Freelance: Yahoo Pool, Restaurant City

In this edition, two community games!

Whether it's downloadable games made by indie developers, or free online flash games, we're covering the best of those titles that you can point your browser to.

Restaurant City

Okay, so it's easy to dismiss Facebook games as simple apps. And for the most part, they are. There are a couple of games though that have given me genuine entertainment. Restaurant City is really the main one I managed to get sucked into. It's basically a very, very stripped back simulation game.

Sure, you have to manage your restaurant (to an extent), but it's mostly about acquiring points to level up so that you can customise your restaurant more. The fun of it - for me at least - is to come up with themes every now and again and then mix up your designs. Any one of your friends that has an account can view it, and it really is interesting to see how different friends express themselves through their restaurants. Everyone can get into the game, and a lot of my work mates signed up, giving us something to discuss during the slower hours.

If you have Facebook, check it out, but be warned - it's surprisingly addictive.

http://apps.facebook.com/restaurantcity

Yahoo Pool

Unfortunately I don't have a pool table in my house. Even if I did, I doubt I could find people to play against at any hour. This is where Yahoo Pool comes in. It's a great way to fight internet boredom and I even found that it improved my actual Pool game by making me think of angles for shots I probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

The hardest part of the game is finding someone to play against. There are people on all of the time, but quite often you will be kicked from rooms or waiting ages for people to press start. I will only play games with shot timers now, so if the person I am playing gets distracted and does something else part way through the game, I can forfeit without negatively affecting my own stats. The other trick is with so many rooms constantly opening and closing it can be a little hard to organise to play against someone you actually know. In fact, it's impossible if you are not in touch with someone via internet chat at the time. With the game being so popular for so many years, you would think they would update the application at some point...

Actually playing the game is simple: you just drag the cue around with the mouse and the overhead viewpoint makes lining up your shots a breeze. Beginner players may think the game is too easy with on screen angles, but start to play with the English and take more complicated shots and you will find there is a lot of scope for increasing your skill level.

http://games.yahoo.com/

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