Last week was the release of another exclusive game by the studios of Kongregate. The Great Siege is a strategy game with some action orientated influences. It has survived the first few critical days of a brand new release and is now receiving a big number of gameplays.

The gameplay is quite diverse and new players can feel a bit lost when trying the game for the first time. During battles you control the catapult, hire new soldiers and initiate attack waves. Aiming with the catapult can be a bit frustrating during battle due to its delay and sensitivity. All the action happens real-time and the game is only paused while browsing for new units. After every battle the player is returned to the town screen and upgrades can be puchased to strenghten your units, walls and catapult. The overall artwork is pleasing to the eye and the menus are clean.

It will be interesting to see whether this game is rated high enough in a few weeks to make a sequel worthwhile. The game certainly has potential and the current shortcomings could be improved in a future sequel, which would add another premium title to Kongregate’s list.

Click here to play The Great Siege at Kongregate

The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 3 is currently in development and good news, it will include jumping ninjas. Developer Borne Games was even kind enough to post a screenshot of their newest addition to World 3.

The previous two Fancy Pants games have been nothing short of a hit. Labelling these games under one genre is almost impossible and everyone should find out why for themselves. With their unique and style and tone they quickly conquered the top of the rankings. Millions of players have since tried this game and are patiently waiting for World 3. Not much information has been released by Borne Games about World 3, but it seems development has reached a stage where we’ll sporadically get a glimpse of the upcoming features including new enemies. We expect the major changes to be in terms of content, like with World 2, instead of gameplay and style.

We’ll keep you updated on this game and in the meanwhile, make sure to have played the previous releases!

Click here to play The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 at Armor Games

Time to put another puzzle game into the spotlight. Civiballs has proven itself by the sheer number of gamplays and high rankings. Puzzle fans haven’t been spoilt lately apart from Super Stacker 2, so hopefully this will please them for a while.

Choose Greece, Egypt or China and solve the puzzles by cutting the chains. If you get stuck, just try another civilization! The gameplay is really straight-forward and good fun once you get the hang of it. The artwork is colourful and the ancient themes have been worked out very well. Developer King has a reputation when it comes to puzzle-skill games and this is another fine example of that genre.

Another quality puzzle game to add to the list and hopefully we’ll see more of this game in the future. Make sure to have played this one!

Click here to play Civiballs at Kongregate

Currently the most anticipated and talked about free online flash game is without question Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity. Over the last few years, tower defense games have become immensely popular and the end of the craze is not in sight. Let’s have a look at the origin of these games and find out which games contributed to its success.

For those not familiar, tower defense or simply TD is a subgenre of real-time strategy computer games like Starcraft. The aim of the player is to try to stop enemies from crossing the map by building towers which shoot or affect them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities and costs and these get better and higher as the game advances. When an enemy is defeated the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers. The choice and positioning of the towers is the essential strategy of the game. The enemies usually run through a maze, which allows the player to strategically place towers, but there are also versions of the game in which the user must create the maze out of their own towers, such as Desktop Tower Defense. Some versions are a hybrid of these two types, with preset paths that can be modified to some extent by tower placement.

Tower defense finds its roots in the strategy classic Rampart, an arcade game from 1990. The game involved defending a castle by placing cannons and making repairs between several rounds of attacks. Its success resulted in the game being ported to a number of platforms including Super NES, Game Boy, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and most recently to the Playstation Network to offer multiplayer action. By the new millennium, tower defense games began to appear in user-created maps for Starcraft, Age of Empires II, and Warcraft III. Using defensive buildings or units as towers, these custom maps filled the online lobbies.

Eventually, independent game developers began using Adobe Flash to make stand-alone tower defense browser games, which led to the influential release of Desktop Tower Defense in March 2007. Hundreds of themes and gameplay variations have been tried out over the last few years including space and medieval settings. Child friendly versions appeared where players popped balloons or protected a picnic from ants. Protector was released late 2007 and was immediately ranked among the best, offering classes and specialization upgrades. More recently it was Gemcraft Chapter One: The Forgotten that took the crown by offering a new twist to the gameplay, the ability to combine towers.

The future looks bright for this genre and upcoming titles such as Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity, Bloons Tower Defense 4 and Pirate Defense will surely set the bar even higher.

We’ve started a new poll today, so make sure to cast your vote! This time the contest is between three upcoming releases. Decide whether it’ll be Battalion: Ghosts, Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity or The Several Journeys of Reemus Chapter 3 who receives the most wanted game label! The poll is located near the bottom of every page, just scroll down. Our previous poll ended with a clear victory for Armor Games over Kongregate as your favourite place to play games.

Furthermore, register an account here at Best of Online Games.com as soon as possible and discuss the latest developments of your favourite games. Become a part this community and don’t forget to invite your friends as well! E-mail them or bookmark and share this page on your favourite social website using the share button at the bottom of every post.

