I scream, you scream, we all scream for Flash games, as the saying doesn't go. Yes, I'm back again with a rundown of even more brilliant Flash games from the early 2000s because... well, because I've got nothing better to do right now and I can only assume you're at a point where you're hardly about to turn down some free entertainment.
If you missed my first piece on Flash Games, you can have a read of it here. I'm mainly asking you to do this because the odds are one of your favourite games absent from this list is on that earlier list. So be a peach and make absolutely sure before you message me on Twitter or Facebook calling for my execution/firing/joint exectution and firing because I "forgot" to include a game you liked. Okay? Okay.
Anyway, let's get right down to it, shall we?
THE LAST STAND
Quite possibly one of the best and most engaging zombie games of all time, and easily one of the best flash games ever. The Last Stand is pretty simple. You take on the role of one of humanity's last surviving members as you make a desperate, final attempt to hold off the zombie scourge that has claimed the rest of the world.
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During the day you'll need to scout for fellow survivors, fix up your weapons and gear, and repair the barriers that protect your ramshackle shelter. When night falls, you get down to some good old fashioned zombie killing fun. Survive to daybreak, and you get to do it all again.
The core feedback loop of gathering gear and upgrades during the day, and unleashing your arsenal when night falls is so incredibly rewarding that The Last Stand is almost impossible to put down once you've picked it up. Great for killing time during class.*
*Do not play this game during class.
BLOONS TOWER DEFENSE
Bloons Tower Defense is pretty much the exact opposite of The Last Stand. Both are excellent tower defense games, of course. But while one features zombies and some fairly gritty subject matter, Bloons favours a much more simple, wholesome approach: monkey with darts pops balloons. You love to see it.
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In this tower defense spinoff, our monkey friend still loves popping those bloons. That is his whole schtick, after all. This time, however, you need to dispose of them before they reach the end of the track. Do that with all manner of whacky powerups and upgrades that you can unlock as you progress.
Bright, accessible, and tons of fun. Bloons Tower Defense is just another piece of evidence to support my longstanding theory that monkeys make games approximately 1000 percent better.
THE FANCY PANTS ADVENTURE
The Fancy Pants Adventure
A lot of Flash platformers are objectively rubbish. Sorry, but they are. Clunky and badly-designed, with truly awful physics, so many of them are defined by how truly awful they are to play. So... why play them at all? Don't, would be my advice.
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Fortunately, there are some nuggets of gold hidden in the slimy brown poop that is the Flash Platformer. The Fancy Pants Adventure is one such nugget. The internet's answer to Sonic The Hedgehog (because Flash Sonic is not good), this slick action game is a minimalist wonder.
Run, jump, avoid monsters, and explore beautiful hand-drawn worlds. Less is more, people.
DINO RUN
Some people say John Marston's death is one of the saddest moments in gaming. Others say the end of Telltale's The Walking Dead is a tearjerker. My friends, neither of those moments compare to the real saddest game of all time: Dino Run.
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Dino Run is an endless runner/platformer all about the extinction of our reptilian friends. Playing as a small dinosaur, the sky is blood red as you sprint from right to left from a sweeping black cloud of smoke, dodging falling rocks and other obstacles - including fellow dinos that are also trying to escape.
Try holding back tears as you literally LEAP over another dino as it desperately tries to scramble up a hill to avoid its fiery fate. Your survival means its death. A smart modern commentary on the futility of life and inevitability of death? Maybe. A fun flash game that I'm reading too much into? Possibly.
BOWMAN
If you're bored in class and want to play a game, there are tons of flash games you can play solo. But what if you're bored in class and want to drag an impressionable friend down to your level? Bowman is the game for you.
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A two-player archery-based physics game, Bowman is a tense battle of wills. The premise is simple. Two players take in turns to shoot arrows at each other, adjusting the angle and power of the shot accordingly to ensure you hit them before they hit you.
