Got a Minute? Then We've Got 15 Free Games for You!

If you have only a little time to waste, try out one of these 15 quick, simple, fun games.

Got a Minute? Then We've Got 15 Free Games for You! #1
Simple Side-Scrollers


And Yet It Moves

Side-scrollers are the 2D games, epitomized by Super Mario Bros.
and Sonic the Hedgehog in their younger days. But mention them to newer gamers
who cut their teeth on 3D action games like Castle Wolfenstein, and you'll get
only a blank stare. I mean, blanker than usual. And Yet It Moves offers proof
that simple 2D side-scrolling games still have plenty to offer.


The typical side-scroller puts a character in an underground
labyrinth from which they must escape by running, jumping, and solving the
occasional puzzle. And Yet It Moves similarly starts off with a young man
trapped in a cavern. Instead of being made out of the usual Lego-like blocks
and hackneyed texture mats--so 20th century--this cave is fashioned from
crumpled paper. The character is made from simple line drawings.
Despite
its simple graphics, And Yet It Moves is not a simplistic game. It makes
gravity a key element by allowing you to rotate the world. (That explains the
title, which is based on Galileo's defiant heretical claim that the earth
revolves.) A false turn can send our young hero plummeting onto spiked rocks or
put him in the trajectory of a falling boulder. In the second level, solving
puzzles requires an understanding of the laws of physics evoked by each turn of
the earth. The game is clever in concept and ground-breaking in design.


Flow

Even more abstract and just as fascinating is Flow. This game is
reminiscent of Edwin A. Abbott's classic Flatland, a
mathematical novel about creatures in a world where a third dimension is
unknown. Flow is certainly the most relaxing game you will ever play that
involves killing other creatures. In it, you are some sort of microscopic life
form that looks vaguely like the petroglyphs drawn by cliff-dwelling tribes.
You swim though a primordial soup looking for smaller forms of microscopic life
to consume. Your goal is simple: Eat and evolve. Other creatures are obeying
the same primordial mandate, of course, and they're bigger than you are. There
are no sudden movements, and the mechanics of the play assure that each move
made by the abstracted creatures is as graceful as the soothing background
music, even while they are being eaten.


Double Wires



The best part of the Spider-Man movies
is when Spidey shoots webbing around so he can swing from one building to
another. If your swing gene is itching, scratch it with Double Wires, a
Macromedia Shockwave game you don't even have to download to play--though you
may need to download the
Shockwave player. Double Wires has a sparsely drawn, vaguely humanoid figure who
also can shoot sticky strands from his wrists as he swings among abstract
blobs. You shoot the strands by placing your cursor on a blob and clicking.
It's harder than it sounds. And more fun, too. Think of it as a game that
offers only the good part.


Tumiki Fighters

Like
Rrootage
below, Tumiki Fighters comes from Japan by way of


Got a Minute? Then We've Got 15 Free Games for You! #2
cs8k-cyu/" target="_blank">ABA Games
and the Acid-Play free game site. (Check it out!) In this side-scroller,
you pilot a fighter plane headed in one direction while fending off enemy
planes of all sizes going the other way. You shoot. They shoot back.
Sounds pretty conventional. What makes it outstanding is the artwork, in
which everything is constructed out of the simple shapes of kids' virtual
blocks. Each time you destroy an enemy aircraft, it falls apart. Any parts that
you can scoop up become part of your airplane--no matter how unaerodynamic it
may appear--and adds to your firepower.


