There are a lot of games available for play on the web. What are your favorites?
Since it’s topical, here, I’d thought I’d kick this off with an online version of the Buckaroo Banzai text adventure game.
If you’ve never played Zork, or the like, you enter your commands in the text box, usually in verb-object combinations (e.g. “get lamp”.)
Like the Desktop Tower Defense, but different and as addictive. Antbuster:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/378646
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I play Kingdom of Loathing. Way too much. Just had my 3 year playing anniversary a while back. Definitely my favorite browser game of all time.
For those who don’t know, it’s a browser-based RPG built primarily on satire of other video games, movies, TV shows, music, pop culture. Definitely worth a look for those with senses of humor.
I love the old-school text-adventure games! My favorite is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which can also be played online.
I was heavily into KoL for about a month, but then I reached a plateau (after you kill the hobgoblin king) and lost interest.
H2G2 is almost a perfect example of how not to design a text adventure, although that’s part of its appeal; beating it is a genuine accomplishment. (I had the original, complete with peril-sensitive sunglasses and packaged pocket fluff.)
I was just hipped to a new one called Thule Trail. It’s a promo for Thule (makers of car racks and such.) It’s sort of an updated Oregon Trail, complete with 8-bit graphics and sound.
When did you play? There’s been a massive amount of new content added recently (relatively) that did well to add stuff to that early period of game play.
About a year ago (maybe a year and a half ago) I don’t think it was a gameplay glitch, I probably beat the system before it would open up new avenues (or, more likely, I just wasn’t paying attention to the new avenues that opened up in places I thought of as familiar.)
I realize my critique came across as “The KoL guys screwed up.” Which is almost certainly NOT the case. I just have a short attention span.
Bloxorz is a great puzzle game. Like all the good ones, the idea is simple–roll a block around until you can fit it into the square hole. The environment gets increasingly complex, though, and the higher levels can be quite challenging.
You can leave it and come back to it later, so it’s a good one to play at work 
I am a huge fan of the board game Risk… so I am addicted to Warfish : http://www.warfish.net
It is basically online turn-based Risk… It is invite only, so if anyone is interested in playing shoot me your email, and I will invite you.
The3, I play a lot of Kingdom of Loathing too; just passed my second anniversary myself and I’m still finding new pop culture references in it. (Just ran across Monty, the Count of Crisco for the first time today in fact…)
As for other games, I used to play Urban Dead a lot but got bored with it after a while. The latest one I’ve come across is Grow Island but its pretty much just a puzzle; once you’ve won there isn’t much incentive to play again.
tanstaafl: Sweet handle. And very, very true.
Thanks; I’ve been using this handle on-line for a long time. I heard your comments about the Starship Troopers movie in podcast 65 and figured I wouldn’t have to apologize about being a Heinlein fan around here.
Audra is going to make you change it to “TINSTAAFL” to avoid the double negative 