Play this: ‘Snake Squad’

Even for a flash-based in-browser game, Snake Squad is thin on plot details, but it makes up for it with a clever gameplay style that belies its simplicity. As with any good flash game, the controls are dead-simple: use your mouse or the WASD keys to move your tiny cartoon soldier across a bloody battlefield and avoid incoming attacks. The game handles all shooting and aiming for you — you just need to avoid the rapidly-increasing hail of bullet-fire from your enemies. That ongoing, never-ending hail of bullets makes the game feel like a cross between Contra and Asteroids — if you don’t keep moving at all times, you’re a dead man.

There are a couple of twists that make the game more engaging: every 30 seconds, a new team member spawns on the battlefield. If you play your cards right, you can soon have a small army to help you battle off the much larger army gunning for your head. And with every defeated soldier comes a number of coins, which you can save up to buy upgrades and unlock new squad members, which make it possible to live longer and get more coins. It’s a nice virtuous cycle that makes you end up spending a lot more time on such a simple game than you’d expect.