Fly Guy

Fly Guy is a laid-back side-scroller that has absolutely no
point--which is the point. It is simply about a character who soars without
need for balloons, planes, or feathers. The antithesis of today's 3D
photorealistic games, Fly Guy consists of black-and-white line drawings that
look as if they were created by James Thurber. (The humorist's art style was so
simple that after he became blind he could still draw dogs, provided someone
else made a dot for the dog's eye.) Fly Guy features a balding, portly man in a
suit with pants hitched up who looks '30s-ish--the decade, not the age. He
starts off bored, waiting at a bus stop. But as soon as you start playing with
the arrow keys, he rises in the air with a gracefulness that belies his every
pudge.
As a sprightly piano plays on the sound track, you guide Fly Guy
among clouds, a duck, an ever-wise holy man, a boxer, and an alien on a flying
saucer, with whom Fly Guy trades some guitar licks. There's not a whole lot
more to it, just a few surprises and more creatures and objects floating
through the air--or water. It depends. The game has the look of an elaborate,
interactive New Yorker cartoon. The whole experience
is so wry and laid-back that it makes snails seem hyperactive.
Into the Third Dimension


Cloud




Fly Guy is a cartoon. For a more realistic fulfillment of the
universal fantasy of being able to fly
la Peter Pan, book your next flight
on Cloud. Your surrogate Icarus in the game is an androgynous, nightshirt-clad
youth who soars above oceans and isles. As the game plays music Yanni would be
proud of, you use your mouse, its buttons, and scroll wheel to position a
glowing light--not unlike Tinker Bell--to control where the youth goes. The
main idea is to gather clouds, which in later levels you can use to construct
floating images, such as that of a lollipop. Or your floater may be assigned
the task of fending off those nasty dark clouds. I spent a long time playing
with Cloud, not because it was difficult, but because it is the most relaxing
experience I've ever had that involved a computer--the perfect game to have
handy the next time you're put on hold.


The Restaurant

The developers of The Restaurant promise that anyone who makes
it through a full round will receive credits on a future game as a "Game
Developer," plus a receive a personality analysis based on how they played the
game. Here's how the game works. After a brief training session, you sign up to
play with another person through one of some 80 servers around the country. If
you're first in line, you become a waitress. The second person is the only
customer, and if no one takes on that role, you're left twiddling your virtual
thumbs. (It's best to play around dinnertime because that's when you're most
likely to pick up a game partner.) Simple animated 3D figures represent each
player. Both of you can move around, pick up things, eat, and communicate by
typing. As the waitress, I started out with the usual: "Your menu. Can I get
you a glass of wine, yada, yada." Pretty boring, huh? But then I remembered:
There's a real human being behind that avatar. That means I could screw with
him.
So I began dredging up Monty Python and Marx Brothers routines,
describing the glories of a raspberry tart and then returning from the kitchen
to tell him the cook had just eaten the last piece. This was great fun until
the customer got sick of me. And left early, apparently by just disconnecting.
That aborted the game, and I never got my promised character analysis. No big
deal. I've already been told I'm a jerk.
A Bit of Ultraviolence


Warning Forever


There are occasions--such as when your Internet connection has
broken for the fifth time, or when the stupidest person in the office has
gotten your promotion--when nothing will do but a good, noisy, fiery ka-BOOM!
Like what you get with Warning Forever.


The great thing about Warning Forever--I have no idea what the
title means--is its simplicity. If you have at least three fingers spread over
two hands and a passing familiarity with arcade games of the '70s, you have
everything you need to play. You're at the bottom of the screen, moving warily
back and forth, as you shoot gracefully wavy streams of--oh, let's call them
"vortex torpedoes"--at a mother of a mothership.
Right off the bat,
you've got a fighting chance. But it diminishes rapidly with each new level,
which of course brings a form of new spectacular weaponry that the mothership
uses to kick your butt in a new spectacular way. The retro graphics are
primitive compared to those of most games, but so what? You didn't launch
Warning Forever because it's Art Appreciation Day. You needed it to vent some
of your inner killer before you take it out on the next person who wishes you a
"nice day."


Rrootage

What's that you say? Oh, it is Art Appreciation
Day? In that case you should launch Rrootage. It's essentially the same type of
game play as Warning Forever. You scoot back and forth at the bottom the screen
firing off lasers and bombs to take out the enemy ship, which is half
dreadnought, half work of art.
The action is more intense than in
Warning Forever, but better still are the amorphous, semi-abstract artwork and
the high-energy te


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