Flash games are games that were ran using the Adobe Flash Player that was very popular once upon a time before the introduction of Unity3D, the Steam application and a number of other open-source engines and gaming platforms that are now available out there for aspiring game developers or hobbyists to take advantage of and on top of all the security flaws that the old Flash Player is plagued with as well as the limitations it has compared to newer engines and the fact that Adobe themselves will stop updating and supporting the player, it is very much on its way out now, there are still the odd games that come out on gaming websites that are made running Flash Player but nothing to the level it once was.
The Flash Player wasn’t just for games though, it was also for running media on websites such as audio and video as well as executing a number of other functions that many websites have now moved away from and updated to new players and systems that do it instead due to the current state of Flash Player, but it was once a very important piece of software for pretty much everyone and thing that used the internet.
Due to the security flaws most, browsers now block Flash Players and Google Chrome is planning a full shutdown of it later this year sadly and I assume most browsers will be taking a similar approach due to Adobe shutting down support for the Flash Player. It will still be possible to play flash games using workarounds, but it will mean likely a near full-end to the making of any new flash games. Many popular flash games have been repurposed and re-released on places like Steam and on Mobile thankfully and I hope that this trend continues now that the Flash Player really is drawing to a close.
I have many fond childhood memories of playing numerous flash games on websites such as Armor Games and Kongregate among others and also cheating at them on ArcadePreHacks because why not. My first step into online MMO games was also thanks to Flash Player as well and through these said gaming websites or on Facebook and just from their own websites.
With that being said I am going to go over some of my favourite flash games that I remember playing time over during the good old days of the Flash Game Era.
Eridani
Eridani was a strategy game where you captured 2D planets and built bases on them that allowed you to build defenses against the enemy from taking your planets, collect resources and build war ships to take over other 2D planets and eventually destroy the enemy AI you are also playing against. Strategy games, specifically of the attacking and defending variety, were my absolute favourite flash games and are still my favourite genre of games.
Drone Wars
This game was kind of similar to Eridani but had some differences in game play. In this strategy war game you started off with a mothership and some drones that can mine resources from nearby asteroids that spawn in the space-arena area, these resources allowed you to build a fleet of other various types of drones or ships that could attack and defend against the enemy, the aim of the game was to defend your mothership and destroy the enemy’s mothership/s to win.
Black Navy War 1 and 2
This strategy game was quite a unique one, you played on a 2D grey field and there was a base at either end of the field separated by the sea, your base and the enemy base. In this game resources generated over time and you could use it to build various defense turrets to defend your base or a fortification that allowed you to build more defenses and you could also use your resources to create various ships, submarine and air units that when created would automatically spawn from your side and go towards and attack the enemy units and base, having various ways of attacking and certain units unable to attack certain other units. There were also upgrades such as to create more resources and so on.
The aim of the games was to defend your base while creating units to destroy the enemy base. The 2nd game introduces a few new units and also abilities. It really was one of my absolute favourite games of the Flash Era.
Stick Wars 1 and 2
Another strategy game, this one you are on a battlefield and there are different units that are different iterations of stick men with different weapons, attack power, speed, ranged or melee and so on so forth. You battle across the map as the black-coloured stick people against the red-coloured stick people, each stage is a different country/region that introduces you to a new unit.
The 2nd game is a similar format but introduces new units and features as well as an online mode where you can battle against other players and partake in leaderboard rankings. I remember after playing stick wars I was so hyped waiting for the 2nd game to come out, and it took a very long time for that to happen.
This game is one of the many stickmen games that existed during the flash era, many of which could be easily found on Stickpage.com and Stickgames.com.
Other stickmen games I liked were strangely the ones where you threw a stickman down a set of stairs, yeah, I don’t know why. I also liked stick man laser dodge as well.
Crush the Castle 1 and 2
A physics-based game where you simply crushed a castle! In this game which was the inspiration for the incredibly popular Angry Birds physics-based game, you have a catapult that hurls projectiles and you go against various structures that contain members of royalty, your goal is to hit the castle in such a way that it collapses and kills all the people inside to win. There are different projectiles that you can use that have different affects, and the type of walls or obstacles there were and how the castle was constructed determines the best path to take on what is used and when. So, for example wood burns but stone doesn’t so hurling stones is best for breaking stone, but firebombs are good against wood as fire can also spread through wood and eventually break it and the fire kills all characters it touches, but fire bombs would be ineffective against metal and stone beams/objects.
