Developed by Pet Tomato the object of the game is simple. Get your character from door to door. It's just the way that he gets there is rather um... how should we put this... gas-tastic.

While you can certainly jump, in order to reach the heights required to get to each level you'll have to expend you inner powers. Of course there is a limit to this and you can't very well expect an infinite supply, so use it wisely. As you progress, the levels get harder and enemies try to block your way from reaching your goal.

We've haven't been able to get very far in the game, so we'll need to work on our fourth meal to increase our strength.

Boomstick is a Flash game where you move a stick-figure person left and right, and aim/fire a boomstick (gun). The object is to shoot the "bad guys," which are really just basic shapes that fly through the screen at varying paces.

When you hit the bad guys, debris falls like a candy from a piñata, and collecting this debris gives you more ammo to continue the cycle. There are two powerups as well: a nuclear blast that clears the screen of bad guys, and a speed boost that, you guessed it, increases your lateral movement.

The background music and sounds can be turned off, though the music is sort of like techno/house and made us want to shoot more bad guys.

[Via UberPike]

Grid16 is a unique combination of mini games for gamers with short attention spans (like us). You start out with a grid of 16 squares, each with its own game. All you need are your arrow keys and good reflexes as the game's "camera" moves from mini game to mini game.

For instance, you may start out playing a Brickout-type mini game for a few seconds, then switch to a game where you must move a small square to avoid walls. The game steadily increases the speed at which it moves you between mini games, which gets tricky since you pick up the games where you left off when you start the mini game again.

If you fail a game, that game's grid square is removed from your 16 squares. When you're all done (when you have no grid squares left), you get a fancy pyramid graph showing your percentage of three skill sets: prioritizing, timing, and reflexes.

[Via gddgb]

In Filler your goal is to fill 2/3 of the game board with "filler balls." Balls can be created by clicking anywhere on the board and their size is determined by how long you hold down the button on your mouse. The longer the you hold down the button, the bigger the filler ball.

The game has other balls bouncing around the screen which for the purpose of this explanation we'll call "bouncing balls." If one of those balls hits your filler ball while you're still creating it, then your ball pops and you lose a life. As you progress in the game there are more bouncing balls which make it more and more difficult to grow your filler balls without them being popped. Each level gives you a certain amount of lives, a certain amount of balls you can create, and a time limit.

Some tips we picked up when playing:

• You can move your filler ball around while you're growing it to avoid being popped.
• The filler balls react to each other, and to being hit by bouncing balls...so where they fall isn't necessarily where they'll stay.
• You can grow balls specifically to move others and create "safe areas" for you to grow bigger ones.
• If you completely squish a bouncing ball with filler balls it's not gone forever...they reappear in the top right corner.
  

We played this engineering game for the first time almost a week ago, and have yet to make it past level one. Now we've decided to ask our dear readers to help us out on beating this thing so we can get back to more important things like blogging.

The idea behind the game is fairly simple. You're given a little island. There are eight different types of engineering you can bring to the island and you decide which order to activate them in. Each development will affect the others you've already activated in allowing the island to grow so it's important to pick the right order. The ultimate goal is to get each advancement level maxed out (developments max out at 9 or 10 levels), and then you proceed to the next level...a level which we have never seen.

The Choices are Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Applied Chemistry, Aeronautic, Marine and automotive engineering, Architecture, Environmental Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. We've managed to get pretty far: our island dwellers have fell in love and had children, built rocket ships that travel to the moon, and created robots that build tunnels and bridges. Right before we select our last thing to add however an alien like creature always comes out of the volcano on the island and drips some sort of hyperactive sludge on our community. Our final numbers usually include maxing out 3 or 4 sections but then being at level one or two on others.

Some things we've learned: If you have people living in your house and don't activate "Environmental Engineering" then your little man walks outside, doesn't have anywhere to throw away his trash and in retaliation goes on a tree cutting down spree that seems to end in his death as well. If you activate "Applied Chemistry" too early then the volcano trembles and breaks your beaker before you can do anything with it...maybe there's a way to stop the volcano?

So we beg you: help us. If you figure it out tell us how you did it.

[Thanks (we think) Jay]

Man, oh man. If ever there were a time waster with a name that could evoke innuendo and double-entendre, it's one called Balls. It's excruciatingly difficult not to comment about playing with them or that this game scratches a real itch. Staying strong, we'll steer well clear of commentary like that.

Balls is a very simple game in which you play the part of a little grey ball, trying to touch a large hollow ball until it disappears. Complicating matters is the black ball, which chases you and when it catches you, makes your small grey ball grow. This in turn makes it harder to evade the black ball, and the walls which are continuously closing in on you. The game simply repeats over and over again with this simple formula, making it seem a bit like a bad dream. But somehow it's an enjoyable and addictive bad dream. Try it and you'll see what we mean.

Momentum Missle Mayhem is a Flash-based arcade shooter with a funky physics concept and great action. You play the part of the Gravity Launcher, which is basically a fixed structure. You can shoot out different projectiles in a slingshot fashion, and hit the attacking machines and either damage them, or push them around. The goal is to defend the left side of the screen from the waves of attackers coming from the right.

