Nanaca Crash

Zubaaaaaaan!

Nanaca Crash!! (actually spelled NANACA†CRASH!!) is an online spin-off game featuring characters from Cross Channel, an eroge (a Japanese video or computer game that features erotic content, usually in the form of anime-style artwork) for the Windows and PlayStation 2 platforms. You can view the Wikipedia article for Cross Channel here.


The object of the game is to click, hold and release the mouse button to determine the angle and velocity of Nanaca crashing her bicycle towards Taichi, sending him flying across the screen. Your score is determined by the distance of his flight. Certain characters he crashes into will greatly affect his velocity. Landing into girls gives you different "Boosts" that can add to your velocity and sometimes trigger "Specials" at certain conditions. While in their "Special" state, the mouse button should be clicked to activate the special boost (and a cool animation). Not doing would cause the cancellation of the special state and just the boost of the character Taichi landed on would be activated. For best results, click the mouse button otherwise within 0.7 seconds to get a super boost. Also, there are two guys you can land on: one could change your angle (Angle Up or Angle Down) while the other guy slows you down.

Summoning Nanaca (clicking the mouse button anywhere in the game screen) to produce "Aerials" could be done between a height of 3-10 meters which is basically when Taichi is above the trees but not too high that the red arrow pointing up appears. Red aerials are possible when Taichi's falling. Clicking the mouse button gives him an upward boost. You can use this up to three times. Useful if you want to avoid running into a certain person like Misato Miyasumi (girl with glasses, the game would be over when Taichi lands on and hugs her). Blue aerials, on the other hand, are possible on the way up. Clicking the mouse button gives you a boost downward. Unlike the Red aerials, the Blue ones are “rechargeable” and you have to wait until it recharges back to 100% for each use. Useful if you want to hit someone that can boost you further.

So, if hitting other people with your bicycle is your thing, go on and check out Nanaca Crash here.

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Desktop Tower Defense

Look away if you value for lives and your jobs...

Whatever you do, don't click on the link and start playing the game. This game is responsible for us losing a week's worth load of work due to its very simple and addictive gameplay. Again, be warned. We were practically going to work just to play this game. We were spending more time discussing about the different strategies and map layouts rather than focusing on our work deliveries and deadlines. I think we had gone overboard when each of us received emailed memos warning us about “playing too much”. Whew! We almost lost our jobs due to this wonderful Flash game.

Desktop Tower Defense illustrates that you don’t need fancy graphics or big budgets to build highly addictive online games. In Desktop Tower Defense, all of the main graphics are hand drawn. Unlike some other Flash based games in the web this game is free and is very simple to pick up. Also, this game employs a lot of strategizing and resource management. Numerous modes, difficulty levels, and maps are just some of the game’s features which give a big boost to its replayablity factor.

The rules of the game are simple. You start with an empty map as “creeps” enters from the left and/or the top. These creeps find their way to the different exits that are opposite to where they had entered. Initially, you start with a set number of lives (about 20) and these get diminished when a creep would exit the map. Each wave of creeps have their own special abilities and it is the player’s goal to build different towers with also their own abilities to shoot, damage, and sometimes hinder the creeps on their way out. Also, the layout of the towers should not block the path of the creeps to their respective exits. Towers could be bought, sold and upgraded for an amount of money which could be earned for every creep killed. It is the objective of the player to handle all the creep waves as they get harder and tougher without exhausting all the life points. Good “mapping”, “path building”, and strategic placements of the towers is important to maximize every tower’s use.

The creator of this ludicrously addictive Desktop Tower Defense game is apparently making close to $10,000 a month from Google ads. The game’s creator, Paul Preece, a Visual Basic programmer having no professional experience with game development, is now making, by his estimate, high four figures monthly for his ferociously viral little game. In the span of a few months, the game has become extremely popular, having been played over 15 million times as of July 2007. The game was among one of Webware 100's top ten entertainment web applications of 2007.

Desktop Tower Defense is already on its 1.5 release which features new towers, modes and creep types. If you have nothing to do, or just wish to be fired immediately from your job, check out the game at www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

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