Play Falling Clyde - a great arcade game from GDEX for free online – right now!

When Jarrod Rizor, sole developer of Falling Clyde, asked me what I thought of the game, I said “If it were 1984, I would be pumping quarters into this thing like no other”. I was serious. It was difficult for me to pull myself away from the unassuming Falling Clyde booth yesterday.

Like all great arcade games, Falling Clyde takes a simple premise and ratchets up the tension and challenge until you eventually fail, which then stomps on that magical “one more time” button in your brain. I could see this game grinding productivity to a halt around the office.

Clyde, a charming little helicopter guy, starts on a platform at the top of the screen. Other platforms are scattered about. The platforms start scrolling to the top of the screen, and Clyde has to jump to a lower platform to keep from disappearing off the top of the screen. Dropping off the bottom of the screen also gives players a quick “Game Over”. The scrolling gets faster, Clyde’s jumps get more frantic, and before you know it you are pressing the start button for “one more time”. There are also jewels to collect to raise your score, and little time pieces occasionally appear that will slow the scroll slightly if collected, but when things start to heat up, both of those collectibles go out the window in favor of just keeping Clyde falling.

This game captures what makes one-and-done arcade games great, and the good news is that the game is available to play for free online right here. According to Rizor, Clyde plays well in most modern browsers (with the exception of Internet Explorer, because its Internet Explorer). If you like the game (and I can’t imagine anyone won’t like it), maybe consider throwing a few bucks Rizor’s way. Not many people make ‘em like this these days.