Space Shooter with Clever Increase in Challenge

Where Scavenger excels is in its difficulty system, and its level of polish. The controls are very smooth--everything is controlled with the mouse, and the levels introduce new features and problems gradually. Scavenger's difficulty system is particularly clever: rather than simply making enemies more numerous or powerful, each difficulty level ads some new feature to complicate your life. For example, at the second level, there's gravity, constantly dragging you down to the bottom of the screen, so you must be firing your jets periodically to prevent contact with lower walls (any wall contact damages your shields); at the next, you have a limited amount of fuel for each level, and have to husband it carefully. This considerably increases the game's replay value--playing it on a higher difficulty level presents new challenges, not just more stuff.

SiSSYFiGHT 2000 is, like, an intense war between a bunch of girls who are all out to ruin each other's popularity and self-esteem. The object is to physically attack and majorly dis your enemies until they are totally mortified beyond belief. You'll never come out on top without making the right friends, so be careful who you're nice to. Because in the end, only the shrewdest will survive with their social status intact!

Classroom Doodles Come Alive in a Top-Down Shooter

Like everyone else, no doubt you've doodled little things on lined papers during boring classes. Maybe you doodled hearts and ponies, but more likely spaceships or airplanes. Matt Lucas apparently doodled soldiers and guns, at least by the evidence of this game: the graphics are pencil sketches, the background lined notebook paper.

Gameplay is simple, old-school shooting action; move your soldier with the WASD keys, shoot with the left mouse button or throw a grenade with the right, grab power-ups by walking into them. As you move across the map, you encounter enemies; if it moves, shoot it. Later on, you get to control a tank, and a helicopter. Simple fun, and the nature of the graphics is always charming, and sometimes rather humorous.

Smugglers 3 hearkens back to an earlier generation of 4X space exploration and conquest games. In a way, it's the sort of game I might have played on my old Apple II--but of course much prettier graphics.

You're a starship captain during an interstellar civil war, belonging to one of four factions in the war. Your primary activities involve trading (including smuggling illegal goods, if you so choose); accepting combat missions in support of your faction; or becoming a pirate and attacking planets. As usual in games like this, you start off with a tiny ship, and progress is mainly in the form of earning enough money and rising in rank so that you can get bigger and better ships.

This optional add-on expands the basic full version of the most-popular space trading game Smugglers 3 by many exciting features making it a must-have for everyone.

While other online role playing games mostly focus on monster bashing or warfare, Sociolotron has a totally different focus. This game is all about social interaction. If chatting with other players, combining your talents to accomplish tasks together, and having a lasting impact on the game world is your cup of tea, then you have come to the right place. But what's more, this game is specifically designed for players age 21 and older!

You must be over 21 to play, no exceptions! Sociolotron features strong adult content, language, and graphics. A game play you don't have anywhere else: No censorship of your game play, except for legal reasons. Game elements that enable you to run around and kill monsters (yes we DO have monster bashing also), elements that enable you to blackmail your fellow players, assassinate them, have sex, live out your darkest fantasies, and even establish a lasting dynasty. Death is a reality in this game and you must be prepared to pass on your belongings to a worthy heir!

MS Paint Meets Lemmings

In this ingenious little puzzle platformer, you need to guide a crew of little characters ("notes" whom "DJ Sonoro" is trying to steal) to the level's exit. You do so by painting--connecting ramps with orange paint, walls with red paint, jumping platforms with blue paint, and so on. But you have a limited quantity of each type of paint for each level, and have to be careful, particularly as DJ Sonoro (the enemy character) has a gun which he can use to destroy orange platforms (but not yellow ones). Painting is straightforward; select a color, hold the left mouse button, and draw.

A Little History

SpiritWars premiered in 1998 on WON.net, Sierra's now defunct online game service, and when WON was purchased by the Flipside network and was merged into their casual game service, Randy Chase, the developer, decided to keep it going, running it himself. The game's enthusiastic fans followed him off the service, and have kept it going ever since. Now in version 3.0, it's been iterartively developed over the years until it now contains a veritable wealth of different 'spirits' and maps, and has become a highly polished, smooth-playing game. This is, of course, one of the advantages of this kind of online game; it gets better with age and polish.

Slamdance Guerilla Games Festival Finalist

A sidescroller? Sorta; Steam Brigade's ultimate heritage is in games like Rescue Raiders. You and your opponent have bases at opposite sides of an area; you build units at your base, they move horizontally across the screen (which you have to scroll to see the full play area), and the ultimate objective is to take out the enemy base.

Old school gameplay, in other words but, well, very nicely implemented.

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.