[FlashFriday] Insurgo

“Build as quick as you can, as high as you can!”

That’s all voidSkipper (Another pesky developer without an easily findable website to link to… I’ll have to go with his Kongregate account) needs to say about Insurgo, I’m going to say a little more, else this’d be a very short article indeed!

Insurgo is a lovely little physics based game from 2007, and the aim is as simple as it’s tagline. You begin with a small tower base, you have the ability to add rods of a limited length, the higher up you get, the more points you get. Everyone loves points right? If you love points, you’re in luck, because you know what happens if you extend the highest point of the tower multiple times in quick succession? Oh yes, multipliers. We do love a good multiplier.

But of course, whilst points are nice and all, the real aim of this game is to see what weird and wonderful ways you can construct a tower. There are no limits on how many rods you place unlike some newer physics building games, and this gives you a freedom to, well, play about a bit.

This image represents 'Playing about a bit'.'

It’s a game to sink time into, not because you need to, but because you want to. The simple, but attractive and effective graphics coupled with the oddly relaxing and hypnotising guitar music (from voidSkipper himself) really build an atmosphere within the game, an impressive feat for a game with no plot. It really has to be played to really get the air it creates, which is very hard to describe here in a review.

You can lose hours in Insurgo, simply ‘playing about a bit’. I certainly have, and I regret none of them. Insurgo is relaxing, interesting, replayable and well, it’s fun. You don’t have to be a mediocre reviewer to know that fun is pretty important in a game, especially in free Flash games where if a game isn’t fun, players can just click away to another one. Unfortunately, players seem to be doing just that, as it appears to have aged poorly to Kongregate’s young userbase. Comments like “Bad game 1/5″, “this games sucks 1/5″ and the stunningly tactful “its not HORRIBLe but its bad.” really sadden me. This game is not being appreciated, which is why I chose to highlight it here this week. It’s a game I keep returning to, for the feeling more than the gameplay. I’d even recommend playing it over at DeviantART instead of a games site. It feels like it fits in better there.

That’s all for this, relatively short, Flash Friday. I shall try and keep on top of posts here, and I welcome any and all suggestions for games I should be reviewing instead of 3 year old physics toys.

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