Tag: Games

The Aspie #9 – Being Nostalgic for… Flash Games

My early Internet usage concentrated on them. These are a few of my favourites.

Right, so… Have you enjoyed December 25th, 2024? If you have, I’ve a funny feeling that talk at the Christmas Dinner Table touched on childhood memories. And if you grew up around the same time as I did, something that probably hooked you as a child were those online games supported by Flash. At least until 31st December 2020, which only made that whole year 10 times worse! I played my fair share of those growing up across many websites. In recent years, some of them have been restored and / or remastered on platforms like Steam and the Google Play Store. In this fifth and final part of my Post Blitz on gaming, I want to talk about some of the Flash Games I played that I wish joined those that I have rediscovered.

It’s not just Flash Player Games that have made their way into the Steam Vault, but I’ll touch on some of them in a moment. First, these are the Flash Games I am aware of on both platforms and have also purchased myself:

  • Cube Escape: A series of eerie Escape Room Puzzle Games. They were originally released as individual games between 2015 and 2018 before the first nine were released as a single collection in 2020. I’ve also discovered through this page of the Rusty Lake Wiki that there are also Premium Games that are set in between free-to-play games so my collection clearly isn’t complete! At least this side of Christmas.
  • Don’t Escape Trilogy: Developed by Script Wielder for Armor Games, this trio of 8-Bit Horror showcases the best of Kevin MacLeod’s music! My personal favourite was number three, set in a spaceship tasked with investigating the disappearance of another ship near an unusual crystal. But something went terribly wrong and with life support on the verge of collapse, it’s up to the player to figure out the truth and decide the best course of action to take. Number four in the series was published exclusively to Steam, but it was very kind and convenient of him to bring the previous three together on the same platform!
  • The Henry Stickmin Collection: If you’ve watched Breaking the Bank or played Stealing the Diamond somewhere, you’ve technically consumed a Henry Stickmin game. Now, here’s your chance to play all of them together! And see if Henry can finally complete his mission, which seems to have been curated by a multitude of crazy actions taken by the player on his behalf.
  • Papa Louie: I’ve come across a couple of Papa Louie games on various websites. Basically, it’s a series of mid-2000s simulators of various restaurant types that see you serving a multitude of customers to earn money, unlock ingredients and decorate the restaurant to (your taste) maximise customer satisfaction. How many days can you keep the business up and running? Even if it wasn’t something you planned on starting yourself. This page from the Flipline Studios Wiki, the studio that created the series, indicates that most of them have been remastered under the To Go subtitle on Google Play and Steam, but I need to double-check just in case the originals are still playable on places like Kongregate.

As well as this quartet, I have also found most of the Worms games remastered and available on Steam, as well as Puzzler World and Puzzler World 2011 (called Puzzler World 2 on Steam) interestingly. There are probably more out there that I am not aware of at the moment, but right now, here are five Flash Player games I played that I wish would join the Steam Vault, mostly for preservation’s sake.

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The Aspie #8 – Being Neutral towards… Online Games

It’s not just Roblox where you can game online without paying an arm and a leg for the privilege. Unless you really want to!

Right, so… Have you unwrapped your presents and gobbled down good ‘ol fashioned Christmas Dinner of Turkey and Ham (your mileage may vary if you celebrate Christmas differently)? Good, because it’s now time for the fourth part of my Posting Blitz on the hobby of gaming. I’ve already talked about my taste in Roblox Games, which is a platform accessible online. This time, I want to focus on games and platforms besides Roblox that I have dabbled in, mostly as temporary relief from the mental pressure of the Pandemic in the early part of this decade. And because these are other ways to access games that I wasn’t familiar with! Until I found myself mixing and mingling in the right circles.

Jackbox Games

Let’s start with the most obvious, even if you’ve only heard of the words Smitty, Quiplash and Trivia Murder Party. If you’ve been living under a rock and have never heard of a Jackbox Party Pack, they are essentially online-based party games where players join in a room via Mobile Phone and play along to see who comes out on top. I’ve seen my fair share of action on small-town Twitch Streams which means I’m in good standing to declare my overall favourite game as Quiplash and my overall least favourite as Trivia Murder Party. The former because of how out there people can be with their quips and the latter because of the horror theme, which I loathe, and also the standard of questions being way out of my comfort zone, even if they toned down the US-centric-ness in the second version.

