It's the morning - well, afternoon - after the curry night before, which means ow my head. It also means ow I'm dead, thanks to a raft of browser games that want to kill me and others in various ways. Get into the Christmas spirit (gin) by crushing your beloved, manipulating blocks, and having a skull for a face. Enjoy!
Skullface by Greg Sergeant
Skullface reminds me of N (opens in new tab) , even if the physics of the main character WHO HAS A SKULL FOR A FACE WHY DOES HE HAVE A SKULL FOR A FACE don't seem quite as fluidly perfect. It's also a bit Dustforcey/Super Meat Boyey, which is to say that it's a 2D platform game where you navigate spiky environments against the clock. Importantly - most importantly - the soundtrack is pretty great. Also it has that whole face-skull thing going on.
Spike: A Love Story Too by Matzerath
Have you ever wondered how the Thwomp from Mario feels? He's so angry, so determined to turn Mario into patty, but no one ever stops to ask why . I'm hoping Spike: A Love Story Too will provide the answers. Like its predecessor, it puts you in the shoes... spikes of a crushing block of grisly death, employed to squash the human, the monstrous and the amorous alike. It's a great, satisfying game, my favourite part being the charmingly nervous expression of the be-suited people before you flatten them into a pile of blood and guts. Merry Christmas, everyone!
TANK FIRES BLOCK by Kenta Cho
TANK FIRES BLOCK is a game I can't play, partly because using the arrow keys to aim feels like an obscure and horrible torture method but mainly because I'm terrible at this sort of thing. That doesn't mean it isn't any good of course - I'm also bad at walking across the road, and I hear that's quite important - but it does mean you won't get much insight from me. Anyway, this seems like a clever shooter - you fire blocks instead of bullets, as the name suggests; success involves using them to shield yourself from enemy bullets. (Thanks to IndieGames (opens in new tab) for discovering this.)
Three Body Problem by Robin Burkinshaw
IndieGames (opens in new tab) also uncovered this ridiculously addictive arcade game, which puts not one but two orange monsters on your tail, who will chase you to hell and back - well, to hell and back across a minimal playing area. Your goal is to touch the purple squares, when they appear, making contact with as many as blockly possible before the ginger grim reapers catch up and turn you into a puddle of pixel juice. The AI makes it. That and the graphical effects, the sound effects, and pretty much everything else.
