Crazy Doors of Rainbow Colours

First of all ask yourself - how could you not play a game with this title? Some crazy doors? Complete with rainbow colours? Sounds like a great place to be.

You have to find objects, throw them against the correct walls to make doors, open the doors, and repeat! You never need to reset (although you might need to if you can't remember things), which makes this a fairly straightfoward game. However it's not an easy game, which makes it fairly satisfying too.

Dwarf Complete

This is a bit of a weird game, by the maker of the Grow and Tontie games. In this game you have to explore around and collect all the weapon/clothes/shoes things which unlock the passages into the next rooms. You also have to get the other objects which allow you to do super-cool things. Yes, super-cool is a real phrase.

I'll put some helpful hints in the comments section (otherwise it's impossible).

Everyone's a winner

A bit of a random game, but can you work out what needs to be done to win? Once you've worked out how to win, can you work out a tactic to win every game?


 

Galves Adventure

Apparently Galves is a baby known by the maker of the Grow series (eg. Grow Cube) and this is a point and click adventure game made about him. It's very similar in style to the creator's earlier games, and equally fun. At times you need timing, and it's possible to get stuck, so use the reset button frequently.

Warning: There's a rude bit which can happen if you let the crab and the baby get too near to each other!

Stick Cricket

Using just the arrow keys can you play a successful batting innings? I've played this for quite a while and have concluded that I'm fairly rubbish at it, but it's still entertaining.

Also check out the "Super 8" game, where you play as one of the teams in the World Cup trying to qualify for the semi finals! Needless to say I didn't win a single match and ended up bottom.

50 Dark Movies Hidden In A Painting

If you liked the Ultimate Film Desktop then chances are you'll like this too. There are fifty spooky movies hidden in the painting and the aim is to work out what they all are. When you think you know one you can click on it and type your answer in. The box will go green if you're right, red if you're wrong (or it's mispelt).

You can also save your progress by putting an email address in (it doesn't have to be a real email address), but you need to find the @ button, which is 'Shift' and '2' for anyone with British keyboards.

The Impossible Quiz

Funny, loud, and almost a quiz. The impossible quiz requires you to think laterally and often to simply guess. Some of the levels are about speed while others are more about thinking. I've managed to get to level 60 or so, let me know if you do better!

I think this takes a looong time to load, so if you've got a slow connection maybe try a different game. Many thanks to Paul for telling me about this one.

Desktop Tower Defense

Desktop Tower Defense is a clever game where you have to create and maintain a field of towers. Periodically you will be invaded by a swarm of little critters and if any of them get through your `tower defense' field alive then you lose a life. You can upgrade your towers by clicking on them and clicking upgrade.

There are full instructions at the bottom of the page.

Planets (A different one)

In this game the aim is to get all the planets aligned. As of yet I haven't worked out how to do this, but I have worked out a few things which I'll put in the comments. If anyone works out more feel free to help me out a bit!

The game itself has a hints button, but that didn't really help me much/at all. Basically this game is extremely weird, but it looks fun all the same.

Planets

Fire the missile at the red planet without hitting yourself or the green planet. As the levels go on the green planet gets larger and larger and the red planet gets smaller and smaller. As in all space scenarios the missile will bounce off the edge of the screen.

See if you can beat my personal best of failure on level nine.
 

Let It Flow

Comic Relief have made this game which is fairly similar to the old skool game "Pipe Dream". Rotate the pipes to connect the pump to the plants and animals, then pump the pump and finally wait for the water to reach the end point.

Bonus points for using the 'star' pipes and negative points for spilling any water.
 

Dice Wars

It might take a short while for the page to load, but it's an interesting game. You play as purple and have to try to conquer the world with your dice. Dice are allocated randomly, and when you attack an adjacent country all the dice involved are rolled and if you roll higher than the defender then you move into the country (leaving one dice behind to defend). If you fail then you lose all the dice that would have invaded. At the end of your go you get reenforcements (depending on how many countries are in your largest connected region) distributed randomly over your territories. You cannot have more than 8 per country though.

Turbo Risk

Continuing the line of board games turned into computer games, this is TurboRisk. The game of Risk converted into a very playable game. If you have the skills you can even write your own computer opponent! By watching the computer players it seems like Australia and South America are the places to be.
The only downside is that you have to download this game. However it seems to be fine on my computer and I've had it for a while now.

The Settlers Of Catan

Another board game made into online game, and this one's great. It's a bit complicated if you haven't played before, and the computer players are sometimes a bit annoying and gang up on you, but on the whole this game is really well made. You can play a game of Settlers that would normally take over an hour with human opponents in ten minutes!
You can also play against other people, but it helps to play with people you know won't take ages over their go. I don't think you can get the rules from Wikipedia (probably due to copyright), so you'll have to pick it up by playing.

FreeCiv

So this isn't by any scope of the imagination a quick distraction. This is a huge life-time of a distraction. It's a download game, which instantly spells out long, but it's also amazing. If you've ever player Civilization, then this game is very similar (verging on the same). It's much more customisable, and is also much more free.

I can't possibly hope to sum up the whole game here, but basically the aim is to take charge of a civilization and lead them through the ages, keeping up to the times with military, economic and scientific advances. You start in 4000BC and the game goes all the way up to the present day.

This game is also multiplayer, and I'd love to organise a multiplayer game some day in the future, if only so everyone can see how bad I am at it!

5 Numbers

A weird game with instructions in Japanese (I think), but actually a very simple concept. Click on each of the terminal things (the grey boxes), and use the clue to work out the five digit number. Type in the number, click "Lift", and away you go. If you get it right then the terminal will be replaced by bits of something else (I'm sure you'll work out what quite quickly).
I managed all but three fairly quickly, and have now managed all but the grey and black pattern puzzle (feel free to give me any hints!).

GoWind

Play Go against a computer. Unlike drafts and chess computers are supposedly pretty bad at Go, for more information about this see this Wikipedia page. However this program (GoWind) seems to beat me every time!
The aim of Go is to capture squares on the board by surrounding them, and also to capture the opponents stones by surrounding them. You aren't allowed to suicide a stone (place it somewhere it would be immediately captured) except in the case that you would use it to capture an opponents stone, and therefore free up some space. Repeating the same moves over and over is not allowed either, so you may not be able to capture a piece if it's the one which the computer just placed.
My best effort so far is b 232, w 129 (ie. a loss of 232 to 129).

Catch The Butterfly

When you click on the button then your mouse pointing becomes invisible, and you have to catch the butterfly without running over the walls. When you are over the butterfly a box will appear around it, and you can click the mouse button to complete the level. Oh, and if you click on the british flag symbol you get the instructions in English!

 

Weboggle

Play Boggle against people from around the world and try to get to the top of the score board. If you don't know how to play Boggle already then you should look at the Wikipedia page on it.

Have fun!
 

Seen On Screen

In this game the aim is to work out what to do in order to advance to the next level. There are no instructions, and you can see what level you've reached in the bottom left corner. We managed to reach level 13, but are now stuck! If anyone can do better then please let us know (and we'll probably sulk for a while).