Sorry for last week’s failure, won’t happen again if I can help it!

Welcome to FlashFriday, where I ramble nonsensically about a couple of vaguely linked Flash games I’ve found on t’interweb whilst my readers ignore me and simply click the links and play, because games are more interesting than me.

And rightly so! I’ve never been addicted to reading the same thing over and over again, though I’ve certainly gotten addicted to today’s Flash fare, two lovely retro-styled platformers Tower of Greed and MoneySeize, which will hopefully grip you as much as they have me.

To introduce you to our first game, Tower of Greed, created by Epic Shadow Entertainment (That’s what we like, easy to find websites to link developer names to), here’s a little extract from our IRC channel:

<Tom> http://www.kongregate.com/games/EpicShadow/tower-of-greed

<Lankin> Oh God, that game is eating my life

<Lankin> I have never been so angry

<Tom> It’s amazing though!

<Lankin> Yeah, I love it, it just makes me smash my hardware

Tower of Greed is a vertical platformer, in which you must scurry upwards ahead of the advancing bottom of the screen, which is your second worst enemy (more on that later), gathering gems and pickups whilst avoiding enemies. Your goal? Why, riches of course!

Now, as the game’s description handily reminds us, riches and death do not go too well together… so to escape alive with your riches you must decide when to leave the tower via one of the many exits, scattered around as you ascend. Will you leave this floor, and miss what could be coming? Or go ahead and lose it all to a pesky blue springing monster?

That’s your definite number one enemy. Greed. It’s right there in the title. It will get to you as you go on, and there will be a time when you continue and quickly succumb to a horrific, irritating and facedeskingly frustrating death. Bye bye riches, hello worm food.

It’s a brilliantly addictive tactic to keep you playing, combined with the ingame trophies which you’ll earn as you progress (Oh, did I mention, you lose those if you die too) it’ll have you franticly restarting and building your lovely pile of gems. Ah yes, the gems. There are the standard green ones, which I found myself treating as pennies I’ve found on the floor. The blue ones, which in terms of score should be about 10p on the floor, but for the success of this comparison we’ll call it £1. Finally there are the shiny, shiny white ones, which, if you go by the joy that’ll explode in your brain when you see one, are worth about £100.

Hey look, I’m not a racist!

And it’s pretty. Really pretty. Lovely retro-stylings really make this game, and I suppose it’s partly nostalgia. The music and artwork really come together with the arcade-style gameplay and hit home effectively. With a small but eclectic selection of enemies and powerups, and it’s fiendishly addictive gameplay, Tower of Greed is a great game, and being a flash game, it’s free. You have no excuse!

As a little sidenote, this comment pretty much sums up a lot of Kongregate’s userbase:

…Yeah…

Next up we have MoneySeize, developed by Matt Thorson. MoneySeize is a game that makes me want to literally stab myself in the face with a really big metal stick… in a good way. Incredibly frustrating in parts, and by parts I mean all of it, it’s even more addictive than Tower of Greed for me, and I’ve had to force myself to stop playing it to even get time to write this article.

You play as Sir Reginald MoneySeize II, Esq., a fatcat businessmen by the looks of things, who you must help through 40 levels (and 10 super-secret ones) to collect lovely golden coins to fund the construction of the tallest tower in the World! One might even call it a tower built by greed… hehe, SUBTLE LINKS ARE GOOD THINGS.

Anywho, yes. Reginald is surprisingly agile for his appearance, and can perform some amazing feats of ability, with his jump, double-jump, wall-jump and slide-jump, so long as your fingers can keep up the pace. It’s certainly a difficult game, with some fiendishly clever level design which pushes your dexterity to the limit. Infact, I can only imagine what some of the later levels are like, as I’m stuck around level 15. If someone could comment and tell me how I’m supposed to hit that big orange button, that’d be nice…

One of my favourite things about MoneySeize is the rather ingenious level selection/progression screen. As you gather your coins, the tower on the level selection screen begins to take shape, growing every so many coins. Doors to levels are situated on platforms up the sides of the screen, and as the tower reaches to the sky, you can access more levels by climbing up it. This, is simply win. More games should have interesting, linked in level select screens.

As with Tower of Greed, MoneySeize features some lovely retro-styled artwork, and some brilliant chiptuney music (Which you can download on the MattMakesGames blog), and the whole feel of the game is great.

If you’re willing to put up with seeing this every ten seconds or so, or have fingers with the accuracy of a hard-drive needle, go and play this game. Right now. Go on, we’ve already established it’s more fun than reading my waffle!

Could you leave a comment first though? …Please?

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