The Central Committee's Choice:

Make New Friends and Learn Their Secrets

Georgina Okerson specializes in light adventure games with anime-style graphics that are designed to appeal primarily to a young adult female audience (but that are perfectly enjoyable by those of us with a Y chromosome). In Summer Schoolgirls, you play a recent high school graduate going to an orientation program at an women's college, where you meet your roommate and the other girls in your dorm.

It feels something like a "choose-your-own ending" book, in that your choices are mostly multiple choice, although between classes, you can choose where to go on campus. Each of the five other girls in your dorm has a secret, and your goal is to make friends with your roommate, and discover hers. There's a little bit of puzzle-solving, in figuring out how to go about uncovering her secret (or those of the other girls), but this is not a game to trick up hardcore adventure gamers; rather, it's designed to appeal to a broad audience.

Interactive Novel with Puzzles

Georgina Okerson, creator of Cute Knight returns with Fatal Hearts, a charmingly quirky adventure game, of a sort, featuring a teen girl protagonist and a chilling set of murders. Featuring anime-inspired art and teenage angst in a horror story, Fatal Hearts has several different endings -- different enough that you'll want to play more than once to explore the different outcomes -- along with puzzle mini-games and a well-written story.

It's not a point-and-click adventure game in the usual style; indeed, it's more of an interactive graphic novel with puzzle-game aspects. As such, it's very accessible even to adventure game novices.

The "What Ifs" of World War II

Making History is more than a wargame; it's a grand strategic military, economic, and diplomatic simulation of the entire globe, starting in 1934, and going on until the end of the Second World War. If that happens, of course.

As such, it addresses one of the central failings of most WWII games; it doesn't lock you into a historical straightjacket, with Russia inevitably coming into the war even if the Nazis don't attack, and with the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor on inevitable schedule. Instead, you can play with all sorts of what-ifs: What if France had resisted the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1934? Or if Italy had gotten pissy about the Anschluss? Or if the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had stood firm behind Czechoslovakia in 1938?

Penguin Puzzler

The backstory of Storked has it that the stork inadvertently dropped scads of penguin eggs all over Antarctica, and using your crack crew of penguin specialists, you must rescue them. What it basically means is that this is a puzzle game, and in each level, your penguins must find an egg, and get it to the baby basket somewhere else in the level.

As typical in puzzle games, there are a limited number of obstacles and elements you must use to solve the level, with additional elements added over time so that you're gradually introduced to the complexity of the system. In Storked's case, you have four penguins, not all of whom appear in each level, each of whom can move and kick the egg (no hands so they can't carry it), but each of whom has some special ability.

Out-Compete Those Other Heroes

At first glance, Depths of Peril is a Diablo-esque RPG. You control a single character of the usual range of classes (warrior, mage, cleric, rogue); you go out on quests to surrounding areas, slaying lots of monsters, earning XP and money that you can use to improve stats and equipment. Combat is fast, Diablo rather than Final Fantasy, and there's the same huge range of variety in equipment and magic items.

But -- layered atop this are AI opponents that remind us of the opponents in Railroad Tycoon. You control a "covenant," which consists of you and up to 5 other characters you recruit (and incidentally, you can take one along with you when you go adventuring, which is extremely useful). Each of the other covenants -- up to 5 of them -- is busy adventuring and building up their own heroes' stats and equipment while you are.

Engaging TCG-Like Computer Game

Bellatorus is obviously inspired by trading card games (TCGs) like Magic: The Gathering, but it isn't a -trading- card game exactly; you get all the cards with the game (and can download more from the developer's site) and edit decks with the provided editing utility--then play out games, either against remote opponents or an AI.

In other words, all the cards are available to you at all times, and you don't have to pay for more.

Unlike Magic, Bellatorus doesn't have land cards. Instead, the three resources in the game (crosses, skulls, and lumber) are produced by three different kinds of workers (priests, liches, and workers). You can hire more workers on any turn (up to 3 of a single type), but of course lose your opportunity to play a card on that turn if you do. In addition, each type of worker requires a building for support (churches, graveyard, or lumber mills)--each supports 5 workers of the same type--and building a new building takes a turn. And you can spend a turn "working" to produce resources. One nice fillip; you can discard a card for a replacement on a turn you spending hiring, building, or working, so if you have no useful card to play right now, you can do something else helpful.