I've been a big fan of Flash games for quite a while. For me, Flash games provide the pure gaming fun that the big-budget console and PC games on offer these days seldom deliver on. Without further ado....
*** Awesome games for the brain ***
The Codex of Alchemical Engineering - a brilliant game that starts out fun and builds towards a truly brain-taxing challenge. Requires patience, and thinking like a computer programmer, but you'll be rewarded for your efforts.
The Codex of Alchemical Engineering: Magnum Opus Challenge - so you finished the first one and think you're pretty smart?
Fantastic Contraption - an elegant physics-based puzzle game that allows for inventing solutions. One of the few games I would let students play.
Portal - based on the Half-life 2 mod. This is a short but enjoyable logic/physics-based puzzle game, and the bonus; it doesn't require Steam. Steam is evil. Steam is bad. Steam makes the baby Jesus cry.
*** Simple and fun games ***
Steambirds - a simple and fun 2-D turn-based game of aerial dog-fighting. There should be more games like this in the world!
Bubble Tanks - a fairly short game, but good, simple fun.
*** Tower Defense games ***
Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 - the first Tower Defense game I ever played that really sucked me in. It manages to achieve a nice balance that most games of this ilk fail to achieve. Your first challenge will be to finish the game. Your second challenge will then be to finish it with a better score.
Cursed Treasure - a more thematic take on the Tower Defense genre, and one of the best of the bunch.
Gemcraft: Chapter 0 - a Tower Defense game with some nice features.
I hope you'll enjoy some of these games. Some of them are fun, and some should be compulsorily played by all. If you know of any other great Flash games, please post them here.
Benesato.
