You start each map with all of your characters which you can place on the map. Your one and only goal is to keep them away from Azra, your lead character. Azra, while not fighting actively, has a repertoire of spells at her disposal to aid in battle.

You start the game with a single melee class which only gets you that far. New characters are recruited in town, and sometimes awarded during the story telling in between battles.

Each character has a skill set available to that class. The berserker for instance gets a double-cut early on in the game which hits two enemies passing by when executed.

Your sorceress gains PSI power during battles which can be used for spells, summoning more characters to the battlefield or powering up characters. When you power them up, they grow considerably stronger.

Characters have attack, armor and health values that you need to keep an eye on. Especially health – and armor items – become important later on when enemies start attacking your characters either in melee or range.

Your characters gain experience with every battle they fight, and the occasional level up awards one skill point that you can spend to improve an existing skill or learn a new one. Skills are divided into active skills, like the berserker’s double hit, and passive skills like swiftness which increase abilities passively.

You can equip each character with a weapon and armor, to increase their damage and resistance. These items become more important later on in the game.

Some maps allow you to select a challenge level with considerably stronger enemies and greater rewards. Rewards usually get you more experience and items that you can equip your characters with.

Defender’s Quest all in all is a solid game that does a lot of things right. If there are things to criticize, it is the low variance of enemies that you encounter on the map. The developers have released a full version of the game which boasts more maps, character classes and five additional acts to play through. The full version retails for $6.99 currently, and you get $2 off when you visit the purchase page from the Kongregate website.

You start with a poorly equipped soldier with options to purchase additional soldiers once you have completed your first missions. Soldiers are moved around with WAD, the mouse is used to aim and fire.

Mission objectives are displayed on the screen before a map starts. You’ll encounter bad guys, civilians and stars in most maps. Bad guys need to be eliminated, civilians and VIPs rescued and stars collected. Rescuing civilians results in additional money for successfully completing the mission, and stars are used to upgrade your troops.

Each soldier has a distinct weapon, some of additional abilities. This ranges from commandos who shoot a lot faster than your average soldier over spies that can avoid detection to jeeps or rocket launchers. Some soldiers may be more effective than others in certain levels. The Jeep for instance can pack a pound, but cannot nearly jump as high as the commando.

Each unit has a health, power and speed rating associated with it.

Soldiers that die in combat cannot be revived. This is exactly the Cannon Fodder mechanic that leaves you with inexperienced troops once your elite units die. The experience point system is basic at best. You can award points to soldiers who get higher ranks and more hitpoints in return.

Only one soldier can be controlled at a time. You can switch between soldiers of your squad with the 1-5 keys or a click on the individual unit. There is no option to control multiple soldiers at once.

City Siege 3 Jungle Siege is a nice game. It is not overly complex though and may bore experienced players after a while. You basically need to move your units from left to right all the time, kill every enemy you see and collect civilians and stars when you encounter them.

The upgrade system itself is mediocre at best. It would have been more plausible if units would get experience for combat missions or actions.

Playing around with the different unit types may keep you entertained for a while though. Collecting enough money to do just that on the other hand is again pretty boring, especially in the beginning.

Gamers who are looking for a side-scrolling action game that is not overly complex can play a round over at Armor Games.

You begin the game with cash but nothing else. Your first task is to build Office space and hire some workers to start making money. But workers can only work if you got additional personal standing by, IT for instance to fix computer problems or janitors to clean up the mess when the workers go home.

The tutorial walks you through the first steps with the help of objectives that are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Completing objectives gives you cash and a new objective (e.g. build four office parts, then hire 20 workers).

You can hire supervisors to beat workers on the head to make them work faster, and researchers that research new game elements or improve existing ones.

New worker and building types become available later in the game. You will be able to hire accountants or HR to improve earnings and happiness, decor to improve happiness and transport to get your workers from a to b (to another floor).

You also need to make sure that you have enough restrooms and other types of room that your workers request. If you do not happiness may drop and workers may need to go outside to fill their needs (bathroom, eating, gym).

It is important to have the right ratio of all worker types available. This means that for every x workers you need a janitor, IT worker and supervisor. It is also possible to promote workers to make them more efficient.

The game plays in realtime. Your workers come in the morning and leave in the evening. You can speed up the flow of time using the slider at the bottom of the screen. Here you also find information about your organization’s happiness level, the time of the day and the total number of employees. Research is handled automatically by the game, but you can manually select the area that you want to concentrate research on.

Offices can be upgraded to speed things up, make workers happier and make them earn more money. Workers can be promoted or fired as well.