Another cool projectile are the electric eels in a bottle, which although does basically no damage to the structure, does conduct electricity through metal beams and objects and of which kills all characters standing on or touching the metal. The games also lets you make your own castles to be crushed as well and of which you can share online with the game’s community.
The aim of the game is to destroy the castles using the least number of projectiles. There is also a 3rd one now, called Crush the Castle Siege Master on mobile devices.
Infectonator 1 and 2
Infectonator is a game which has cartoonish pixelated graphics but fun and engaging gameplay, basically your job is to propagate and develop a zombie virus and infect the world from one place to the next, in each level you start off the zombie infection in one person with the aim of infecting everyone within the level to win, with the ultimate goal of infecting all of Earth. Each level gives you currency to upgrade and make your virus more effective and each level introduces new obstacles and characters that can make things harder for your virus to spread, such as soldiers who will kill the zombies and stop it from spreading as effectively and so the aim is to be strategic on how you spread the virus in each level.
Infectonator 1 and 2 were flash games but a 3rd one was also released on Steam.
I Am An Insane Rogue AI
Quite a mouthful of a title but that is literally what the game is called and, in the game, you are the bad guy! Or well, you’re a rogue AI. The aim of the game is in each level to hack all the computers with the rogue AI virus in the facility. At first there are simply just scientists that walk around and when they see that a computer is being taken over by the rogue AI they will run to it and stop it, so you must do it before they either see or before they can reach the computer, as the game progresses even more difficult characters are introduced to the facilities, such as people who can damage the AI, those who can un-hack computers even after the AI took it over and people who can unlock doors. You have a certain amount of power to hack, which increases the more you successfully hack, but decreases the more you are stopped, which can eventually lead to your defeat and failure in a level.
In the facilities there are things you can take advantage of to make it harder for the characters to work against you, such as by locking doors, turning on sprinklers, finding ways to kill characters and so on, you can also complete levels in either a passive fashion where you don’t kill or injure any of the characters or in a hostile fashion where you do, as you progress you can purchase upgrades to make the rogue AI more powerful and unlock new things you can do to enable you to hack all the computers more easily. It is a very fun and enjoyable game and even after you completed it the game continues into an endless mode where you just go through level after level.
Kingdom Rush and Kingdom Rush: Frontiers
I was never super fond of tower defense games, that was until I came across Kingdom Rush, probably in my opinion the best tower defense game there ever was, basically there are four different types of towers, a long ranged fast shooting archer tower, an AoE tower, a barracks that releases troops and stops and fights the enemies coming down the paths and a wizard tower that has high damage and good range.
Each tower was more or less effective against certain enemies based on their resistances and weaknesses, such as armor, magic resistance and so on, so strategy of tower placement and types of towers was important based on the enemies that were coming, where you had time to prepare and change things before the next wave, you earned coins from killing enemies, making waves come earlier and from completing waves, which you use to place more towers in the specific plots available and upgrade existing towers, including eventually branching upgrades and for maxed out towers, ability upgrades. There are dozens of different types of enemies you come across in the game as you progress that you are introduced to with information on them including strengths and weaknesses, stronger attack, fast or slow, lots of health and so on, which is what I really love about the game, all the different types of enemies and the cartoon graphics are just so good as well.
Certain levels also have a big boss you have to defeat as well, and many levels have multiple paths that enemies can come down and so it can get quite complex. You also have an upgrade tree you can do as you go, and you have spells you can use in levels, the 2nd game introduces heroes that can be upgraded and have their own abilities and powers. There were some premium aspects, such as to unlock more hero types and certain levels that were added after the game’s release were made premium DLC, but the vast majority of the first and 2nd games are free.
There was a 3rd one called Kingdom Rush Origins that released on mobile, which you could play after a small purchase fee and there is also a 4th one now as well on mobile which I am still yet to obtain and play, which is called Kingdom Rush Vengeance.
