Game Tunnel

2005 Casual Game of the Year

Certainly Indie games are known for the casual fare. While Game Tunnel puts a lot of effort into providing information on games that you don't find anywhere else, that doesn't mean that we ignore what has been a key money-maker for Independent developers for some time.

This year we highlight another five great casual puzzle games. They are a guilty little pleasure that most hardcore gamers admit to enjoying just as much as anyone else. And who knows...there may be a couple of these games that you haven't heard of even if you are a more 'casual' fan.

5th Place - Big Kahuna Reef

Developer: Reflexive		Players: 1-8
Website	Download
System Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, 400 MHz, DirectX® 7+, 64 MB RAM

The water is a warm 80 degrees, and the temperatures at the beach are in the low 90s. A gentle breeze cools your skin as you watch the colorful fish swimming among the reefs below your boat. Ready for an instant vacation to Hawaii? No need to book an expensive flight, because Reflexive Entertainment brings us Big Kahuna Reef!

Basically, it’s a puzzle game where you have to swap pieces around on a playing board in order to create triplets or quadruplets of matching objects, which will disappear, then other pieces fall into their places. Your goal is to create enough matches to have covered the playing area at least once, or sometimes twice depending on the tiles the board is made of. Sound a lot like Jewels and similar games? True, but Big Kahuna Reef manages to excel.

This is an excellent puzzle game, and you definitely should play the free trial version to experience it yourself. Big Kahuna Reef is never frustrating and never unfair, the time limits are generous yet challenging, and there is even a “Relaxed Play” mode if you like it slow. The general mood of the game is just like a vacation on Hawaii.

4th Place - Chuzzle

Developer: Raptisoft		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 128 MB Ram, 500 MHz

Chuzzle is another great game by Raptisoft (who also had a top 5 game from our awards last year with Hamsterball). In addition to becoming a phenomenon across the internet, it's a game that has already spawned several clones. Take the two together and there is precious little that I can tell you about the game that you probably don't already know.

Chuzzle is a match three game where instead of swapping two adjacent items as we've been doing ever since Bejeweled was released, you slide entire rows or columns of Chuzzles to make a match. What is a Chuzzle? Well, it's a little puff-ball with eyes (before the game was released we all just called them puff balls with eyes, but thankfully now we've all be set straight!)

Likely the best part of the game is the super-groovy 70s style that gives the games its bright colors and psychedelic look. The Chuzzles themselves are also quite entertaining as they interact with the mouse in various ways (if you haven't clicked on one until it explodes you are missing one of the most fun clicking exercises since the Orcs in WarcraftII!)

3rd Place - Glow Worm

Developer: Flashbang Studios		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 98/2000/XP/Me, 600MHz, 128MB RAM, 16 MB Video, DirectX 7+

Glow Worm was a nice surprise when the game came out in April of this year. Following up on other solid titles by Flashbang Studios, Glow Worm comes across as a perfect puzzle game with a strong hook. In fact the game play mechanics in this game are even more mesmerizing than the wonderful graphics and more spellbinding than the entrancing music.

The twist in this game is that you are always working with two different colors. The worms that you put down are one color with dots of another color. When you make a match with their primary color, they leave behind a firefly of the secondary color.

Prior to placing any piece you can choose to make the secondary color the primary color and the primary color the secondary color. This ads a solid strategy aspect to the game as you are placing pieces not only to make matches, but also to make secondary matches (as well as tertiary matches and so on if you are talented enough!). This gameplay mechanism is a blast to play and leads players to ignoring the game objectives and just working to make tremendous combos. Glow Worm is a game that hasn't been fully appreciated by the portals yet, so you can probably jump in now and still be the first of your friends to discover this little gem.

2nd Place - Zzed

Developer: NevoSoft		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP, DirectX 8.1+, 500 MHz, 64 Mb RAM, 16 Mb video card

Zzed is another game that hasn't gotten all the attention that it deserves. It is a wonderful looking game with a great space theme and an action component that makes the game cross ever so slightly out of the puzzle realm towards being more of an action game. In fact, the game feels an awful lot like a shooter meets a bubble-pop, but it is heavy on the shooter side.

In Zzed you control a green garbage man who is tasked with cleaning up the trash of the universe (and you thought you had it rough at the office). This is done by zooming about and blasting trash into the never-ending hordes of garbage to make a match that will destroy the it.

The game really shines in its ability to combine the puzzle side of things with a bit of skill. Bouncing shots off of shields of neighboring ships and flying past the trash to make a well-timed shot with a bomb or missile is a lot of fun. For all those who are wasting time with one of the millions of Zuma clones, this is a game that one-ups them in every way and you should be frantic to download it as you read this so you can check it out.

2005 Casual Game of the Year - Professor Fizzwizzle

Developer: Grubby Games		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows or Linux, Pentium 200MHz, 64MB RAM, 18MB Hard Disk Space; Mac OS X, G3 200MHz, 64MB RAM, 22MB Hard Disk Space

In a nutshell, Professor Fizzwizzle is a charming puzzle game with sensibilities that hearken back to the good old fashioned days of 8-bit gaming and graphics gamers that want the latest and greatest. A kid's game for all ages, Professor Fizzwizzle includes enough content to keep Junior interested and enough challenge for Senior to start losing his hair prematurely.

Professor Fizzwizzle is a brilliant, diminutive scientist who built a legion of robot helpers. One day, however, the Professor absentmindedly changed the robots' setting from helpful to rageful and the robots kicked the professor out of his laboratory. Now, in platform-puzzler style, the Prof needs to work his way back to his beloved lab and you've got to help him get there.

Fizzwizzle features just a single gameplay mode, but has four different level paths for gamers to explore. Two of these paths are for older gamers (Standard and Advanced) and two are for younger gamers (Kids' and Alphabet). The Standard and Advanced level sets feature the Professor navigating various scenarios, trying to outmaneuver ragebots or the environment to get to his goal. Along the way, he'll employ barrels, magnets, boxes, freeze guns and other devices to manipulate his environments and forge a path home. In the Kids' and Alphabet levels the concept is the same, but levels are designed more for aesthetics than for challenges. One level may be designed to look like a giraffe, another like a giant koala. On these levels, Question Mark markers that the Professor gets to will reveal some fun text for kids to read. The Alphabet levels feature tons of alliterative text with words related to the featured letter for the level, and the Kids' levels tend to feature a bit of quick learning about whatever object or animal has been created for the level's layout.

Grubby Games are to be commended for making a game that can truly be said to be for all ages. A good number of standard level challenges are mind-bendingly difficult (although the “Show Solution” option is never too far out of reach) and there are a hefty number of levels overall, giving a certain degree of longevity to the game. Wannabe stumpers, can break out the Level Editor and design their very own puzzling scenarios for the Professor. In fact, hit up Grubby Games' website to find over 100 user-made levels posted and sorted by difficulty. This is a game that looks and plays great, can appeal to an entire family of gamers and will stump even the wiliest gamer at times.

Professor Fizzwizzle is an outstanding puzzle game that can be picked up by parents and children alike. It looks good and plays great and is guaranteed to leave gamers stumped more than once. If you're tired of relying on your twitch reflexes to get you through a gaming experience, warm up your cortex and pick up Professor Fizzwizzle and get your brain a workout. The Professor brewed up a fantastic game that was an easy pick as the Casual Game of the Year!