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.