Game Classification

Everyone who owns a car or can rent one is driving to the shore for a sunny summer holiday. Our protagonist, an adorable animal-child, has for whatever reason determined that sandcastles and sunburn are not the way to go, and decides to depart the beach using all the means at their disposal. Since all private vehicles are already engaged, hauling in an endless series of sun-starved animal people in one of the great mass migrations of history, these means come down to an umbrella which, employed Mary Poppins-style, provides a crude form of flight.

Because our hero is simply too cute to meet a messy and unpleasant end in the middle of a fifty-car pile-up, this unorthodox hang-gliding is conducted over the main traffic thoroughfare, and in fact involves using the roofs of vehicles as stepping-stones and launch-pads. Automatically padding up to the edge of a vehicle's roof, a click on the mouse opens the umbrella and lifts the protagonist up into the sky, from where they gradually drift down, hopefully to land atop a vehicle and not between cars on the road surface where, fear not, they adeptly sidestep the hustle and bustle and take up a safe position by the roadside, awaiting the start of a new game.

The game can be played conservatively, with brief hops from car to car, or with growing boldness, seeing for just how long one can protract the flight of a single umbrella-opening's propulsion and hoping that one finds a car roof underneath oneself at the critical moment of altitude loss. The power strategy, however, is to remain aloft for as long as possible -- or perhaps indefinitely -- by exploiting the extra bit of lift granted every time the umbrella is opened. Opening, then closing, then opening it again, all while still mid-air, a player can stay aloft while ten, twenty, fifty or maybe even a hundred cars thunder past underneath. Tempering this is an umbrella "power gauge" that slowly decreases (with a little bite every time the bumberchute is opened) between landings, when it is recharged. Should the gauge reach zero or the player collide with a bird in the air, the umbrella goes inside-out and the player plummets... hopefully to land on a car and continue playing the game, but without the ability to control the rate of descent granted while the umbrella is right-side out. Also periodically floating through the air are bonuses restoring the umbrella's power-gauge to its full starting level, truly permitting perhaps indefinite spells in the air. (For the seekers of high scores, however, it is recommended to land from time to time, since as with Tony Hawk combos, the big bonuses for being airborne are only collected upon a safe landing.) [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Browser (Flash) - iPhone / iPod Touch

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/sunny-day-sky/