## Mini Game of the Month #1

### Written by Lachie Dazdarian (June, 2008)

###
Introduction

With this article I'm trying to start a monthly/bi-monthly editorial featuring mini games of the month (or two months, depending on the release of the previous issue). All games will be rated from 0 to 5 stars and rated as mini games. Also, I will award the best mini game for the past or past two months. Of course, the success of this series depends on how much mini games the community will deliver. If you think I missed your game and you consider it mini, let me know and I will try to correct this in the next issue of "Mini games of the month". Since the last issue, I've selected 3 games I consider mini. Here we go.

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Penguin

From the developer of upcoming and very promising Moon Project comes this cute and addictive game entitled Penguin, a variation of the classic Frogger game in a way.

Your objective in Penguin is very simple. You control a small penguin (naturally) with a goal to cross the river over small moving icebergs from one side to the other, scoring points for faster times between crosses. To stop you in your mission is a nasty but cute looking bear (:P) who likes to stand on the passing icebergs for some reason.

The game features this very good premise and solid execution. The gameplay perhaps is not fun as it could have been. The choice of movement algorithm (object position = mouse cursor position) is perhaps a too simple solution, and can also allow cheating on lower FPS values. Also, bear to penguin collision is rather poor, which surprises as box bounding collision of two objects couldn't be a simpler programming problem. The last flaw would be the inability to input your name in the high score table (only the score is saved), and the very final score not being highlighted to the player once the game is loss. Nevertheless, the game becomes quite exciting on higher levels (game speeds).

Other pluses are cute graphics, pleasant music, and very spiffy looking main menu.

A side note: AlexZ claims he made Penguin for his girlfriend. Are we to believe this?

RATING:

Download: Penguin.rar (1769 KB)

###
FB Tic Tac Toe

A very basic Tic Tac Toe game by arenth. It's a two players only game and for network play only. It's adequately executed, with nice looking X and O sprites, but the lack of a more coherent design, AI and offline mode are quite notable flaws.

Very good connect/host interface.

RATING:

Download: fb_tto.zip (262 KB)

###
Rotation

A challenging ASCII puzzle game where you need to align numbers in a rectangular playfield in order. This is accomplished by rotating a box of 4 numbers (2x2). The game can be played in 3 playfields (4x4, 5x5, 6x6), and in 3 difficulties (scramble ratio), but I'm not sure how much that feature actually effects the difficulty. Anyway, nice design, but far from topping the possible limits of this type of game, even in text-based mode. There could have been a time limit mode, various scoring and high score tables, and more interesting colors.

RATING:

Download: rotation.zip (58 KB)

###
The Mini Game of the Month

Congratulations to AlexZ for making the first Mini Game of the Month - Penguin