The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Reminiscent of both pen & paper RPGs and gamebooks, Monster’s Den allows you to create a party of four to journey into nine randomly generated levels of a dungeon to explore, kill and loot. Don’t even think of attempting to play this game during your lunch break or at work, since completing the entire game requires at least half a day. Trust me, I tried

Besides, dungeon crawl RPGs like these are inherently repetitive after an hour or so so make full use of the autosave slots and savour it slowly two or three levels at a time

© Biclops Games

Form a party of four adventurers from a total of five classes - Warrior, Cleric , Mage , Ranger and Rogue - and descend into the dungeon immediately : there’s no need for that time-consuming dice-rolling for stats and talking to NPCs for quests.

© Biclops Games

From the current highlighted room, simply click to move into adjacent rooms where treasure (treasure chests) or monsters (crossed swords) await.

© Biclops Games

The turn-based combat will be very familiar to players of Strategy First’s Disciples series but with far more tactical options. Levelling up in this game is done by moving to the exit for the next level and not by clearing the level of all enemies. Since fallen foes drop weapons and equipment, it’s highly likely that you’ll attempt to wipe out all enemies before proceeding to the next level.

© Biclops Games

When levelling up, your characters not only increase their stats but receive new class specific skills as well which translates to extra tactical options during combat. Several class-specific skills complement each other like casting the Ranger’s Nature Balm (which increases health regeneration of an ally) on a Warrior using Shield Wall (which increases the warrior’s damage resistance and redirects all damage to the party except for area attacks to the warrior).

© Biclops Games

As you progress through the nine levels, you’ll fully appreciate the streamlined and intuitive interface as it makes managing your characters’ skills and inventory a breeze. Moving over an item of equipment shows the attributes of both the currently equipped item for that slot and the selected item for easy comparison. Equipping a piece of armour or weapon is as easy as dragging an item and dropping it on the character portrait. Your party shares a common inventory store of 45 items so there’s no need to manipulate items to attempt to cram different-sized items into a virtual backpack a la Diablo.

© Biclops Games

The addictiveness of this game in my opinion, lies in the abundant loot which results in almost continual weapon and equipment swapping and upgrading as you explore each room on a level.

I dare say it’s one of the best Flash RPGs I’ve ever encountered and I do play a lot of games

Play Biclops Games’ Monster’s Den.

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What do you get when you combine turntables, accordions, pianos and an assortment of drums together ?

Instead of the expected cacophony from the distinctively different sound of each instrument, the end result actually comes off as an infectiously toe-tapping, head-bopping soundtrack - I simply love the cheery carnival sounding clockordian and the machinegun clatter of cymbals (Loop 2).

© Luke Whittaker

My kind of band

While the loops for each instrument in Luke Whiitaker’s One Man Band has been carefully constructed and synchronized for each other, it’s still hard not to listen in disbelief when the sounds of contrasting instruments such as the clockordian (accordian), loop-o-lin (violin), piano and turntables actually meld so well together.

There’s definitely a limit to the number of tunes you can create with 12 ingeniously automated instruments and 24 audio loops but it’s still a lot of fun for a short break.

Build your own One Man Band or check out Luke Whittaker’s other works, his current project being Stigmatisation to raise awareness of HIV in Sierra Leone.

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Promotional trailer for Success Corporation’s Raiden : Fighter Aces compilation for the Xbox360 featuring three shoot-em-ups from the Raiden Fighters spinoff series, 1996’s Raiden Fighters, 1997’s Raiden Fighters 2 and 1998’s Raiden Fighters Jet.

© Success Corporation

Raiden Fighters - Classic Raiden fare.

© Success Corporation

Raiden Fighters 2 : Operation Helldive - Seems like it’s only a graphically upgraded version of Raiden Fighters from the look f it

© Success Corporation

Raiden Fighter Jet - Love the little details like the spinning propellers on the massive aircraft idling on the runway in this one but I doubt anyone seriously playing the game notices these kind of stuff while playing.

While the gameplay in the three games is pretty standard shooter fare with the prerequisite fuild animation, eye-watering weapon and explosion effects, what kept me glued to the entire 3 minutes of this trailer was the incredible reflexes of the player being recorded in the video - or was it just a pre-programmed demo?

By the way, if you’re itching for some Raiden action on your PC, there’s a pretty faithful fan-made Flash version of Raiden which you can play online - RaidenX - enjoy!

Download the trailer from Gametrailers (Quicktime or WMV) or the Raiden Fighter Aces (WMV only) site.

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Saw this over a while back at Geeknews, a great source for interesting stuff and despite the title, it’s not necessarily for geeks only . MyMinicity.com is a Flash site by French developers Motion-Twin (creators of one of my newfound online addictions - Dinoparc.com) where you can build your own virtual city @ mycity.myminicity.com.

Geeknews City

The city automatically grows when visitors enter your city by going to mycity.myminicity.com directly. After a set number of inhabitants, the city can only further evolve when visitors enter via the infrastructure links provided on your city page e.g mycity.myminicity.com/ind to expand your industrial sectors thereby reducing the unemployment rate and prevent jobless inhabitants from leaving your city. Different infrastructure links are ‘unlocked’ as the city grows in size and population.

Since visitors have to enter the infrastructure links directly, you have to advertise these links on your blog, forum signatures (and possibly spam email ) for a chance to really expand the city.

While the entire process of city evolution is completely non-interactive, it still feels like a city-building sim where you derive some weird sense of satisfication from seeing a couple of humble huts expanding to a town and (hopefully) to a bustling city like the one below.

Kuala Lumpur - the biggest city in MyMinicity.com for the Malaysian zone. There isn’t a Singapore zone, though

Create your own virtual city at MyMinicity.com or help expand Geeknews City by increasing its population or improving its industry, transport (currently unavailable), security (currently unavailable), environment (currently unavailable)and business (currently unavailable).

While there are many ways to learn your A.B.Cs, this must be one of the more unconventional and possibly the bloodiest method of learning the English alphabet.

Clearly inspired by Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, Emperor of ancient Rome and allegedly an insane tyrant. His supposedly depraved character was the subject of the shocking 1979 film and now in this (literally) bloody Flash game from adult swim.

Over in Viva Caligula, you control the mad tyrant himself as he cooks up some half-baked excuse that his fellow Romans have rebelled against his rule and then goes on a massacre of both defenseless civilians and heavily armed legionnaires alike, simply because he can.

Armed initially with a lowly dagger, Caligula sets forth to collect 25 other weapons hidden in 7 different districts split into 97 zones (yes, I counted). The name of each weapon starts with a different letter of the alphabet which means that this cunningly-disguised educational tool actually helps you refresh your A.B.Cs since you need to press that key to activate that weapon (admittedly, most of the words are non-English or absolutely useless in real life like the word “Xyston“). On top of that, it also helps you remember where all the letters are found on the keyboard

Weapons range from those commonly found in the Greek or Roman armory to incredibly bizarre stuff like … you’ll have to play the game to find out since that’s one of the highlights of this mad little game.

After collecting all 26 weapons, you get to enter his palace and if you have seen the film before, you already know what perversity lies in wait inside those walls.

We’re about to enter his palace. Minors not allowed

Definitely not for kids or for those disturbed by excessive blood, unnecessary violence and pixelated nudity in their entertainment. You have been warned!

Play Viva Caligula or read Play This Thing!’s review. Many thanks to Gnome for pointing out the excellent Play This Thing! site to ignorant gamers like me

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