Much like digital distribution on the current generation of consoles and handhelds has brought us charming, unique, and thrilling game experiences that would absolutely not survive in a retail environment, digital distribution of independant computer games allows us to become audience to gaming concepts that would likely never survive in committee. A majority of the most interesting games hitting the 'net these days are little more than proofs of concept, but of really freakin' neat concepts, and that makes all the difference. I would rather play a game in my web browser for five minutes and be left thinking about about it for hours than sink days into yet another epic console slugfest and have no idea what the point of it all is.
Case in point, I played Intuition Games' "Effing Hail" about twelve times this weekend.
"Effing Hail" is not a complex game. Presented as an isometric cross-section graphic similar to those seen in ecology text books (or the artwork to a certain rock album that helped some of us survive freshman orientation), the player controls wind gusts in order to hold the incoming hail stones in the atmosphere, accumulating greater moisture, mass, and volume, forming larger hail stones which are then flung into the unsuspecting people and constructs of the world in a vengeful God simulation.
There are only a few levels, and the only true challenge is beating the timer, but it's still a challenge and it's deceptively compelling. Still, having "beaten" the game within a half-hour of first playing it, why did I keep playing all weekend? Because I couldn't stop thinking about it! Destroying cities isn't new, we all aimed tornados at our power plants in SimCity. Controlling the wind isn't new, we've recently had console-based downloadable wind sims in LostWinds and Flower. Maybe it's the faux-scientific presentation, maybe it's the humorous and ironic nature of using Godly powers to control science and destroy humanity, or maybe it's the name "Effing Hail" and the end screen history book reporting on the record-setting hail storm of 2009.
Whatever the reason, I find "Effing Hail" a fascinating case study in everything I love about Flash games: a singular idea fleshed out just enough to prove it can be a fantastic game mechanic and then the game ends, move along to something else and tell your friends. Thank you, Intuition Games, and keep up the wild work. Click here to try out "Effing Hail."
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