Color Pic-a-Pix [Game Saturday]

Color Pic-a-Pix is an addictive online puzzle game that is more or less a spin-off of the Japanese Kakuro puzzle game. The core difference is that numbers have been replaced with colors. Here is what this game is all about.

Each game consists of a set number of rows and columns, and color hints that indicate the position and length of each color in the row or column. Two black and one brown for instance indicates that you need to fill two black squares first and then afterwards a brown square. It is now up to you to find the starting position of the first and second color.

The game mechanics sound simple but it may take a test game or two before you get a feel for the game play.

A list of 30 different puzzles are provided by the game, sorted into three difficulty levels. The first ten puzzles are played on a 5×5 grid which makes them easily solvable. It becomes slightly more complex and difficulty once you hit level 2 with its 10×10 grid and level 3 with 15×15.

You need to click on the colors at the top, or use the shortcuts 1-4 on the keyboard, to switch colors. A left-click paints the selected color into the field on the grid. A second left-click removes the color and replaces it with an empty field marker which you can use to keep track of fields that you believe do not contain a color.

The top bar offers back and forward options, a restart button, a check button that checks if the current colors are correctly placed on the grid, and a solution button which displays the resulting picture (and ends the game).

Players should take a closer look at the color information when they start a new map. Some are large enough to fill the whole row or column which makes them a good starting point. It becomes more difficulty in later levels though, which makes rare colors and empty fields the best starting option.

Color Pic-a-Pix is a great little puzzle game, ideal for a short break and for users who like to to try something different for the change.

Awesome Tanks [Game Saturday]

Awesome Tanks is a free fast paced action game that you play in your web browser. The game comes with everything that you’d expect in a tank game, with the exception of a story. You need to select a difficulty level at the beginning before you are taken to the upgrade screen where you see all the upgrades that you cannot afford yet. A click on Play opens the level selector, displaying 16 levels in total of which only the first is playable.

The game controls are displayed briefly on the screen (WASD or cursor keys to move, mouse to fire and aim, space to switch weapons ) before you are thrown right into tank warfare mayhem.

Awesome Tanks uses a fog of war system that hides the majority of the level from you at the beginning. The fog clears once you start exploring the level. The first level acts as a tutorial explaining some of the key game concepts. Depending on the difficulty level selected, you may have troubles completing the tutorial level. New gamers are advised to start with the beginner difficulty.

You earn Dollars for defeating enemies, finding money caches and completing a level. Even if you are defeated, you take the money that you have earned in a level back to the upgrade screen where you can invest it into upgrades.

Available for selection are performance and weapon upgrades. Performance upgrades increase the tank’s visibility, movement, turret speed or armor, and weapons more powerful weapons. The tank has a stationary minigun with unlimited ammunition, and five extra weapon slots that are more powerful but require ammo to fire.

Awesome Tanks is a fun game that will keep you entertained for about an hour. Just head over to the Kongregate website to start playing the game right away.

Zombie Defense Agency [Game Saturday]

I love to play all sorts of tower defense games. From classic flash based versions to new interpretations like Orcs Must Die which I recently bought on Steam. Today’s game is a flash based browser tower defense game. Zombies and other creatures pour into the level and try to reach the exit. It is the player’s task to prevent this by building towers in the level that attack and block the entering enemies from reaching the exit as players lose a life whenever that happens.

The player has only a few towers to select from in the first levels of the game. This changes later when updates become available. Zombies enter in at least one but often multiple entrances and leave the map through one or multiple exits which are usually indicated with arrows. There is also some debris in the levels which act as natural borders that zombies cannot pass.

It pays off to look at the layout of the map before placing towers. It is often possible to block parts of the map with cheap towers to direct all zombies through a narrow opening for maximum effectiveness.

Towers range from cheap basic towers to lightning, fire, minigun and laser beam towers. Each tower has a distinctive attack pattern, range, firing speed and damage.

Towers can be upgraded if the necessary upgrade has been selected by the player. Available for selection are new towers, additional money or global tower upgrades. All towers benefit from the latter.

It is up to the player and play style to decide which upgrades to select. It is not possible to go back to select different upgrades at a later time though which makes it important to make the right selections.

Defeating zombies earns money which can be invested in new tower placements or tower upgrades. The game has a total of 15 different maps that unlock gradually and become increasingly difficulty to master. Enemies become stronger, map layouts more difficulty and wrong tower placement often result in a loss. Players loose one life if a zombie reaches the exit, if 20 zombies reach it is game over. Game over only means that the map was not won and needs to be restarted to progress to the next map.

The game becomes repetitive halfway through, which can be mainly attributed to the lack of “interesting” new zombies and the lack of a story. Another element that is missing is a fast forward button to speed up the gameplay.

Still, the game is fun to play especially for users who like the tower defense genre. You can play it over at Free Web Arcade. (via)

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Prizma Puzzle Challenges [Game Saturday]

It is Saturday again and this means that I’m going to review another game for you to play during the weekend. Today’s game is Prizma Puzzle Challenges, a browser based puzzle game in which you need to direct light – or is it a laser? – through various nodes to reach the exit of the level. In order to do that you need to keep an eye on the energy level in the lower left corner of the screen. This indicates the remaining number of nodes that you can connect. To make matters more complicated, you can never go back to a node. Once you activated it and left it, it is blocked so that you need to plan well in advance to get the right route from start to goal.

Since it would be pretty boring to just connect nodes, you will encounter all kinds of special nodes. Some give you energy back, others unblock regions or have the ability to break crystals which block your route to the finish.

The first ten or so levels should not be to much of a challenge for most gamers. Once you reach level ten things get a little bit more complicated as you know have multiple routes to take. Not all later levels are considerably more difficulty though. The Cannon Challenge levels for instance should not pose a problem for the majority of gamers.

But even if you are stuck in one level, you have the option to try a different zone first and come back later to the level that you could not complete.

Later levels are challenging. You may encounter multiple start locations or teleporters that add to the complexity of the solution. And if you are really stuck you can click on the Walkthrough button to watch a video walkthrough of all levels.

Prizma Puzzle Challenges is a great game for a break. You can complete most levels in less than a minute, provided that you find the right path right away. Some levels can be frustrating to complete, but since you can select others to continue playing that should not bother you to much.

You can play the game in your web browser over at Kongregate.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: browser game, game saturday, kongregate, puzzle