Pong and Beyond

220th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Internet
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Nekogames

For those of you who keep up with MMORPG, you might have realised we recently got a slight shock. While it’s closed down when you read this, we only recently found out City of Heroes was closing down. With that worry, and our ongoing concerns about Reset Generation, we realised one thing… we’d better get those online games done, so we’re actually able to play them before they disappear. Not necessarily a worry for most of them and hopefully we’ll get an early warning, but why risk it, right?

With that, we’re starting off playing a few smaller games that are easier to cover. I’ve played a bit of Cursor*10 already, as well as some other Nekogames, and it’s a simpler game by nature.

Our Thoughts

Cursor*10 is a short game. I mean, I know that’s not entirely unexpected for a free Flash game, but it somehow feels worth mentioning. It is, after all, that short by design. You get 10 cursors, each of which lives for about a minute. You play one after the other, but in a change of format, the previous cursors still come back to help you finish the game. This is necessary – the earlier cursors are needed to press buttons to make the stairs to the next level pop up, or click a box 100 times to open it.

Aesthetically, the game is simple – very few embellishments are there (except for the congratulations screen at the end). It’s simple line art, pointing you to what you need to do. What each thing will do might be unclear at the end, but you’ll soon figure it out.

The mechanics are what makes it interesting. The first time you play, you’ll get annoyed with yourself. As you have no idea what you’re doing, your earlier cursors are an embarassment for you, wasting time when they should help you solve puzzles. As you figure the game out, it becomes easier and you can actually start to plan ahead.

An additional challenge is in getting the highscore – by clicking small pyramids along the path, you get extra points and get rewarded based on the amount of points you click.

Don’t expect a lot of gameplay out of this, but as a game, it pushes you to keep trying until you succeed. And then asks you to try more of their games, really.

Final Thoughts

Okay so it looks like we are phoning it in somewhat but what else can you do with a game that can be completed in less time than an episode of Adventure Time? A unique time waster which would make for an interesting take on co-operation and time travel… wait what?