Tonight, let me tell you about one of my favourite game sites in the world. It is the place I go to when I’m sad, or lonely, or just plain bored. It never fails to cheer me up, no matter how many times I go back to it. Orisinal: Morning Sunshine is a website full of small, simple flash games by Ferry Halim. There are 58 games on there at the moment, and I will tell you about my 3 favourites to give you an idea of the delights that can be had here. Every game is full of happiness, peacefulness and relaxation. Even the most violent games are made in such a way that you can still feel like you aren’t covered in blood at the end. Pastel colours and tranquil music abound. From blowing a balloon tied to a message up to heaven using fans to burning blocks of ice as a dragon to get food, this site will delight and charm you.
1) Pocketful of Stars - http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g2/stars.htm
A little girl is standing on the side of a lake at night. When she jumps, her reflection seems to soar into the sky and grab pocketfuls of stars as she passes them. Give height and magnitude point values, add a multiplier for the number of stars collected and a bonus for grabbing shooting stars and suddenly this adorable scene is a game! This is my very favourite out of all of the games on the site, and I feel no shame in saying so. It is relatively challenging to time your jumps properly and aim them to collect the most and brightest stars. You are timed, though lots of points extend that time, so there is a small bit of pressure just to make it more than mindless jumping, a system which most of the games use. That girl and I have collected more stars than I can count, and I never grow tired of jumping for more by that little lake.
Bugs features another little girl who is on a mission: to jump as hard as she can to scare away all the little bugs scuttling around the ground. The playing field is rather small, and you have to navigate your way around the bugs, find a relatively safe location, and then stop to build up your jump. As late as possible, jump and watch all the bugs fly away! Avoiding the bugs is really difficult, and it has a faster pace than a Pocketful of Stars. The music is my favourite part of this game; a little guitar and flute tune which sets such a pleasant ambient. Most of the games on Orisinal have lovely music, but this is particularly special.
This is perhaps the simplest game, yet the most bizarre. Pigs ride bubbles from side to side across the screen, and you have to pop the bubbles so that they land on top of each other to form a tower. This tower becomes impossibly tall (they don’t fall as long as they’re touching... somehow), and your goal is to score points by both building the pig tower and by aligning the tower so that the pigs collect a series of cake slices suspended in other balloons. Utterly strange, but the pigs are very cute. Also, the music is Pachebel’s Canon in D, so you can’t help but enjoy yourself.
These are my 3 favourites of the site, but there are several others I enjoy too. There are games on this site I don’t like, generally the older ones at the bottom of the list which don’t really fit the same style and themes as the rest of them. This is a great site for anyone who is feeling sad, so keep it bookmarked for that rainy day, and maybe you too can come away with a pocketful of stars.
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