Flash games offer cheap method for killing time

Everyone has experienced this situation: You wake up in the morning and decide that you’re… Everyone has experienced this situation: You wake up in the morning and decide that you’re sick of writing. You think it would be amazing to sit in class and take notes on the laptop that you begged your parents to buy you but has never left your dorm room.

So you bring it to class and discover, after a while, that the lecture has made you extremely drowsy. You decide that you can’t miss out on the major contributions the Romans made to architecture between 100 and 110 C.E., and you believe that surfing the Web will help to keep you awake.

Thank you, Pitt, for wireless.

Down this road, however, lies an all-too-familiar trap. Eventually, by no fault of your own, whatever you’re searching for and whatever Web site you’re currently surfing, you will come across a Flash game. And so you begin to associate Flash games with a distraction (wanted or unwanted) that prevents you from getting an A in your architecture course.

Gamers tend to think that Flash games are just a novelty to be played whenever one is completely and totally bored out of one’s mind or when one’s mental state restricts him from playing a more “challenging” game.

This article will strive to change this notion.

If you begin to play some of the Flash games on the Internet, you’ll find that they are extremely helpful in relieving boredom. You will also find that many Flash games are high-quality games in their own right and are just as challenging and entertaining as their mainstream, Windows- and Mac-based counterparts. And, as an added bonus, most Flash games don’t cost anything.

In order to illustrate this point, imagine a typical afternoon in Pittsburgh during the winter. It’s raining, sleeting and snowing, all at once. As many of us know, when you’re bored, it’s customary to search for strange things on Google. When you’re extremely bored, it becomes logical to search simply “I am bored.” When this search criterion is entered into Google’s textbox, one of the first things that will be returned is the Web site I-Am-Bored.com.

On this Web site, you’ll find a few Flash games. The genres of the games range from an amazing, 3-D puzzle game called “3D Logic” to remakes of classic games like “Zelda.”

“3D Logic” is one of the more entertaining games on the site. The game is, in a way, like a Rubik’s cube. Instead of connecting colors by manipulating the cube, however, a player must draw logical lines on three faces of the cube between colors. As the cube gets larger and the positioning gets stranger, the puzzle becomes exceedingly more difficult. The graphics of the game are impressive, smoothly scrolling 3-D effects. The effects are smooth even on a computer with an integrated, somewhat low-end graphics card and little memory.

I-Am-Bored.com also features “Zelda: Seeds of Darkness.” As its name implies, this game is simply a remake of the original Zelda series, but with a strange flare. In order to destroy the “seeds of darkness,” a player must tote around a giant bomb that will explode if it comes too near enemies or if Link is slain. The graphics of “Zelda: Seeds of Darkness” may be described as simplistic, but they’re designed to appear in the old style of NES Zelda. With the help of Flash, the animation and the scrolling of text and characters are significantly smoother than that of NES. The map Link must traverse is extensive, and the animation of the enemies is well done. “Zelda: Seeds of Darkness” also features great tongue-and-cheek dialogue and catchy Zelda-esque music.

Perhaps the most advanced game featured on I-Am-Bored.com is the Flash version of “Guitar Hero.” It features a nicely done knock-off of the original PlayStation 2 “Guitar Hero’s” opening screen and effects. To play the notes of a song, a player uses the four arrow keys. Strumming is accomplished by pressing (or holding) the spacebar. The game gives the player the option to play two songs, two difficulty levels and as two different characters.

I-Am-Bored.com acts as a repository for other gaming sites as well. Do Google searches for other Flash games. They’re everywhere. You’ll probably run against one even if you’re not looking specifically.

And if you’re thinking of spending $54.99 on a new video game, maybe I-Am-Bored.com will give you a fix and save you some money.