Fun with Physics

The name may make BCS sound dull, but actually, it's quite entertaining--and quite innovative. In a series of levels of increasing difficulty, you're challenged to build increasingly complicated bridges, then drive over them in a train--and if you haven't done a good enough job, watch it collapse. The key is that it's in 3D with a robust physics engine that simulates the stresses on bridge members in detail, and provides a nice view of the occasional disasters. It's no surprise that BCS won the "audience choice" award at the 2003 Independent Games Festival. (Mac and Linux versions, too.)

Balance Real Needs, or Cynically Work to Reelection?
Game Tunnel's 2005 Sim Game of the Year

Books can be important; movies can be important. Games, however, are the degraded purview of violent male adolescents. Democracy cannot exist.

Except that it does, of course. It is not without flaw; but it's a game that every citizen of a democracy should play, to get a better gut understanding of the pressures faced by they leaders--and every citizen of a tyranny should play, to get a better gut understanding of why democracy, whatever its flaws, is better than the alternatives.

It's Free

Disaffected! is an anti-advergame, if you will, in which you take the role of a Kinko's employee who is not all that interested in working and is faced with a constant stream of increasingly annoyed customers. Gameplay is somewhat similar to the old arcade game Tapper, or to games like Diner Dash, in that you must run around attempting to satisfy the demands of your customers--although in Disaffected!, sometimes your character just doesn't feel like working or gets confused...

First Responder Sim

In Emergency 3, you control a city's first responders--EMTs, fire and rescue services, police, and so on--responding to emergencies. In twenty missions, you have to deal with a wide variety of them, from raging fires to explosions, derailed trains carrying dangerous chemicals, etc. There's also a 'sandbox' mode with randomly-generated emergencies, so once you've completed the missions, you can continue to play indefinitely, if you like. It's a real-time strategy game, in a sense, but your objective is saving lives, rather than conquering enemies.

Cheerful, Fast-Playing Farm Tycoon

Little sheep wander around going 'baa,' you shear them when they grow wool; pigs snort around and you butcher them when they're fat--but if you don't provide enough slops, they turn the grass the sheep eat into mud.

Funky Farm is a fast-playing, light little sim/tycoon game that's surprisingly fun given its simplicity. And simple it is; your eight year-old will probably enjoy it as much as you (some reading is required). Don't expect a challenging simulation, but if a light-hearted, fast-playing little tycoon game sounds like a good way to kill some time, it's up your alley.

Hacking the Night Away

Hacker Evolution is, ahem, an evolution of Exosyphen's previous hacking games, of which they've developed several over the years. This is a good thing, as the current game is intelligently thought through and polished, and the puzzles cleverly designed (if at times frustratingly hard). That is, of course, a big advantage of reworking the same theme: you improve each time.

Many will compare Hacker Evolution to Introversion's Uplink, also an excellent game in this--well, there aren't enough hacker games to call it a genre, but "of this type" will do. Hacker Evolution =feels= more like you're actually hacking because of a design decision that in almost any other type of game would be obviously incorrect: The game is largely played on the command line.

If Sam Goldwyn Were Alive, This Would Be His Favorite Game

That's because Hollywood Mogul 3 is what it says it is: a game for wanna-be studio heads. If you'd rather be Michael Eisner than Martin Scorsese, this may well be the game for you.

Hollywood Mogul 3 is to Molyneux's The Movies as Football Mogul is to John Madden Football. That is, it's a data-driven game with enormous detail in which your role is to manage the studio, not watch cute animations or move animated characters around. Visually, it's far from stunning--some have likened it to a spreadsheet--but the level of detail, and the complexity of the underlying model is stunning (and somewhat overwhelming to a first-time player; luckily, there's a good tutorial).

The Slacker Sim

You're 20, you have no particular skills, you're working as a waitron to pay the bills. Sure, Horatio Alger would urge you to work hard to get ahead, but a person's gotta have some fun. If you're too depressed and lonely to get out of bed, how are you going to do that?

This is a game that sucks you in. Perhaps like Cute Knight, but in a different way; both games put you in the role of a young person trying to make your way in an uncertain world, but Cute Knight is very much a fantasy, anime-influenced game, while in Kudos you get a real sense of being a 21st century slacker. But in both cases, you're likely to come to the end of the trial and think, damn... I want to keep on playing. Is it worth the 20 smackers?

Okay, so Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 it's not, but Lemonade Tycoon is a cute, cheerful little sim/tycoon game in which you start with a little lemonade stand in Da Bronx, and try ultimately to become a multimillionare lemonade magnate with branches all over New York City. Try not to overstock on supplies on those rainy days...

You could almost call Orbital Trader a casual game for geeks. It's a space trading game--you start with a small starship, move from one planet to another buying and selling stuff. You're limited to a single star system (no FTL here), and planets move over time, and you're restricted to transfer orbits, so closer planets are a lot easier to get to. Each planet has only a single commodity, and it's easy to find destinations where you can make a profit (mouseover your planet, and you'll see what its commodity fetches everywhere else in the system). And that's--really about all there is to it.

Well, yes, you can upgrade your ship over time; and as time goes on, you can invest in upgrades to the planets, building 'structures' which improve their productivity, demand, and so on. There's fairly a deep tech tree, in fact.