Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters
Average Shoveler: 8-bit headline zen - Today's Time Waster
by Jordan Running Dec 28th 2005
There's a lot of
things you can do with RSS headlines, but this isn't one I had thought of: Average Shoveler is a Flash toy with old school adventure game-style
graphics. You control a character who can do three things: walk around, shovel snow and talk to passers-by. The
passers-by will tell give you news (scraped from Yahoo! News) and when you shovel the snow, news photos will appear.
Occasionally large chunks of snow will fall and photos will fly inall directions (try not to be under those when they
fall, though). There's really no object to the game, other than to shovel snow, learn about current events, and
explore. Eventually, though, the snow will win.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
