Casual Monday -- What Ubisoft Needs to Do Edition

They need to steal this idea and run with it immediately, that's what they need to do! Classic Prince of Persia fans take note, Armor Games' Sleepless Knight - Assassin runs a lot like you'd expect a combination of Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia and Lode Runner to -- the levels themselves are puzzles, the guards are ruthless and your character (Lucy) just can't help but collect inconveniently placed 'coins.'

If it weren't for the squirrelly controls on my laptop's keyboard, this game would be near Portal-level clean in it's ability to (enjoyably) present an entire game in a short period of time -- editing is key in these types of games, folks. However, on the exact opposite end of things, our number one complaint with SKA (like the aforementioned Portal) is it's shortness. That's correct -- we are simultaneously praising and damning a single element of SKA's entirety. It's a wonderful game that we're sure to replay but we can't help but shake the feeling we'd like a little more of a challenge (in the form of additional levels.) Oh, and we'd tell you about the story but seriously, you don't care that much. It's a 20 minute game -- you don't need a story, though they do provide one (and elegantly at that.)

Now get on that, Ubisoft. Check's in the mail, right? Thaaaanks.

Casual Monday -- Sticky Fun Edition

Yeah, I said it. Sticky fun. Not to be confused with sticky buns. Though this week's casual fare comes to you in the form of the much maligned adjective 'sticky,' it's gameplay is addictive and fun -- Rez-like in it's visuals and unlike nearly all shooters we've played, Tumiki Fighters serves as a demo (at this point, though it wasn't always this way) for it's older Wii-born brother, Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy.

The novelty of the game is simple: you're a ship, you shoot other ships and as their vessels fall, you may catch them by sticking to them and thus, they become part of your now-uber ship -- cannons and all. And yes, the eventuality of this is a bullet hell game like you wouldn't believe with some really great new ideas regarding character health and weapons upgrades.

Unfortunately, though we strive for multi-platform capable games here, Tumiki Fighters is only available for those of you running Windows. If you really like what you get here though, BW:BTD seems to be not only a capable extension of the single-player game but also incorporates a (supposedly very complex and detailed) level editor. And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go to sleep. No one wake me up with a cold, sticky hand to the face.

Casual Monday -- You Have to Shave the Beard Edition

Sometimes, you just have to make that giant recreation of your favorite 2D side-scroller's character costumes and then do battle. Let's be clear -- it's the right thing to do. (Is he fighting Gohan?) Either way, this week's casual release comes to us as a confusing menagerie of meta-game/actual-game/flash-game/beard-game, in the form of Castle Crashing The Beard -- a mini-game created for the Behemoth programmer (and newgrounds.com creator) Tom Fulp. Simply put, CCTB is centered around one man's quest to not shave until his work is done and one castle crasher's fight against that.

According to the horse's mouth directly, "Tom Fulp, creator of Newgrounds.com and programmer for “The Behemoth” has vowed not to shave his face until the release of his next console game, Castle Crashers for the X-Box 360 live-arcade. Newgrounds office workers have noticed Tom’s behavior and sanity steadily declining as his beard grows.
Will Tom win his battle to finish Castle Crashers, or will “The Beard” win in the end?"

So you've seen it here first! You can now say with confidence you've played a really good meta-game/actual-game/flash-game/beard-game. Hey, at very least it was entertaining, right? See y'all in the cut.

Casual Monday -- Back On the Horse Edition

Another week, another bloody fight to the death, er, free casual game, just for you! This week we bring you a throwback to the future with Noitu Love & the Army of Grinning Darns, a title straight outta konjak.org that's spilling over the top with 16/32-bit era goodness. It's kind of like MegaMan, it's kind of like Castlevania and it's 100% free to download (unlike it's sequely brother, most recently featured on the 1UP Show.)

The game is an interesting twist on a classic platformer setup in that it changes how you interact with the enemies -- more specifically, this game is a combination of Final Fight/Double Dragon and MegaMan. You are guiding your character with the typical 'wasd' setup and attacking enemies with the click of your mouse. (Nearly) more important than any of this: Noitu Love was made by a single man. Dude did the music, art, programming, testing...everything. You may want to check out the game based on this impressive caveat alone. And with that, we'll leave you to your murdering, you murderer.

