Happy Wheel

Happy Wheels is all about two things: ridiculous obstacle courses and its consistent damage system. The damage system is what really sets it apart from similar games. The obstacle courses mix a little bit of traditional platform gaming with some puzzle and racer elements, but it's the injuries your racers can suffer that really make the game addictive.

These injuries are rendered with just the right level of detail as just cartoony enough that you won't get too grossed out, but just realistic enough to retain a kind of dark humor. In any event, they're really what make the game. When you first bash your head on something, maybe your helmet will split in half and fall off your head, but then you might stick a landing poorly instead of rolling with it and bust your ankle. Fall down a couple more times and you might wind up with nothing below the knees, grabbing the handlebars of your ride for dear life as you whip up and down ramps, through vacuum tubes and across collapsing bridges. As you injure yourself more, it becomes trickier and trickier to operate your character and finish the level.

The characters include a homeless guy in a wheelchair, the a fore mentioned business guy on the Segway, the most irresponsible father ever on a bicycle with his kid in the seat behind him, and a morbidly obese fellow on a heavy duty scooter. The obstacle course level allows you to try these guys out and get a feel for the game's physics, while the other levels will typically assign you a character and a bit of context (the business guy, for instance, might need to get that report to his boss RIGHT AWAY). The courses are really imaginative at times. You'll drive full speed into rickety towers to knock them over and continue on your way and trigger explosions at just the right moment to get some obstacles out of your path.

Control for happy wheels is simple: up is to move, down is to reverse, and you use the left and right arrows to stay balanced. Lean over too far in one direction or another and you may wind up shattering your character to pieces in seconds flat. Sometimes, these little splatter shows can be the funnest part of the game.

Combined with the level editor, you could call this game: Mortal Kombat meets Linerider. The splattery action, the fast pace and the neat physics system make up an addictive, fun action game with endless replayability.