There is a lot to the game that you will discover while playing it. The game plays like a mix of popular games such as Little Computer People and Sim Tower. It is a lot of fun, especially in the beginning. The game plays like an open end game which means that you will eventually run out of things to do and fun. But that takes a while since you have got a lot to discover before you have seen it all in the game.

You can play Corporation Inc at Armorgames.

Available for selection are elements that redirect a color stream to a specific direction (e.g. right or down), that split color streams or teleport them to another exit. Most elements can be placed with the mouse at another location on the screen. Some elements on the other hand are fixed at their position which adds to the difficulty of the level.

The game comes with a level selector to select unlocked maps directly. In the beginning though you are stuck with level 1 and need to work your way towards level 25, the last level of the game.

The puzzle game is not overly difficulty, but that was not probably the intention of the game developer. It is a relaxing and entertaining puzzle game for players of all ages. I’d estimate that experienced players may need about 20 minutes to play through all the 25 levels of the game. Those that cannot get enough can load the predecessors of the game to continue playing. The first two parts of the game are linked from Waterfall 3 directly. Players who are stuck can lock at the walkthrough videos that demonstrate how elements need to be placed in each level to beat it.

Music and visuals are excellent. The game itself could use maps that are more difficulty to master. Interested gamers can play Waterfalls 3 directly at the Kongregate website. The game requires Adobe Flash Player to be installed as a plugin in the browser.

The last game by ConArtists is called The Last Stand – Union City. Unlike its predecessors, it is a side scrolling action adventure type of game. You play the role of a guy (or girl) who awakes after a car crash to find out that zombies have taken over the once pretty neighborhood.

The game has several RPG elements which become apparent right on the character generation screen. You can pick one of the preconfigured roles, e.g. military man, fire fighter or create a custom character.

Characters have five major attributes and twelve skills to choose from. Each attribute defines specific traits of the character. Strength for instance lets you carry more and put more force behind blunt weapon attacks, while precision makes you deadlier with guns.

The survival skills can be compared to the skills of the Fallout game. You increase them to be more proficient with a certain type of weapon, improve your ability to use first aid, break security or increase your overall survivability on the streets.

You control the character with WASD on the keyboard. The AD keys move the character in the selected direction, W jumps and D ducks. Attacks are carried out with the left mouse button. Tab opens the character menu where you can equip weapons, eat food, use first aid or equip other stuff that you may need in a specific situation.

The game has many parallels to the Fallout game series. You find books for instance from time to time that you can read to increase your skill sets.

You use the E key to interact with objects. This can be a door that you want to open, a trunk or items that you want to pick up. You need to move with the mouse over the item before the option to interact with it becomes available. You also use E to talk to people. These people may give you quests that you can complete for some extra experience points. Sometimes, you need to complete a quest before you can processed to the next block of the street.

Other keys that you will need are R to reload a weapon, F to turn on the flashlight and G to give a weapon or save a companion.

The game itself is pretty straightforward. You basically move from the area entrance to the right and investigate every building that you come across that you can enter. Not everything that you find in the game has a purpose. You will find lots of junk items on your way that you should not pick up as you’d reach your maximum carrying limit very fast otherwise.

The Last Stand – Union City is a well designed browser game with nice graphics and gameplay. The game will keep you entertained for a long time, and even if you beat it you may want to replay the second game mode that is offered on the start screen.

Head over to Armor Games to play the game in your browser.

Several factors determine the penguins success. First it is the starting ramp’s length and height, which has a direct impact on the speed and distance. Then there are four types of items that the player can purchase and upgrade to improve the flying vessel. Sleds that improve starting speed, gliders that improve speed in air and time in air, thrust that can give you a much needed boost in air and payload which is used to give you enough punch to destroy objects in story mode.

Better items get increasingly expensive. That’s somewhat balanced by the fact that you get more money the longer you stay in air. Still, you often need to fly multiple rounds to earn enough money to buy the next improvement. That’s kinda repetitive, especially in mid game when you earn a few hundred bucks the most but need thousands to buy the next improvements. Bonus points help a bit overcome this problem, you get them for all kinds of achievements.

There is also a bonus shop available that changes the environment a bit. You can reduce air friction here, improve air glide or earn more money per flight. You earn bonus points from completing challenges for instance.

You control the game with the left and right arrow keys, a and d keys or the mouse. Space or a left mouse click uses the boost. The best way to play the game, as far as I’m concerned, is to get as high as possible after start, build up speed by diving down and building height again once you have enough speed. This way you can glide your way to greater distances that would otherwise not be in reach at all.

