Yes, crawling from the wreckage of ’07 like Arnie’s own unkillable metal skeleton, it’s Monday Flash. For the first installment of this bright and glistening new year – and is it me, or do the round-numbered years always sound a little more like future? – we’re blessed with two games that are each impressive in their own special way. “Being generally awesome” might not sound like much of a tenuous theme in keeping with the glorious tradition of this weekly spotlight, but it’s turned out to be rather appropriate for this week’s entries. And it’s my blog, so there.

What Cursor*10 lacks in substance, it more than makes up for in style. The latest from Yoshio Ishii of Neko Games, it’s more than a spatial puzzle game – it’s a single player co-op spatial puzzle game.

As mentioned above, Cursor*10 is by no means deep – once you know what you’re doing, it’ll only about ten minutes or so to reach the sixteenth floor. But like a certain other unique puzzle game starting with P and ending in ortal, it’s not how long the trip takes you, but the journey itself. At the start of play you have ten cursors at your disposal, each with a limited lifespan. Progress is made by finding and clicking the staircase on each level leading up, some of which will be hidden in boxes or can only be activated with a button on the floor. Once your current cursor’s time is up it dies, sending you back to the bottom to start all over again with the next one. The goal is to get to the top before all your cursors are gone. I’d elaborate further, but I’m afraid I’ve already given away what makes Cursor*10 special. Suffice to say it’s one of the more unique twists I’ve seen in a game, and despite spending all weekend thinking it over I’ve yet to come up with any other place I’ve seen the same mechanic used. And when it (pardon the pun) clicks, it’s as satisfying a moment as you can ask for from a puzzle game.

Chain Factor, on the other hand, doesn’t feel so much like something new as it does the distillation of exactly what I look for in all manner of puzzle games. Since being introduced to it last week by Bastard Coworker #5, it’s completely taken over several seemingly vital parts of my brain with little hope of ever giving them up. Negotiations have failed, and I’m afraid my cerebellum – and now, of course, yours – must welcome its numbered disk rulers and hope for mercy.

The premise is maddeningly simple – drop disks into the grid and make them disappear by having their number match the size of the row or column they’re a part of. Gray disks can be broken to reveal new numbers, often setting off a chain of cleared disks that are worth more and more points. Every so often a row of grays appears on the bottom, knocking everything up a notch. If any row has over seven disks in it, the game is over. Like I said – simple. What’s not so clear is what about this formula makes Chain Factor so hopelessly addictive to the point that it’s occupied every ounce of free time (and more than it’s fair share of should-be-working time) I’ve had since last week. I suspect the answer lies somewhere with it’s creators, the always-fun kids at area/code, a company dedicated to creating games that intrude on the real world as much as possible. I don’t know what now-defunct ARG spawned this little flash-based puzzle game of pure joy, but I can only imagine the rest of it being something of a disappointment after its players found this. God help us all if they ever bring it to the DS.

Filed under: Monday Flash