Level up: Games for the times

Pack Man: This used to be a popular game, the favourite of bored office workers and computer operators a long, long time ago. Only fossilised beings spoke lovingly of it till it was revived recently - and rather suddenly too. The new game requires you to pretend you are a much-sought-after vice-president who packs a bag and disappears for 56 days, leaving a host of friends and foes alike snapping at your heels in an effort to eat you up in gossip columns and parliamentary pews. Your objective is to keep them at bay even as they try to figure out the Four Big Ws of the game: Why you disappeared, Where you might be, When you might return and What might happen thereafter. If you can evade your pursuers, you get a bonus prize of a collector's edition of the 1,000-page Put New Energy into Your Speeches.

Angry Buds: Remember that addictive game in which you hurled birds with blazing eyes at pigs who had stolen their eggs? Well, a new version is out now. There is a slight change in the gameplay and instead of birds, you throw your best buddies at the enemies, which now are no longer pigs but beef steaks. The game has been gaining steady popularity, and central ministers have been known to make cannon fodder of their state chief ministers in ensuring the complete annihilation of beef steaks.

Flappy Bud: Like its predecessor, this is a difficult game. You have to manoeuvre your buddy past a series of pipes without touching them. If you have a bud named Sakshi Maharaj, you can be sure you will be a sure loser because he keeps piping up when he shouldn't.

Candidate Crush: If you get thousands of invites to play Candy Crush, you should be happy, not irritated, because only if you get an invitation to play Candidate Crush do you realise how lucky you are to get only those annoying notices on Candy Crush. The game is the latest favourite of India's political class. Ask Mukul Roy of Trinamool Congress or S Ramachandran Pillai of the CPI(M) what happens in this game. You are there in the top row, all others arrayed below you. When the game starts, there is a terrifying shake-up and they find the ground slipping beneath then. They can see the stalwarts in the lower rows disappearing from sight. And before they can even shout "Didi" or "Politburo", they too are gone, crushed to nothingness. Now wouldn't you rather be invited to play Candy Crush?

Pharmville: After having enthralled thousands on Facebook - and exasperated an equally large number through unsolicited invites - the game has a mint-fresh edition, evident not only in the adoption of a different spelling in its name, but also in the game dynamics. Unlike the agrarian ecstasies of the earlier version, the new one lets you pretend you are a corporate maker of medical necessities. You can choose from characters named Sankyo Die-ichi, Run-away-Baxy, Doctor in the Red, etc, and either buy/sell rival companies or get help from sympathetic souls in growing and harvesting assets. The objective is to win a place in the Sun. The more devious and abstruse the methods you employ to achieve your goal, the higher the points you gather.

Solitaire: No, this is not a new release of the perennial favourite. It is the same old game. As the name suggests, this card game is played by someone who has no friends to play games with, so it today takes up a lot of the time of people such as Mayawati, N Srinivasan and Amar Singh.
Free Run is a fortnightly look at alternate realities joel.rai@bsmail.in