Will Freeman 

Web browser games review: Space Valet, Corgi Simulator 2071, Weird City Interloper

Will Freeman enjoys three of the best new games for web browsers
  
  

Corgi Simulator 2071
Corgi Simulator 2071: tongue in cheek and deliberately lo-fi. Photograph: PR

If big-budget console releases leave you cold, and you've grown tired of swiping at your mobile screen to flap birds and clash clans, the web browser has been especially fertile for great games of late. Take the minimalist, intergalactic, parking-themed puzzler Space Valet. Brimming with charm and buoyed by fantastic audio, it is, effectively, a traditional block-sliding puzzle. Developer Benjamin Davis tasks the player with cramming spacecraft into parking bays using an overpowered tractor beam. It's a playful distraction spawned from a two-week game design competition themed around the concept of the "space cowboy", and well worth some time.

Still not absurd enough? The Space Cowboy Jam contest also inspired "CorgiSim" to craft point-and-click Corgi Simulator 2071. The tale of a kidnapped canine trying to escape his galaxy-hopping captors, it's extremely tongue in cheek and deliberately lo-fi, but guaranteed to put a grin on the face of anyone who tries it.

Away from absurd spins on sci-fi conventions, CEJ Pacian's Weird City Interloper is a text-adventure in the classic form – in layman's terms, a game built entirely from words. Picking your way through an engrossing tale of conspiracy in a gloriously distinctive fictional world, it proves that games can provide tremendous escapism and detail purely through the medium of the written word.

 

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