So one of the things that’s weird with Flash games is the ability for it to create these hyper-specific sub-sub-genres. Some of the broader genres I’ve come across are the “room escape” games and the “tower defense” games. Tower defense has done well enough for itself to spread to non-Flash platforms, but I think it originated just as a stripped-down version of an RTS. And the room escape games are like a short version of the graphic adventure games popularized by Myst.
Then, when you start looking for even narrower genres, you get stuff like the Box 2D Physics-based Puzzle Games, which produced the Angry Birds. Or the Kitten Launching genre, where you launching something and hope for the best. (The genre seems to be expanding towards games where you can buy upgrades for your Penguin Launching Cannon, or even steer your rocket ship/submarine.) {Upgrades are how to make someone feel like they’re improving at a game if it doesn’t depend upon skill at all.}
What was my point? Oh, yes.
I’ve just encountered a Flash genre that is new to me. It’s “kissing games.” You score points by kissing someone, but it’s vitally important you do it only while nobody is watching.
This one’s the only one I’ve seen that’s actually sort of fun:
http://www.ampgames.com/game/161/Office-Love-Kiss.html
You are co-workers trying to kiss at work without the boss seeing you. This has the best graphics of any I’ve seen, plus I think it helps that the boss will talk on the phone and has these little fake-outs like he’s about to put down the phone but he’s really just switching to the other hand. Also, this is the only one I’ve seen that comes close to motivating their need for secrecy. You’re keeping it secret from your boss that his employees are at it, plus I suspect the boss has a crush on the girl and that makes him more angry about employee fraternizing than he otherwise would be. There are others where it’s game over if a random waiter or stewardess wanders up and sees you kissing, which I see as ridiculously prudish and/or a sign that these games are never going to catch on in Western countries.
Once I started actively searching for these things, I found some awkwardly bad ones, like this:
http://www.gameslist.com/playonline/Lovers-Kiss-Game
This one is at least stupid enough to be amusing. A lot of them strip it down to bare essentials like “kiss on the bus when the other passenger is not watching,” or something, and becomes boring. This one introduces weird elements like you are wandering a beach with a dozen different guys, and four or five of them look like the guy you want to kiss. But you can’t kiss him while anyone else is watching. That any random stranger seeing you kiss someone at the beach is a blow to your well-being is so prudish. But that there are a handful of guys on this beach that I can treat as completely interchangeable is very licentious. Plus, if you stop kissing any particular guy, he simply disappears and you must go find another guy that looks like him. Maybe you’re some kind of alien succubus, devouring their beings and moving on to the next. (I shouldn’t put too much of a gender reading into this, I got to pick my sex at the beginning of the game.)