Among Us

It’s funny how this social deduction game became one of the biggest winners of the COVID-19 Pandemic despite having been released a few years beforehand to pretty much no fanfare or ceremony. And, when you have the right mix of players, it can be a cause of brilliant chaos! One of my best performances was on a Twitch Stream where, during a round on the Skeld, I was an Imposter who sabotaged the Oxygen, which the rest of the crew couldn’t figure out and when the timer ran out and it was revealed that I was the Imposter who done the deed, I felt very good about myself and it gave me a high!

That’s something I don’t believe would ever happen if I played games of a similar nature that you can play online, on Steam or recently via consoles like Fall Guys and Fortnite. Not only does the sunk cost of purchasing Seasonal Skins and stuff really put me off but every time I think of the former, I can’t help but always think of those TimtheTatMan Meltdowns and how he would take out his frustrations on his poor penguin plushie who’s just… There vibing and thinking to himself, ‘Not another fail…’ They also remind me of me when I was a young buck majorly struggling to complete the second part of Set to Kill from The Simpsons: Hit & Run and how every time I failed, especially when I was just getting up the hill… I got more and more frustrated and occasionally boiled over. And I think playing Fall Guys would bring those same emotions out.

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The Aspie #7 – Being Confused about… Console Games

Consoles were all the rage when I was growing up. Unfortunately, I only had access to one. That wasn’t part of the Console Wars.

Right, so… Welcome to Christmas Day! It hasn’t been my favourite day of the year for many years but when I was younger, some of my favourite presents were Consoles and the games that could come with them. So, in this part of my Posting Blitz regarding gaming, I want to talk about the games I have played on consoles. Well… One family of consoles anyway. As well as others that I have come across on other platforms. Including, surprisingly, PC!

Now that family of consoles I’m relatively familiar with comes from Nintendo of all places! It started with the original Nintendo DS when I was 10, followed by the Nintendo DSi and then the Nintendo 3DS. And no, I haven’t evolved into the Nintendo Switch and might wait until Nintendo Switch 2 comes out so I can be right up to date. Unless reputable reviewers deem it trash. In the meantime, I still have my DSi and 3DS, one of the benefits of which is ensuring I can keep on playing the Nintendo DS games I have accumulated over the years.

In fact, one of the first ever games I played on the original DS was Brain Training. I literally tried to keep on training every day, sometimes playing a rotating set of exercises and doing Calculations x20 and x100 on weekends. There was also a Sudoku section which is where I grasped the basics of that puzzle at all.

I then found More Brain Training where, at the very bottom of the Daily Training page was Germ Buster, which might remind you of Dr. Mario if you played games that far back!

Much later, I found Devilish Brain Training. A completely different set of exercises, some I grasped much quicker than others, as well as the best exercises from both original Brain Training games and puzzle games such as Klondike and Spider Solitaire. It also had an Instrumental Break full of all the songs used in the game and original compositions (I think). If you just want to listen to those, I’ve taken the liberty to put them all into one YouTube Playlist, accessible here. Probably the biggest benefit of still having my 3DS on hand and a charger to keep it juiced! Even if the wire covers are worn out.

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The Aspie #6 – Being Keen on… Roblox

Yes, it may be a platform aimed at Kids, but I find some of the Games created quite enjoyable!

Right, so… Apologies for the massive delay in getting this post out! With Christmas just around the corner, my house had to experience upheaval so it could be decorated. Anyway… Welcome to Part Two of my five-part chain of posts on my second-favourite G-Word: Gaming. Last week, I covered my Tablet full of Mobile Games. However, there is one game I didn’t have room in that post to talk about. Well, it’s more a platform than a game. And it’s called Roblox. Most of you have no doubt heard of it and probably dabbled in it as a player growing up. I first caught word of it via a cousin who used to play it on a desktop computer. I kept removing the launchers because I didn’t know what it was at the time, and I didn’t allow anything like that to be stored on the computer. Until I joined the platform myself. And since I registered on June 3rd, 2013, I have played a wide variety of games. And I have quite a few of them marked as Favourites right now.

Those favourites fall into one of three categories: Simulators, Tycoons and Unique Places (in my opinion, anyway), which I’ll go through one by one in a moment. As for what I don’t like playing, you can forget the Horror Genre in general, as well as those that have zombie mechanics at a minimum, general free-for-all shooting games, and anything mass multiplayer survival because they bring out a competitive side in me, which I consider one of the worst sides of my character.