One thing that is irritating is the ad popup in the shop window that asks you to buy a shirt or mobile game. Players who like achievements and challenges find a lot of in the game, which could keep them busy for quite some time.

Players who are not into that kind of things will find the game to become dull over time as there is not a lot of variety in the end. All you try is to stay longer in air and beat the five obstacles if you are in story mode. That’s fine for a while but may become boring eventually.

Learn To Fly 2, despite that, is a great looking flash game that has already made an impact since release. You can play the game over at Kongregate.

A reverse tower defense game if you will. The excellent tutorial walks you through your first raid on one of the world’s villages. You select your troops at the beginning but are limited to casting spells and watching the progress once you hit the start button. Troop selection is the essential task in the game that will lead to success or failure. There are a few things that you need to know to be effective.

First, there is only one monster available that can plunder. The Goblin Raider. Not good for anything else besides that though. All other troops are support troops that protect or aid the raiders in reaching the objective. You only got a tank unit called Mammoth Turtle at the beginning that you can send along with the raiders. Enemies will automatically fire their bullets at the turtle, they act as cannon fodder to protect the raiders for as long as possible.

You get access to four other units later in the game: A healer with a healing aura, a golem with a protective aura, a warlock that can cleanse units and elementals that aid in the generation of mana.

The money earned during raids is used to unlock new spells, abilities and units.

You will encounter different types of towers on most maps that require different strategies. One basic example. A bog tower damages your units constantly. Only a warlock can cleanse the troops to reduce the effect of the tower. If you add a healer to the mix you should not have difficulties with this kind of tower.

Other towers include a standard and fast firing arrow tower, cannon towers that do splash damage, holy towers that do holy damage (also cleansed by warlocks), quake towers that do ground damage or atomic towers that do even more splash damage than cannon towers.

You have got three spells at your disposal that you can cast during a run, provided that you have the necessary mana to cast it. The heal spell heals units, quake disables towers in a specific region temporarily and the stun spell disables a tower for one round. Clever use of the spells is essential in the later stages of the game, when towers become more powerful and more versatile.

It is necessary to assemble the right units and their order to beat all maps of the game. It may look like an easy to beat game in the beginning but the later levels turn out to be hard to beat, especially if you want to raze and win gold medals and not only bronze.

Villainous is a great game with traits from many games that I like to play. You get a tower defense part, reversed but still lots of fun to play and an rgp part where you need to unlock new skills and units.

Users who are interested in playing Villainous can do so over at Kongregate.

Your task is to survive for as long as possible. Your controls are limited to jumping and double-jumping which itself is not very spectacular.

But Edmus offers more than just pressing the jump button at the right time. What makes this game stand out from the rest of jump and runs is the fact that you do not race alone. You are accompanied by other players who have also played the game.

And this is where it gets interesting. You run with others, or more precisely with the ghosts of other players, just like you did when you played Super Mario Kart for the first time.

The player count goes down the longer you manage to stay alive which is a big motivator to try that level again. Level? There is only one that you can play, and it always looks the same. This means that you can memorize the layout and design to get better with time and practice.

Back to the jumps. You can use the left mouse button to jump, or nearly any key on the keyboard. They have all been mapped to jumping in Edmus. The longer you press the jump button, the higher you jump. This is true for a single and double jump in the game. Sometimes, you may not want to jump to high, as there may be obstacles in the way that you would crash into otherwise.

You can collect flowers in the game that act as a currency for upgrades. You can spend the flowers to increase your characters run speed, or single or double jump height.

These extras are bonuses that make the game easier, but it appears to be possible to get far without them.

The display of other player’s successes and failures on the map is the main driving force behind the game. It motivates to see the player count drop while you are still racing, and even more so if you fail and see that dozens of players have managed to get past that point.

Edmus is a nice game, good for a few rounds of racing. There is not a lot you can do in the game though and lack of alternation means that it will eventually become boring. You can play Edmus over at Kongregate (via Gameokratie)

SwiffOut for the Google Chrome browser is an incredible extension, and I’m saying that after testing many different solutions to run flash games in full screen.

What makes it that incredible? For one, it introduces lag free fullscreen gaming to the Chrome browser. Fullscreen in this regard means that all browser UI elements, like the address bar or title bar, that are normally still displayed are not shown. Only the flash game is shown in full screen on the computer monitor.

That alone makes it superior to comparable solutions. SwiffOut determines the best possible resolution to run the game to improve performance in fullscreen mode. Even better, the Chrome extension works even if flash games do not support scaling.

