Flash Friday: Gamesnacks.com
November 19, 2021 10:23 AM Subscribe
Gamesnacks.com has over 140 simple games you can play in browser with no ads or crap. I've played most of them.
These are the games I keep coming back to again and again. Many are ... based on other existing games.
Basketball Masters - Bubble Tower - Candy Bubble - Dunk Brush - Endless Siege - Flippy Box - Hexa Dungeon - Pin the UFO - Retro Drift - Stack Bounce - Totemia - Tower Crash 3D - Knife Smash
These are the games I keep coming back to again and again. Many are ... based on other existing games.
Basketball Masters - Bubble Tower - Candy Bubble - Dunk Brush - Endless Siege - Flippy Box - Hexa Dungeon - Pin the UFO - Retro Drift - Stack Bounce - Totemia - Tower Crash 3D - Knife Smash
It’s built by Area 120, and I'm kind of curious why Google is funding this.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 AM on November 19, 2021
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 AM on November 19, 2021
oh, interesting! Here's a blog post from Area 120 about it.
posted by rebent at 10:32 AM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rebent at 10:32 AM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Some light coverage by TechCrunch: “GameSnacks, from Google’s Area 120, brings fast, casual online games to developing markets”
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
HTML5 is the new Flash.
Why Google is doing this:
We’ll soon start experimenting with next-generation AdSense for Games ad formats with a select number of GameSnacks games.
posted by eye of newt at 10:49 AM on November 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
Why Google is doing this:
We’ll soon start experimenting with next-generation AdSense for Games ad formats with a select number of GameSnacks games.
posted by eye of newt at 10:49 AM on November 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
Clicking on the "Bubble Tower" link locked my work PC HARD. Audio buffers got stuck and it stopped responding to any input at all; I had to physically shut off the power to reboot.
Guess I'll start that 90 minute build process over again...
posted by Foosnark at 10:55 AM on November 19, 2021
Guess I'll start that 90 minute build process over again...
posted by Foosnark at 10:55 AM on November 19, 2021
I needed this so badly for those times when I want to waste time, but don't want to fire up a real game. Sincere thanks, rebent.
Endless Siege was the first one I tried and it's great.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:10 AM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Endless Siege was the first one I tried and it's great.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:10 AM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Online Flash games used to be a lot of fun (remember Friday Flash day?). Despite all the rhetoric, HTML5 had a lot of shortcomings compared to Flash, so it didn't really replace it. Maybe over time it has quietly improved enough to finally takes its place and we'll get back to having a lot of creative and fun free online games and activities.
I'm surprised Adobe hasn't taken advantage of this. I wonder if they could take their Flash development code and have it output HTML5 instead of Flash, so people could port over all their old games. I want to play 'Crush the Castle' again (a superior Angry Birds pre-cursor).
Maybe some day we can have Friday 5 day (for HTML5).
posted by eye of newt at 11:43 AM on November 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm surprised Adobe hasn't taken advantage of this. I wonder if they could take their Flash development code and have it output HTML5 instead of Flash, so people could port over all their old games. I want to play 'Crush the Castle' again (a superior Angry Birds pre-cursor).
Maybe some day we can have Friday 5 day (for HTML5).
posted by eye of newt at 11:43 AM on November 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
Many are ... based on other existing games.
I'm not sure what the relationship is between Ultimate Knife Smash and Knife Smash, on USA Today's website, other than that neither one of them really lives up to the name.
posted by box at 11:47 AM on November 19, 2021
I'm not sure what the relationship is between Ultimate Knife Smash and Knife Smash, on USA Today's website, other than that neither one of them really lives up to the name.
posted by box at 11:47 AM on November 19, 2021
Cannon Balls 3D is very replayable, as is Stack Bounce. Love these little time wasters.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 12:12 PM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 12:12 PM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh dear. I'm in trouble ...
posted by Quasirandom at 12:44 PM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Quasirandom at 12:44 PM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I haven't clicked through any of these yet, but I'm hopeful it will be something like Orisinal was, back before Flash went away. The games were pretty and smart and simple and quick and challenging. I loved games like Bubble Bees - you had to enclose bees in bubbles from a bubble wand. Charming, with lovely music.
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:40 PM on November 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:40 PM on November 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
If you're casually interested in the tech progression of this area, keep an eye out for Web Assembly becoming the new buzzword.
It very basically allows the web to be directly targeted by lower level languages like C++ and thus achieve speeds much closer to device-native than Flash or HTML5 could ever hallucinate of...
