Remember the classic arcade game Marble Madness? If you enjoyed the frustration that is trying to guide a ball along a 3D course using an isometric view, without falling off the arbitrary edges, just like in Marble Madness, you'll probably enjoy Gyroball.

As you might be able to tell, I find Gyroball frustrating. The first few levels are fairly straightforward, but on the third or fourth level, I was completely stymied. It started driving me nuts. I'm sure many of you long-time timewaster players will cruise right through that level without a second look, but for whatever reason I just couldn't get the right combination of direction, momentum and control.

The game controls are dead simple - use your direction arrows to push the ball in various directions. Of course, because the game is presented in an isometric 3D display, the arrow keys do not correspond with the direction that your ball will typically be traveling; the ball is mostly going in diagonals, requiring multiple button presses at the same time, or very quickly alternating between two.

If your frustration tolerance is high, this game could be played for an extended period. Otherwise, it makes a nice, short time waster between tasks.

Assembler is a fun physics-based game where you get to toss around boxes, beams and other shapes, trying to get a box into a target somewhere in each level. It's difficult to write a review of Assembler without becoming distracted for an hour, playing Assembler. The puzzles become challenging in later levels, but a lot of the fun is in throwing boxes around, hitting them with beams, and making goofy little catapults.

Some levels have more than one target to reach, and a lot of them have metal bits that you have to work around. Solving the puzzles isn't conceptually difficult so much as tricky to actually execute. You can see the structure you need to build, but making it balance properly is another matter. The Assembler high scores are based on time, too, and it's even more challenging to complete some of the levels when you're trying to do it as quickly as possible.

Remember Lunar Lander from back in the days of your Apple ][ or Commodore 64? I sure do. It was tough, but landing in that deep and narrow trough was so rewarding, and a great way to show off to your geeky friends.

There have been many similar games over the years, and Super PerfectoProp is one of them. The concept is similar, in that you are flying a little guy around, but instead of using jets, you're using propellers, and instead of three, you have four. The idea is to take off on the left side of the screen, collect all of the coins, and land safely on the right side of the screen, avoiding the various dangers around you.

In terms of controlling your character, it's a bit more complicated than Lunar Lander. Instead of one booster that pushes straight up, you have two that are on 45 degree angles. To go straight up, you have to press both at the same time, but if you do you'll go up fast. And since there's a power line overhead, you have to be pretty careful about it.

Super PerfectoProp is interesting for just about as long as you'd want to spend playing a time waster, which might be a great fit for your next coffee or lunch break.

Tiger of Mysore is a shooting game. You take control of a cannon defending your castle, and shoot the attackers that take the form of infantrymen, mounted attackers, and even cannons.

While in some ways this is a straight forward shooter, there is also an element of resource management, in that when you kill your attackers, a coin or number of coins appear on the spot they were killed for a limited time. You need to make sure to collect coins while still shooting attackers. Sometimes your gun needs to reload, so if you can time things well you don't lose much shooting time while collecting coins.

Money in the game is good for repairing your castle, but it also can be used to purchase reinforcements, such as cannons and rockets.

The game can be played in a One Man Show mode where you fight an ongoing rush of attackers, or in Story mode where you fight waves of attackers with brief interludes of a page of text telling the story of your fight.

Run is one of those games that's so simple it's hard to figure out why it's so addictive. But it is. Basically you have to run and jump your way through an obstacle course. You run at a steady pace, but each time you complete a level that pace gets a little bit faster.

The game takes on a whole new level of complexity when you realize that in addition to moving left or right or jumping to avoid a hole you can also walk up the walls to your right or left. By the time you get to level 10 or so, this technique becomes absolutely essential to your survival.

The game's not particularly hard. You never seem to run out of lives. But it's the kind of game that's hart to stop playing once you start. Consider yourself warned.

[via Neatorama]

Some time wasters seems sort of dumb when written out, but when you play them, you realize how fun they are. This one might be one of those. BoomBot is a game where you place bombs to try to blast your robot character to the goal door on each level.

While it sounds simple, and it starts out simple enough, soon enough the levels start to get pretty challenging. You'll have to interact with various materials and objects, such as rubber blocks, boxes, and even explosive things like oil barrels and boxes of TNT, each of which have their own unique properties.

