Elements of Arkandia

Link to game

Hooray!  Look what I have found?

Its a 100% recycled game!

I love Undefined games for their eco-friendliness in how they have recycled elements and graphics from past games.

I mean the music is recycled, and it fits in so little into gameplay of this game that its almost silly.

Also interesting?  Your some apprentice thing who's father died and willed you his curiousity shop, and the horrible debt load that it has incurred.  How, a storyline about as cliched as amnesia!  Beautiful.

So, you get to this screen.

Variety!

You get your spell book with your spells.  You get your armory with your weapons and armor.  Holy fuck, am I playing My Pocket Protector?  No, oh.

The shopping channel if you need to buy something.  Your store, a beautiful place to go to if you need to get rid of any useless garbage you accumulate as you adventure.  Finally adventure allows you to go and play Bejeweled!

I wasn't shitting you

More specifically, your playing Bejeweled with a fighting mechanic.  You match shit to get 'mana' you use to cast other shit to reduce the enemy numbers before they reduce yours.  Nope, can't see anything stupid about that at all.

Now, if you're thinking that you've played this game before, don't worry, I was getting the exact same sense.

These graphics look disturbing familiar

It pretty much looks like Protector, or any other game this dev team has shat out at some point.  Now, I am not against graphical rehashing, as it does decrease development time if you don't have to keep redrawing everything, but this is done to an extreme that I just can't support. 

Anyone, does Sinjid look like Sonny?  Both games are made by the same dude, and therefore share the same graphic style and graphic files, but it isn't so similar that its noticeable.

Shit, now I have to actually do those games!

The I of It

Link to game

After going on a one month hiatus, I've made a decision: I'm not reviewing games anymore.

Does that mean no more Life on the Flash Lane?  Actually, no, it doesn't.  This blog will still be active.  What will happen is that I will not review the games that come forth.  I mean, its hard to keep a critical eye when most of the experiences that come before me are forgettable and dumb, so I think I just want to talk games, flash games specifically, simply cuz the cost of entry to play them is your internet connection.

With that, we are brought to The I of It.

As a game, its rather interesting.  You play the letter I, and your buddy T has run off, and you are going after him in a bizarre platformer where instead of jumping you stretch and shrink your body.

And you slide off, hoping to not land on the other end.

This game as a subtle sense of humour to it, as many games feel the need to rely on given the person making a flash game is a nerd, and nerds have an... 'odd' sense of humour.  This being shared by the game creator obviously.

Now the game does have odd moments.  There are moments where the the gravity reversed itself, where you can turn off the gravity and so forth.

Course, the thing that strikes me is this voice over done by someone who is clearly not a native speaker of English.  At every level he says "then" or "suddenly" like he was reading from a story book.  He even voices the sound effects with the stomping on a switch getting a 'click' or a 'boom went the bomb' if you get hit by those red thingies (did I mention he literally says 'click' or 'boom'?).  Though "'ouch', cried I, and died" everytime you hit spikes is good for a laugh too.

Don't cry 'ouch' I

The puzzles in this game are unique, given that the game itself is a rather fresh breath from the sea of TD clones and zombie gore fests and shit on Newgrounds, but that voice-over guy gets me going everytime, with me vividly remember him saying after dying and restarting the level "hit me baby one more time" which are lyrics from a Brittany Spears song in the event any of you have no recollection of that horrible decade that was the nineties.  Hee hee hee, I explained the joke so you hate me now!


Course, it is nice to see something like this out there just being silly and fun without being really stupid.  I guess I just like the story telling mechanic where you can just imagine that it says somewhere "and I then fell towards the platform after shrinking to lift itself up."  Really, its cute.