Okay, Possibly a remake, Rather than an online game, But it is apt given your Spectrum wanderlust, Klass of '99 - A remake/improvement of Dave Reidy's Skooldaze.

http://retrospec.sgn.net/game/ko99

Santa Fu, A Spartan X/Kung Fu Master clone. But with St. Nick!

http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/santa-fu/

Infiltrator

Now, this is simply amazing! So many cool ideas crammed inside this, I'm afraid I'll forget a couple while trying to summarize the game .

What we have here is a top-down stealth game. As you see from the screenshots (err, I hope so at least ), you control a grayish blob trying to get past by bluish and reddish blobs that scan the area. If anyone catches you on their site, they come at you and start pounding you. You can plan how to lure them into traps though, including mines and holes, so you're not entirely defenseless. The feature I liked most though is that if a red blob catches sight of a blue blob, then they forget about you and they start attacking each other . To top this all off, in some levels you even get to play Sokoban, by pushing crates into the aforementioned holes in order to build bridges to get across levels!

A very ingenious and playable game! It gets the award

http://www.gapingwolf.com/LudumDare/LudumDare18-entry/index.html

My first quantum translocator

Yet another platform with yet another twist. Why do I keep falling for these all the time?

TBH I was sold from the first 2 seconds I moved the main sprite around (the title screen is actually a game screen, no menu. In order to continue a saved game you'll have to know how to get to the upper platform, which is a part of the game mechanics. I love these menus where the menu itself is a part of the game). The cute sprite is animated very nice and moves around the screen smoothly - yay .

Anyway, it's a platformer without weapons, so you only have to run and jump around. The twist in this game is that you can leave a "shadow" of yourself at any place of the level you can visit, and you can teleport to it at any given time. Sounds crap? Well, moving platforms, blocks and some other stuff makes the level's puzzles very enjoyable. In general they are very well designed and you get to learn to abuse your ability in order to pass the progressively harder levels (the difficulty step is set just right in my opinion).

So go ahead, give it 2 minutes of your time. It can't hurt that much, can it?

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/548371

The trader of stories

Apparently, what I played here is one story from the full game which will be commercial, but was enough to spark my interest . It's been a while since I played a nice point'n'click adventure (Machinarium, and before that it was flippin' ages ).

Nothing out of the ordinary to report gameplay wise, it's all kept down simple. It more feels like the game is a vessel to the story and art, which are both very well done. I must say I felt obliged to play it until I finished it, and that's only a good thing!

I'll be looking around for the full game as I enjoyed it tbh, [url]here's the game's blog[/url] for those interested.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/549940

Gunblood

Everyone loves a good old western shootout, right? (I don't ).

This game is pretty simple, point the mouse at the lower left of the window, wait till it's time, then start shooting at your opponent! It's all pretty unpredictable, and with the physics model doing weird things to the bodies as they're getting shot, I find it fairly amusing!

I only posted it because I can't stop playing it, so it's gotta be worth something!

http://www.officegamespot.com/gunblood.htm

[EDIT] In the year 2017 we actually received an email about a HTML5 version for modern browsers over here: https://www.crazygames.com/game/gunblood
Many thanks to Katie for reporting this!

Knytt Stories

So it seems that within a deep forest was merely a warm up for Nifflas. In Knytt stories he took all good points of WADF and refined them to perfection.

Knytt stories is addictive like crack cocaine. Everything visual and audio is so nice, it really makes you immerse inside the universe of the game and get inside the character. As with WADF, the flip screen nature of the game gives Nifflas the opportunity to create a very challenging map, with different puzzles/actions in each screen to give variety. Also, because of the flip screen, he can change areas (and tileset themes and music themes) with ease. That's another thing I forgot to mention in WADF incidentally: the different areas make the game varied and keeps interest.

I could be writing for much longer, but I think I'll stop now. Try it out!

http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=Knytt+Stories

Seiklus

And, to finish off this small section of cool platform/exploring/puzzle games, here's another oldie I should have mentioned ages back. I actually played this even before WADF, and it's every bit as enjoyable.

Very nice graphic style, loses a few points for using "retro" modules, nice and varied areas, easy to pick up and play. Its ending is not so obvious to reach, but it really gave me a few hours of pleasure.

http://www.autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/

Just out of interest, I know a few of the guys involved in WADF, Have you found all the secret levels yet?

