Now that computers have made our working lives so much more efficient (ha!), what are we supposed to do with all that extra time we’ve created for ourselves? There are only so many paperclips you can unbend, only so many rubber bands to be made into a ball...
Bright Idea
Luckily, someone had the bright idea of using Adobe’s Flash technology to allow us to play games within our browsers – and now the sheer variety of instantly available, often free games means there’s very little time left to actually do the stuff we came to the office to do in the first place. Let’s have a look at a few of the best ones...
Top Games
Happy Wheels, despite the innocuous-sounding name, is a gore-soaked platformer in which you attempt to conduct your vehicle to the finish line without loss of limbs or decapitation. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll succeed, based on my experience. Very funny; not very nice.
At the other end of the spectrum are educational games such as Eight Letters In Search Of A Word. This is one for Scrabble players and fans of Countdown; make the longest word you can from the random letters, with an eight letter anagram every five rounds.
Crashing one’s balloon in a wasteland at night, and having to fend off weird creatures with increasingly advanced weaponry: it’s something we’ve all done, and at last there’s a Flash game that reflects our experiences. It’s called Balloon In A Wasteland, as you may have guessed.
Online bingo is a good way to use up those empty office hours. At bingo.com you’ll find all the bingo-related thrills you’ll need to keep you going until hometime. Bonuses are available for new players, and there’s a chat function.
Old people (i.e. people born in 1981 or earlier, like me) will be thrilled to hear that classic shooter Doom is now available as a play-for-free Flash version. Prepare to be sacked, as the chances of you stepping away from the game are exactly the same as they were twenty years ago, i.e. zero.
Learn Stuff!
There’s a profusion of poker sites of course, but if you want to practise before you play for hard cash, you could do worse than either Poker Practise or Learn Texas Holdem, both available at Flashgamepoker.com.
Finally, another brain-tester that’ll maybe teach you something. Flags Of The World is fast and attractively designed, and really quite addictive as you battle the clock and other players to identify as many flags as possible. It’s online at Geography-map-games.com. Enjoy!
(Images via Wikipedia, totaljerkface.com, bingo.com, geography-map-games.com)