So how does it work? Chrome users need to install the extension first. It places an icon in the Chrome address bar that switches to full screen mode when Flash contents are embedded on the active page. If no contents are discovered nothing happens. If a Flash element is discovered it will switch automatically to fullscreen mode.

Only the flash content is then displayed on the screen, everything else is hidden and not shown anymore. Take a look at the before and after screenshots of a Kongregate game.

This is a screenshot of the standard browser UI. All browser controls and elements on the page are visible.

This is a screenshot of the full computer desktop (note not the browser window!) after the Swiffout button has been activated. Only the flash game is visible on the screen.

I have tested the Chrome extension on several popular Flash gaming websites, including Armorgames, Kongregate and Addictinggames.

Most games could be played without difficulties, a few were blurry which was probably caused by the selected resolution. The games were still playable though.

The ESC key on the keyboard exits the fullscreen mode. The extension displays an intermediary page at this point with a back button to open the game page at the developer or gaming site again.

Another interesting feature of SwiffOut is the ability to create game shortcuts. These shortcuts are placed on the computer desktop.

A right-click opens the context menu with the option to save the shortcut to the desktop. This opens the save file dialog window. The shortcuts are placed as .lnk files on the computer which indicates that this will only work on Windows.

A double-click on a lnk file starts the flash game immediately in full screen mode which is very comfortable and unique as far as I know.

As a side note, I have tested the extension on popular video portals as well but it did not work with Flash video at all, at least not on portals like Youtube or Gametrailers.

Google Chrome users can install the latest version of the SwiffOut extension directly on the Google Chrome extensions gallery.

The basic principle of the game remained the same. You have to stop enemy creeps who enter a level from one or multiple locations to reach the exit of that level. You begin each level with a certain amount of life and every creep that makes it reduces that life by one.

The player can build five basic characters and four advanced ones that have to be researched before they can be placed. The five basic characters have each strengths and weaknesses and only a combination will ensure victory on most levels.

Each character that is placed on the board gains experience by attacking and defeating enemy creeps. If he reaches a certain amount of experience he can be upgraded which always gives the player the choice to upgrade the special attack of that character or give him more general attack power.

Special attack powers can be poisonous attacks or critical for instance. Monsters do always have one strength (like poison for instance) and one weakness (fire for instance) and characters with those attacks do more or less damage because of these. There are other abilities that players have to watch out for. Some monsters have immunities, some regenerate, some absorb damage.

Beating a level for the first time gives the player a skill point which he can use to buy advancements. This can be the aforementioned advanced characters or other abilities or extras that make live just a little bit easier on the battlefield.

The choice of level is upon the player. He can’t choose all of them at the beginning but there are always some to choose from which is great. Levels are divided into easy, medium and hard and each have different stages. There are some fun maps as well, for instance the marathon map with forty stages.

The easy and medium levels are fairly easy to beat most of the time but the hard levels require solid planing and lots of testing. The good thing is that you can try the level as often as you like without loosing anything.

This might sound easy at first but it becomes difficulty pretty soon starting at level three. Later on different types of stars are introduced. The first star available sends out two shining stars for instance while the next type of star sends out only one. Additional stars are introduced in the later levels.

Starshine is a nice little game that is fun to play but can be quite frustrating if you are not able to find the solution for a level.

You have to make it through ten levels to rescue a woman (princess, geisha ?). To do this you have to cross the levels and beat all the enemy guards who are defending the captured woman. You only have a limited assortment of techniques at your disposable. Amongst them are the infamous wallrun, the backflip and the quick short slash.

The best way to defeat the guards is of course the silent way. Approach them from behind and retreat. If guards spot you they attack with swords, bows and lances and they will most of the time beat you. It also means that your rating for that level will be reduced. You only get a master rating if you have not been spotted in a level at all.

You do receive a final rating after all levels which surely adds to the replay value of the game. It does not take long to complete levels, just the right game for a short break.

The game begins with the first night. You only have a weak pistol and no other survivors are going to help you. When you manage to survive the attack you can use the next 12 hours to either repair the barricades, search for guns or search for survivors. Repairing the barricades is rather obvious. Whenever a Zombie reaches the barricades he is reducing their health. If the health level reaches 0 they are going right at you and you will eventually die.

You do need better guns to survive in this game. It is possible to equip a primary and secondary weapon. Unfortunately for you there is no secondary weapon at the beginning. If you do find other survivors they aid you in the defense and also help repair the barricades. If you are alone you can repair 5% per hour, for every survivor this amount is raised by an additional 5%.

