Flash games were my absolute jam during the 2000s, and I still consider them to be superior to traditional video games in many different ways. (I'd be more than glad to do a massive rant about this, but let's keep things neat and tidy for now.) I'm sure I'll have a million different answers to this question, but for right now:
The
Grow series by Eyezmaze is something I blather on about constantly, here, because it's one of the best concepts for a video game that anyone has ever come up with, and it couldn't be done in any other medium. I already wrote up a huge wall of text about why I love it so much
here, but, in short: I think it takes perfect advantage of a digital medium to encourage curiosity, creativity, and experimentation, which are the three things I love most in this world. Grow Island is my fave, but there isn't a bad one in the franchise. A++
By a similar token, foon's
Hapland series was another awesome idea. You have to solve puzzles by clicking around an overworld to guide a little stick-man to his destination. Every part of the world interacts with itself and each other, so nailing down a firm order-of-operations through environmental clues is necessary. I used to draw little maps based on this series in school – loved it! Every game was like a little Myst puzzle.
I WILL FIND A STAR!
Hoshi Saga was an expertly-designed series of puzzle games that seemed right at home in the DS era. You're given a series of puzzle screens, each of a completely different nature, with
zero content. Using your mouse and keyboard, you have one goal: Somehow use the elements to create or discover a star.
I played through this series a few years ago. There are a ton of them, but I was constantly blown away by how clever and inventive every single one of the puzzles were. The guy who made this needed to be on the Professor Layton team ASAP.
Hoh my fucking God in Heaven, did we ever love
Territory War. The gameplay is essentially just Worms, but with a huge emphasis on platforming and using a limited range of weapons to gain tactical advantages over your friends. Me and my buddies played this game for hours in school, naming all the characters after us and our teachers – "Ha ha, Gorse just got headshotted!" Those were the best times ever.
Aaargh, you bloody indie game designers – how is there no spiritual successor to
Jelly Battle, yet!? This was a brilliant little competitive strategy game! You and three friends jump around an environment with different power-up tiles on it, and try to reduce each other's HP gradually over a series of turns. You can heal and teleport around and call in airstrikes and trick people into landing on mines... it was so fast-paced, frantic, and fun, and there's never been anything like it! AAARGH!
And, finally, the fact that
Nitrome isn't a major video game developer proves once and for all that this industry is a fat lot of poo. These games were gorgeous, sounded beautiful, endlessly creative, and just a joy in every aspect to play. They've done a few similarly-brilliant mobile games, but I always wanted to see how they would have made a full handheld or console game. Brilliant developers.
I could go on for the rest of my life. Flash games are just the best games ever.
