Daily Flash: Flur

A game created in three weeks by a team of two, Flur is a "progressive casual adventure with engaging and nonthreatening gameplay.” The only controls are to move your mouse for direction, and to click once you've leveled up enough to use collectable power-ups. I've said before that games today add achievements to try to superficially extend game time, like a cripple hooked up to a machine. Lets just say that Flur has 85 achievements to get.

Presentation:
Visually, the game starts out looking pretty nice. The menu displays a beautiful fairy, with the entire game sticking to a greenish-blue hue that brings everything together. Unfortunately, that's all you have to look at for the entire game. The background never changes, and neither does your character. The only other things that exist are green and red glowing orbs, though they do manifest themselves in amusing patterns.
3.5/5

Gameplay:
The only thing that kept me going was my curiosity. Yes, the glowing lights appear in increasingly complex and elaborate configurations, but that's about all you get. After leveling my way up most of the way, I still hadn't gotten any feedback that I was doing better. Make my wings grow, make me glow a different color, make something happen that tells me I'm getting stronger. The 85 achievements are mostly shallow and pointless. The addition of red orbs makes the game partially interesting, but it's a long time until any of them pose any threat.
2/5

Overall:
Nonthreatening? Yes, they did that pretty well since getting hit only means a temporary phasing out of the world. Engaging? Hardly. As I played, I waited for something fun to happen. The game feels like it's unfinished, like there was some goal to reach or other levels to add, but they're all missing. Leveling is pointless, and gathering orbs doesn't give you any rewards except more orbs to gather. Yes, there are 85 achievements, but I don't expect anyone to get close to getting them all.
2.7/5

Play Flur Here!

Daily Flash: Magnet Towers

Sometimes, after a long day, we need something mindless with flashy sounds and lots of points to pick us up. Magnet Towers has a simple concept, roll your mouse over the similarly colored tokens, and avoid tokens of other colors. A fun game, but one fatal flaw puts a huge dent in it's entertainment value.

Presentation:
Two large problems stand out for me with the presentation. The first, and it's mostly just a personal preference, is that the music is a generic techno mix and is ridiculously loud. The second, and here's the big crutch that is holding the game back, is that the colors are too similar. This is a game where quickly distinguishing between colors is important, letting you figure out which tokens are safe to touch, and which aren't. Unfortunately, neon green and neon yellow are just so close together, that it takes a lot of focus to tell them apart. A color-blind option would be nice, or changing one of the colors to pink would work just as well.
2/5

Gameplay:
Don't get me wrong, the game is plenty fun by itself, but it just suffers from the poor color decisions. There's satisfaction in whisking around the level, narrowly avoiding tokens you don't want. But, once again, there are problems that could be easily fixed. There's a problem with the interface hiding tokens in the bottom left and bottom right corners. Several times, I finished off a stack thinking I got every piece just to discover that I missed one sitting perfectly under the Mute button. Increasing the number of colors in later levels would also be nice, instead of only raising the number of tokens on the screen.
3/5

Overall:
DO play this game. Just turn the game on mute, and stick around for a minute or two. It's a prime example of how a game could be so much more, but got lost somewhere in the polish stage. I wish there was more to get out of this game, but as it is, the game is just a shadow of what it could be.
2.5/5

Play Magnet Towers Here!

Daily Flash: Soul Tax

An amazing blend of 8 bit graphics and quick puzzle solving with a unique twist, Soul Tax brings you in as a ghost who must gather enough souls to avoid damnation by killing everyone around. Your only weapon? The ability to possess anyone in the game with a pulse. The game may sound like a walk in the park, but clever mechanics and level design show that there's lots of depth to be found in this killing spree.

Presentation:
Oh do I love me some old school graphics. While a change in location would be nice, this is a game about haunting an office building so I can't complain. Everything from the sounds to the artwork hark back to the days when games were all about mechanics and gameplay.
4.5/5

Gameplay:
Snatching the body of anyone in the world makes for interesting puzzles. The first few levels are introductory, and while they have the difficulty of squishing a fly with a ghostly rocket launcher, there's fun in experimenting with the many different things you can do. The level design is excellent. There are several ways you can beat each level, and I'd argue that it takes too long for the game to throw you a puzzle that actually makes you think. There are a few reflex puzzles thrown in there for variety, and it's always a nice to have a change of pace.
4.2/5

Overall:
The fresh gameplay that stealing bodies provides is a breath of fresh air in a world of Super Mario clones. While the ideas were there, I felt like something was missing. Maybe it was a lack of challenge from the early levels, maybe it was a cry for more difficult puzzles in the later game. Some puzzles made it obvious that there was only one solution, and those were nowhere near as fun as the levels that just allow you to work your creativity. Definitely worth a try, Soul Tax gets my approval for originality.
4.3/5

Play Soul Tax Here!

