Well, you could call it a waste of time but gosh-darn-it, there are some thing that are ok to waste time doing.
What you should call it is the perfect way to get your co-worker fired. Two of my co-workers – who both quite “innocently” passed these games on to me “uncoordinated” – have conspired to drag my productivity to nil. They are in such awe of my capabilities and afraid of my intellect that they ply me with time-wasting games in an attempt to derail me. But I’m on to them. I’m only letting it ruin HALF of my workday and spending most of my time at home obsessing about the games. So there, guys… choke on that. Really, thanks go to The Dude and Diode-Boy.
The game in the pictures below is a physical simulation problem solving on-line game. Costs nothing, and you can share your solutions with others once you save them and get the link to the save. Fantastic Contraption. You build a thing inside of the light blue box – anything you want – using spinny wheels (left/right), free-spinning wheels, a water linkage, and a wood linkage. When you build the thing you want built, you hit start. In the example below there is a pink sphere inside my contraption that is the football and we have to get up the hill under or over all those little orange balls that are shortly going to come crashing and rolling down that hill. The goal is to get the pink football in that big pink square at the top of the hill.
When you hit start, it will start your contraption to running and then it will interact with the world, bouncing, flying off cliffs, climbing – you name it.
(solution: http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=806606)
This other puzzle (20 in all, I think) requires you to get that big pink square in the blue staging area into the big pink square on the right hand side. I just threw out a really smart-assed demonstration using some pretty basic wheels and water linkages in the form of a chain, thinking it would fly off and over the hump by itself. It worked but not like I’d have ever imagined it.
The next online game is called VectorTD. You build turrets that have different types of firepower and different amounts. Some other turrets don’t shoot to kill but they slow the enemy down. Upgrades boost range and firepower. You get money per unit of the enemy you kill, and you can turn that around and buy better and better turrets. Oh yes, you get 20 lives, and each time an enemy makes it through your gauntlet to the end (and pops out at the beginning) you lose a life. Have fun!
It’s wickedly mindless simple fun but paradoxically it requires good logic and planning to win. Go have fun.
Lemur King's Folly 