Cyclomaniacs is a side-scrolling bike racing game with solid gameplay and tons of charm. There are multiple goals in the game. As always in racing games the goal is to win, but quite often there are a number of other goals as well.

For example, it's possible to do tricks like wheelies and flips. Often unlocking new levels or new characters relies more on performing tricks than it does on winning the race.

Speaking of characters, they might be the most intriguing part of the game; you start with just a robot character, but quickly start to unlock other riders with bikes that have very different characteristics. My favorite so far is the King (and Elvis-like character) that seems to make performing wheelies quite easy. He's not the fastest, but I find him the easiest to control.

Cyclomaniacs is a very deep game for a Time Waster, providing tons of levels, and even lots of reasons to replay the levels you've already opened. One tip: to silence the game's annoying music, start a race then hit the Pause button in the lower-right part of the screen. Once you've paused the game you have control over music and sound effects.

What could be more compelling than documenting the lives of characters from the video game The Sims? Okay, it doesn't sound all that compelling, and there are many examples on the web of it being done poorly. But once in awhile someone comes along and does something that seems like a bad idea in such spectacular fashion that it truly becomes noteworthy.

Alice and Kev is a blog by Robin Burkinshaw that documents the lives of two characters he created in The Sims 3, the latest iteration of Electronic Arts' blockbuster game franchise. The two characters are a father and daughter, and Burkinshaw decided that to make things interesting he would give his characters some real challenges, such as homelessness and in the case of the father, Kev, insanity.

The resulting story is somehow both heart-rending and hilarious. Burkinshaw's blogging style is almost entirely graphical, with occasional pithy comments thrown in. The few comments he includes give the story life, and the characters really do feel all too real.

Reading the comments for each update is almost as entertaining as the posts themselves; Alice and Kev have a huge following, and an average post results in 100 or more comments by people who seem to genuinely care about this duo, and the other characters they are involved with.

It's an inspired bit of storytelling, a bit of a surprise given the usual fare when it comes to Sims blogging.

[via Boing Boing]

What better way to waste time then to create a cartoon. Who cares if you have no skills, ToonDoo will help you out.

ToonDoo is created by Jambav, and backed by AdventNet, the folks behind ZoHo. They have put together an easy way to create comic strips where users can choose characters, props, and backgrounds and make a cartoon in under five minutes. Seriously, you can sit for hours playing with different scenes and setups, fine tuning characters and writing scripts in speech bubbles. Cartoons can be saved, and when you feel they are good enough, you can publish them for visitors to the site to check out. It's very addicting.

Feel free to drop a comment with a link to your ToonDoo!

Today's time waster is a bit of a weird one. PICTAPS is a site that allows you to draw a character using some rudimentary online drawing tools, then watch that character become automatically animated. It then dances to a beat that will quickly drive you crazy if you listen to it for too long.

The thing is, you will listen to it for too long. At least, I know I did. When you first navigate to the site, it launches right into the animation using characters that other users have created. If you continue to watch, you'll be treated to basically the same show over and over, but using different characters. If this sound boring, I suppose it is - but it's also somewhat compelling.

But to really have fun, you need to draw a character yourself and get into the game.