Daily Flash: Top Defense

I love me some defense games. Top Defense brings you in as the commander of a space station, but who cares? This game is about the tedious destruction of thousands of enemies who will mindlessly follow the arbitrarily indirect paths towards your base. Is this game enough fun to play to the end?

Presentation:
Everything from the explosions to the enemies look pretty good in Top Defense. The intro has some wonderful images that suit a sci-fi universe, and you actually see several diverse environments as you progress through the game. No matter how busy the screen gets, all the weapons have distinct effects, and although things can get frantic when the tough enemies come out, everything is clear and the game never slows down.
4/5

Gameplay:
Once again, this is a game that would benefit from a Start Next Wave button. There were plenty of times where I just wanted more things to kill. I like that the different weapons clearly have their pros and cons against different enemy types. Your main cannon can hit hard if you upgrade it, but it can be a hassle to destroy the smaller, quicker units. Your several area attacks can decimate small units, but have a long time between uses.
3/5

Overall:
There are small improvements that could have been made to the game play, and many of the levels just felt drawn out. The earlier levels suffer from easy enemies that are quickly destroyed by anything I threw at them, but there were moments later on that genuinely had me scrambling. If you like defense games, this is an okay way to waste your time. Otherwise, maybe try to find something with a little more action.
3.5/5

Play Top Defense Here!

Daily Flash: One Button Bob

You're at your friend's house, and there's something suspiciously sticky about his keyboard that tells you that if you touched it, you'll probably have to cut off your fingers. Thankfully One Button Bob brings us a delightful game using, you guessed it, one button. The many modes there are reminiscent of the Wario Ware games, with the difficulty ramping upwards as you go along.

Presentation:
8 bit graphics, simple images for a simple game. The entire game feels like you're playing an old Indiana Jones movie, back before we had aliens and Shia Labeouf. The main character is adorable, and you I feel sorry for all the pain I must have put him through with my failed attempts.
4/5

Gameplay:
For a single button game, there's a deceptive amount of gameplay here. From outrunning boulders to throwing boomerangs, jumping gaps and avoiding arrows, it's all done with one button. If there's one thing I wanted from the gameplay, was more of it. By the time it was over, all I wanted to do is see how much deeper one click could take me.
3.5/5

Overall:
Much shorter than most games, One Button Bob will only last upward of 5 minutes. (I finished the game in under 400 clicks, so there's a ballpark for how look it took.) If you have the time to read this review, you have the time to play the game. It's an amazing example of mechanics so simple a child can understand it, but it takes quite a bit of timing and reflexes to make it all the way to the end. Tell me how many clicks you finished in.
3.8/5

Play One Button Bob Here!

Daily Flash: Mechanical Commando 2

Today's flash game is Mechanical Commando 2! It was the featured game for Kongregate today, so why not let it be the first flash game for our daily quick review?

Mechanical Commando is your run of the mill top-down shooter who puts you as some regular guy, who happens to come upon an abandoned Mech laying in a warehouse. Why it has the keys to the ignition in there, who knows. The story doesn't really draw you in or ask you to connect with the hero, lets be honest here, we came to play a shooter and I don't remember the last time I stopped before playing Contra and actually asked what was going on. The story is just there to put you in a war zone, and give you a reason for slaughtering the thousands of people you are going to be killing. And killing we shall.

Presentation:
The game looks good, but lacks any distinct art style that sets it apart from other giant mech games. At times, the camera feels too zoomed in, and you can only see far enough to care about the 4-5 guys on the screen at a time. Bodies, footprints, and explosions stay on the map forever, which is a nice touch, but if you have an older PC be prepared to turn the quality to low to keep up with all the giblets being left on the floor. The aesthetics work, but they never pop.
3.5/5

Gameplay:
There's plenty of people to kill in this game, and I mean plenty of things to kill. Unfortunately, you don't get much variation in a top-down shooter when you basically have: infantry, stationary turret, flyer, robot, and large robot. The boss fights play just like any other enemy, but with a larger health pool and more bullets all over the place. The levels are longer than necessary, and incredibly repetitive. The game is tough, I couldn't make it through the second main story line level without going to do a side stage to get enough exp to make it through. It's not a hard game to play, but the health packs are few and far apart, and when you have several thousand bullets to dodge, they eventually whittle you down. It also doesn't help that if you die, you don't gain any exp for your hard work, and must start the level all over again from scratch.
2.5/5

Overall:
The game is boring and slow. You get new weapons, but all the ones I experienced played exactly the same, but with variations in speed in power. The game was fun for the first fifteen minutes, but the repetitiveness of the enemies and boring level design just couldn't keep me interested. Play the game to see what it's like, but don't expect it to keep you hooked til the end.
3/5

Play Mechanical Commando 2 Here!