Casual Monday Addendum -- This Game is Hard as Shit Edition

This fine Monday we present you with, no joke, The World's Hardest Game. Of course, hard is really a subjective term. Tabuu was hard to beat in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but let's be honest -- he's a cheap son of a bitch. I guess what I'm getting at is this game ain't much better. Created by Armor Games, developer of previous Casual Monday showcased game The Last Stand, you may find yourself mad immediately -- the first level is ridiculous. And that's just the first f'ing level. Good luck, sucker!

[UPDATE] Seriously, this game is ridiculously hard. When it says, "DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING.", it's not joking.

Casual Monday -- Too Many Games Edition

Here at QP, we normally spend all weekend meticulously combing the large, interconnected tubes (sometimes called 'The Internet'), looking in every dark and dusty corner to find your Monday morning casual gaming goodness. Well, it was a busy weekend and as such, you get hit with the old standby -- EveryVideoGame.com being that very standby. Not to say it's not worth your time! Clearly it is, boasting legitimately hundreds (if not thousands) of titles from NES in America, Japan and Europe.

They're all remade in flash, just for you. You can even use a compatible controller so as to quell the rage that comes with playing NES games on a keyboard. Now go get to playing! Go ahead and try out that amazing Virtual Console game that was released today before you spend those virtual bucks! Say something else that requires exclamation points!

Casual Monday -- Spring is in the Air Edition

Oh Springtime! The scent of freshly cut grass coming through the open window where I'm comfortably sitting on a futon, thoroughly enjoying Mass Effect. The official Quarterplay review is coming soon (and incredibly late, by internet news standards) -- maybe we'll call it the Mass Effect postmortem. Either way, it's Monday again, meaning of course it's time to enjoy some more free casual fare, courtesy of your benevolent overlords friends here at QPHQ.

This week we present you, dear reader, with The Game of Disorientation -- a fresh take on top down platforming, coming to you from the folks (single dude?) at Jiggmin. You control a lonely fellow and guide his journey around a small, terrifying room, often filled with spikes, hairpin turns and most terrifying of all....doppelgangers. Yup, I said it. The piece of the puzzle that challenges TGoD's traditionalism is in it's camera views. As opposed to presenting the player with navigation challenges, the game tries it's best to confuse the hell out of you by switching the orientation of the camera, which in turn results in objects that are seriously distorted as well as your character orientation becoming more and more confusing. You can pick up the game and finish it in 10 minutes (and in as little time as 2:33, if you're so inclined to top a leaderboard.)

Though we're inclined to buck trends rather than proliferate them, it seems we have one on our hands here with Casual Monday's pimping of Kongregate.com. The service has simply blown up in popularity since we first spoke about it way back when and it even got a bump from WhatTheyPlay founder (and ex-EGM Editorial Director) John Davison on the infamous 1UP Yours podcast. We again suggest to you that you snag an account and start building those new achievement points -- though we should also warn you, we are meth addicts. At least for achievement points. We'll see you here next week folks, with more free gaming goodness for you. Try saying that five times fast!

Casual Monday -- Everyone's Always Right Except Me Edition

People talk a hell of a lot about this Desktop Tower Defense business and have been for months now. Well, us here at QP, never wanting to believe the hype (Chuck D told us not to), hadn't checked it out until bright and early this morning when we were scrounging searching for a good Casual Monday title.

This game is a great throwback. For those of you who spent hours hurting your neck, back and hands playing Rampart on the Atari Lynx (yeah, I had one of those), this game is perfect for you (and you don't have to sit in horrific pain anymore either!) There's multiple levels of toughness, quickly ramping up in difficulty and sucking away at your free time like you wouldn't believe. But you will believe, if you go play the game that is. It's Monday, you've got time.

Casual Monday -- More Acheivement Points Edition

Zombies, pirates, ninjas...do these things really get old? Though pirates and ninjas have a base in humanity's past, zombies stand out amongst these giants as they are clearly not a part of our past, but our future. Oh yeah, the zombie apocalypse is coming, you didn't know? It's good to have a plan. (And seriously, don't forget to bring a towel, seriously.)

A good way to practice for the upcoming slaughter, the alpha AND the omega, is to shoot the hell out of an endless stream of our new overlords mindless zombies -- and Sean T. Cooper wants to facilitate that. His development studio, Boxhead, focuses specifically on zombie related games, and for our Casual Monday purposes, he has created Boxhead: The Zombie Wars, available on his site as well as our new favorite site, Kongregate.com.