That's... kind of it. It's not the most complex game out there, but firing off an arrow that hits your mate square in the head on the first try is like drinking a warm cup of liquid joy.
THE IMPOSSIBLE QUIZ
The Impossible Quiz
On the face of it, The Impossible Quiz seems like a harmless enough flash-based quiz game. One with cute questions and a charmingly rubbish aesthetic, as if cobbled together by a child who just wants to amuse you for a while with some fun questions.
But The Impossible Quiz was assembled, not by a child, but by a man who I've long suspected might actually be the devil. At the very least, he's related to satan, surely. What makes The Impossible Quiz so... well, impossible? It's the fact that without fail, every single question is a trick or trap specifically designed to trip you up and make you fail.
This 110 question gauntlet will get inside your head in a way few games can. Even when you THINK you know the answer, you'll start to wonder if that's what the quiz WANTS you to think. Given you only have three lives to get to the end, with no checkpoints, this line of thought makes The Impossible Quiz an unbearably tense experience. To this day, I don't actually know anyone who's stuck it out and gotten to the end.
INTERACTIVE BUDDY
I like to think you can tell a lot about people by the games they play. You can tell a lot more by the way they treat NPCs. Does your friend play as a noble warrior in Skyrim, or do they cut down everyone in their path and brag about the mod they have that lets them kill children? If it's the latter, I'd watch your back.
Interactive Buddy is NPC abuse distilled into its purest form. The game is simple. You're presented with a basic looking humanoid creature in a small grey room. Using your mouse, you can slap him, punch him, and even throw grenades at him. That's it. That's the game.
The more you pummel the poor digital stooge, the more money you earn. With more money, you can buy more devastating weapons, including a flail, a flamethrower, and missiles. There's really no aim to the game, other than abusing your buddy till you get bored and move on.
I think you can play catch with him to make him happy or something, but I'm not sure why you'd do that when you can drop a dozen grenades and watch him fly.
PORTAL: THE FLASH VERSION
Portal: The Flash Version
There have been plenty of attempts by fans to do flash versions of well-known franchises. Super Mario Bros, Sonic, Smash Bros, Zelda... the list probably goes on, but I can't be bothered to check. Out of all of these flash adaptations though, I'd argue Portal: The Flash Version is the best of the bunch.
Based on Valve's iconic 3D puzzle game, Portal: The Flash Version retains the central gimmick of its namesake. Specifically, it's a puzzle platformer in which you need to get from A to B using a gun that can create portals.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this flash game is it feels like Valve could have made it. There are 40, genuinely really well-designed levels with smart puzzles that gradually get more complex. A properly outstanding piece of work.
RAY
There were many reasons that parents didn't want their children going on the internet unsupervised in the early 00s. The idea that we might stumble upon the anarchic point & click chaos of Ray was undoubtedly one of those reasons.
Ray was not for kids. And yet, as we all know, it ended up being played almost exclusively by small children. Thanks for that, internet. If the creators of South Park were asked to write and produce a special animated episode of The Wire, I'm fairly certain they would have come up with Ray.
Bloody and violent, yet strangely compelling to a young audience who were clearly enjoying something they shouldn't be anywhere near, I'm not sure that Ray holds up as well as the other games on this list... but it's undeniably iconic to those of us of a certain age.
THE HELICOPTER GAME
I honestly don't know if anyone actually likes The Helicopter Game, but I know we've all wasted more time on this cursed aviation sim than we'd likely care to admit. If kids today think Flappy Bird is bad, school them with this.
On paper, it seems so damn easy. Hold your mouse button down and the choppa flies up. Let go, and it flies down. Unfortunately, achieving consistent flight is so, so much harder than you might think.
See, if you so much as graze the floor, ceiling, or one of the many obstacles in your way, you die. Given the wildly unpredictable way in which the level is laid out, plus the chaotic manner in which the helicopter swerves up and down, simply moving more than a few meters becomes a heart-stopping endurance test. Truly, the Dark Souls of helicopter games
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