Vote, comment and share. Good luck!

Slowly but surely we’re getting closer to the release of Arena, a multiplayer addon to the original and the sequel Battalion: Ghosts. Enough reason for develper Urbansquall to reveal more details about their upcoming games. Last time we reported on the new user-interface and this time we’re shown brand new unit models which improve on several gameplay issues.

Players and the jayisgames review reported it was hard to distinguish whether units were facing up or down at the end of their turn. Since looking up or down didn’t have any influence on the gameplay, the issue is now resolved and units will eather face left or right at the end of their turn.

Furthermore, as more and more units were added during development, it became difficult to tell them apart and there were also a few inconsistencies in the unit designs that hurt the overall cohesion of the unit graphics. Especially the sea units suffered from this problem and they have been given a complete make-over. The screenshot below shows the difference between the old blue ships and the new red ships.

Once in a while a game is released which outclasses the vast majority of all other games. Berzerk studio had been making this revolutionary game for months and it’s finally finished. Hero’s Arms looks like the start of a new success series, but as with all other games, only time will tell. Already named the Zelda of free online flash games, Hero’s Arms does set the standard even higher.

The story is about ‘Gordzak and his dark minions, who have been bullying the inhabitants of their land for a long, long time. But everything is going to change when a young kid named Rix shows his little brat’s face in the neighbourhood! Rix sets off for an adventurous journey to challenge the mighty Gordzak in his dangerous lair.’ From here on you begin on an epic journey lasting ten to twenty hours! The scale is immense compared to any similar game and that’s not all. The artwork is superb and presents a colourful world filled with beautiful enemies and backgrounds. Throughout the game you’ll be collecting money to buy better equipment and experience points to raise your character’s level. The story is pretty straight forward but interesting enough to keep you going till the end.

Apart from all the positive aspects, there are some shortcomings. Firstly, some quests are dull and too repetitive. Killing another 30 zombies to open a door is not something you’ll enjoy after doing the same for the previous door. Secondly, for the love of your ears after some hours of playing, please give us a mute button.

Make sure to try it if you’re into adventure games, or any genre for that matter. This is one of those games you must have played. It seems like Kongregate have another great game to add to their exclusives list!

Click here to play Hero’s Arms at Kongregate

Armor Games released their latest game named Fox Fyre earlier this week. Although some were skeptic about the unoriginal gameplay, the game is ranked above average. Of course, the number of gameplays is very high as Fox Fyre is featured on the frontpage of Armor Games.

Initially the gameplay was described as ‘cannon-shooting-other-cannons, all real-time in-rounds so you have to keep aiming, shooting, and defending yourself as you go. This isn’t turn-based combat!’ Quite hard to imagine what that must be like, but once you played it actually does deliver. Although aiming is somewhat difficult at times, the game is full of action and as the levels advance you’ll be very busy managing all your cannons. At the end of every round the player can upgrade his cannons and purcahse new attacks.

All in all the game is good fun whether you like the action or the upgrade management. It is interesting to see how Armor Games continue to build a strong line of exclusive games.

Click here to play Fox Fyre at Armor Games

Bloons Tower Defense 4 is still underway and in development, although it won’t be out anytime soon. According to developer Ninja Kiwi ‘it’s in the pipeline but it’s a heck of a long pipeline.’ There goes any hope we had left to see it before the summer.

Ever since Bloons Tower Defense 2 was launched there was a lot of anticipation for the next game. Luckily, part 3 of the series fulfilled the hopes and expectations the fans had and kept everyone playing for months. The game is still ranked as one of the best tower defense games and its replay value remains. However, it has been six months since its release and the fans are getting eager again for a new episode. Ninja Kiwi has received dozens of petitions demanding the next Bloons Tower Defense and the time has come for a new announcement on their part.

Apparantly they don’t want to let the fans down with a hurried and hasty sequel. They will carefully take their time and in the meantime we might see a track expansion for Bloons Tower Defense 3. We can’t blame them as undoubtly they’re waiting for Gemcraft Chapter Zero: Gem of Eternity to blow over before releasing another tower defense game.

GP Studios kept their promise and made the deadline for their latest game: Bunny Invasion: Easter Special. It is in fact an extended version of Bunny Invasion 2 featuring some Easter themed enemies and storyline. Simply put this means more evil bunnies to shoot.

The game introduces a whole new host of bunnies, some more weapons and upgrades to play with, a whole new plot along with new characters and cut-scenes, loads more extras to unlock, new bosses, 40-60 more more blood spurting waves of bunnies and an Easter theme! Clearly, this game is more than a simple Easter re-release.

Meanwhile the original Bunny Invasion 2 has had more than 3.5 million gameplays worldwide. We are quite confident that we’ll be seeing Bunny Invasion 3 jumping along this year to become a worthy sequel to its predecessor and reach an even bigger audience.

Click here to play Bunny Invasion: Easter Special at Kongregate