Shmups tend to start off easy then steadily build difficulty. Many times I have given up on a game because the difficulty ramps up so high. It is utterly frustrating to play 80% of the game and then quit because the game gets impossibly hard. Charlie fixes this problem in Scoregasm by offering a non-linear, grid-level advancement. If you score high, you will be offered a choice between Normal or Advanced, or if you really score high then you can go to the Insane levels. If you choose Insane and you score poorly, the game will drop you to Normal levels. Thus you are always facing the right difficulty level.

Caylus is a much-hyped game. The first printing sold out so quickly, people were calling it the second coming of Puerto Rico. Due to this popularity, Big Daddy Creations is releasing a universal iOS port this week. Caylus is a pure Eurogame, putting elegance over a rich theme. Although, you play a master builder constructing a castle in Caylus, France, you spend most of your time changing one color cube for another cube, which in turn will be converted into another color cube.

Caylus popularized the worker-placement mechanic whereby a player places a token (a worker) from a menu of choices, denying others that specific choice. Furthermore, the Provost and Bailiff mechanic is fascinating because they are neutral pieces (white discs) that any player can spend resources to move. You can use it to speed the game up as well shut down other player's buildings, and increase tension around their movement.

Caylus is also available as a Windows fanware by Jason Long.

...is that it tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist. We already have a universal points system, across all aspects of life, that represents status and is redeemable for real world prizes. It's called "money."

Ra is an ancient-Egyptian-themed, press-your-luck auction game by Renier Knizia. The rules says that you influence Pharaohs and pay homage to gods, but Ra is thinly themed. Regardless, the simple game mechanics and tough decisions make this game a perennial favorite.

There are three Epochs (rounds) of play. Each Epoch you have three uniquely numbered Sun (bidding) tokens, ranging from 2 to 16, that are fairly distributed according to number of players. For instance in a 5 player game, one player will get tokens 2, 7, and 16, while another will get 3, 8, and 15. Every turn each player makes a bid on the existing pot of tiles (call Ra), or draws blindly and adds one tile from the bag. If a player calls Ra, a Ra tile is drawn from the bag, or all eight tile slots are full, then a once-around English auction begins, the active player having the final bid. An Epoch ends when 10 Ra tiles are drawn.

In Infested Planet, Alex Vostrov is taking the basic gameplay dynamic he explored in his freeware Attack of the Paper Zombies and running with it. As in the previous game, you control a handful of space marines who must clear out a succession of spawn points that churn out huge numbers of opponents -- Zerg-like bugs here rather than the zombies of the previous game -- but Infested Planet has many improvements.

In Infested Planet, most levels are algorithmically generated rather than predrawn. There are several different weapons with which you may equip your marines, each with its own advantages and drawbacks; in addition, they can construct a number of defensive turrets, and use grenades to wipe out enemy structures. In early levels, the bugs have only one basic attacker, plus a defensive turret and eggs that can spawn more bugs, beyond those that bug bases create; later on, they can have a wider variety of building and unit types.

Water Galaxy is a pleasant little physics puzzler that, as with most good puzzle games, uses a handful of elements, combined in different ways, to create diverse challenges of increasing difficulty.

In a sense, it's a cannon game, but rather than trying to destroy an enemy, the conceit is that you are are shooting water from a planet to your "mothership;" apparently your race needs water. The idea that you travel interplanetary distances to get it is absurd, but whatever.

Minicraft was made by Markus Persson of Minecraft fame for a Ludum Dare competition. With NES-level graphics, it is essentially a crafting game with a sort of action-adventure resolution.

You begin with a weak weapon and a workbench in an algorithmically generated world. While you can kill enemies if they start near by, your main task at start is to chop down some trees (with your bare hands, evidently) in order to get wood to craft wooden tools. When you have a pick, you can mine hills for stone and the occasional coal drop; shovels can be used to dig for dirt or sand (depending on terrain). Hoes prepare ground for planting, and sometimes this drops seeds which you can plant. In some hills are stairways leading down to an underground, where iron and gold ore and gems can be found.

As always, everybody gets games for Christmas, both digital and non-digital. In years past, the digital have tended more to commercial release, but I decided to go indie this year.

Karen (my sweetie) wanted her own copies of both Puerto Rico and Minecraft.

Betsy, at Drew and a serious linguist, got Jaipur; she will doubtless read the German version of the rules. I got it for her mainly because she does not currently have a games group, and it's a two-player game, so she can play it with her b/f. And, on the digital side, The Blackwell Deception; Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games are among her favorites, and she has enjoyed previous games in the Blackwell series.

Vicky, who is at Oberlin and living in the Sci Fi dorm there, got Small World, an excellent game to play with her dorm mates, as well as the Humble Indie Bundle 4

Simona, who is 8, got Matt Leacock's Forbidden Island; perhaps a little advanced for her, but as the kid of game designers, she'll probably take to it. And, on the digital side, Costume Quest (the PSN downloadable version). Coincidentally, Vicky gave Simona Psychonauts -- like Costume Quest, a Tim Schafer game.

Battle Line is a 3-card poker game by Reiner Knizia. Although it is published by a wargame publisher, GMT Games, the theme is shallow and basically a two-player poker variant. It is a short but tense game of risk and hand management.

The game plays like this. Each player starts with a seven-card hand from a 60-card deck composed of six suits, ranging from from 1-10. A battle line is formed by placing six flags. On your turn, you play one card to a flag, face-up, then draw a card from a common draw pile. When three cards are played on a flag, it is be compared against the three card hand on the opposite side of the flag, for capture.