When you first fire up Space War Commander, you may at first wonder whether there can be much of a game here. The basic structure is one that often leads to symmetrical gridlock: You have one starbase, an opponent has another, you must destroy the opposition. Scattered about the starfield are a number of planets and asteroids; each produces income for the owner (whoever's got a ship there). Generate income, buy new ships, defeat the enemy.

This structure is normally a slog, and one that becomes tedious quickly. Surprisingly, however, Space War Commander has a great more depth than at first appears.

Make It Good is a dark detective mystery from Jon Ingold: there's been a murder, and everyone who was in the house at the time is a suspect. The protagonist is a cop whose drinking career has all but eclipsed his career on the force. His sidekick doesn't bother to conceal his contempt at having to serve such a useless master.

On this description, Make It Good looks like a classic style of interactive fiction, in the tradition of Infocom's Deadline and Witness. Those early commercial mysteries involved some of Infocom's most innovative character work: the non-player characters in Deadline give a strong impression of independent purpose as they move about on their own schedules.

Make It Good improves on this tradition.

Rubbish Barrage is somewhat crude: hand-drawn images by someone who is clearly not a Photoshop jockey, backgrounds and music ripped from somewhere or other, hacked together by one guy pretty quickly.

It's also kind of charming. It's a sidescrolling shmup, with enemies appearing at any or all screen edges and following pre-set (but not a priori predictable) movement patterns. You have to dodge, or destroy enough of the attackers that they don't intersect you. Three lives and you're out, though this just puts you back at the beginning of the current level (thankfully), not the game.

Free RPGs are a dime a dozen on the Internet, but Lost Legends manages to stand out thanks to its great, highly stylized 3D graphics and a scalable camera that allows for gameplay from bird's eye to first-person viewpoints. There's no story to speak of here -- just name your warrior or wizard, pick a location on the map and jump into a random overworld and/or dungeon map for a bit of chase & chop fun.

Tabletop roleplaying began as an imaginative leap from miniatures gaming, and yet in many ways, particularly in its modern indie RPG form, it's closer in heart and ethos to theatrical improv. Improv is, of course, a form of finger exercise for actors, a way to hone their chops but not (usually) viewed as an end in itself; and similarly, there's a class of tabletop RPGs which can best be viewed not as full games in themselves, but as finger-exercises for gamemasters and/or players. To me, at least, the classic example is The Files Mr. Freitag, which perhaps I'll try to dig up the rules for at some point -- but Apocalypse Girl also falls into this category.

Platformers are cute, right? Nothing more than super-saturated, saccharine romps through whimsical worlds populated by bug-eyed and harmless enemies... right? Eversion defies the rule by providing a typically cheery world and slowly letting it decay.

Hypothetically, let's say that I got really baked last night. If we continue this hypothetical situation, let's say I played Super Mario Bros. and listened to The Modern Lovers (an amazing band, btw. Hugely Velvets' influenced, and the vocalist is a cross between Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. Gotta love the proto-punk.) While doing so, I made a lot of realizations on the nature of games, akin to how I felt after playing Pazzon a couple times. After doing so, I ruminated on the genre (a personal favorite of mine, since the days of Super Mario World. I love the vocabulary the system gives you, the aesthetics of the genre's best, and just generally mastering the spatial constraints of the games.) While doing so, I thought of making my postmodern take on the genre. I do need to learn my way around Game Maker to craft my adaptation of Passage, and it'd be great to make an homage to the genre. The game would start you being an NPC, going through scripted dialogue with other robotic NPC's. For whatever reason, your character inadvertently takes the red pill, and becomes conscious of the fact that he's in a game.

Blue blooded aristocratic siblings trying to kill each other with an army of killbots and an arsenal of mind control rockets. Media corrupted, Presidents bribed, shares purchased, commodities manipulated - sound familiar? In Terry Cavanugh's pre-apocalyptic vision, illustrated with poise by Derek Yu, we have a game that is both lightweight in scope and heavy in connotation. You start the game by choosing from a family of rich assholes with different asshole proclivities, one is a politico, another a finance geek, another is a straight-up fascist and yet another is a science nerd, (but a mean nerd, not one of the nice ones). These people represent both the stark genius hiding in our frontal lobes but also the misappropriation of resources toward determined psychopaths, at the expense of the rest of society. It's like Oilgarchy but mil-gov and more pulp.