The best strategy would be in my opinion to find a better gun first and search for survivors and more guns on the next days. Repairs should not be necessary at the beginning if you got some experience with this kind of shooters.

I enjoy playing The Last stand. Oh, before I forget. The game is rather violent, not really suitable for children.

You can move it into any adjacent space as long as it is not occupied by another room. If you take the image above you could move the room that the character is in only to the right side. Moving the character offers more possibilities. You can climb ladders, teleport Matrix-like using phones and use objects like keys to open doors that block the exit.

Rooms can be downloaded to play offline or played on the web. I suggest to download the full version which has a size of 30 megabytes. Great addictive game.

I suggest you start with the practice mode to get a hang for the game before you join the beginners difficulty levels. It looks easy but it gets complicated fast. Still a great game for a little pause from work.

Your character is equipped with a glock like handgun in the first two levels, after that you get a shotgun and in later levels even better weapons. Zombies are scarce in the first levels but become more frequent in later ones.

Zombies behave rather mindless, just heading in your direction, you need to shoot them from a distance, if they come to close its game over and you need to restart the level. (at least not the game).

If you are interested head over to [removed] to play the game.

Update: The game is no longer available on the site. The link to the site has therefor been removed from the article. Here are a few alternatives that use a similar setting.

The Last Stand: A great game that puts you in the role of a survivor of a zombie apocalypse. Game play is divided into night where you have to defend your hideout against zombie hordes, and day time where you can seek to find survivors, better weapons and supplies that you will need to cope with the attacks at night.

You play the game with the keyboard and mouse. You move your character with WASD, reload your active weapon with R, switch to another weapon with Space, and aim and shoot with the mouse.

The Last Stand Union City: Another part of the Last Stand series, now with additional story elements and options. Instead of staying at a single location, you now have to make your way to Union City.

For those who don´t know the game, its a sidescrolling jump and run game. You play the protagonist who is armed with a whip. Your goal is to make it to beat an evil vampire lord (Dracula ?). You gain experience by killing monsters like bats and skeletons, once you reach a level up you can strengthen your offense, defense or intelligence.

The game is fun to play, only the location in the upper left corner is a small minus, it would be better if the screen was centered in your browser. Other than that, enjoy this nice game and be prepared for more games that I´ll be reviewing for you.

Update: The original game linked in this post is no longer available, the website that posted it has closed down. You can play Castlevania Flash Game as an alternative. Open this website and wait until the Flash game has loaded.

I’m not really sure if this is a “real” Castlevania game or a re-interpreation. Music, animations and game play work nicely together though. You can move your character with the left and right cursor keys. You use the space bar to jump, and the Ctrl key to slash your whip at bats, zombies and other monstrosities that you are facing in the game. The start screen mentions that it is an alpha version, which may mean that the game is not fully playable yet.

At the beginning you chose one out of four characters which have slightly different skill sets which make some activities easier and others harder. After that you chose one action each turn and wait for the computer players to do the same. You could for instance buy more soldiers and conquer one of the free areas at the beginning, raid a castle, lay siege to castles, hold a tournament and meet Robin Hood who will give you assistance.

A classic game that brought back some childhood memories, damn hard though, hehe.

Update: Cinemaware has updated their website recently, and in the wake of this, they have unfortunately removed the Defender of the Crown game from their website. It cannot be played anymore there, but there is an alternative. Gamers can head over to the DosDose website to play the game online.

Your web browser needs to support Java to play the game there. Please also note that this is a copy of the PC version of the game which may be slightly different from the superior Amiga version.

Controls of the game are the following: You move around with the up, down, left and right cursor keys, use enter as the start and reset key, the z key for button A, and the X key for button B.

Update: Sancho’s Island is no longer available at the original website. The website itself has been closed down and is now returning advertisement and nothing more. Since it was only hosted on that site and no other sites, it is fair to assume that the game can no longer be played online.

If you like adventures take a look at this beauty, head over to sanchoisland to give it a try.

At least three, if not four, parts of Sancho’s Island have been posted by the developers on the site before it was closed down. It is not clear why the site has been removed.

I suggest you check out the adventure game section over at Newsgrounds which lists hundreds of games for you to play. The majority of games posted on the site does not reach the quality of Sancho’s Island though.

One adventure that is comparable in many regards is Bela Kovacs and The Trail of Blood which you can play over at Kongregate. The game has a classic Film Noir touch to it, with excellent graphics and sound. One thing that you may notice though is that it is not overly difficulty to complete. Most of the time you have to find objects on the screen that you need to progress. Multiple choice answers are offered in conversations that determine whether you can continue adventuring or need to restart the conversation.