flash
sciencepunk | June 10, 2011It's been a while since we had some Friday Flash Fun here at SciencePunk, but this one really blew me out of the water.
SpaceChem is currently causing quite a stir amongst the gaming websites: Escapist Magazine gave it the Genre Buster award and Rock Paper Shotgun hailed it as "one of the year's best indie games". Deservedly so, in my opinion.
SpaceChem puts you in the shoes of a junior materials chemist, blasted into the depths of space to work for a pan-galactic mining corporation. Your job is to build complex molecules from the basic chemicals mined out of these planets. At your…
sciencepunk | August 13, 2009
A new game developed by experts at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam puts you in charge of a global war against an emerging pandemic. The Great Flu, created by Ranj Serious Games, is designed to give the public an insight into how disease control is managed on a world-wide stage.
Players are given various tools to try and halt the pandemic - early warning systems public information campaigns, face masks and anti-viral drugs, as well as improved research centres and medical services. In addition you can suspend public transport and close schools and businesses, and forcibly…
sciencepunk | May 14, 2009
From CrazyMonkey, the powerhouse of internet Flash fun, comes Cosmic Crush, a deceptively simple game of meteor might. The rules are straightforward: propel your sentient lump of rock through space, absorbing smaller asteroids whilst avoiding the gravity wells of larger planets. If this sounds fun, you've been conned. It is fun, but it's also fiendishly difficult.
Unfortunately for you, large planets wield a gravitational pull that extends far beyond the visible screen, meaning that by the time you see them, it's too late. Driving blind, you must be sensitive to the minor tugs and drifts…
sciencepunk | May 8, 2009
Not content with sapping our productivity with the Space Game, Armor Games have released another little science-themed gem in Microbe Kombat. The premise is simple - guide your microbe through the primordial ooze, eat proteins, and engulf smaller microbes. There are two broad strategies: keep eating protein until you're the biggest bully on the block, or keep dividing until you swarm out the enemy. Both have their pros and cons - dividing will make you and your daughter cells more vulnerable to macrophages, but many small microbes will out-compete a single large one in scavenging proteins…
sciencepunk | April 30, 2009
Sex is fun, but it's nothing compared to the thrilling life-or-death struggle spawned by passionate, unprotected lovemaking. Thankfully, to promote Channel 4's The Great Sperm Race, Flash game maestro Johnny Two Shoes has conceived a game that puts you in the cockpit of a humble gamete struggling to become whole again.
Like a super-fecund cage match, 250 million enter, but only one leaves. Can you safely navigate the acid-filled folds of the vagina and outwit the hungry leukocytes to bury yourself into the egg in an explosion of zygotic glory? Find out now!
sciencepunk | February 20, 2009
The Space Game might not have the most inspired title, but beneath the nondescript exterior lies a jewel of a real-time strategy game with some interesting quasi-bioinformatics. Made by the Casual Collective for games portal Candystand, it runs in-browser and saves your progress as a cookie, and games last a nice 10-15 minutes - perfect for a short break.
The principle of the game is fairly straightforward - you control an asteroid mining company and your job is to extract as much mineral as you can whilst fighting off bands of space pirates. Enemies come in different flavours and you…
awild | December 9, 2007Flash is a necessary evil in insect photography. This necessity is due to two unfortunate traits shared by most insects: small size and stubborn unwillingness to sit still for the camera. These traits confound each other in a way that renders insect photography uniquely challenging. Small subjects need to be close to the lens, placing them squarely in the zone where depth of field becomes razor-thin. Depth of field can be increased by using a small aperture, but that restricts the amount of light reaching the sensor. With so little light entering the camera, a proper exposure requires…