Gil

Hehe, there are a few tabs open in my browser of lately, waiting for me to write about them and close them, so I'd better get started!

This is the simplest of the bunch, a pretty bare bones platform game with jumps, switches, teleporters, spawners, homing missiles, all wrapped up in static levels. It's in fact so simple that there's no gimmick involved . I liked it though because everything is tiny, so you can cram lots of gameplay in a single level.

Gfx are very plain and simple as you see from the screenshot, and the music consists of some easy listening (non computerized) tunes.

http://www.pixelgames.com/game/275/Gil.html

After years in dark tunnels

Not a cheery title, is it? Well, the game is very dark, so this simply sets the mood.

The plot says that a ship crashed on a planet and that you must search for parts to fix the ship and set up a beacon so someone will spot you. Yet another platformer with exploration elements then. It does start innocent enough with the character in the surface of the planet. As you start exploring, soon enough you get into the tunnels, where the lights dim out pretty quick and the flashlight kicks in. Right then you start noticing the eerie background track (obviously because before this your mind is occupied by watching the gfx and the map). After this you'll probably encounter one of the crew's dead bodies, and a description of the unlucky person will hover above the character's head. Later you find some ship parts and some personal items from the deceased. Bringing the later to the right persons will make their ghosts more at peace.

As if the above weren't enough to creep people out, there's another feature (which seems like it's lifted from the amazing Amnesia: The dark descent): if you don't progress quick enough, or fall into some dark watery/muddy areas, you begin to lose hope. The background track becomes a heartbeat. You then can either keep going, commit suicide or pray: the last option brings up some hopeful sentences on screen, and by picking them up the character gets his hopes up again, so the music starts playing again (great choice, some would say, either a heartbeat or eerie track ).

Depending on a few decisions, there are 5 possible endings. I'm really not a fan of multiple endings and I can't say for sure if I'll pursuit all of them, I'll see how it goes.

In my opinion, this game is executed very nice: I really felt claustrophobic and had a feeling of urgency while playing. However there were a few things that I didn't like, for example, the y dister of the sentences that come up while you pray is, well, crap. Also, it's quite confusing trying to remember crew names and the items they require, so it's soon getting very confusing. Not forgetting the multiple endings I mentioned above, which to me is just a gimmick excuse to add replayability to a game. Hey, if I want to play a game again, I just will; I don't need the game to force this upon me. Other than that, the game runs pretty slick on my craptop, which is a rare thing - most of the games I try run in slow-o-vision and kind of ruin the experience for me.

So, not exactly a recommendation (unless you like the atmosphere I described above), but definitely not bad.


http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/551085

As I lay Dying!

With a title like this, one would expect an artsy-fartsy game. But no! This is just the pretext for yet another platform game. To keep it short, you have to carry your boyfriend's dead carcass through various levels, avoiding hazards that might ruin it(vultures, crows etc) or yourself (stingy bees). The idea is that you can't carry the corpse all the time, since you have to perform some jumps that aren't reachable otherwise. There is also a throwing mechanism thrown in for extra fun.

Despite the morbid theme, an otherwise fun game!

http://www.digyourowngrave.com/as-i-lay-dying/

Submachine 7

What a great Christmas present! I already wrote some stuff about the submachine series above, of course you should play the rest of the series if you want to get the whole plot. Otherwise for enjoying the great audio/visuals and solving the puzzles you don't need to play the previous episodes.

http://www.pastelportal.com/stories/game.php?id=submachine_7

Kaleid

As you might have guessed from the title, this game's about kaleidoscopes. Actually you get to create them. Each level has a target pattern to achieve, and you have to use simple shapes like squares, stars, circles etc. You need to place the items at the right positions and then it's level done.

Liked it, it has a bit of originality in it!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/5minutesoff/kaleid

House of dead ninjas

This is one of the very few arcade games in flash that actually perform well on the laptop I'm using! It seems like it's mostly running in 1vbl, and that's quite a feat . Anyway, the game involves you running around and decapitating stuff or throwing stars at them, or even bombs! The action is very in-your-face, as the game moves so fast. You have to keep getting to lower levels fast as time is running out. There are lots of (intentionally I guess) low quality samples a la IK+ to keep the hilarity up.

All in all, fun!

http://games.adultswim.com/house-of-dead-ninjas-action-online-game.html