Of course there are all sorts of upgrades available as you move on, giving you different weapons to deploy and the ability to use some alternative strategies. One tip when you're getting started is to note that more damage is caused by the attackers colliding with the sides of the arena or even each other than by taking direct hits. So it's valuable to aim as if you're playing pool - make the attacking machines bounce into each other, and you'll cause far more damage.

Finding Time Wasters to blog about should be considered a high-risk activity. While there's no doubt that it's a fun way to spend our time, the truth is that our productivity takes a serious hit every time we start testing out possibilities for inclusion as daily time wasters. Some are worse than others in this regard, but recently Blocky has been stealing a ridiculous amount of our time.

Like all really great games, the concept is simple - draw a rectangle around any set of squares where the four corners of the rectangle have blocks at them of the same color. It's colorful and lively, with a countdown timer that keeps you mindful that if you don't hurry up and find a set of blocks to remove, your game is going to be over. And the level of challenge goes up just right as you start to get the hang of the game.

As always, don't say we didn't warn you.

Bloxorz is a game with a silly name, but great gameplay. While there are millions of puzzle games out there, few come close to matching the fun and challenge of Tetris. Though Bloxorz does.

Now, to be perfectly clear, Bloxorz is not a Tetris clone. In fact, the gameplay in Bloxorz couldn't be more different. The Tetris comparision is simply to point out that we think the game is that good, especially as a little web-based timewaster.

The hero of Bloxorz is, well, a rectangular block. Your job is to move the block by flipping it sideways or end-over-end through the maze of square tiles and arrange things so that your last flip slides your block through a single square hole. At first the game is a bit frustrating, but the learning curve is shallow and within 5 minutes you'll probably find yourself a few levels in, and having fun.

Who doesn't like a quick little Flash distraction? The more addictive the better, I say. Paper Pilot delivers, on both counts.

In Paper Pilot, you get the chance to pick from three different paper airplane designs, then modify the weight of the paper, the amount of lift created by wing flaps, and whether or not to include "winglets" on the sides of the wings.

Once you've designed your masterpiece, you move to the field where the objective is to fly the plane as far as you can. Once you've practiced enough to feel up to it, you can challenge friends to see who has the best paper airplane flying chops.

Okay, now get back to work.

The 1982 Disney sci-fi adventure Tron can be credited for turning many a pimply arcade geek into software developing gods... At least that's the way we like to think about it. Many great things came from Tron, if you follow our logic, but only one of them is today's time waster, Flash Tron.

For anyone who remembers the Light Cycle races in Tron, which took place deep within the heart of an evil super-computer, this game will no doubt be second nature. Racing along as you leave trails of "light" behind for your opponent to avoid. One slip and boom, you'll never see your User again. Warning, it's addictive.

[via Digg]

I'm completely amazed that you can build a game with the quality of Hewitt in Flash. The developers, Casper Smith and C. Gianelloni, spent a year coding and animating Hewitt and it's readily apparent. This is a rich and long point and click adventure game that'll keep you tied up for quite a while.

Hewitt is a geek. In a dream one night he sees himself as an old man, who tells him that he'll always be lonely if he doesn't find a date to the prom. Heeding the advice of his older self, Hewitt sets of on an adventure filled with puzzles and cute animation. The gameplay is surprisingly rich, and -- once you make it through the long tutorial -- completely addictive.

[via Jay Is Games]

I love quick time wasters, and this one fits that bill perfectly. catchThirtyThree is almost more fun if you don't know what the objective is when you first try it, but since that wouldn't make much of a blog post, I'll tell you what it's about. For those of you that don't want me to ruin the surprise, here's the link.

For the rest of you, here's the deal. In catchThirtyThree, your objective is to catch thirty-three numbers in succession. The numbers are floating around in little orange boxes, and catching them simply means moving your mouse onto one. They all shuffle around the screen (all thirty-three of them at first) moving erratically, which makes it very difficult to pick out the one you need to catch. But as the game progresses, there are less and less numbers on the screen, and it becomes easier to catch the ones you need.

After playing it more than a couple of times, you should be able to get your time down well under 40 seconds. That's one heck of a quick time waster if you're only playing one game, but it can be a nice way to transition from one task to another, if you're so inclined. Just beware if you have an addictive personality; this game can be hard to stop playing.

Today's time-waster is similar in design to Dodge and Squares. In Ellipsis you are the center circle, and you are trying to defend yourself against the squares. You destroy the squares by clicking on them. If you don't get to a square in time and it hits your circle you lose power. The circles power starts at 100, giving you 100 times to get hit before the game is over. Occasionally smaller squares can get caught inside of your circle, which can take away from your power much more quickly.

As you progress through the levels sometimes larger squares split into smaller squares rather than disappear when you click on them. I played the game for about an hour this morning and managed to make it onto the high scores list in the very last position.

When I was in high school I used to play Dots with friends during lectures, on the bus, during lunch... anytime there was a lot of sitting involved and I didn't want to pay attention, which was the bulk of high school. When I found this flash version of the game I was addicted to it once again..

Playing Dots is simple. You have several rows of dots on a piece of paper. You and a friend (or in this case the computer) take turns connecting two of the dots together. The object is to create more squares in the end of the game than your opponent. Since you can only connect two dots at a time the beginning of the game is all about finding a place to connect two dots where your opponent can not come behind you and complete a square. If you complete a square, it continues to be your turn until you make a move that does not complete a square. In the end the player with the most squares wins.