Whackbat

A promotional tie-in to the 2009 animated film adaptation of Roald Dahl's book The Fantastic Mr. Fox, this browser game allows the home player to participate in the very complicated sport of Whackbat, a kind of woodlands variation of cricket. The game presents a bestial team full of the requisite numbers of grabbers, taggers, twig-runners and the umpire to yell "hotbox" when the flaming pinecone extinguishes itself, but fortunately for the player all they have to do is hit the space bar at the appropriate moment on two cycling power and angle gauges like in the golf and bowling sims since time immemorial in order to hit the cone that will knock the cedar stick off the cross-rock. The rest of the game is fully automated, including the head-scratching mathematicians needed to calculate a final score through four quarters of gameplay.