What's 20 megabytes, has awful graphics, awful sound, and is vaguely reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers 3?

Why it's RunMan: Race Around The World of course! The website, you assume, is trying to be ironic. 'The game can't actually look like this, surely...' But... well... it does.

The game's visuals look like they were created in MS Paint. In fact, they probably were.

So it looks bad, and the sound effects are pretty awful. But the gameplay is actually quite good. You play as a little star-thing who runs around. Your job is just to make it to the other end of the level at the highest speed possible. The faster you go, the higher the score multiplier. You lose points for falling in holes and hitting enemies, just like in real life.

Unsurprisingly, you start off in a room with nothing. It's the de facto rule that all of these Room Escape puzzles share: you don't know how you got there, or why you're there, but damnit -- you're there, and you need to find a way out!


Inculcation is the first room escape game that I've played with real-time combat elements. There are actually monsters -- zombies? -- that pop up and require shooting. Fortunately it's very easy to shoot them dead, but it does mean that you occasionally lose health. There are syringes about the place that can restore your health.

Mostly the gameplay is what you'd expect from such games -- pick up objects, open doors, solve rudimentary riddles that involve some observation skills. It is nothing special in this regard -- in fact, some of the puzzles feel a little random and rely on guesswork rather than applying your knowledge of the game.


I played through the first house in Inculcation, and I can tell you this now: the enhanced elements of music, artistic direction and creatures that can actually kill you really add to the tension, the danger. I admit I yelped out loud a few times. I admit my hand slipped off the mouse a few times when attacked by zombies. I admit I'm a wuss when it comes to the horror genre.

There's one part in the first house where a door shakes -- as if something is behind it, desperately trying to get out -- and it keeps shaking. Over and over. Louder and louder. And when it finally comes to open the door... well... you're in for a big surprise. Give it half an hour of your time at least -- you won't regret it...

[via JayIsGames]

Red Remover is one of the all-time classic casual puzzle games, where the object is to remove the red blocks while keeping the other ones from falling. With Halloween coming up, the game is getting into costume as Pumpkin Remover: instead of blocks, you've got rotten pumpkins to get rid of, and fresh ones to defend. It's not just a reskinning of Red Remover, though, it also features some new levels.

Just like Red Remover, Pumpkin Remover presents a lot of physics-based challenges. Some of the obstacles you'll face include ramps, barricades, and weird directional gravity. It might not be the spookiest Halloween-themed game out there, but Pumpkin Remover is a fun expansion for anyone who just can't get enough of this particular style of puzzle game.

Pro Tip: Definitely play through level 5 for a cheesy Halloween joke. I LOL'd.

You'll never guess what the primary purpose of this game is. OK, OK, stop guessing! I'll tell you: you gotta push pumpkins!

But it's not as simple as that. It's not just a Boulderdash clone with Halloween-skinned baddies and pumpkins for stones -- no, it's like some kind of fantastic mash-up of Boulderdash, Mega Man and Pac Man. In Pumpkin Push you play a plucky pumpkin-pushin' protagonist whose primary objective is to clean the world of various undead ghouls. Vampires, ghosts, robot-pumpkins... they're all here and waiting to be vanquished.

Fatty Bum Bum is a surreal adventure game from Dutch game developers Hanazuki. You don't actually play as Fatty Bum Bum, who is a large, friendly-looking, hungry character - sort of reminds me of a big Katamari. Instead, you're a kid who's floating through space, trying to collect food to deliver to Fatty Bum Bum, to make him grow as enormous as possible.

The game has three levels, and your food-grabbing abilities get stronger in each one. You start out by using your hands, then graduate to a spaceship with a grabber claw, and finally end up with a chomping crocodile costume. The game is side-scrolling, so you have to slow down as much as possible for maximum goodies. Once a piece of food scrolls off the screen, you lose it for good.

Fatty Bum Bum is a solid kids' game. It's not particularly challenging, although beating the current online high scores looks pretty impossible. Instead, the appeal is in the visuals. Grabbing food can set off fun, colorful animations where you character does a cool stunt or turns into some unexpected animal or object. In terms of gameplay, this slows down the clock (each level is time-limited) and helps you grab more stuff.

[Pro Tip: You can download the game for Mac or PC, and it runs a lot faster on the desktop than in-browser.]

Water Werks is another Time Waster where the aim is to get the balls to the goal. In this iteration of the well-used concept, you can only influence the balls by spraying water at the objects in the environment around them. The balls themselves are impervious to the water's effects.

You can move your hose around and adjust the spray nozzle from a wide to narrow stream, which influences the strength of the stream as well as its direction.

I found Water Werks to be more difficult than an average time waster, but certainly not impossible. It's a fresh take on a potentially tired genre.

