Koules

Prepare yourself for a head-trip with Koules. It's crazy. It doesn't give you instructions, so I didn't even realize what I was supposed to be doing the first time I played it, and I never did figure out what one of the game-modes was supposed to be, but I think it might have been a multi-player only mode.

In the gameplay mode I did eventually figure out, you're a rotund little yellow guy with big blue eyes, and you move towards the cursor, if you hold the left mouse-button. Armed with this control-system, you have to bounce these little red balls into the walls, without hitting the walls yourself.

It starts out simple, and seems to get harder, but this introduces one of the flaws: there's seemingly virtually no difference from level to level. If you have a low threshold for sameness, you're probably not going to have any interest in tackling Koule's 99+1 levels.

I really wanted to like this game. The website shows a great sense of humor behind it, albeit one that speaks English as a second language and doesn't brake for typos. The core mechanic is pretty unique, and it's realized very well. I just kinda found it boring after a while, though.

The graphics are endearingly old-school, which I suppose is a label that could be applied to the entire game; it's from 1995. It claims to have sound, but I didn't hear any. Your mileage may vary. It's got local multiplayer support, and two game modes, one of which involves swinging around some weird sort of tail, which I think can be used as a weapon, but I couldn't really figure it out.

I'd recommend this to fans of the Orisinal games. It's got the same kind of one-trick mechanic, and repetitious gameplay, that you'll find there. Along with a completely insane backstory. If you're looking for the kinds of games most people think of when they think of videogames, this isn't really going to do it for ya.