PaintBall - Tricky Puzzle Game

Paintball is a title that make most of us to thing of the game we play in the woods, using custom rifles with colors instead of real bullets. Well, this is not the case with "Paintball - the game". It's a catchy title though to receive more attention on your game. No mater what you first thought by reading the title, as soon as you start playing you will realize it's about a puzzle game.

A very simple puzzle game where your task is to make the small red ball hit the red rectangle. And to do this you have to draw lines. The ball follows the laws of gravity in a very basic way, always trying to move lower. By drawing lines on the ball's way, you can control it's path and make it find the way to the rectangle. It is not so easy as it sounds though. Some levels are very tricky, requiring you to predict the ball's path as it bounces on the lines. On other levels, your patience is the key of progress.

The game's visual performance is very basic. That's acceptable for a game of this kind, but I believe Claxor could had spent more time to make it look a bit better than a raw blue background, black outlined white lines and a red ball. At sound level, the game's features are very basic also. There's only one sound effect: the one that is triggered when the ball bounces on the lines. And there's a single track playing as background music, witch becomes boring after a few levels. Luckily, you can mute everything by accessing the game's options.

Not to forget, the game comes with a level editor also. Give it a try if the game's numerous levels are not enough for you.

Link: PaintBall - the game @ Insane Central Arcade

Click Drag Type 3 - Brain teasers

A young computer science student at South Dakota State University, Andrew VanHeuklon, has made this wonderful collection of puzzles and collected them all in one release. If you like solving riddles, this is the case for you.
Click Drag Type 3 has 15 puzzles, each one entirely stand-alone and independent of the others. The release contain 10 puzzles from the previous 2 games with the rest being the new ones. There's no clues about what to do or where to start from, it's all up to you to determine the way of solving them. All you know is that you can click or drag items with your mouse and type with your keyboard.
Andrew also added a "Behind the Scenes" feature, with is enabled after you finish a puzzle and lets you know more about the game's creation. And there's a timer to count your total playing time. What I most liked in this game is the felling of self-confidence that you get after solving a puzzle. This is what made me go ahead and try the next one and then the next one and so on, until I solved them all! :) So there's a lot addictiveness involved in playing Click Drag Type and this adds a lot to the game's total value.
Nice work Andrew! Keep on providing the world with whatever else you have in your head, I'm sure it's going to be awesome!
Link: Click Drag Type 3
The game is hosted by HybridArcade.com

Lost Picture by Tonypa

To continue on games following a simplistic design, today I post about Lost Picture. It's a puzzle game coming from Tonypa, an inspired games designer having a pack of quality games in his portfolio, all being very simple in both graphical and sound related aspects.
In Lost Picture your target is to reveal the hidden line-drawn picture, using a sonar scan mechanism. Using the mouse, you send sound waves in vertical and horizontal directions scanning the game screen for the connection points between the lines that shape the lost picture. The closer you get to those points, the brighter red circles will appear on the screen to indicate it.
Play around a bit and you'll understand it, personal experience is better than reading plain text ;)
Note: Once you click the game link, you'll land on the homepage of Tonypa. All games are listed there in a strange way. Highlight LOSTPICTURE and click it.

Traffic Jammer JX - Cool Java Puzzle Game

This is the first time I write about a Java based game and the reason is that Flash and Shockwave games available online are numerous and better in quality than their competitors made in Java. So it's easier to find a good game written using one of Adobe's(and former Macromedia's) platforms. Today I decided to give Java a try and see if I can find something.
And so I found Traffic Jammer JX, witch is a well made Java Applet. It's a puzzle game and the story is about traffic control. Different coloured cars get on the road and have to be routed to the appropriate exit locations. To achieve this, coloured arrows are at your disposal to be placed on the cross roads and junctions.
The levels are of variable difficulty, starting from totally easy to get to very very hard ones that demand a lot of brain-squishing to solve. By the way, after you spend a minute on a level, a hint button is activated at the bottom toolbar. You can click that button to get some help.
The game's graphics are moderate for a game of this type. Nicely coloured objects with funny shapes and that's all. At the sound level things are very simplistic again, with no in-game music at all and a few sound effects that are disabled by default. To enable them, click the mute-unmute button located at the bottom right corner of the game screen.
Try playing the tutorial levels first, they will help get started.
To play it is required to have installed the Java Runtime Environment. Follow the link on the sidebar to get the latest release from Sun Microsystems.
The applet is coming from Crystal Squid.

Grain Strain - Collect the grain!

