Desktop TD, as it is affectionately called by its fans, is a simple game where you are given gold to build towers.  The towers boast various weapons and defeating the invaders gives you more money with which to build.  The best way to play the game is to build a maze that the invaders must travel through and to have them be shot at constantly as they move through the maze.

This game has quite the cult following.  There are many YouTube videos depicting mastery of the more subtle nuances of the game.

You have heard of Heli Attack.  Now imagine that in ASCII art with your favorite IM lingo. And imagine you are the helicopter ROFLcopter, not the people on the ground.  Welcome to ROFL Attack.  This joke of a game is surprisingly well done.  It doesn’t hurt that the background song is “Highway to the Danger Zone”.  So as I said, you pilot a ROFLcopter and are being attacked by LOLLERskaters and LMAOplanes.  To fight back you can drop a WTFbomb, fire an OMGmissile, or shoot your ROFLing gun.  Also to defend yourself, besides just moving around, you have a BBLshield.  Sounds like IM in middle school, right?

In honor of the real Olympics in Beijing, I thought it would be a good idea to make Dolphin Olympics 2 the Free Game of the Semi-Week.  Just like the original Dolphin Olympics, the point of the game is to make the dolphin jump out of the water and do crazy tricks or go for height and airtime in the jumps.  If you can get some good reentries into the water, you will gain powerups that will allow to do some super high jumps, even into outer space.  Dolphin Olympics 2 has the added wrinkle of trying to attract other fish to jump with you, which will give you additional bonus points.  Dolphin Olympics 2 has the added fun of being available as a Facebook application, which means you can compete for high scores against your friends.

This is my first personal pick for Free Game of the Semi-Week.  While Evan enjoys games with lots of flashy tricks and crazy power-ups, I tend to prefer simpler games.  That is why I present to you: The World’s Hardest Game.  This game seems so simple; guide your square from start to finish, while avoiding blue dots and collecting yellow dots.  However, the game is very addicting and can be very difficult.  A quick search on YouTube reveals many video tutorials in how to get through the 30 levels.  Give the game a whirl, and try not to get sucked in.