Scooby Adventure - Episode One

Remember Shaggy, Scooby, and the rest of the gang from your favorite Saturday morning cartoon? Well, they're back - in a River Rapids Rampage Adventure that you control. This fun, free game is available at net-games.biz.

In typical Scooby Doo style, the game begins with Shaggy and Scooby talking to a creepy looking Mr. Culpepper. He's got a hot sauce factory that makes the Five Skull Fire Sauce, produced with a special pepper that grows only in the Haunted Temple of Lost Souls. Fortunately, he's collected enough peppers for his own personal supply. So what's the problem? Shaggy's chili recipe, "like, needs that ingredient!" And nobody who goes into the haunted temple could ever make it out alive.

Of course, Shaggy and Scooby go anyway. They borrow a map from Mr. Culpepper and take off to collect some supplies near the river, which has been overtaken with dangerous jungle animals.

Your job in this little mission? You've got to collect handy items on your way to the river in order to fend off monkeys, snakes, lions, and crocs. If one of these animals manages to scare Shaggy and Scooby before you've figured out how to chase it away, then your Scare- meter starts to fill up. When the Scare-meter is completely full, the game ends.

Once you do make it to the river, you'll take the canoe to the next part of the game. Here, you have to navigate river rapids and avoid crocodiles, piranhas, and a "Mayan Mayhem" that pops out from behind the bushes. Try to canoe through the river, and avoid maxing out your Scare-meter. If you make it to the end, you've won the game.

There's more to come in Episode Two of Scooby Adventure. Maybe in the next episode, Scooby and Shaggy will finally get their hands on those crazy hot peppers in the Temple of Lost Souls. For now, I'm just happy that they made it through the Rampaging River Rapids alive!

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Quadramania

On first glance, it seems a bit like Tetris. Then, you realize it's Quadramania, a totally different tetris-style game from Clever Media.

Here's what's similar to Tetris: You get a single-colored combination of square tiles to place on the board, just like in Tetris. You also get to see the piece on the side of the screen before it's delivered. While you're deciding where to place your piece, you can turn it around in all directions. That's pretty much where the similarity ends.

The goal of Quadramania is to form single colored rectangles that are at least 2 by 3 tiles long. You're first instinct will be to attempt to form lots of differently colored rectangles in different places on the game board by fitting together the pieces you receive (again, remember Tetris?) But then you'll realize that this is not the way to go.

The best strategy is to make one big single colored (say, pink) rectangle in the middle of the screen and then use all the other colored (blue, green, orange) pieces you get to trim the sides and make it an even rectangle. That's because your big pink rectangle will count for nothin' until there are no offensive pink tiles sticking off where they shouldn't be.

Something to keep in mind when playing the game is that you can place any tile over any other tile AS LONG AS IT'S NOT THE SAME COLOR. That means, you can put a blue piece right on top of that annoying pink protrusion, as long as you're not covering up any blue tiles in the process. If you are, you'll have to use an orange or a green piece instead.

The bigger the rectangle you form, the more points you get. Once the rectangle is single-colored and evenly sided, it will disappear from the screen and get added to your point total.

As the board gets filled up, the spaces around the sides start to disappear, leading to a much smaller place to place your tiles. Try to score more points to restore the game board to its former size.

Sounds complicated? It is, a little bit. But I think that's because new players are so taken aback that the Quadramania is really nothing like Tetris. Play a few times, and you'll get the hang of it.

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