When placing your bomb, you have full control over where it goes, as well as how strong the blast is. To control the blast strength, hold down your mouse button and the bomb will get bigger and smaller, corresponding to the size of the blast. The challenge comes when you're trying to time a blast for a specific moment, but need it to be a specific size blast. For me, at least, I could never seem to time things so that my blast size was correct at the moment I needed it. But that's the fun of it, right?

Yet another "tower defense" game? These games are very derivative, but the thing is, they're extremely fun to play. Whiteboard Tower Defense uses a whiteboard metaphor for your battleground, which works insofar as it gives a excuse for a new version of the game with different towers and enemies to deal with.

The graphics are predictably sparse, consisting only of single-color towers and enemies on a white background. The sound effects are cute, but maybe a little annoying - though since most people will likely be playing this at work, make sure to hit the mute button at the top-right of the window. Armor Games seems to consistently produce high-quality browser gaming, and this game while not a standout certainly fits in with their stable of games.

The game play in Whiteboard Tower Defense is surprisingly challenging, with the Easy level providing significantly more difficulty than Easy on the original Tower Defense game. I shudder to think how difficult the higher levels are.

Dino Run is an online flash-based time waster with a great classic arcade feel. You play the part of a small dinosaur, and you run. And run.

The premise of the game is that you are running from a "pyroclastic wall of doom", while trying to find power-ups like eggs, super eggs, bones, critters, birds, and plants. Each of these things help you in different ways, such as earning you DNA which allows you to evolve your dinosaur with additional abilities.

The wall of doom is actually a pretty novel way to introduce an extra level of suspense to the game. When you're well ahead of it, you don't really have any indicator just how far ahead you are. So while you have time to slow down and attempt to get some of the more powerful power-ups, every moment that you waste feels like an eternity. When the wall of doom catches up to you, the screen darkens and it starts to envelop you like a wave. You can actually continue to play as it covers over you, so much so that you can't even see your dinosaur, and it's possible to run your way out of trouble. In fact, if you do this, you actually earn risk points.

The graphics and music are all deliciously reminiscent of 8-bit gaming days of yore. Dino Run is what I wish my Commodore 64 games were like.

Totem Destroyer is a fun little Flash-based physics game that is one part Indiana Jones, and one part Jenga.

The game play is simple; click on blocks to destroy them, while ensuring that the golden idol never touches the ground. There are three types of blocks: brown, green, and black. The brown ones are regular blocks and can be destroyed. The green ones are both bouncier than the brown ones, and have less friction, and they too can be destroyed. The black ones cannot be destroyed.

Each level starts with the idol balanced precariously on a stack of blocks, and your goal is to destroy the prescribed number of blocks without breaking the idol. There are 25 levels of mostly increasing difficulty, so this time waster should last you through your coffee break and part of your lunch break.

Some days when you're sitting at your desk at work, don't you just wish that you had a different job? Something a little more exciting, and maybe a bit dangerous? Something that makes you feel alive... Like maybe being an assassin!

If you're looking to get a little fix of being an assassin without actually having to, you know, kill people, check out Sleepless Assassin, a Flash-based side scrolling action game. While it looks and handles much like many other games that are of a similar style, Sleepless Assassin has one very cool trick up its sleeve.

When it comes time to shoot enemies, your character has a bow and arrow. Since the default view is fairly close up, the screen pulls back to give you a wider view when you click to draw the bow. You can then aim, and an arc is shown to give you an idea of your arrow's flight path. This allows for some "trick shots" where you can kill enemies that can't see you, as well as giving you a quick way to get the lay of the land.

In terms of the fun factor of the game as a time waster, with (very) little practice you can be good enough to have a good time with this little gem.

Spin the Black Circle is an online Flash game that begins somewhat ominously; the first thing you see when starting the game is a disclaimer claiming no responsibility for anything you might do out of frustration when playing the game. While some challenge and therefore a reasonable level of frustration is part of any game, we were a little worried that this game would be too many parts "frustration" and not enough parts "fun". Luckily, although it certainly does live up to the billing in terms of being a challenging and frustrating game, it turns out that it is also very fun.

