gems: fun flash games with artistic value

Flash has enabled solo programmers to create games on their own without the backing of a big team. Here are a few I appreciate, all created by individuals or small teams...

The following games are single user, but they also provide a world with a distinctive and artistic uniqueness to them. In addition, they play well. Not a small feat.

• Fancy Pants by Brad Borne is a platform game which doesn't provide unique game play elements, but it does provide a very unique and artistic game play experience. It provides easy gameplay, which in combination by the perfected esthetics ensure that the player can sustain a unbroken flow of animated bliss. Each level is also appears to be uniquely constructed, except for the monsters. This adds to the world, you don't feel like you are walking through a landscape of repetition. This uniqueness creates an expectation for the new and unseen, and thus fosters appreciation and delight.
• Vector Tower Defence by David Scott is a strategy game in which you place out defences around a maze which is attacked by stupid alien invaders that stream on in a relentless fashion. What makes it brilliant is how well the different elements fit together. As a whole it presents a rather crowded frenetic type of excitement, which indeed makes me think of discos and raveparties. This feeling is supported by the upbeat music and the visual laser-like effects. Indeed, without those elements the game would have lost its artistic value. The perfected whole.
• A Walk in the Park by DeadToast.com is a game I discussed the artistic value of over at Raph Koster's blog. The artistic value of this game is twofold. On the semiotic level it creates a rather surrealistic situation where you play a dog attached by a leash to a man sitting in a wheel chair. You drag this man around in a rather abusive, but friendly, fashion. The game-play is less artistic, but the two-fold string-attached avatar creates a constrained feeling that most platform games try to avoid. You feel hampered, rather than free.
• Wink: the Game by André Nguyen is artistic in the sense that it fits the platform perfectly without resorting to overly simplistic game play. It wouldn't have made it on this list if it was released on a console, though.
• Climate Control by Tom and Dim Vian has artistic merits for the opposite reason of Wink. It does fit the Flash platform, but stretches the technology by using a 2.5D landscape most of the time, creating a 3D feeling. Other games do this as well, but by going for a full featured non-violent adventure game set in Hawaii makes it stand out as special. The most appearent artistic design is the use of icons instead of text for speech. The characters in the game essentially talks using modern hieroglyphs.
• Samorost 1 and Samorost 2 by Jakub Dvorsky et al. These are very simplistic point and click adventure games, but the world atmosphere is constructed using smooth animations and scenery artistically built as photographical collages. Outstanding artwork.
• Note: More games will be added later!

Last edit: 2007-07-31.