Moneyseize is a very straightforward single-screen platformer with charming 8-bit graphics and music. The goal in Moneyseize is to, well, seize all the money.

You're in charge of the 'gentleman', and your job is to jump around in each level and collect all the gold coins. Your gentleman is attempting to build a skyscraper, and needs to collect 1000 coins to complete it. There are critters in most levels, and they also hold coins, and you must also avoid the various obstacles and hazards, like the prototypical spikes.

An interesting twist in the game is that while there are 25 coins available in each level, in many levels it is not possible to reach them all. As you progress through later levels, you can press switches that will occasionally change the layout of previous levels, making once impossible-to-reach areas reachable. Since you control which levels you visit from the map screen, the game takes on a bit of a puzzle flavor to go along with the straight platform style, which feels very reminiscent of early Mario Brothers games.

While I can't imagine actually completing MoneySeize, my building has already grown far larger than I ever intended it to get, just in testing it for this post. That's usually the sign of a good game.

While I've written about plenty of great online games, sometimes a Time Waster really surprises me. That's the case with Fig 8, a very stylistic and unique game. In it, you control an old-fashioned bicycle as it rides along a page of old-style diagrams. Your tires trace lines as you go, and the goal of the game is to get as far as you can as the window scrolls over more and more of the page while avoiding riding the bike into any of the digrams.

Making things more difficult is the fact that the bike's rear tire, like on a real bike, doesn't necessarily trace the same route the front tire does, particularly at slow speeds. So you need to be extra careful when weaving through spaces to line yourself up ahead of time.

As you go, there are checkpoints so that you can continue without having to start from scratch, though they seem to be spread very far apart. As you go, you collect points, and your points are multiplied substantially for every moment that your tires trace the exact same line. If you hold the Shift key, you can slow down your steering, which makes it easier to keep your multiplier going, but much more difficult to avoid obstacles.

Probably my favorite part of the game is that the music is appropriate for the style of the game, and it progresses along with you. The creator of this game gave a lot of thought to style, while at the same time inventing a unique and addicting gameplay.