Wirra! Bathypelagic picrate

Wirra - An interjection used to express sorrow or anxious concern

Bathypelagic - Of, relating to, or living in the depths of the ocean, especially in the area between about 600 and 3,000 meters deep.

Picrate - A salt or an ester of picric acid (a 2,4,6-trinitrophenol). The picrate ion has yellow color.

Launched in March 2007, Bloons by Ninja Kiwi was an instant hit. According to Stehpen, its creator, the reason for this is simple: "popping balloons is fun." Basically, the idea of Bloons is that you are a monkey, trying to destroy the evil balloons with your friends, the darts. The controls are simple too: you aim by pointing your mouse where you want to go, and click! The longer you hold down the mouse button, the more power you put into your throw. Each level, you are given a certain number of darts, and a number of balloons that you have to kill, and then throw away!

Unfortunately, popping balloons gets more difficult as the levels progress because of various obstacles. These include:

• The bouncy block, a black block that makes your darts bounce off of them.
• The metal block, a block that stops your dart in its tracks.
• The ice balloon, a balloon that, when hit, makes all balloons within a 2-balloon radius turn. into ice and be indestructable, unless you have a
• Bomb balloon, a balloon that, when hit, blows up your dart and everything around it (except metal walls, of course).
  

Fortunately, you also have some helpers. My favorite is the Pac-Man balloon, which lets you send Pac-Man into battle to eat the evil balloons by using the arrow keys!

There are 50 levels to Bloons, and many of them near the end can take a while if you're newer to the game, so if you are going to play it, leave yourself some time. The game can be found here. I played just before writing this article, and in about 25 minutes, I beat the game with the following scores:

1. Pop Me 100%
2. Pop Me 2 72.7% (Although easy to beat, it is very difficult to get 100% in this one).
3. Surprise 92.6%
4. Triangles 95.6%
5. Starburst 100%
6. The Iron Curtain 97.6%
7. Dart from above 92.3 %
8. Holy Moley! 100%
9. Boing 100%
10. Parallel 100%
11. Tack-tile 100%
12. Arc 97.7%
13. Reservoir 95.6%
14. Maze 100%
15. One in a hundred 77%
16. Boomer 89.2%
17. Shapes 100%
18. Chain Reaction 100%
19. Light the fuse 100%
20. Loopy 100%
21. Throwback 100%
22. Round-a-bout 82.7%
23. Ouchie 75.9%
24. Monsta 100%
    
25. Demolition 100%
26. 2 Paths 90.5%
27. Bouncy 43.6%
28. Big Ball 94.1%
29. Air Raid 100%
30. Ice Bounce 93.8%
31. The Cell 91.3%
32. Backwards Glance 62.5%
33. Danger! 66.7%
34. Igloos 100%
35. Fuggetaboudit 100%
36. Chalice 97.4%
37. Pacatak 100%
38. Bouncebomb 88%
39. Lockdown 100%
40. Ice Cave 49.2%
41. Myriad 100%
42. Chilly Chips 67.9%
43. D in the D 95.3%
44. Showertime 100%
    
45. Not So Hot 74%
46. Ears 68.4%
47. Bloon of Damacles 93.8%
48. The Matrix 100%
49. Wrong Side 100%
50. The End 100%

If you can beat me at any of those, I'll give you some prize (probably just recognition, but that's still good!). Anyway, once you get through these 50 levels, you definitely should not consider yourself done, for there are many more to go! You can play

• More Bloons
• Bloons Player Pack 1
• Bloons Player Pack 2
• Bloons Player Pack 3

200 more levels of Bloons fun! The levels near the ends of the Player Packs get tricky, though, so watch out! Once you have completed these, you should be prepared for Bloons World! In Bloons World, you can make your own Bloons levels, and play those of other people! I made a few levels, but they aren't very good. Maybe I'll work on some more later.

Pretty much the only problem with Bloons is the various glitches in it. You can often throw darts into or through bouncy walls, or have them slide between frozen balloons, and if you throw them hard enough at a wall, you can generally pop the balloon right passed it (this could be very helpful at level 30, if you're having difficulty with it). I personally don't mind the glitches, though, because sometimes they can be pretty helpful, and they're often not that annoying anyway.

Some of the other games at ninjakiwi.com are pretty fun too, so you should check them out. That's all I have to say for now, so ttyl, and let's hope that Saddening Goat's second 50 posts (beginning with this one) are even better than the first 50! Our current number of viewers per day is 12.9, so I think we should set a goal of, say, 20 viewers per day on average by the 100th post. Bon week-end, et à la prochaine!