Jardinains

The adorable game Jardinains is one of the best Breakout clones we've seen. The aim remains the same: Destroy bricks by deflecting a falling ball with your paddle. Jardinains plays much like the arcade classic, with power-ups and different types of bricks. However, the game adds little garden gnomes who throw plants that subtract points and freeze your paddle momentarily if they hit you. If you hit a gnome with the ball, he will fall with a scream. You can bounce him up just like the ball and double the points for each bounce. Controlling the ball and falling gnomes while avoiding flowerpots and catching bonuses adds up to quite a challenge. The read-me file has good cheat codes, and the license agreement has good jokes. The only quibble we had was that in the main menu, sometimes you enter your choices with the mouse and sometimes with the arrow keys. Aside from that, Jardinains may leave ball-and-paddle fans shaking their fists at those naughty gnomes--then shaking their heads in amazement at how fun this game is.