Double Edged Flash Game Review

Link: Double Edged
Developer: Nitrome
Genre: Action
FlashMush Reviews Rating: 7/10

Nitrome is back, this time with a hack and slash linear brawler flash game! Double Edged has you playing as a warrior in a fight against all that is evil. So rock monsters and King Midas of course. So don't get turned into gold and well...steal his gold!

Double Edged really reminds me of a cuter, Nitrome-fied and basic version of Achilles 2, but the same concept is there. You play as a shielded warrior fighting waves of other warriors as they come at you from the sides as you hack and slash them to pieces. You can knock their weapons off and use them as your own as well. And of course it features boss battles (such as King Midas and his golden touch). Why did I say "basic version" of Achilles 2? Well Double Edged honestly feels...unfinished on a few aspects. One, there are coins to collect but they really do nothing and pointless to grab. Not sure if an upgrade system was planned or something for these coins. Two, the controls are god awful, especially on a laptop. This stems from the fact that this can be a co-op game so there is the possibility to have two people playing on one keyboard, however if you play the single player the controls are still squished to one side of the keyboard. You move with the arrow keys and attack/jump with the < > keys. Yeah... So on a laptop you're hands are very squished and you can accidentally click out of the frame with the laptop track pad. Terrible planning. Luckily you can redefine the keys so I guess that makes my comment null and void.

All in all Double Edged isn't a bad game. It has the typical Nitrome polish and feel and that alone makes it a great game to play, but in terms of groundbreaking ideas in this hack and slash genre it offers nothing, just cutesy soldiers.

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Bloomo: A Submarine Adventure Flash Game Review

Link: Bloomo: A Submarine Adventure
Developer: 4v4.com
Genre: Platformer/Story
FlashMush Reviews Rating: 7.5/10

Everyone wants to ride in a submarine, right? Well here is your chance with Bloomo: A Submarine Adventure. It is your job to discover a new species of underwater plants, problem is there is so much trash down there its hard to move around.

I have Bloomo: A Submarine Adventure classified as a platformer as that is what it is most reminiscent to for me. Of course its not a typical platformer as you don't run and jump...as you're a submarine. So you float and drive under water. However it has all the same puzzles that one has and you can use your harpoon gun to accomplish tasks such as drag huge boxes out of the way to clear passages or drag them onto levers to open gates. There is actually a lot of adventuring going on in Bloomo to make it a platformer.

You'll also notice I have it marked as story. This is really a loose tag I added in there as it tries to subtly talk about pollution in the ocean. They could have made a better point if they used actual trash instead of industrial boxes. Either way I guess the point is the ocean is cluttered with useless junk thus preventing exploration. Bloomo: A Submarine Adventure overall was a pretty nice game. Kind of short and kind of threw you into the environment with no real direction or sense of where you needed to go, but it looked good and was fun to play.

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A Trashy Love Story Flash Game Review

Link: A Trashy Love Story
Developer: Villa Vanilla
Sponsor: Armor Games
Genre: Platformer/Story
FlashMush Reviews Rating: 9/10

Hm... A Trashy Love Story? No this is not a flash game about your mother's raunchy romance novels but rather quite the literal tale of lovers. Actual love between trash! A trash bin and a plastic bag to be exact and as weird as it sounds the life lessons about love to be learned here run quite deep.

It is this combination of interesting and unique platforming action (I'll get to that in a minute) with cute little side anecdotes about love but in the perspective of trash blowing in the wind really makes for a great game. Not sure why just does. So what is this about interesting platforming action, you say? Well, Villa Vanilla took another literal translation with the movement set of a light plastic bag and the whole game is actually played as the plastic bag floating in the air. The controls aren't the best as you have to tap both the left and right arrows in quick succession in order to ascend which can be annoying and turns/descending can feel buggy, but the general premise is there and it dares to be different. Something I'll always praise flash game developers for being and doing. The level designs help facilitate these interesting moves with wind currents and such as well as the dangers of spikes and water.

Of course a platformer isn't going to get a FlashMush Reviews rating of a 9/10 with just an interesting movement dynamic. No! It is the story line and the polish that helped achieve this prestigious honor. The game features many a secret level which you can get by gathering music notes placed in the hardest parts of levels. The graphics are pixelated which is a style I love (as I'm sure you know) which only helps in my judgment. Overall I found A Trashy Love Story to be a catch all flash game. Funny, serious, fun to play and unique. A quadruple threat if you will!

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Apple Shooter Flash Game Review

Link: Apple Shooter
Developer: Wolf Games
Genre: Action/Shooter
FlashMush Reviews Rating: 6.5/10

Decided to go the classic flash game route again with today's FlashMush flash game review with Apple Shooter by Wolf Games. Now I'm pretty positive if you play flash games regularly then you've played Apple Shooter, it's just one of those games. Instant classic.

Apple Shooter is a flash game based on the classic trial of men, shooting apples off people's head. In this case with a bow and arrow. From here you should know the drill. You have a man with an apple of his head and you have yourself with a bow. You then have to get the angle and power right of your shot so you don't accidentally (or purposely) shoot your assistant. This is the hardest part and unless you are really good and really precise, this part does get frustrating at the seemingly randomness it consists of. However it is satisfying when you can shoot the apple in one clean swoop. You feel such like a professional! While you lose the game if you shoot your assistant the detail put into his "death animations" do make the game for what it is. Depending on where you shoot him, he reacts (or dies) differently. Try them out for yourself.

For lack of better words, Apple Shooter is lacking in the...graphics department. All in all it is a very bland game. Although as weird as it sounds it seems this is Wolf Games' style as their other hit game which you might recognize, Gun Blood, is in this same style. So while it does seem amateurish to certain extents, it seems to work for Wolf Games and their games reach millions regardless of flashy amounts of polish. I really would like to see a sequel to Apple Shooter, though, perhaps with better graphics/polish and with more features instead of a highscore farm. More games like this at Free Game Fortress.

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Super Strict Farmer Flash Game Review

Link: Super Strict Farmer
Developer: Deep Night
Genre: Strategy
FlashMush Reviews Rating: 9/10

You've heard of the hit board game Settlers of Catan, right? It's one of my favorite board games and games in general of all time. Love the strategy aspect of it as it can get very detailed and complex but still retain simplicity as you are only dealing with a finite amount of resources. Now I bring Settlers of Catan up because this free flash game I'm about to review reminds me heavily of Settlers of Catan. Super Strict Farmer to me is a smaller, faster and in some ways more complex free flash game version of Settlers of Catan.

Let me explain. Basically its you against a computer player (or a friend) on a small block of land. This land has various things on it; houses, trees, mountains, a pond, a school, fields, etc. Now just like in Settlers of Catan you need resources to live as well as build things in order to earn victory points (and the most victory points after 12 rounds wins). So as usually you have wood, rock, food and wheat. You start out with two farmers, so you have two actions per "day" or round. In these rounds you want to collect resources or build things trying to get victory points. However, you have to pay close attention to the food level as at the end of each day your farmers consume one food each, if you don't have food they consume your wheat and if you don't have any wheat they eat victory points. If you don't have victory points...they die.

So there is a lot of strategy in place. Getting resources to build new buildings which then open up new possibilities. For example you can build a bakery which then opens up the possibility to trade one wheat for five food. There are a lot of these buildings and the building cards you get per game is totally random so every game is way different. You can also sow fields with crops to get wheat or raise livestock which you can trade for victory points or other resources. The best thing about Super Strict Farmer is its a very quick game but the detail put into it allows for some deep strategies and is really challenging.

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