This game is a combination of Lemmings and The Incredible Machine. Grain falls from the air and you have to use various machines combinations to collect as much grain as you can in a bucket on the floor. If you manage to collect enough before the timer runs out, you move to the next level. And that's all about the gameplay.
Graphics have not anything special, just simple shaped objects of pour quality. This will not make you enjoy the game less, but I think the designer could make it better. There's no sound effects, only a repeating music track that is a little boring. This is not a big problem though, because you're pretty busy to complete the level and so you don't notice the music. Again, the designer could provide us an option to mute.
To play, press the button labeled "Start Game" and begin putting machines into place by dragging them from the toolbar on the bottom of the game screen to the main game area. When placed, the machines can be drug again and be placed somewhere else.
To start the game in it's own window click on the image above. Or click here visit the page the game is hosted on.

Incredible Machine Flash Variant

If you ever played one of "The Incredible Machine" games from Sierra, you'll notice the similarities of this one with the original. Your purpose is to use various parts available in your invertory to make the small box go from the begining point to the room's exit.
It's a puzzle game, so you have to be creative and find the right parts combination and positioning in order to success.
The game have a lot of rooms to challenge your brains, all having an icy look. That's the reason of the game being named "CCL Winter Game". It's coming from CCL, an online computers trading company, so it is created for promoting their site. When you move from a room to the next one, a splash screen appears asking you to select a part for what they call "your Virtual PC".
Despite those advertizing screens, it is enjoying and you will have a good time playing. If something is missing from the game, that is a larger inventory of parts. This could make the rooms more challenging. The original Incredible Machine had a LOT parts to choose from to make your way through the levels and that was what I liked the most.
The gameplay is simple: Drag items from the inventory and place them in the room wherever you want and press the button labeled "GO" to see the results. Press the "STOP" button to make changes and the "CLEAR" button to clear the room and start over.
You find information on the original Incredible Machine games in this article from Wikipedia.
CCL Winter Game is hosted here.

Moover - A Nice Sokoban Variant

Sokoban is a classic puzzle game first released to the public on 1982 and it is well known to players worldwide as Tetris is. The game's subject is about moving all boxes to specified areas on each level and to do so, you have to calculate your moves. You have to be careful because some moves will result in a box not being movable anymore, and you will not be able to complete the level.
Moover is a Sokoban variant written completely in Javascript and PHP and can be played in any Javascript enabled browser. You control a funny cow trying to move all wooden boxes to the areas of the level marked with a red "X" sign. The levels are well designed and the difficulty is increasing normally as you move on. Also, if you have cookies enabled on your browser's settings, the game will automatically save your progress and you'll be able to continue from that level later. See the game's instructions for detailed information on saving and loading.
There's a settings page where you're able to configure the game's screen size and control keys. The default are as follows: Arrow keys to move around, U key to undo a move, O key to redo and Escape key to reset the level.
Click here to go to the original page.
If you want to have extended info on Sokoban History, check out this Wikipedia entry.

GROW nano vol.1 - A new addition to the series

Hello again to all of you! I'm back, refreshed and fully rejuvenated, ready to provide you new game links and reviews!
This time it's about the last addiction to the popular GROW series. The name is GROW nano vol.1, witch obviously follows GROW nano vol.0. The concept is almost the same in all the games coming from the designer at Eyezmaze. Click here and there in order to make things grow, usually with different outcome depending on your actions.
In this one, you start with a little stone on the bottom of the screen and try to find points highlighted with a dashed circle when the cursor is above them. If you click those points, the stone will grow and become something bigger, starting to take shape. The difference with the previous volume of this game is that you have all the time you want to search and find where to click until you finish the game (took me about 5 minutes) and see your creation fully functioning. The previous volume has a timer clocking and you have to click all the spots in fixed order and on time if you want to see the ending.
It's very small, indeed. But it's funny and enjoying and leaves you with curiosity to see what the next volume will look like.
When you're done playing, take a visit to the creator's home page by clicking this link. There, you can find all the games published and check the ones you've missed.
Oh, and here's the original page: GROW nano vol.1
Note: this game is played in 500x800 resolution, so if your screen height is not bigger than 800 pixels, the you're probably going to have problems playing it. In this case you can go to the original page. You will be able then to scroll and see the entire picture.

Play Sudoku Online

Sudoku fans around the globe is a crowd continuously growing since the game became popular worldwide 2 years ago. The concept is very simple: fill the boxes on the 9x9 grid with numbers from 1 to 9, with no row or 3x3 box containing same numbers. You begin with some clue-numbers and have to fill the others.
Enough with the explanations, probably you already know how the game goes and my aim here is to provide you some cool game links.
So I found Sudoku Craving, a site where a new sudoku puzzle is available every day. And if you create an account you can track your progress and get more statistics.
I also found this article about the history of Sudoku witch includes plenty of knowledge about the roots of this popular mind-breaking game..