Once its ecosystem has grown and stabilised, and once clever devs have combined this raw speed with tricksy ways of streaming assets or generating them procedurally, web and mobile gaming will probably see a period of pretty massive growth and diversification.
posted by protorp at 1:51 PM on November 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
It very basically allows the web to be directly targeted by lower level languages like C++ and thus achieve speeds much closer to device-native than Flash or HTML5 could ever hallucinate of...
Once its ecosystem has grown and stabilised, and once clever devs have combined this raw speed with tricksy ways of streaming assets or generating them procedurally, web and mobile gaming will probably see a period of pretty massive growth and diversification.
posted by protorp at 1:51 PM on November 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
Welp, found Pin the UFO. See you folks on Monday morning!
posted by NoMich at 2:11 PM on November 19, 2021
posted by NoMich at 2:11 PM on November 19, 2021
Damnit rebent this is basically the addictive videogame from that episode of Next Generation, except that there are over a hundred of them. Thanks but curse you as well 😁
posted by sixswitch at 10:49 PM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by sixswitch at 10:49 PM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Ah, an actual replacement for Shockwave games!
I am addicted to stupid dumb non-narrative idiot solitaire games, and Shockwave was so good at providing them that I actually started paying a yearly subscription (it's cheap, 20 bucks or so). But with the death of Flash all my favorites were replaced with depressing word search puzzles and less than inspired bits of junk, so I just stopped.
This looks like a perfect replacement, which may not be a good thing. . .
posted by jrochest at 12:10 AM on November 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
I am addicted to stupid dumb non-narrative idiot solitaire games, and Shockwave was so good at providing them that I actually started paying a yearly subscription (it's cheap, 20 bucks or so). But with the death of Flash all my favorites were replaced with depressing word search puzzles and less than inspired bits of junk, so I just stopped.
This looks like a perfect replacement, which may not be a good thing. . .
posted by jrochest at 12:10 AM on November 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
It is crazy surreal to play some of these games and not have them constantly flogging pay to proceed tokens.
Also pin the ufo is that bait and switch game I used to see constantly on Facebook and I love it for that.
posted by Mitheral at 7:56 AM on November 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also pin the ufo is that bait and switch game I used to see constantly on Facebook and I love it for that.
posted by Mitheral at 7:56 AM on November 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
Thank you! I so needed this kind of pretty bubble game today!
posted by SaharaRose at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2021
posted by SaharaRose at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2021
Very poor timing of this post for a person who lost their job yesterday and was never able to get the hang of a PlayStation controller. I love it.
posted by bendy at 7:37 PM on November 20, 2021
posted by bendy at 7:37 PM on November 20, 2021
These are good, and nicely polished, but -- at least in the ones I've tried so far -- the lack of any difficulty progression makes them a little unsatisfying to play for long.
Like for example: Stack Bounce is a really good one-button game but I'm at level 65 now and it's not any harder than level 1 was. It's a nice distraction for a few minutes but I'd really like it to put up more of a challenge.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:58 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Like for example: Stack Bounce is a really good one-button game but I'm at level 65 now and it's not any harder than level 1 was. It's a nice distraction for a few minutes but I'd really like it to put up more of a challenge.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:58 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
I agree. The complexity seems to be in making levels longer by tiny incremented
posted by rebent at 3:27 PM on November 21, 2021
posted by rebent at 3:27 PM on November 21, 2021
There's a version of the site that allows for being more social--setting up a 'party', competing for scores with your friends.
posted by eye of newt at 6:59 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by eye of newt at 6:59 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Eye of newt, that's incredible! I know what I'm doing with the fam this Thursday
posted by rebent at 4:15 PM on November 22, 2021
posted by rebent at 4:15 PM on November 22, 2021
99 balls is good. the snake game is good.
All of the driving games have been the wooooorst.
Some word games were good but I kept waiting for them to get harder and they never did.
For the purpose of killing <5 minutes at a time, they are good. Most have this thing, though, where it takes about 2 seconds to tell you you passed a level and animate some stars or something. I have discovered the most stupid thing to get impatient about.
posted by Acari at 3:40 PM on November 23, 2021
All of the driving games have been the wooooorst.
Some word games were good but I kept waiting for them to get harder and they never did.
For the purpose of killing <5 minutes at a time, they are good. Most have this thing, though, where it takes about 2 seconds to tell you you passed a level and animate some stars or something. I have discovered the most stupid thing to get impatient about.
posted by Acari at 3:40 PM on November 23, 2021
Scooter Extreme 3D has a kind of Crazy Taxi energy to it that I've found pretty enjoyable.
posted by box at 12:32 PM on December 7, 2021
posted by box at 12:32 PM on December 7, 2021
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posted by Going To Maine at 10:30 AM on November 19, 2021 [9 favorites]