Want to kill some time behind your PC? Then try one of these online puzzle games, which you can play in your browser.
Tip 01: Jewelanche
Jewelanche builds on the success of Bejeweled. Actually, this is the umpteenth variant of three-in-a-row, but very beautifully presented. The jewels fall into a playing field in random order and you create a chain of three or more similar shapes by dragging the mouse pointer over them. The more adjacent equal shapes you select, the better, because this will remove these shapes and the rest will sink to the bottom. In between, there will also be boulders that you can explode and secret boxes with surprises. Chain combinations yield special gems that buy power-ups. Perceptive and fast, those are all the qualities you need in this game. If you're a bit slow, the stones quickly pile up to the top, and then it's game over.
Tip 02: Crush The Castle
For hours we played Crush The Castle. In all versions of this delightful game, the aim is to smash the enemy's rickety castles with a slingshot. All the inhabitants of the castles are also infected by a disease. So you have to take out not only all castles, but also all inhabitants Angry Birds-wise. Crush The Castle 2 and 3 come with new levels, new weapons and a new plot. Even if everything seems simple at first, you still have to think and work more carefully to level everything and everyone to the ground. The Crush The Castle series is quite challenging, and you can also design castles yourself. The graphics are excellent and the background sounds give you the impression that you are actually in the forest or on the battlefield.
Flash and security
All the games we discuss here run on Adobe Flash. In recent years, this technology has lost much of its luster as the Adobe Flash Player has been one of the most popular programs for hacking into PCs. This was for two reasons. Flash was on many computers, so hackers could reach a large group of victims through this route. In addition, there were security updates all the time, which made it very likely that the version on your PC was no longer the most recent. By the way, Adobe announced that they will no longer support flash from 2020 onwards. Reason enough that this technology is no longer activated by default in modern browsers and you get a message to activate flash on every page that presents you with a game. Have we killed this article? Not really, we suggest using a (separate) browser for playing flash games. Go through that browser's settings and strip it down to the bone. So disable all non-essential options and treat the browser as nothing more than a container for such games.
Tip 03: Portal
One of the smartest video games of all time is Portal. Some fans of 3D first-person shooters have designed a new two-dimensional flash game from scratch. Surprisingly, it was never the designers' intention to make the project public. They saw it as an internal 2D flash design. You use the mouse and keyboard to create passageways so that you can teleport from one area to another. You have to take the laws of nature into account, because the main character has to work his way through barriers, moving panels and all kinds of walls. So keep thinking and be quick. The flash version of Portal even has some advanced features, including autosave and an in-game console to set the gravity level and skip complex levels.
Hardware acceleration
A hardware acceleration forces the PC to use its hardware to perform a function faster. That can give a better result than via the software that addresses the CPU. Test this option, checked and unchecked, to find out what gives the best results for your system. Restart the PC after a change! You can set hardware acceleration by right clicking on the flash game and by Institutions to choose. It is the only option on the first tab.
Not only do you have to take out all castles, but also all inhabitants Angry Birds-wise Tip 04: Unpuzzle
Many puzzle games first see the light of day on mobile devices before they become available as a free online game. Unpuzzle is the exception to this rule. It is a beautifully designed, minimalistic built game. The player is never rushed and even the music is soothing. The idea is to take a puzzle apart piece by piece. To do this, drag the pieces to the sides. The skill level increases quickly and the puzzles quickly become more difficult while the number of game pieces also increases. You learn as you go that you have to remove certain pieces before you can loosen others. The first minute you wonder what's difficult about this, but as the puzzles get more complex, you notice that the game becomes more and more addictive. And if you really like it, there is also Unpuzzle 2.
Tip 05: Threes
A game designer, an artist and a composer came up with the indie puzzle Threes under the company name Sirvo. It is an addictive puzzle game that was uploaded to the web by a fan. To claim that Threes is based on mathematics is an exaggeration. It simply involves recognizing multiples of the number three. In the flash version, you use the arrow keys to move all the tiles in one direction on the screen. When a multiple of three is placed next to or below each other, those numbers disappear and your score increases. The game continues until no more moves are possible. Is it actually possible to beat Threes? Yep, 3.33 years after its release, Twitter user @ThreesPorn has managed to do what everyone thought was impossible: beat the game. With a score of 1,594,323, he reached the fireworks of the game-ending animation. So, if you try really hard, you can bring Threes to their knees!
Tip 06: Waterfalls 3
Waterfalls 3 proves that puzzle games can be relaxing. The name is somewhat misleading, because the animations remind us more of beams of light than of waterfalls. In this game you have to move the light of the beams using diversion arrows so that the small containers are filled. Sometimes the light has to bend, sometimes it is transposed by a wall. The tranquility does not only come from the set-up of the game, but especially from the soundtrack 'Is it right'.
With every assignment in Yellow you have to think differently and choose the right method Tip 07: Yellow
The independent game developer Bart Bontje has more than fifty games to his name in the past twelve years. The setup of Yellow is simple: make the whole screen yellow. The nice thing about this game is the variety in the different levels. With every assignment you have to think differently and find the right method. Sometimes you have to find hidden buttons, then blow up balloons again, and all with a click of the mouse. Just when you think you've mastered it, you have to discover another technique to make the objects blend into the yellow background. If you really have no idea, you can request a hint. Yellow can be played without too much effort. After about an hour of entertainment you can write this one on your record again. If you have had enough of yellow and want to try a different color, there is the game Red from the same maker.
Tip 08: Huebrix
Huebrix is an unpretentious, smooth game where you fill a grid with colors. Each color has a certain number of moves and you may not cross colors. Again this game starts simple, but from level 15 it gets serious. The gameplay is addictive, the controls simple, the music and graphics help calm your nerves and the whole thing has a retro appeal. Huebrix has the old world charm of a crossword.
Tip 09: GO Virus
In this game you can release the devil in yourself by spreading a virus. GO Virus consists of an interplay of hexagonal colored cells. Select a color with the mouse and the virus will change to that color. In addition, it spreads to every adjacent cell in the selected color. Keep changing colors so that you infect more and more cells. Be careful, because you only have a limited number of moves. Try to fill the playing field in as few moves as possible. GO Virus is a fun, but difficult game that requires some insight.
Spin the entire game area clockwise or counterclockwise to avoid the deadly spikes Tip 10: Mirror Runners
Countless games are designed to guide a character through obstacles to the exit. Mirror Runners works according to a completely new concept. You control two heroes at the same time with the arrow keys to two different exits. The difficulty is that you control them at the same time. So when you press the arrow to the left, both dolls walk to the left, while this can be a free path for one doll and an obstacle for the other. This is also quite a brain teaser, but luckily it doesn't start too difficult.
Tip 11: Rotate
At Rotate they have also given a nice twist to the familiar concept of the puppet looking for the exit. Literally, because you control the hero not only with the arrows, but also with the Q and E keys. This allows you to spin the entire play area left or right, causing the hero to thunder down, but often it's the only way to dodge the deadly spikes. Rotate is trickier than you think and contains sixteen challenging levels. Once you've finished them all, you can use the Rotate editor to design your own rooms, play them and share them with friends.
Tip 12: Liquid Measure
Use the mouse to drag the pipes, bends and barrels into the correct order and then drain the water tanks in the hopes that the barrels will fill neatly without wasting a drop. Each water tank and vessel in Liquide Measure has a number that indicates its capacity. The game now has two sequels and three more expansions, making it six related games. Liquid Measure is a great piece of puzzle mechanics. Moreover, the game situations are always very short, ideal as a snack.
