Here’s a fun little Flash game — Chaos Theory. A bunch of blue balls, 50 in total per round, are thrown up in the air horizontally, then fall slowly downwards. You’re allowed to click one ball per round, which blows it up into a small yellow/orange explosion; that explosion ignites any blue balls it comes into contact with, and so on, and so on, until the explosions die out for lack of fuel. The thing is, the explosions are only about an inch wide, so you have to pick where you launch your first explosion very carefully. It’s surprisingly hard to create a chain reaction that will explode all fifty balls each round! My record so far is getting 121 balls per game.

Like all excellent simple “action” games, it follows the Path of Enticement and Infuriation: i) At first, it seems to be a matter of pure luck. Then ii) you quickly spy patterns in the game that drastically improve your ability. But then, iii) luck seems to take over again, limiting your score as you fluctuate ever closer to playing a “perfect” game, yet somehow unable to attain it.

Weirdly mesmerizing.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for this one!)