Return of the Beloved Amiga Classic

Largely a remake of the much-loved Amiga game Defender of the Crown (later released for just about every platform available in the late 80s, including the NES), Heroes Live Forever updates the game with better graphics, fully digitized music, and a new gameplay element ("tactics" cards that give you special benefits during battles).

In Defender of the Crown, you play one of several great lords in England, attempting to unify the realm under your own rule. Conquering provinces produces tax revenues that you can use to increase the size of your army (but you have only one "army" which follows you, milord, about, and can purchase new units only at your castle, meaning you become vulnerable over time unless you return home frequently).

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.

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.

In Space No One Can Hear You Giggle

Derelict's backstory is straight out of Aliens: you encounter and board a derelict spaceship which proves to be teeming with nasty alien critters who try to eat you and whom you must mow relentlessly down with high-powered, futuristic weapons. But the Alien series is brooding, dark, and bloody, while Derelict is light hearted, well-lit, and rather charming; the aliens may want to eat you, but they're aliens out of Nick Jr. rather than Lovecraft.

Elegant Sword-Fighting Game with Outrageous Stunts

While many games indeed contain sword-wielding characters, very few make even a cursory attempt actually to simulate the dynamics of sword-fighting, nor yet to impart a sense of how it actually feels to engage in swordplay.

That's what Determinance does. True, what it simulates is less the reality of fencing that the sort of over-the-top dramatic swordplay you'd expect in Highlander or a Hong Kong action flick, but hey, that's fun. What it does, and elegantly, is allow you to control sword motions, body positions, and arm positions with nothing but the mouse and its buttons.

Blow Things Up Real Good

DevastationZone Troopers is not a deep game--but there is a lot to be said for picking one thing and doing it well. And DZT does precisely that: it's a Ramboesque third-person shooter (in nicely rendered 3D) where you run around, gun blazing, and blow things up real good. Cathartic fun, in other words.

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...

Family-Friendly Sidescroller with Cute Marsupials

Dispell is a cute classic sidescroller in which you, an apprentice wizard are attacked by a variety of demonic marsupials--whom you have to "rescue" by zapping them with your wand, than grabbing them before they hit the ground.

It's geared for kids (hence the non-violent theme), but is challenging enough (at least if you crank the difficulty up) for adult sidescroller fans, too. And there's a co-op play mode, too, so you can play with your child, if you like. Good clean fun.

2004 IGF Winner For Innovation in Audio and Innovation in Digital Art
Now Free!

From Digital Eel (oft-time IGF nominees and creators of the excellent Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, among other games) comes this oddball circle-shooter. The basic gameplay here you've seen before: You are shooting from the edge of a circle at something in the middle, and you have to zip around the circle (using left and right arrow keys) and firing madly, trying to keep the thingie at the center from touching the edge.

But in Dr. Blob's organism, the circular thing you're firing around is a petri dish... some kind of nasty and potentially lethal organism is attempting to escape.

The Best Puzzle Game of All Time

Or so says the Mathematics Association of America, and who are we to disagree?

To call it a puzzle game is inadequate, however; the DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death) games are sui generis, and about the only quick way to describe them is as "Gauntlet meets Sokoban."