Got a Minute? Then We've Got 15 Free Games for You!

Into the Third Dimension

• Cloud

Fly Guy is a cartoon. For a more realistic fulfillment of the universal fantasy of being able to fly à la Peter Pan, book your next flight on Cloud. Your surrogate Icarus in the game is an androgynous, nightshirt-clad youth who soars above oceans and isles. As the game plays music Yanni would be proud of, you use your mouse, its buttons, and scroll wheel to position a glowing light--not unlike Tinker Bell--to control where the youth goes. The main idea is to gather clouds, which in later levels you can use to construct floating images, such as that of a lollipop. Or your floater may be assigned the task of fending off those nasty dark clouds. I spent a long time playing with Cloud, not because it was difficult, but because it is the most relaxing experience I've ever had that involved a computer--the perfect game to have handy the next time you're put on hold.

• The Restaurant

The developers of The Restaurant promise that anyone who makes it through a full round will receive credits on a future game as a "Game Developer," plus a receive a personality analysis based on how they played the game. Here's how the game works. After a brief training session, you sign up to play with another person through one of some 80 servers around the country. If you're first in line, you become a waitress. The second person is the only customer, and if no one takes on that role, you're left twiddling your virtual thumbs. (It's best to play around dinnertime because that's when you're most likely to pick up a game partner.) Simple animated 3D figures represent each player. Both of you can move around, pick up things, eat, and communicate by typing. As the waitress, I started out with the usual: "Your menu. Can I get you a glass of wine, yada, yada." Pretty boring, huh? But then I remembered: There's a real human being behind that avatar. That means I could screw with him.

So I began dredging up Monty Python and Marx Brothers routines, describing the glories of a raspberry tart and then returning from the kitchen to tell him the cook had just eaten the last piece. This was great fun until the customer got sick of me. And left early, apparently by just disconnecting. That aborted the game, and I never got my promised character analysis. No big deal. I've already been told I'm a jerk.