Flash Games
A look back at a different era of gaming. Before app stores/mobile games/microtransactions, there were flash games.
James Pagen
7/4/20264 min read
For those who don't know, Adobe Flash was... wait a minute... do I even know what it was? For the purposes here, I am just thinking about Adobe Flash Player which was some kind of software that let you play the "Flash Games". These were in-browser games, typically free and simpler than a full-fledged video game. Lots of passion projects by individuals or small teams. In many ways, they were the precursor to the wave of mobile games that you can now pick up on the app or play stores. Popularity (seemed) to drop over the 2010s before it was killed off altogether in 2020. But for my brother and me, growing up in the 2000s, flash games were this incredible source of free entertainment. Either played on the home computer (as long as no-one was using the phone) or on the computers in the local library.
There were many, many portals to access a library of these games, but Not Doppler was the one we used to use most. I haven't, for the life of me, any idea how we came across it. Probably just a Google search for "games" and a lack of caution about which links we were clicking on. The dozens (if not more) games that I must have played on Not Doppler are a blur now. I do remember one particularly violent shooter, Raze, that I played a lot and that my mum definitely wouldn't have approved of. This was one that was actually multiplayer - or seemed to be, I wouldn't be surprised if my younger self was always in a lobby with bots and didn't realise - and you'd bounce around shifting between all the different weapons. Games like Age of War which have two civilisations battling as you evolve through the ages. First throwing cave men against their rock walls and eventually bringing in high-tech machines of war. That one I remember my brother and I playing side-by-side which was always part of the fun with these games.
There was also 'Armor Games' which seemed to make or publish a lot of these games. I know nothing about them but have a strong memory of seeing their logo pop up on screen as games would be loading in. There was even a batch of Flash Games on the BBC or CBBC website from beloved kids show, which were great because you could play them on the school computers without them being blocked!
Amongst them all, my favourites were the ones created by LEGO. They had a host of different games across their IPs and I love just about every one of them. My love of LEGO toys helped, but these games were genuinely incredible.
Junkbot was a puzzle game in which you had to help a little robot eat the bins by moving as few LEGO bricks as possible. There were some brutally hard levels if you were trying to achieve the minimum number of moves. The building was very fitting for a Lego game.
Bionicle might've been my favourite of the LEGO, er, themes? Sub-brands? The stories and the characters were so cool. Even looking back as an adult they seem cool.
Bionicle's contribution to Flash Games was Mata Nui: The Online Game, which was a point and click adventure. It was beautiful, atmospheric, and... super confusing for a young kid. I loved playing it but would routinely get stuck. And this was prior to the era where an online guide or playthrough would be available to solve all the problems.
But looking up the answers would've felt too much like cheating anyway. What's the point of a puzzle game if you give up on trying to figure out the puzzles? And I was a kid besides, so I had plenty of time to try good old brute force and ignorance if it came to it.
I'm noticing a theme here, because another set of the LEGO games had puzzle elements to it. I guess I was a sucker for puzzles even then! The game I am thinking of now was part of the Johnny Thunder theme, which now that I think about it was just an off-brand Indiana Jones. But I came across Johnny Thunder first so it feels like something original. The game I remember was a maze that you had to navigate by controlling multiple characters who could, for example, open doors for each other by standing on the right buttons. Mechanics that appear a lot across co-op games and one that my brother and I would played together.
There were some great non-LEGO puzzlers as well, with This is the Only Level standing out in my mind. You control a little elephant through a series of increasingly painful puzzles. If you're expecting a short, one-level game then you've probably not played so many of these types of games. I found it terribly addictive in trying to beat the game fully.
Perhaps the most addictive of them all is The Impossible Quiz. They use the Rocky theme for the music and to this day I associate the tune more strongly with this quiz than anything else. A sequence of questions with severely escalating difficulty and which requires you to start all over again should you fail.
I do miss these games. Sure, some of them still exist. For example, I played a lot of Kingdom Rush back in the day and that is now a readily available app with expansions, micro-transactions, and everything else that comes with modern easy games. It is still a great tower defence with the right blend of passively upgrading your towers plus some active abilities. But it doesn't feel the same. And some of the games - especially those old LEGO favourites - are hard to track down.
There will be a million more that I've forgotten to mention or maybe forgotten completely. I perhaps should've consulted my brother before writing this because I bet he'd have a host of others that he remembers as well. But that was the beauty of Flash Games in some way. There was a whole digital world to explore and you could find your favourites. Maybe it's just nostalgia for my childhood, but I miss those games and all the time shared with friends playing them together.