QP suggests playing it on Kongregate, and even furthermore, signing up for an account with them (yes, it's free.) Not only is there game tracking but also achievements for every game (god help us all) and chat rooms. It's all quite well integrated and stands as a great example of where the videogame industry is headed. Browser based digital life folks!

Anyways, Mr. Cooper started developing games way back in 1987 for Electronic Arts, "and they collectively sold 20 million copies plus." Now he just makes flash games for the hell of it. Sounds pretty ok to us, especially given the high level of quality inherent in Boxhead's games. We suggest perusing their website as well as Kongregate, though you may beat us to the punch in future editions of Casual Monday. On second thought, relax, let us sort through those games for you. You deserve a break. Seeya next Monday folks.

Casual Monday -- Dinosaurs With Feathers Edition

Holy crap! It's past noon! Normally we like to have our Casual Monday section up and running early in the a.m., for your gaming pleasure. This week, however, we got caught up playing this game so much that we didn't even realize the time. I guess it's true what they say, "Time flies when you're driving over dead velociraptors." Oh well. As you may have inferred from our oh-so-clever title, this week's Casual Monday comes to you from Flashbang Studios, and is titled Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. Seriously, that's really the name. Amazing, isn't it?

The premise? You drive a Jeep Wrangler looking 4x4 over the scattered herds of velociraptors, sometimes deploying your medieval spiked mace to finish the job. There are achievements, points for just about everything and lots of good fun to be had. The driving mechanic isn't perfect but it's pretty frackin' good for a web-based, 3-dimensional, velociraptor murder sim.

Flashbang Studios have lovingly stated their intentions in creating this game on their website:
"Off-Road Velociraptor Safari was created in eight weeks. We made the game because we wanted to play it. Enjoy!"

There's a bit of a thinly veiled story regarding the velociraptors dead bodies and why you're bringing their carcasses to teleporters (they're being transported to the future where there's less meat -- obviously.) The company you work for has littered the ancient terrain with boxes of supplies, teleporters and conveniently placed jumps, which is mighty nice of them, don't you think?

Seriously though, did you really need a story for this? This is gold. Why aren't you playing right now?

Casual Monday -- Feed the World Edition

Another week has begun, tired though we are, and as you should expect by this point, we're here to offer you another free casual game for your entertainment pleasure. Our selection this week comes inspired by our Week End Podcast Roundup, directly from our sordid weekend of podcast listening and museum visiting (also that damned GTA4 piece in EGM has forced us into a solid week of obsessive Crackdown revisiting.)

Regardless! This week's game is of the text based type and it's called, "Free Rice." The concept is simple: you are given a word and you must match it with it's synonym, which is one of the four answers offered. It's a never-ending, multiple-choice, vocabulary test. But there's a catch! For every answer you get correct, www.freerice.com will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program (a program that feeds people in some of the poorest parts of the world.) All in all, this is a good deal. Even furthermore, while you're answering questions correctly, there's a cartoon bowl of rice on the right side of the page filling up with your donations -- it's hard to deny the attraction of feeding folks who need food by playing a free game.

Is the game going to change your life? Probably not, but it may change someone elses -- and that's no joke. The totals they've achieved since launch are pretty impressive as far as changing the world goes -- they also inspire you to play this game, should you think your contribution isn't going to help that much. Now go help some people, and learn some SAT words ...in toto. Yeah, I said it.

Casual Monday -- Basketball is My Life Edition

Right off the bat, early Monday morning, QP is lying to you. While all of us here at QPHQ are heavily inspired by Charles Barkley's actions as a heroic basketball player in the future -- we are of course talking about Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, the ridiculous (and fully developed) role-playing game offered as freeware -- none of us here actively participate in the sport (or any sport for that matter, other than Calvinball.)

We're sorry about the lies upfront and we hope you'll recover; Allow the voluptuous text boxes flowing from Mr. Barkley's 16-bit face sooth your wounds -- like a Great Fairy Fountain, if you will. If you gobble up this week's casual offering before next Monday, well, you have too much time on your hands. Anyways, you should be playing Brawl. Even if the enthusiast press doesn't understand why people love Super Smash Bros. so much, you know better, you little Sherlock Holmes, you. Now go save the world, in turns, so that you can play basketball, so that everyone can play basketball -- assuming you'd want to play basketball of course.

