Flash games have been around since the scary days of dial up internet. The sheer amount currently on the web is slightly daunting. Luckily there are also many different websites that host these time syncs such as addictinggames, miniclip, notdoppler etc etc. One of the first flash games I remember is an enjoyable game where you repeatedly punch osama bin laden in the face. It came to prevalence around 9/11 and the Iraq war. Kids everywhere could do there bit for the anti terror movement in a very small and useless way. Personally I clocked around fifteen hours online military service. Which brings me to the main content of this post. I enjoy a flash game as much as the next lay about student but some of them are really starting to take the proverbial. Last night (01/04/2011) before bed I decided to visit one of the sites mentioned above and found a game called Space is Key. On the face of it this game is your usual very basic (by basic I mean less complicated than those creepy stick figures you drew aged four) 2D side scroller. How this game differs is by tricking the player into thinking it's not that bad. It uses one key (its the space key if you didn't quite catch that from the title) to make a block (yes a square block) jump. As it only uses one key the block moves all by itself at a reasonable rate. Space is Key has fifteen level which doesn't sound too ridiculous+. I guessed it would take about half an hour. Before I continue it should be mentioned that the sound track to the game is quite good. A nice musical scale with a duck being strangled in the background. Rather soothing, if you hate ducks. My guess of half an hour completion time was a little tame. Two hours later I was I was on level 13 and ready stop pressing the space key and start pressing a gun, to my head. The dying duck music that had got me pumped for 2d side scrolling fun times had turned into a repetitive loop of endless wailing. To make it worse hitting the mute button and watching the Satan block waltz mockingly across the screen was like been slowly sucked into a particularly cheeky black hole. The game had started with easy jumps over small blocks. Then the speed increased and 2d self scrolling fun times started turning sour. Finally when the jump height increased it gave me hope that the game was taking its spiky block heel off my back. Infact it just made the leaping sequences taller and more complex. Why didn't I just stop? Space is Key had me by the balls. Giving up would have voided the past two hours and ten minutes of the night. Failure would have left me an empty shell of a time waster. Then, like most moving stories, when all hope was lost I beat the last two levels. I expected my reaction to joyful, high five some close friends, hug my parents, maybe find a baby and kiss it on the head. Insert emotional victory scene here. Instead the room grew very quiet. Space is Key told me the block had died 1500 times and it defiantly was not a high score. My back was sore from leaning over the key board and my eyes gave the impression I'd been smoking a rather large pipe of cannabis rather than sacrificing the past few hours of my life to a moving block. If you can beat Space is Key in a more reasonable time please be my guest. The links below. It may have just ruined flash games for me. (You will probably beat the block easily and then laugh at my awful flash abilities) DBfletcher http://www.notdoppler.com/spaceiskey.php