My twenty-fifth game is complete! Couch Carnage is my twenty-third #onegameamonth game, and the theme this month was “Couch.” It was a rush job, but it turned out okay.

In Couch Carnage, you must bounce your ball (I ran out of time for the art) across the couches without touching the floor. The titular “carnage” is your wanton destruction of the couch cushions, which will eventually break and spring you into the air. There are three game modes: Infinite, which just keeps putting couches in front of you to see how long you can survive, Damage, which does the same thing but measures your success in repair costs, and Backtrack, which is a very bad name for what turned out to be a very cool mode. In Backtrack Mode, you try to see how far you can go into the infinite field of couches, but you must turn around and make it all the way back to the beginning in order to succeed. I find this mode to be terribly exciting to play, as the pressure builds the farther you travel. You must constantly evaluate whether it is safe (or even desirable) to keep going, or whether you should turn around and begin your trip home. And you must decide quickly, because it is easy to break too many cushions and cut off your return route, rendering the entire trip fruitless. It’s tense gameplay, and the Infinite and Damage modes are downright boring by comparison. Infinite mode still has some things Backtrack mode doesn’t, though, so it’s also worth checking out.

I forgot to list the controls in the game, so here goes. You can move using the arrow keys or the WASD keys. You can use the mouse to click the buttons in the menu, but most buttons can be activated with the keyboard as well. You can also use the arrow keys on the “Mode Select” menu, so there’s no need to use the mouse at all if you just want to get into the game straightaway. One more thing: high scores. This is not a game you can “win,” per se. You can only beat your previous high score. If you need an initial goal to shoot for, try beating me: 1,000m in Infinite Mode, $10,000 in Damage Mode (that was too easy, so now it’s $40,000), and 500m in Backtrack mode. Feel free to post your scores in the comments (I like knowing that people are playing my games; haven’t you seen Toppleblox?). Have fun!