Notes on Casual Online Games

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This page was created as a summary of interesting, free, casual online games.  These may be useful in a course that involves game programming.

Dicewars
Round-Based Strategy Game
Pros:
Cons:

 

GrowCube                                

http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/
Round-Based Sequencing Game
Pros:
  • Interesting approach to the game - the only thing you do is choose the sequence of panels to click
  • Has nice animations - fun, well done
Cons:
  • It's not exactly a game, exactly
  • Seems like once you figure out how to determine the proper sequence for one of these games, you can do them all mechanically.

 

Box Head                                

http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Boxhead-2Play-Rooms.html
Real-Time 2D (Overhead) Shooter

Your character is in a room, with mindless zombies & demons flooding toward you in waves.  You get more guns as you rack up points.
Pros:
  • Nice-looking, distinctive, "box head" animations
  • Can jump to higher difficulties (more monsters/better guns)
  • Some strategy in setting up barrels/mines/walls
  • Nice path-finding algorithms.
Cons:
  • Not a particularly interesting / unusual idea.
  • Keyboard isn't the ideal input device for a game like this.
  • Seems unbalanced.  Once you get fake walls, you can channel the Zombies straight into your gun.  The red Devils try to mix it up (they can shoot fireballs & break walls),
  • It feels like every time I'd died was because of a dumb-luck sort of mistake, as opposed to a lack-of-skill mistake
  • Small rooms get overrun with monsters real quick, big rooms mean you'll be spending forever hunting down the monsters.


 

WhiteBoard War ChopRaider                               

http://www.whiteboardwar.com/chopraider/crplay.php
Real-Time, 2D Shooter
Pros:
  • Basically well done - clean animations, interesting sequence of missions, multiple levels of difficulty
  • The humor is good - the idea is that the 'war' is being fought by (animate) whiteboard illustrations
Cons:
  • 'Normal' was pretty easy - you basically have unlimited helicopters & ammo, unless the bombers (slowly) destroy your resupply ship.
  • Later levels can get a little bit tedious
  • Your bullets have inertia, maybe?  Simply putting the mouse cursor on a target & clicking "fire" won't actually hit when the helicopter is in motion.