Destroy the Wall 3 is a straightforward puzzle game. Your goal is to throw a ball so that it knocks down a wall (or walls) in such a way that a specific number of blocks fall out of the level, without losing your ball out of the level. The challenge is that you can only grab the ball in a small pink area, so you really have to actually throw the ball in the direction you think will cause the most destruction.

The more difficult levels later in the game can involve using levers to knock the blocks about, or pushing larger balls around. There are even levels featuring teleports that move your ball about the screen in confusing ways.

The somewhat random result of throwing the ball using your mouse (this is not a game that plays well when using a trackpad) means that even though you might have the right idea, it can take multiple frustrating tries to pass the level. The game unfortunately does not remember your progress, but you can start from any level, so you're not stuck back at square one if you reload the page or come back to the game at a later date.

Destroy the Wall 3 is one of the more addictive time waster's I've tried recently. Give it a shot, and let us know what you think. What levels are the toughest?

In Miami Shark, you play the title character - a shark, naturally - who's hell bent on destroying every swimmer, boat, fish or helicopter in the vicinity. Wait ... HELICOPTER? Yes, my friends, you can jump out of the water and bite down on flying objects, dragging them down to cause explosive chain reactions. This is not a realistic physics-based game. It's a blow-up-everything-you-possibly-can-by-biting-things-with-your-awesome-shark-teeth game.

Miami Shark isn't hard to play. The only controls are the arrows keys (for movement) and A or CTRL (for BITING!). You can chomp things along the surface of the water, or dive down deep and then hold the up arrow to get into the air. If you manage to cling on to a flying vehicle, keep hitting the down key until you drag it back into the water. If you can pull it down on top of an unsuspecting boat, it's all the better for you and your score.

Gravitex 2 is a classic gravity-based time waster. You pick a direction and amount of power, and shoot a ball off into space where various orbs' gravitational pull affect its trajectory. The goal is to collect all the green coins and get the yellow ball safely to its goal.

Interestingly, the green coins are not persistent; if you collect one and get the ball to the goal, that coin does not return again if you replay the level. That means that you don't have to come up with a single magic trajectory that will collect every coin in one go, but instead you can tackle a level multiple times in multiple ways to try to conquer it.

The graphics in Gravitex 2 are simple but do the trick, which can also be said for the soundtrack. The game offers both mouse-based control, and keyboard control. Given that this is very much a trial-and-error based game, you'll want to get comfortable with the keyboard controls, though for very tough levels the only way to finely control the settings is to use the mouse.

Gravitex 2 is pretty much a perfect casual game for people who enjoy physics games. You can play it for five minutes on your coffee break, and come back to it for a few minutes on your lunch hour.

Icycle is a "capture the stars" style game where you control a naked (yes, naked) character. Instead of stars, your character is trying to collect frozen bubbles. Since he's missing his clothes, and if you ride him into a hazard and he falls off his bike, he freezes, or dies in numerous entertaining ways.

While the game play is solid, the physics of the game are pretty limited when compared to other side-view bike or car games. But Icycle isn't trying to be a physics-based game; instead it focuses on lush visuals and simple but challenging gameplay that requires memorizing the location of hazards and bubbles. Rather than scrolling as many games of this type do, you ride through multiple screens, which means that you don't get to see what's coming. It's admittedly a retro-style game, as the game's creator Damp Gnat freely admits.

Savanna Blocks is a falling-blocks puzzle game created by Clockwork Monster that uses a fresh take on a tired genre. In Savanna Blocks your goal is to draw a line through groups of blocks that are touching either horizontally or vertically (not diagonally) to clear them from the board. As soon as you release your mouse button, the blocks that you've drawn on will disappear, but if you draw outside of the group of touching same-color blocks, your line will disappear.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that while you're busy connecting 10 blocks together, rows are being added to the bottom of the screen, shifting the blocks in play and potentially ruining your current line.

There are also special blocks available that will slow down the addition of new lines, blow up an entire line, or simply give you bonus points. The special blocks can be added on to any adjacent grouping you are making.

Savanna Blocks takes only seconds to learn, but I was surprised at how addictive the gameplay is given how tired I am of falling blocks games. Give it a try, you might be surprised too.

Go Home Ball calls itself a physics game, but is really more of a time-based puzzler. Your job in the game is to get the red ball from the top of the screen, where it rolls out of an opening in a tree, to the bottom of the screen where an opening in the top of a tree trunk awaits, ensuring to collect all the gold stars along the way. Your tools to move the ball along vary across the levels, but they are typically a stick that you can temporarily lay to allow the ball to cross gaps, and a hand that you can use to nudge the ball in the correct direction.

Don't let the simple and cute appearance of the game fool you; the timing and placement for each move is crucial, and your skill with a mouse will play a big part in the success you have at the game.

(after the break, Happy Gilmore weighs in with his thoughts about balls going home...)