory chapter – a prologue.

When you get to the end of the level, you’ll have some kind of an idea what this series is going to be about.

Colour my World

World opens with a short animation setting the scene. You’ll notice that the game is now dealing with a much larger canvas, so whilst the images below are difficult to define, click them and you’ll see the full size version. It seems that much more development time went into this chapter. The animation is smoother and more detailed, there ‘s more interaction with items (sparkling levers and such) and you can start bringing some colour into your your hero’s universe: B&W City.

Again the gameplay is very straightforward platformer style, but your guy has a bit of a spring in his step as he bounds across the landscape towards the Sky Trains that will take him to B&W City. Messages are revealed from some dystopian source discouraging you from continuing across the Grey Mountains (No Explorers, No Photos, No Smiling), showing a world and society in deep decay.

As I mentioned before, there’s quite a poetic effect of the feeling of defying the obstacles and discouragement in your path mixed with the saddening music. If it hasn’t got you by now, then it may never, but I would encourage you to play on. The development of the themes continue and the games get a bit cleverer into chapters 3, 4 and 5 – Dreams, Fate and Life.

I encourage you to take your time with these games.

Don’t rush. Enjoy them. Explore them.

Explore your dreams, free your world …

To be continued …

WARNING: may result in unexpected tears of joy.

The typical user reaction to stumbling across Robot Unicorn Attack.

It’s a bit like The Helicopter Game in its simplicity, only it has Robot Unicorns, rainbows, pink dolphins and Erasure on the soundtrack.

Open your eyes, I see
Your eyes are open
Wear no disguise for me
Come into the open

I don’t know whether time will be kind to Robot Unicorn Attack, but for now it seems glorious. It’s the kind of game that will restore your faith in the internet if it ever wanes.

5 out of 5

Play Robot Unicorn Attack

Edited to add:

http://www.playauditorium.com/

This superb music flash games has won a bunch of internet awards, and for good reason. Although the website only offers a free demo of this game, if I had the extra few bucks, I’d probably pay to download the rest.

Use your intuition to direct the flow of light through the music activator bars to progress to the next level. This game is more about audio and visual experience than completing goals, so you can just chill out and enjoy the music whilst exercising those brain cells a little.

It gets a little more complex when different goals come into play, for example you can attract and repel the flow light to get it to the destination or you have to fill the container with certain coloured light.

Even if you just have a play about with the demo, I’m sure you will enjoy the experience and I recommend you try it.

4/5.

Music in Motion

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio_Niato/music-in-motion

I spent way too much time on this game. Use your arrow keys to race through the levels to a catchy tune. The music generates the level, so dips and spikes will be represented in the game play by obstacles. Don’t let the screen catch up with you or it’s game over.

On the second level the obstacles fall down and squish you, in time to the music. Avoid getting squished to complete the level. Each level is generated in a unique way for you to figure out.

This game is a little tricky but it will leave you wanting to try over and over again until you get it.

4/5

Chaos Escape

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/387991

Intructions. You are blue, don’t touch red. Use your mouse to move.

This game is FUCKING AWESOME. The  music is great, the artwork is cool. It’s also FUCKING HARD. Especially for a slow reacting stoner like me! You should go and see if you find it any easier using a mouse, something which I’m lacking.

Another 4/5

Rhythm World

http://www.funny-games.biz/rythm-world.html

If you’ve ever played OSU! then you’ll probably really enjoy this game. It combines Guitar hero, Dj Hero and DDR style game play and there are lots of songs to choose from, with categories from Video Game to BlueGrass, Goth and Old School Hip Hop. Some of the tracks are  bit iffy as the content is user created, but I had good fun trying to beat the scores of other players.

There are some bugs in this game, like tracks that do not work, that need ironing out but it’s a good way to pass a little bit of time.

3/5

Labuat are a Spanish music band who I know virtually nothing about, other than I picked up the link to this little flash delight from one of those blogs that trade in the currency of weird and wonderful weblinks.

It’s not a game as such, but will help you happily pass a few zoned out minutes. The action streaks from left to right, and you control the horizontal with your mouse leaving paint daubs and swirls in time with the music. The music is kinda lilting and soothing and it becomes really quite hypnotic wooshing around in time with it.

It automatically records what you do as you go along and at the end of the track you get the option to playback your masterpiece. I have ideas that would improve it, such as using the same engine with any MP3 you have on your hard-drive,  the inclusion of more colours would be great, and a standalone desktop version would be really cool. But at the end of the day, it is what it is, which is a cool bit of promotional work for a little Spanish band.

It’s really neat. Stoners will love it.

Try it here.

FatCat
Arrow keys or W A S D to move the cat, move the owl with the mouse.
Sounds simple enough, but what they fail to mention is that left mouse click is to shoot with the owl and space bar to shoot with FatCat.
Making things a little more difficult. I didn’t intend to make a video with the review but trying to explain this game is not
the easiest thing to do. I failed miserable at the first few attempts.

