That, for me, would exclude asteroids, pacman-like games and so on. I like immersive games, which are able to tell the story and create a relation with the character. That points in the direction of role playing games.

After examination, it seems that making this kind of games is pretty much possible (even though most of the stuff online, and there is really a lot, rarely raises to the level above trivial).

Below some examples.

2d adventure ? Murloc RPG

Murloc happened to be the first game I found in which you can explore the world (2d, horizontal movement), pick quests, and fight (turn based combat).

I fail to identify myself with the creature that you play, but technically it proves the point.

2d adventure but more advanced ? DragonFable

DragonFable goes much further than Mork. Plenty of quests, characters, and items. The game is still 2d, but you have much more freedom to move within the scene. The combat is turn based, you can use skills, spells, and friends who assist you. You even customize your character in the beginning.

The graphics is not bad, indeed fable style, and the world seems vast. The game loads new areas in the course of the adventure.

There is also interesting business model: you can play for free, but cool items and locations are not available unless you buy a ?dragon amulet?. It cost $19.

Japanese Flash games

Ealier I posted one screen, here.

The play is quite impersonal, I would say, but these games prove that it is possible to have really nice graphics in a Flash game.

Conclusion: definitely possible to build an interesting online game. There are some games which have a storyline (e.g. Covert Front by M. Skutnik), but most are rather shallow (surely there must be some gems I haven’t found yet of course). This seems mostly due to the business model for the games, but it’s another topic.

Biblefight (combat game). Technically rather impressive.

Weird but beautiful.

Instead of shooting, the games are more into exploring rooms, finding stuff and solving riddles. As for me – on a minus side, there is less mood than in zombies and no soothing action (shooting), on the other hand, exploration is a plus. I believe mixing action and thinking and mood is the way to go, riddles alone may get tiring after some time.

See here for one called Covert Front. First episode. I finished it myself so I am proud.

I clicked a bit around and it turned out that Mr Skutnik is a rather known Polish illustrator. He co-created a cartoon illustrating one of the Polish philosophers. Read some of his blog. Impressive.

So far the coolest game I found is Last Stand:

Not exactly the deepest story, but still I played till I finished it.

Maybe not deep but it has: a dark mood, exploration element (new weapons), and shooting which is cool.