Bombaloon

Bombaloon was one of those simple, quick games you'd find during the Flash era. It didn't try to be anything more than a few minutes of distraction between other tasks, and that was its charm. You loaded it in a browser, and it just worked, a small piece of that now-gone ecosystem of instant play.

You control a character who throws water balloons from a fixed spot on the screen. Your targets are people walking by in the background, and you click the mouse to launch a balloon at them. The main goal is to hit enough targets to score the points required to clear each level. Along the way, pigeons fly across the screen to attack you; if they hit your character, you lose a life. The pacing is steady, with the challenge coming from timing your throws around the moving pigeons. It feels like a straightforward test of aim and patience, a quiet little arcade task.