Starscape

Starscape is a great example how a small team that knows what its doing can pack a lot of gameplay into a small package--and Moonpod, a team of long-term industry vets turned indie, know precisely what they're doing.

At its heart, Starscape is a space "shmup" (shoot-em-up) with the kind of fast, intense shooting action you expect in a game of that style; but layered atop that is a game of resource management and tech development.

The back story is that something goes terribly wrong when Earth's "first interstellar space station" triggers its experimental faster-than-light drive, catapulting it into another dimension filled with hostile aliens, who make off with the FTL drive and much of the station's computer core. To get home you have to get them back, a process that apparently requires you to slaughter a whole lotta alien starships. But the space station is severely damaged, and to win, you'll need to collect resources, build new weapons and ships, and research technologies to give you new ways to blow up aliens and defend yourself against their evil depredations. Collecting resources involves, well, shooting the crap out of asteroids and using a tractor beam to suck the resources in, then delivering them to the station; research is by a series of static menus (with the crew of the station occasionally cutting in with advice).

In other words, this is something akin to an RPG campaign game, with a story and series of quests you need to accomplish, and if your character's skills don't improve (hopefully your own skills do--this is a player-skill rather than character-skill game), you still do upgrade your ship and space station over time. And as you do, your opponents get more fearsome, culminating in some amazingly tense boss battles.

Graphically, the look is a mix of anime-style character graphics (when in the space station) and arcadey 2D space combat action when in your ship. No, this isn't some high-end Unreal engine title--but the tenseness of combat and the mission progression does tend to suck you in. If hammering on a fire key, zipping around space, and blow up aliens real good is your idea of a fine time (and why wouldn't it be?), you won't go wrong with Starscape.

Game Tunnel's 2003 Game of the Year (and Adventure Game of the Year as well)

They rated it 10 out of 10, too...