Also, I am acutely aware of controversy and scrutiny around the platform (For example, this video produced by KiraTV’s second channel), which would naturally make one question why I would be on a platform shrouded in it, especially at the age of 26. However, as you’ll see in Part Three next week, Roblox has generally been my main source of games outside of just one console I’ve played on and off most of my life (at least until Mobile Games creeped in). Plus, just like Mobile Games, I like to play them by myself, for myself and for stimulation and relaxation. Not for ego, not to make friends (like I would want to on this platform anyway) and certainly not to be someone notable in the gaming scene (at least at this point of my life). Although, I think there might be plenty of scope for a series of posts into Roblox under the hood. Because I don’t know about you… But maybe I am viewing the platform with rose-tinted glasses and should be just as conscious about where I play games, and not just what I play.

Anyway, here’s what I regularly play on Roblox at the moment. All games mentioned will be linked straight to the page on Roblox they are on.

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The Aspie #5 – Being Keen on… Mobile Games

I tend to find stimulation and solid mental workouts in this collection of Mobile Games that appeal to me.

Right, so… If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been most of this month, I work in an accounting firm and in Ireland, around the middle of November, there is this thing called Income Tax that needs to be filed. And our firm has been doing that on behalf of lots of clients for the last few weeks. Now that it is out of the way, at least for this year, let’s talk about something I do to take my mind off it after 5:30 in the evening: Games.

Most of us play them in one form or another. Mine have mostly existed on screens since I was about 9 or 10. And in the first of a chain of posts up to Christmas, I want to explain where my tastes lie in the five types of game that I’m aware of being primarily on a screen: Roblox, Console, Online, Flash (when that was a thing) and first up tonight, Mobile.

Let’s face it, a mobile phone is man’s third best friend besides his Dog and his Umbrella, at least in my mind. And there is also no getting away from the reality that some of us cannot really function in real life without some kind of mobile phone. The Pros and Cons of mobile phone use for certain tasks could be something for me to weigh up in my own head another time but today, I want to focus on one element that I am increasingly entrenched in thanks to my Tablet: Mobile Gaming.

I have played my fair share of mobile games from an early age, mostly via Facebook when you could invite “friends” to be your “neighbours” in games mostly produced by Zynga. Most of them do not exist anymore like PetVille, Café World and the original FarmVille to name a few that I was a part of. But the spin-off FarmVille 2: Country Escape still does, alongside sister spin-off FarmVille 2: Tropic Escape and FarmVille 3, all of which I have dabbled in but have not touched in a while for reasons that will become clear once I go through the games I actively play right now.

Before that, let’s talk about how I approach Mobile Games, especially considering the way some of them are advertised and the avalanche of micro-transactions that exist beneath the ‘Free’ tag in the App Store. I will discuss the ethics of those issues and more in an Analytical Aspie post, but generally speaking, I play mobile games one of three ways, depending on the type of game.

The first is the Scavenger style. If there are Optional Ads for in-game Resources, Boosters and even Premium Currency available, I’ll happily rattle off several of them in the background while doing something more productive. The ads themselves are often the annoying ones from TEMU and those I want to rant about in a future post, but at least I can press the mute button and look at something stimulating while they are whizzing by. I am also a fan of any Wheel of Prizes I can spin for anything valuable, even if some prizes require luck. But in general, I play games objectively and try my best to earn resources, boosters and currency by playing normally.

The second style I employ, which sometimes ties into the first, is Resourceful. This involves me making the most of what I have and usually refusing to be tempted by weekly package offers that can add up very quickly. Although some are more worthwhile purchasing than others, such as Removal of Ads packages. And the third style I employ, which regularly ties into the second, is Intuitive. When I play mobile games like Pet Rescue Saga, for example, I always keep on eye on the way the grid develops and if my instinct says a Booster is best used at a crucial moment now than never, I’ll often do so and sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. Truth be told, you sometimes need luck to break through a particularly tricky level. And instinct is like pure chance, sometimes it serves you well, other times it backfires. But we all have it and use it subconsciously. Mobile Games just happen to be the arena I am most aware of it in action.

So that’s how I play Mobile Games, but why do I play Mobile Games? The answer: Stimulation of my Brain. Firstly, I’m not a sporty person by nature but I also don’t like being idle, even if when I let my brain wander, I have crazy dreams and craft ideas that make me excited downstairs, and sometimes dream up ideas for posts I want to publish on here. Secondly, as someone that has been more slow than resistant to moving with the times in terms of the consoles people play with, the ways people play with each other and, most importantly, the games people play, mobile games have been that perfect way for me to both destress and game on a regular basis. Especially since, thirdly, I do not like myself when I am trying to be competitive. I often feel frustrated and depressed when I am having a bad run of form against randomly assigned competitors in a game that has such a mode available. It often knocks my confidence and makes me question my skills, which is why my stance when it comes to games is that I play games by myself, for myself.

But what mobile games, specifically, do I play?

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