Casual Monday -- Never-Ending Love Affair Edition

Oh Monday morning, you're always such a malevolent bastard. If it weren't for the wonderful folks at ICanHasCheezburger, we'd be up a cranky creek without a paddle. Waking up to Jonathan Coulton's seminal, "Still Alive" helps to shake off the early Monday boogie-woogies and got us here at QPHQ ready for some old school Portal action. That's right folks -- Narbacular Drop -- the DigiPen title that launched Portal from a student project directly into our hearts.

And now it's here, for you, from us. You're welcome. Ok, we didn't make it. Our bad. But anyways, enjoy the precursor to what's quickly becoming our primary obsession. And in case you were thinking about doing it this week, seriously, don't play Little Gamers on XNA. It is the definition of suffering.

Casual Monday: Aperture Science Edition

Though some of us have already mentioned a Portal flash game earlier in the week, much like most of the gaming community, we here at QPHQ fell fast and hard for Valve's three hour lovechild. And though we're not much for ARG's normally, this week's casual game is most certainly one of those.

We're quite inclined to let you do some searching yourself (around the Enrichment Center, of course) for the login and password -- but given we weren't exactly such astute observers ourselves the first time, we'll give you this:

1.) Click on the area blinking to allow you to type text.
2.) Type, 'login'
3.) For Username, type, 'CJOHNSON'
4.) For Password, type, 'TIER3'

You're on your own from there, dearest reader. If you don't have any knowledge of basic MS-DOS commands (or UNIX for that matter), then you may have a bit of a problem. Otherwise, read the entirety of, 'NOTES.EXE.' It's hilarious.

Casual Monday Addendum: XBLA Edition

Ohhhhh nooooeeeez! We almost forgot about N+ coming to XBLA this Wednesday! With that in mind, though we still heartily endorse The Last Stand, it would be hard not to suggest checking out the game that inspired this week's XBLA release, N. Considering you'd be spending 800 spacebucks otherwise, we're inclined to believe you'll agree.

Enjoy your now, "loaded-with-free-games" Monday. If your boss catches you though, it wasn't us -- you were told to! -- by these assholes.

Casual Monday: Dead Rising Edition

QP blogger Shawn Annable recently received his rental copy of Dead Rising (after nine days of waiting) and boy were we excited to experience the terrible save system. Finding myself thirsting for more zombie killing mayhem, this time without botched save systems and impossible-to-rescue survivors, I turned to the world of flash. It probably doesn't hurt that it's Monday, and thus time for another installment of 'Casual Monday.'

This week we bring you The Last Stand, courtesy of Armor Games, wherein you are charged with fighting off zombies while they endlessly barrage your barricade. Though the details on the game boasts 11 weapons and 20 days & nights of gameplay, I think you may be hard pressed to experience all of that in your first playthrough. The game is easily accessible, has a pretty decent story and some strong play mechanics -- it even has some light tactical rpg stuff thrown in for good measure. The beauty is in the details, people. Though not quite as addicting as certain spinning black circles, The Last Stand will certainly have you cursing those cheating bastard zombies.....your words, not mine.

Casual Monday: Listening to N'Gai Edition

Though we heartily missed the weekly podcast day post this past Friday, us here at QPHQ want to apologize by offering a new weekly section known as, "Casual Monday." Once a week, on (you guessed it!) Monday, we'll offer you our suggestion for a casual game you should be playing (at least when you're stuck in a lecture/cubicle and have a computer in front of you.)

Our suggestion this week, our inaugural week!, comes from Newsweek's very own N'Gai Croal. Over at the Level Up blog, N'Gai's blaming the chaps from Rock, Paper, Shotgun for putting him onto the ridiculously engaging (and terrifyingly addicting) "Spin the Black Circle." The premise is simple: use the left and right arrow keys to, well, spin the black circle. You have to get your companion cube, er, um, I mean a ball, to the exit - - located somewhere beyond the gauntlet of spinning wheels, shooting flames and tremendous gravity. I warn you now, play at your own risk. It will suck you in something fierce. So much so that you miss the part of the lecture you actually needed to hear. Now, SPIN THE BLACK CIRCLE!