Backyard Monsters
In this game, that has been re-done in many other forms now, you built a base that included your main hall, your operational buildings, walls and of course defensive structures, and all the buildings could be upgraded to make them stronger and better at defending and also to unlock new things. In the game you could unlock, upgrade and train various monster units that you used to make armies and attack other player’s bases with.
It is one of the games a part of my early venture into the online gaming world and it was very fun at the time. You could attack both CPU and other players and the aim was to steal resources to use to upgrade and improve your base and monster armies. You could unlock and upgrade abilities for your monsters as well as have big hero monsters that you had defend your base or used to attack with, having their own abilities and would also be upgradeable. Eventually you would reach a big world map that you could build an empire of outposts on.
It was a fun and enjoyable game, but it was eventually abandoned by the company, it was originally available to play on Facebook and Kongregate. I believe it is still on Facebook, but as I said the game is no longer updated and it is prone to outages and also hackers so I no longer suggest playing it. A mobile version of the game called Backyard Monsters: Unleashed was put out on iOS for a time, but was eventually removed unfortunately. It seems impossible to find a reason why the game was abandoned and also the mobile version vanishing.
This game was out before Clash of Clans and other similar type games that are now way more popular but I believe that this game was likely the inspiration for them. The company that made Backyard Monsters also developed Battle Pirates, War Commander and VEGA Conflict, three very similar-style games and that I believe are still active and maintained and updated by the company, although the company now-a-days has lots of complaints for being greedy and its games focused on requiring to pay-in to make good enough progress to keep up and the company’s community relations are quite poor, perhaps that has since changed, but I kind of doubt it.
Tinywarz/DropShock
This was another of my early online game ventures and of which was once a very popular game with a good community. In the game you made an army of mechs, vehicles, machines and so on that you could deploy in groups to a number of different planets and use them to hunt for bandits, salvage wreckage, mine for resources, attack enemy players (as long as the particular planet allowed Player-vs-Player battles) and work together in factions with a number of other players.
In the game there were tons and tons of different units you could purchase using the resources that could be obtained in various ways and these units had slots that you could place extra weapons and powerups in to make them even stronger and effective. Honestly, the game had so many units, weapons, abilities and gadgets a part of it that customization was incredibly broad. There were also buildings as well and factions could deploy bases to planets to do operations. You also trained crews that piloted your units as well.
It was such an enjoyable game and is hard to explain in brief, but unfortunately there was only a single developer keeping it afloat and he eventually ran out of time to do it and although the game was passed on to a council of dedicated players to do stuff with, nothing much really came of it and the game is mostly inactive now, you can still check it out and play it, but it isn’t really too fun to play it alone and without the updates and support it once had. It is a shame for what was once a good game.
Desert Operations
Finally, to round this off I will talk about a game which is one of my first ever steps into the online gaming world, this right here is ground zero, the first ever MMO game I ever got into. The game was very basic and was mostly about statistics than actual visible gameplay. But nonetheless it was still fun and had a great community at the time.
What you did was build a base including buildings that made resources such as money, oil, gold, ammunition and so on. All these resources had numerous functions for trading or attacking and defending. You would build defenses and armies and you could place them to either defend or to attack or you could just store them away. There was basically no limit to the sizes of armies and of how many resource buildings you could make, but successful attacks against you could lose you buildings and also resources and lose you your units.
The main aim of the game was to obtain points from successful defense and attacks, the more points you got the higher up the leaderboard you would go and the more susceptible to more skilled and experienced players you would be, as points determined who you could attack and who could attack you, losing battles would lose you points. Each battle and defense gave a detailed and statistical battle report of the outcome and what you gained and/or lost. Different units had different rules of what they could and could not take on, which was the ultimate determination of outcome – you could even spy on other players using special spy units to get a spy report on some of the stuff they had. It was all about planning strategy and tactics, performing the execution of that and then waiting for the outcome of the battle report.
You could also join or make alliances with other players and have wars against other alliances. Alliances had different positions that gave numerous powers such as a finance minister that controlled taxes on its members resources and so on. It was a very fun game but eventually as more advanced games came out Desert Operations became much more unpopular, the game is still up and running though, and I would still suggest having a go of it.
There is still so much more I would put on here, but I won’t make this too overly long than it already is. I will probably do one on mobile games at some point, which is basically the new frontier after the Flash Era.
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