A bit late this week, as most of my time yesterday was spent in the dark on a plane next to somebody who was clearly Somebody, just not anybody I know. At any rate, here’s Space Hopper.

You are a little Space Man, and each level has a set number of stars that need to be collected. As a little Space Man, it’s your job to leap from planetoid to planetoid and snatch them all up. Each planetoid has its own field of gravity, and getting from one to another is as simple as timing your jump to bring you close enough that the gravitational field of your intended destination can reach out and grab you. Did I mention the gravitational fields? Each planetoid has one, and they differ depending on its appearance. Some are average, some are super strong, and some are barely there. Few platformers manage moments as nice as the first time you manage a leap that sends you spinning around a space rock without ever touching the ground, and Space Hopper is full of that sort of things. Tricky and time consuming, if you can’t appreciate the game itself you can at least acknowledge how good an idea it is.Next is Bee Dodger, a game that has nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with dodging franken-bees for as long as possible.

The purpose of Bee Dodger is so simple it’s right there in the name: avoid the bees coming at you from the right for as long as possible. Your score goes up the longer you stay alive, and both can be helped along by grabbing health and coins worth points. Enemy bees come in three types, from the single-shot guys that fire their stinger at you before dying to the gigantic monster bees that appear to have been welded together. It’s simple fun, with extremely smooth controls and a better soundtrack than most flash games deserve. I have a soft spot for games that you play for as long as you can stay alive, and Bee Dodger rewards that with a difficulty curve just subtle enough to convince me I can do better if I try just one more time. And for browser games, it’s all about how long they can keep you from what you should actually be doing. By that measure, Bee Dodger is a triumph.

Filed under: Flash Games