Bobblebrook, a new Viennesse casual games developer launches, welcome to the neighborhood!

Bobblebrook, a relative newcomer to the Vienna, Austria games development scene, has launched as of May 1st! Consisting of childhood friends Philipp Seifried and Markus Mundjar, Bobblebrook aims to release new and innovate Flash games every four to six weeks, focusing on unusual ideas and concepts. So far, they have three games launched, “A Good Hunch”, featuring two time-traveling goats in a platform environment, “Twizzle”, a puzzler based on pushing a sphere through various circular orbigs and “Drifts”, a re-imagining of a previous game released several years ago by the duo.

Read the full press release after the jump or Go play at Bobblebrook

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May 5th in Bobblebrook, Casual, Vienna | Email this | Comment
The Human Brain Cloud, a massive multiplayer word association game


Brain Cloud

Originally designed as a learning experience from a designer who wanted to learn Flash and JavaScript, The Human Brain Cloud is a brilliant stroke of simplistic game design and high-brow fun for those of us who still remember Scrabble nights with fondness. The ‘game’ starts out with a player typing in the first word that comes to their mind, allowing other ‘players’ to then begin associating other words with the original subject, creating a lovely (and large) mind map of words and bubbles. For instance, “pizza” might be associated with “cheese”, “Italy” or even “yummy” by other players, creating a sometimes humorous look into the inner workings of word association on the human psyche. Some interesting statistics have also popped up, as of this post, The Human Brain Cloud consists of 209644 unique words, 1934531 connections and 171984 humans , not bad for an experiment from a first time Flash scripter.

Brilliant: The Human Brain Cloud

July 31st in Casual, Flash, MMO, Timewaster | Email this | Comment
Kongregate - Flash gaming social network


Kongregate

It’s only a matter of time before the benefits of web 2.0 are recognized and adopted by the games industry, and those times they are a coming. Kongregate is a flash games hub with social networking-style community features allowing game developers to connect and interact with players and players to easily connect with and play against their friends. Developers are free and welcome to add their own games to Kongregate and are even compensated via shares of any microtransactions or advertising revenue while keeping full rights to their games. A great start to the future of casual social gaming.

Read more: Kongregate

January 3rd in Casual, Development, Flash, Games, Internet, Social | Email this | Comment
Irritating web games - The most irritating fun you’ll ever have


Irritating Games

As Dilbert taught me, it’s very important that to be a good weasel you make it appear as if you’re the hardest working employee in the office as a way to actually avoid having to do any real work. You do this by getting upset over the smallest thing you possibly can and let everyone know about it, giving your co-workers the impression that you’re so passionate about your job that it stresses you out beyond belief. I’ve experienced many weasels over my working lifetime and let me tell you, it works and works quite well, especially when your managers are themselves weasels. Now, I’ve discovered the greatest way of having a great AND irritating time at the office thanks to the Irritating Games collection from Zanorg. A collection of great web-based games which are enjoyable to the point of obsession, most of these games are meant to boggle the mind while testing dexterity and reaction times. Some of these games are addicting (play “Double Game”) and perfect for wasting time at work while looking like the efficient little weasel that you are.

Play more: Irritating web games portal

October 30th in Casual, Games, Indie, Timewaster | Email this | Comment
Tasty Planet gameplay trailer - Katamari indie-style


Tasty Planet

Tasty Planet, a new release from indie developer Dingo Games, certainly wears it’s influences on it’s sleeve. In Tasty Planet, you play as a happy little ball of microscopic nanotechnology which is becoming aware of it’s surroundings and begins to devour the planet, starting with the body it’s implanted in all the way to devouring the entire galaxy. Not quite as cheery as Katamari I must say, but for what it is, an enjoyable indie developed casual game, it looks pretty interesting to me, especially since I can play it on my Mac (a rare treat).

Watch gameplay footage of Tasty Planet after the jump..

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October 26th in Casual, Games, Indie, OS X, Video, Windows | Email this | Comment
Line Rider - Physics and tobogganing cartoon characters make for lots of fun


Line Rider

Line Rider is a brilliant little flash application which was actually a project for a student’s illustration class, thus not officially a ‘game’ so to say. Though it’s not meant to be a game, users are getting hours of fun out this intuitive and beautifully simple physics, illustration, cartoon, project whatever-simulator. The user simply draws a series of lines, in any form, direction and angle, then clicks play and a little tobogganing cartoon dude goes nuts, shredding the lines which are now rendered as gnarly slopes. After about my 30th track, I had to sit back and take a break in order to actually finish writing this post.

Watch the ultimate Line Rider flip course after the jump..

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October 25th in Casual, Flash, Physics, Prototype | Email this | Comment
Square Enix to distribute PopCap titles in Japan


Square Enix to distribute PopCap Games in Japan

Legendary Japanese developer and publisher Square Enix will begin distributing four PopCap titles for the Japanese market, via Square’s online web portal. Bejeweled 2, Chuzzle, Insaniquarium, and Heavy Weapon all will be localized and made available to Japan’s large casual games market, providing a huge boost to PopCap and a possibly lucrative doorway into the much sought-after Japanese market. Additional titles will be coming in the future, at first starting as free trials through Square’s download service.

Read more: Square Enix to distribute PopCap titles in Japan | PopCap Games

September 9th in Casual, Games, Industry News, Japan, PopCap, Square Enix | Email this | Comment