Here’s a crazy variation on Asteroids: SlingStar. You play a floating space eye with two comet satellites. Move your eye with the mouse to sling your comets into the bad guys (everything else). I got to level 14 before I got bored. Crazy.

Here’s a rediculously fun game: Desktop Tower Defense. It’s along the same lines as Flash Circle TD, but the monsters don’t have a pre-defined maze to follow. Instead, they move from the left-to-right and the top-to-bottom (in normal mode). My high score is 4643 in Normal mode, 7022 on the 100-level challenge, and 3454 on Easy, and I feel like I’m nowhere near mastering it.

Use this tip to play it full screen. A full review is available at Jay Is Games.

I love a game that entertains me for five or ten minutes without sucking up my entire day. Bloons is one such game (assuming you can overlook the, uh, overly festive color scheme). A monkey pops balloons. Pac-man makes a cameo. What more do you need to know?

Use this tip to play it full-screen. I got to Level 27 before getting bored.

Here’s a simple version of SimCity that you can play in 20 minutes: DotVille. Build farms to create food and markets to make money. If you feed your dots enough, they’ll be happy with you and promote you. The goal is to reach Emporer status, and then to defeat the evil squares in a cunning battle of strategy. OK, there’s not really any strategy in the final battle, but it kept my interest.

Use this tip to play it full screen. It took me two tries to win the game with a high score of 759,124 (proof after the jump). A full review is available at Jay Is Games.

Here’s a great way to kill ten minutes on your Sunday morning: NaaC. This simple, two-dimensional, one-room shooter reminds me of asteroids. Move around the room with your cursor keys, and hold down the left mouse button to fire. If you pick up a weapon, click the right mouse button to switch to it. The pace of the game cosntantly increases as new enemies are released into the room. When everything gets quiet, that means you’re about to meet one of the bosses.

For strategy:

• Turn inertia off from the main menu (otherwise, it’s hard to pick weapons up)
• Use your pistol (the default weapon) as much as possible. Switch weapons when you start to get in trouble.
• Don’t move around the room too much; you’re better off staying in one corner for most of the game.
• Pick up weapons and goodies whenever possible, but don’t dive into a group of enemies to pick something up. If a weapon is surrounded, just let it disappear.

I suggest just downloading the .ZIP version of the game, unzipping it, and then running the executable file without installing it. It’s a fun game, but it’s not like you’re going to be playing it years from now.

My high score is 1,355,081–post your score in the comments. This is another game from Jay is Games.

I’m a fickle gamer. I love games, but I don’t have much time to play games, so when I do sit down with a controller I want the game to be great.

For years, I just bought games new from the local Circuit City. Often, though, I’d get a game home and realize I hated it, and I was out $50. When GameFly started, I thought, this’ll be cheaper than buying the games, and I won’t have to worry if I get a game that I hate–I just send it back and get another.

I’ve been a GameFly member for more than three years now (since January of 2004), and overall I’d give it 3/5 stars. It does work as advertise–they mail me games, and I send them back postage-free in the included mailer. They’ve always given me whatever game I had at the top of my queue, including games that would have been hard to buy in stores. They sell used games at very cheap prices ($20-$35) for the few occasions that I want to buy one.

GameFly has its flaws, though. I live on the East coast, and it literally takes TWO WEEKS to get a new game after I send one back. Actually, sometimes it’s a little shorter–they have a clever service now where the postal service informs them that i’ve mailed a game back. That shaves a couple of days off the round-trip time, but it still takes at least 9 days to get a new game. Plus, they don’t get the notification every time.

Also, I’ve had a lot of games disappearing lately. Literally, since I’ve moved to my new town, about 75% of the games I send back never arrive at GameFly. Either someone is taking them directly from my mailbox, or someone at the post office is stealing them. This happened once or twice at my previous address, but now that it happens most of the time, I have to be suspicious. I’m going to have to start returning them to a post office box (which reduces the convenience factor).

Out of the maybe 40 games that I’ve rented over the last several years, two were damaged. GameFly sent me a replacement promptly (they don’t wait to receive the game, but ship the replacement out as soon as you notify them of the problem).

I’ve tried to find a similar service that offers faster distribution to people on the east coast. GameFly does have several competitors, but none of them are as well-reviewed as GameFly, and people still have the same shipping time complaints. NetFlix, which distributes movies instead of games, has distribution centers throughout the country and so offers very fast turn-around. Unfortunately, there’s no real “NetFlix for games”.

If I do ever cancel GameFly, I’d just buy games used from eBay and then resell them. That’s more trouble, but given the small number of games I play, it’d be much cheaper. Though, if someone at the post office stole a game I bought, I’d be on the hook for it, I suppose.

Add a comment if you have an experience with GameFly or a similar service.

FrostBite is a platform game that combines Super Mario Brothers and DigDug. Use the cursor keys to move and jump, and use your mouse to aim your grapple. My hi-score is 20850, at which point I got bored. It’s a good game, though, I just have to get back to work.

Use this tip to play it full screen. A full review is available at Jay Is Games.

Here’s a way to kill two minutes: the New Nest of Moai. I always find these foreign-language games funny. Well, click the bottom button on the first screen, and then click the top button on the second title screen. Then, move your mouse over the tower heads that appear to get points. Click to zoom in, which reveals hidden heads that are worth more points.

Crazy stuff. I don’t even know what my high score was.

As they say, “If you liked Flash Element TD, you’ll love Flash Circle TD.” In this flash game (it runs within your browser), enemies come in waves and navigate your simple maze. You setup towers to kill the enemies. You have five different towers to pick from, and each tower can be upgraded up to level 9.

I tried two main strategies to choose from:

• Add as many towers as possible
• Apgrade a smaller number of towers.

A larger number of towers is clearly the better strategy (I tried both). My high score is 2326 (proof after the jump), which I got using the “add more towers” strategy. Upgrading a fewer number of towers only got me 1059.

I can’t imagine that the Slow tower does any good, so just avoid it.
Start by adding only Splash towers, positioning them to cover as much area as possible. After the first Air creeps appear, add enough Air towers to take them out. If you get Air creeps circling around and hanging around too long, add a bunch of Air towers. You don’t need to eliminate them quickly; you just need to keep the total below 100. Ideally, you’d keep your Air towers busy 100% of the time without letting the Air creeps build up too much..

Unlike Flash Element TD, you don’t earn interest on the money you have saved up. So, spend it right away.

Add your high score or strategies in the comments. Via Jay is Games.

Here’s a way to forget your pain for five minutes: remote controlled lego cars. Drive around with the cursor keys. Press S to kill the awful techno music, and press Esc to return to the main menu. Eh, I’ll give it a 4/10. I’ll do better in the future.