Spikes Tend to Kill You is an super-fast retro platformer -- Time Waster

Spikes Tend to Kill You has got to be one of the nicest games I've played in a while. It's an old-school platformer, and it is very well made.

You're just a cube, and the graphics are retro. But the game is very fast and very responsive. Each level takes exactly one screen, and as you may have gathered from the name, touching spikes is not a good idea.

Other than avoiding spikes, you will have to avoid bullets. Those rounded protrusions you see sticking out from the walls in the screenshots are cannons, shooting out bullets at specific intervals. You can touch the cannon, but can't touch a bullet. So you need to time your movement just right, often taking into account more than just one cannon.

When you strike out, you immediately start the level again – no waiting, no limited lives. Very very addictive. Eventually you get familiar enough with a level to "choreograph" it – i.e, you know exactly when to jump, when to run, and when to wait. And then, of course, you move to the next level.

The only slight downside here is that the soundtrack is too 8-bit for me, but I guess that's a personal thing. A superb time-waster.

Tags: flash, fun, game, platformer, spikes, spikes tend to kill you, SpikesTendToKillYou, time waster, time-waster, time-wasters, TimeWaster, web