Travelling, holidays, and the excessive amounts of whiskey both require mean there’s probably not going to be another Monday Flash before the end of the year, so I’ve decided to go out with a bang. Several, in fact, as both of this week’s games involve simple, brutal creatures locked in mortal combat against their age-old enemy: the helicopter. With brains slowly but surely turning off in anticipation of work and other responsibilities taking the holidays off, I give you two games sure to speak to the reptile remnant of your grey matter that’s taking over in the meantime. I give you the explodo.

First is DEATHWORM, a game demanding to be typed in all caps if ever there was. DEATHWORM (Pronounced “DEATHWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURM”, with the second syllable rising in unholy cresendo as you stretch it out) is the perfect answer to any and all holiday stress, as no other game this season will let you pretend to be the monster from Tremors with your family as everybody in the cast not named Kevin Bacon.

Yes, the gameplay is simple to a fault, and after a few tries you’ll realize that were it not for the extremely short timer cutting your play off unexpectedly you might never come back. What’s important is that this feeling doesn’t really hit until your fifth or six time at it, and by then you couldn’t care less. As the eponymous DEATHWORM, you have thirty seconds to devour as much as possible by bursting forth from the ground to consume houses, people, cars, trees, the occasional military helicopter, and more. By the time it hits home how hollow the game actually is, you’ll be too wrapped up in how many of those hippy hot air balloons you can consume before time runs out to notice. It’s not a lot, but it’s fun, addictive, and charmingly stupid in all the right ways. If you like it, by all means try it’s big brother and inspiration, the downloadable version of DEATHWORM. It’s Windows-only, but offers up so much more compelling fun than this version that it’s worth finding a way to play it.

And then there’s personal favorite Indestructotank!, which may not quite rate all caps but has certainly earned the right to wear its exclamation point proudly despite my distain for them.

I can only imagine the journey into stupid that would be trying to write a story for Indistructotank!, so rather than explain the “why” I’ll just go straight into the “how” – you are racing across a battle field in your – wait for it – indestructible tank, an unstoppable brute force that laughs in the face of danger and homing missiles. A nameless enemy has dispatched wave after wave of helicopters and airplanes against you, and the only way to take them out is to let their shots hit you and use the force of the explosion to propel you upwards so you can smash your indestructible ride into them. Doing so will send you flying even further up, allowing you to hit even more enemies and create chain attacks. With me so far? No? It doesn’t particularly matter. With Indestructotank!, all that matters is doing whatever it takes to smash yourself into as many aircraft as possible.

Only that’s not quite right, as you’ll realize the farther in to it you get. Smashing enemies gives you experience that goes towards levelling up, at which point you get a full tank of gas (did I mention the part about how, when you run out of fuel, you explode?) and the chance to buy more bad guys to fill the sky with. Having more things to bounce off of might seem great, as it allows you to create longer and longer combos and perform more ridiculous aerial acrobatics, but the only way to get the experience points earned from a combo is to end it by touching the ground, something which becomes harder and harder as the sky gets more crowded. It’s at this point, far into the game and with your pick of juicy targets to bounce off of, that you realize the truth: this isn’t a one-man war, it’s a suicide mission. And sooner or later you’re going to be stuck in mid-air when the tank runs out and you explode in a rain of shrapnel. It adds a wonderful and unexpected level of complexity to the game, challenging you to pull off as long a combo as possible while still keeping an eye on the quickest route to the ground. While the game starts off a bit rocky (it’s far too easy to die before you’ve gone up a few levels), it’s worth the minor annoyances at the beginning to push through to where a game that already breaks one convention by having you seek out enemy attacks breaks the one it created by having you learn when to leave that one last enemy alone in the intrest of surviving a bit longer. Maybe not so dumb after all, then.

Filed under: Flash Games