Games And Puzzles

The definition of a sticky site is kind of like the old Supreme Court definition for pornography: you know it when you see it.  What happens when you find a sticky site? You don't want to leave.

These are quite literally the best sites on the net. This is when you find yourself surfing over lunch, and begging someone to go to the corner store for you so you can continue to surf. These are the sites that make you get home late from work, that keep you from your family and force you to eat mountains of fast food because you don't have time to cook.

So how do you make a sticky site? You add things to the site which make people want to come back, day after day, and spend as much time as they can while they are there. Good content is the key - plus a few bells and whistles.

One thing that many sites can make use of is games and puzzles. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of them available for free or very low cost all over the internet. All you need to do is find them, add them to your site and watch your visitors have fun. Of course, you need to make sure that these games fit in with the theme of your site - Asteroids is probably not the right thing on a site about AIDS, for example.

Here is a quick list of a few sites which contains games and puzzles that you can freely take and add to your own pages.

• A huge and wonderfully fun site is called EncycloZine. This site has a treasure trove of puzzles and games, with links to many different sites containing even more fun stuff. Encyclozine has mazes, puzzles, quizes, board games, illusions, arcade games and many other fun things to do.

• Another cool thing that many people just love is crossword puzzles. For just $19.95 you can get a program which allows you to create crossword puzzles for your website! It's called the Crossword Puzzle Construction kit, and from what I saw it's definitely worth the price - if you like crossword puzzles.

• Another great site is Mazeworks. They have some wonderful games such as the Tower Of Hanoi, Peg Solitaire and Fiver. These are all Java applets, which you can install directly into your own web pages. Using these files, you could easily put together a home page with a large number of games for your visitors. Or you could just play the games yourself.

• You want some more games for your web site? Try Java Boutique's gaming section. They have arcade games like asteroids, centipedo, Pac Man and Space War, as well as card games like HiLo, Concentration and Blackjack. There are also puzzles, slot machines and dice games. In fact, there is a little of everything, and most of it is free for your to install directly on yor own web site.

• I found a really great site called Shock-Bauble Showcase. These guys have small shockwave animations which look pretty cool. These are tiny in size (some as small as 2k), fast and fun to watch. They are not games exactly, but you could add them to your web site to give your pages a little excitement. These animations require Shockwave, which is a free download.

• If you just want to play some games, check out the Rubik's Cube site. These people have created an online version of the cube which is actually quite fun. I don't know about you, but I wasted many hours years ago trying to solve this puzzle ... Note this is not something you can add to your site, but it is fun nonetheless.

• Want to add a Rubik's cube to your site? This guy has created a Java applet so you can do exactly that.

• Like jigsaw puzzles? Steve White has put together an applet which is very interesting. It's free for non-commercial sites.

This is just a small sampling of some of the puzzles and games you can add to your site. Enjoy yourself and make a very sticky site.