The concept of the game is fairly straightforward. It takes place inside a large black circle that you control. You can rotate the entire circle either left or right, and it moves at a constant speed. Inside the circle is a ball that is subject to the law of gravity, and the object of the game is to rotate the circle to guide the ball past various hazards to the goal.
If you can tolerate the frustrating repetitiveness of some of the harder levels, you'll be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment that is probably totally unfounded. I mean, really - you beat a level in an online game. So what? Somehow that doesn't matter to us though, we're just happy to feel just a little bit better about ourselves after each level we beat.

If we told you that we wanted you to try out an Asteroids clone, you probably wouldn't be all that excited, would you? It seems like that genre of game has been done - to death - and there's not much more that could revive it. Surprisingly, Luminara seems to do just that.

Just like Asteroids, you play a little space ship thingie, and you fly around shooting at objects, in this case mostly just geometrical shapes. Sometimes the shapes simply explode and disappear, while in other cases they fragment into a bunch of smaller pests.

While the game has a nice soundtrack for a simply time waster, and pleasing if simple graphics, what sets Luminara apart from other Asteroids clones is the control mechanism. Instead of using space ship physics requiring rotating and firing boosters to move and aim, Luminara is a two-handed game. You use the mouse cursor to aim and fire your weapon, and use either the arrow keys or A, S, D, and W keys to actually move about the screen. The direction keys are absolute; rather than rotating, you simply move the direction of the key you press. The cognitive dissonance this creates when you're used to the way Asteroids works makes for quite the challenge, but that challenge is also what makes Luminara fun to play. It's neat to be able to pull off moves like strafing and nifty little dekes around the bad guys.

The game also sports some nifty power-ups, like Spread which turns your one laser shot into three that spread out, or Buddy which positions another mini version of yourself on the screen that flies around shooting baddies on your behalf.

This time waster can be played for a 5 minute break from your day, but also stands up if you want to dive in for an hour of gameplay. Have fun!

[via UNEASYsilence]

Look, we like broccoli as much as the next technology web site, but we all know that asparagus could take broccoli in a fair fight any day. And to prove our point, we bring you Attack of the Killer Broccoli.

This Flash based video game is basically a space shooter. But instead of controlling a spaceship shooting asteroids or other spaceships, you control a bundle of asparagus. And you get to attack broccoli and bugs. The controls couldn't be much simpler. You maneuver around the screen by pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard, and you shoot spears of asparagus with the space bar.

We suppose there's some sort of commentary inherent in this game about how kids don't like broccoli. But seriously, who likes asparagus but hates broccoli?

[via Neatorama]

Chat Noir is one of those games that looks really easy until you actually play it. You know, like chess. OK, maybe not like chess, but still, we dare you to beat this Flash game on your first try. Or your tenth.

The rules are pretty simple. Try to prevent the cat from leaving the board. All you have to do is click a bright green spot to make it dark green and fence the cat in. Every time you click a spot, the cat gets to move one space.

After wasting about half of the morning, we can now definitively tell you that the game is beatable.

[via Neatorama]

Imagine you were using Excel, and it was actually fun!

Yes, it's difficult, but try.

While it might be hard to imagine, the makers of Excit have accomplished the task of making Excel fun. It's not really Excel, but an Excel-themed online Flash game, but even still it's remarkable. Excit is described as an "MIS Spreadsheet game", implying that there are a number of such games. For this Time Waster we're going to focus on Excit.

The goal of the game is to exit the level you're on. Get it? Excel / exit? It's a clever play on the two words... oh, you get it already. Okay.

Each level consists of a number of walls arranged in different patterns with a clearly marked exit cell, as well as other objects that your cursor can interact with. Control in the game is dead-simple: you can move your cursor up, down, left or right with the arrow keys, but choose wisely, because your cursor is going to continue in that direction until it hits an object that stops it, or continues off the screen. If it goes off the screen, you start the level over. Luckily, there is no concept of lives in this game, so you can continue with a trial and error approach until you succeed, or go crazy from frustration.

The first few levels are fairly easy, but soon enough the challenge level ramps up enough to get your brain thinking ahead by a a few moves. Each time you complete a level, you are given a password so that if you want to come back to the game at a later time, you can jump right to the level you were at.

With some concentrated effort, it should be possible to complete Excit during a lunch hour and have time left over to scarf down a sandwich. It's definitely a great little brain teasing Time Waster.