Soul Provider.

Game time.
On paper, today's plink may sound a bit unsavoury. You float around as a ghost possessing hapless people and forcing them to commit murders until you have harvested enough souls to pay the reaper. But it's not as bad as that sounds, honest! The whole thing uses the ever-charming 'pixel art' visual style and the bouts of slaughter are broken up by some decent sections of black comic dialogue.

As you progress through the game, you'll take control of several different types of people, each possessing different skills (see what I did there?) from the lowly office worker who is only able to swing his briefcase around menacingly, to the likes of the gun-toting security guard and the lock-picking cat burglar. You'll need to figure out who to use in order to dispatch your co-workers, whether that be by pummelling them, shooting them or kicking them out a window.

The difficulty ramps up as you progress and each level has a pretty strict time limit, so there's no time to hang around contemplating the morality of your actions, just hurry up and punt that guy off the roof!

More fun that its subject matter would suggest, then. Play Soul Tax.

Press M For Murder.

Hey, so we haven't had a game for a while. To be honest it's because nothing has really grabbed me. No matter how nicely polished or deep, every flash game I play recently seems to be a variation on a familiar theme.

Then finally something held my shrivelled attention. Ironically it was a game made as part of an indie game design contest called Ludlum Dare 48H, which tasks entrants with making a full game in just 48 hours. The game I'm about to show you was created by a guy called Adam Saltsman who created the previously-plinked Canabalt and it really shows that he has mastered the 'simple concept makes compelling game' trick.

Taking place on a single, unmoving screen and lacking in such luxury features as a play button or any instructions, this game is minimalist to say the least. However, it gets very hectic very quickly.



It's called Grave Robbers but you do not play the eponymous thieves. Rather, you play the unseen omnipotent force that is trying to thwart them using a number of carefully laid traps, each mapped to a key on the keyboard.

As the little animation-free swines swarm through your dungeon, you'll be hitting S to drown them, K to squish them and U to burn them (amongst others). Don't be squeamish though, the spartan graphics ensure there is no gore.

They will try every different direction and the 'cool-down' time on each trap means you will quickly start flailing about trying to rain death on your puny yellow foes before they can abscond with your loot.

It's frantic and fun. Give it a shot:

Grave Robbers.

Sty Stallone.

Evening all.
It's game time. I hope you're ready, because it's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded and I've run out of baseball clichés. Should probably have picked a sport I know more about. Or just not persevered quite as far with this tawdry introduction.

Either way, you're about to play a game where a pig in a bandana uses an arsenal of weaponry to take out other, presumably evil, pigs.

It's a 2D physics puzzle game, like so many that have gone before but the quality is elevated by the variety of weapons and intelligent level design. Also, if you run out of levels to play, there is a whole gallery of user-generated ones.

It's good, wholesome, cartoony, pig-murderin' fun for all the family.

It's Hambo!

On The 13th Day Of PlinXmas!

Yeah, ok. You got me. I missed yesterday. It just totally slipped my mind. I suddenly realised at a few minutes to midnight while I was in bed that I hadn't done the advent calendar and I am nowhere near a dedicated enough blogger to get up and post something in a hurry.



HOWEVER, you are about to forgive me, or at least forget that I ever transgressed against you. I am about to send you on an emotional rollercoaster, you see.

First, watch this video and feel your heart leap up into your mouth, as you see a procession of tiny, fluffy, baby ducks come face to face with a most fearsome predator... the WIND!



There isn't a word to describe what you're feeling right now. It's simultaneously sad AND awesome. As with most situations though... T-Rex Has Your Back.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL!

While you're still reeling from that, prepare to have your feelings get the equivalent of a vicious nipple tweak in the form of a pixelly flash game.

It's called As I Lay Dying, and it starts with the death of the protagonist's spouse. You decide you can't very well leave his corpse to be pecked to bits by the crows so you pick him up and begin your journey back home.

Along the way, you will have to use the decomposing remains of your beloved to solve puzzles, activating switches and the like. All the while, you'll be fending off the aforementioned crows. Anyway, it's grim and hilarious all at the same time. If pressed, I imagine that T-Rex would label it 'grimlarious'.

Anyway, I hope I am absolved and that you haven't had the Christmas spirit violently shaken out of you. Either way, see you tomorrow!

How many chimneys does Santa go down?

Stacks!

They're Dead, Dave.

Hello. It's time this blog had a splash of much-needed mortality. So let's talk about death! Specifically, the people that you have outlived and what they did. It's an interesting read, even if you're sprightly and young like I am, you'll have already outlived someone of note. For example:

Andrea Feldman was about 2 months younger than me when she died of suicide by defenestration on August 8, 1972. She was an actress and performance artist who was a Warhol Superstar and a regular at Max's Kansas City. She died 13 years before I were born.

That one was chosen for its legitimate use of the word 'defenestration', which is my favourite word!

So come on, who have you outlived? Read Dead At Your Age.

PlinXmas Advent Calendar: Day 12!

You like Lemmings? Sure you do, everybody likes Lemmings. What's not to like? Shepherding a bunch of mindless creatures to a safe exit point without any of them getting mangled by savage traps. But what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, didn't the 'mindless creatures' bit ring any bells? Exactly, this game has the same premise but replacing the furry little fellas with christmas shoppers! Get it? Got it? Good. Play Christmas Consumerism.

Karoshi.

Hmm, I'm at work, about to link to a game involving a guy being at work and killing himself. Weird.
Anyway! The game is called Karoshi, which translates as "death from overwork". Your objective in each level is to kill your little blue suited guy by figuring out how to get him impaled, crushed, shot or electrocuted.
I should point out that this is more fun (and a lot less nasty) then it sounds. The puzzles are pretty clever and get really fiendish by the end.

So have fun!