Level one walk through.
Super Kawaii Nekosama Mothership leaves Owl and Fatcat floating through a sky full of baddies, with only one mission:
Eat cake and make a big burp.
How productive. Anyways so, owl flies in front of FatCat and can shoot flying baddies whilst FatCat collects the cake and blasts through
bits of walls with his lasers (you might want to remember these tips as controlling two independant characters at once is pretty hard, and
even harder with a  touch pad)

You dont need to worry about controlling FatCat so much on Level 1, just shoot all the enemies with Owl and let FatCat follow behind, eat the cake,
then laser the purple bricks. When your collecting cake its easy to forget about Owl, but try not to as you need him to
destroy new enemies heading towards you both. I screwed up at the end and just dashed for the finish whilst I had the 2 second
immunity after getting hit.
You should have a feel for the game by now, but don’t get to confident…

Level 2 walk through
Shoot bad guys with Owl… then things start to get difficult. It took me a few times to work out what was going on since the
screen scrolls fairly quickly.
DRAG THIS WITH OWL – move the block to the right using the Owl.
Fatcat can then pass through the yellow and grey blocks.
Take Owl ahead and move the first block down and then second block up, then direct FatCat over the first and under the second.
Watch out that the screen doesn’t catch up with you or its back to the start.
The next block can move in four directions, take it left and smooch the enemies with it, then move FatCat through the path.
Move the same block all the way to the right and then fly up the center path.
Gah, lots of enemies! Shoot them all, collect cake (don’t miss it like I did) move the first block left, the second one right,
move the next one along the path, shoot the big scary looking thing, move the next block and leave it in front of the next big
scary thing. Huzzah, the finish line!

Level 3
Use Lasers to kill bad guys! Weee! Uh oh- WARNING! DEADLY LASER. Move the block down with Owl to block the laser from frying
FatCat. Move the next one up, use Owl to press the switch to turn the next laser off. Same again, then shoot bad guys. The next laser you
have to switch twice, once to blast the baddies, then again to turn it off. Then move the block to the right, the next to the left,
then right again and left again. I kind of messed it up again at the end and I’m too lazy to record it played properly but you can see what you need to do to get to the finish line.

Level 4
Special Buttons have special powers…but you’ll have to go and play the game to find out what they are! In a matter of seconds
I was nothing but a faint meow in a storm of pink and green orbs. I’m not quite sure what happened but I’m done writing this so
I can go and complete the rest of the game.
Overall I really enjoyed this game, the music is great and the game play is smooth (the software I recorded the video on is a bit laggy, it’s not the game)
and each level requires more thought than the last.

Play it here.

I give this game a 5 out of 5.

What we have here is a physics game. You are presented with an object around which you must construct your Fantastic Contraption from the various tools available to you, making sure that it’s fit to get to the goal zone by negotiating whatever obstacles, puzzles and landscapes that are put in front of you by the devious level designers .

I’ll refrain from showing you many of my solutions in the spirit of fair game, but the wonderful thing about Fantastic Contraption is that there’s a limitless number of ways that each level can be solved. Naturally the early levels are very easy as you get used to the tools at your disposal, but as you progress there are some devilishly difficult scenes to beat.

There are three types of wheel from which you can construct your device; clockwise moving, anti-clockwise moving and neutral (it only goes anywhere when shoved in a particular direction). In addition there are two types of struts with which to build the frames and connect wheels; water struts which are more bendy and can pass through other parts of the contraption, and wooden, which are more sturdy and can’t pass through anything. So, 5 materials to go at and manipulate as you choose. To be honest, the best bet is not for me to explain too much about the game mechanics, but for you to just jump straight in and start experimenting.

A word about the background music. Yet again this is an example of the music adding to the experience with what is to all intents and purposes a repeating mellow riff. It’s kinda hypnotic and as you play along you’ll notice it’s helping suck you in to the whole thing. If you were listening to, I don’t know, some Megadeth as this was playing out, you’d probably want to stab someone after being stuck for 5 minutes on a level. The music here encourages you to think and work out exactly what you are doing and how this contraption is going to get around that bend or over that big dumb ball.

As I mentioned, the levels get hard. Seriously. WTF?

A couple of them (including the above) had me seriously beat.

Then I discovered the game’s forum. And then I discovered that you can save and share your solutions to levels. And herein lies a good bunch of my fascination with this game. This little feature is fucking brilliant. Playing back other peoples’ solutions to levels and seeing the imagination that goes into some of them has me hooked. And yeah, it’s also helpful if you wanna take a shortcut and cheat a level. I would encourage you not to as far as possible though. Some levels I looked at for 10 or 15 minutes wondering where to even start, but the satisfaction in getting to your solution your own way doesn’t compare with creating a copy or variation on someone else’s.

The only screenie with one of my attempts in it (my caterpillar).

Fot $10 you can get an advanced version of the game which will give you access to extra levels and allow you to construct your own, and play other people’s creations. I think that I shall be investing. I figure that if you are into this kind of stuff (like me) then you will absolutely adore this game. I’m loathed to give it 5 stars because then I have no headroom for future games that fully blow my mind. It’s as near as dammit to full marks though.

4 stars out of 5

Play Fantastic Contraption

Really. Play it. Right now.