Polly Party Pickup

Polly Party Pickup was one of those simple, cheerful games you'd find during the Flash era. It didn't try to be anything more than a quick, colorful distraction, usually played in a browser window between other tasks. The premise was straightforward and fit right in with the kind of lighthearted, goal-oriented games that were common at the time.

You control Polly, driving a small car through a top-down map of a town. Your job is to navigate the streets, picking up each of her friends from their houses and delivering the whole group to the mall for her birthday party. The arrow in the corner points you toward the next friend, so you're constantly checking it and planning your route. You have to watch for roadblocks and other obstacles that can slow you down. The game moves at a brisk pace, and the challenge comes from managing your path efficiently under a time limit. It feels like a race against the clock, a test of your ability to plot a quick course through a familiar little grid.