When Tim Leary died, his last words were "why not?" This game is basically an expression of that. Total insanity giving way to refreshing mechanics and surprisingly deep arcade gameplay. See, you´re a garden gnome, or maybe a building, and you use tether physics in conjunction with left/right movement to knock these little bastard Christmas elves off of you. If one can climb up and get in your chimney, like a Santa of doom, then you lose. Each wave gets more crazy and loaded with elves, then they get the flying sleighs out and the black cats you never know quite what to do with. Then there´s this guy´s face popping up in moments of hysteria to reward you with a bonus token and a perpendicular sound effect. All in all, a wholly aesthetic mosh.

As this article makes clear, golf was originally an impromptu game played on landscape typical of the coastal glacial moraine of the British Isles. All of today's golf courses -- on terrain as varied as Hawaiian volcanic scree and Florida landfilled swamp -- essentially strives to recreate the landscape features of a forlorn bit of Scotland.

What if we got rid of that entirely, and instead created new games better suited to the landscapes in which we live? Arizona Desert Skeet-Ball, perhaps. Or even Brooklyn Urban Goff.

For which I will now devise the rules.

1. Before the game is scheduled to begin, the course master, henceforth to be known as the Goff Rebbe, shall determine the course. The course consists of 12 dinguses (because 18 is stupid and takes too long). Each dingus (corrresponding to a "hole" in golf) consists of one whatsis (starting position) and one dingus (target). No whatsis and its corresponding dingus shall be more than 200 meters or 3 blocks apart, whichever is smaller. The next whatsis should be no more than 25 meters (or one half block) from the previous dingus. Each whatsis and dingus should be a substantial fixed landmark feature, such as a lamp post, parking meter, or fire hydrant.

2. The Goff Rebbe shall indicate the location of each whatsis and dingus by marking it prominently. For courses expected to persist for some time, it is recommended that spray paint be used; a "W" followed by a number shall mark the whatsis, and a "D" followed by a number the corresponding target. For shorter-duration courses, the use of post-its is permitted. Each D location should contain, in smaller notations, an indication as to the location of the next whatsis -- in some cases, a spray-painted arrow may suffice, but in others, the Goff Rebbe may need to indicate a street location and corner (e.g., "4th & Union SW", the southwest corner of 4th Avenue and Union Street). Permanent-marker pens may be useful for this. When feasible, maps of the course should be provided to the players -- using GIMP to mark up Google Maps may be helpful here.

3. Each player will supply his or her own playing equipment, which shall consist of one (1) broomstick or mop handle, unscrewed from or sawed off from the actual broom or mop; and one (1) ball. Both india rubber balls and tennis balls are acceptable.

4. The players shall begin at whatsis 1. Each player, in turn, shall place his or her ball on the ground within one broomstick-length from the whatsis, then strike his or her ball toward the dingus.

5. When a player has hit his or her ball in such a way that it rebounds from the dingus, he or she is said to have "completed the dingus," and the number of strokes he or she required to do so is recorded, preferably in ink on the back of one player's hands, although in a pinch you can use scrap paper or your Twitter feed.

6. If a ball rebounds from some other object, e.g., a parked car or a passing pedestrian, you are required to "play it from where it lies," that is, to hit it from that position toward the dingus (but see rule 9).

7. Any injuries to pedestrians or property resulting from play of the game are entirely ascribable to the player, and he or she is wholly responsibility for any legal liability resulting therefrom. Players are entitled to wait a reasonable amount of time before making their next stroke, in order to avoid the danger of striking a pedestrian or some other object with their stick or ball. Players are encouraged to warn pedestrians and other players of the danger of an incoming ball by stating loudly the time-honored phrase "Wadjaback!" (analogous to Golf's "fore").

8. As in Croquet, it is legal to attempt to hit your ball in such a way as to move another player's ball to an awkward position.

9. If a player's ball is within 4 inches or 10 centimeters of an obstruction, such as a curb or the tire of a parked car, that clearly renders it impossible to strike the ball in the direction of the dingus, the player may move it to another location, at a distance not exceeding the length of a broomstick, so that a more direct hit may be made, at no penalty

10. In the event that a player's ball is entirely lost (e.g., over a fence into a locked yard, or down a storm drain), the player may place a new ball as close as possible to the point of loss, or within one broomstick distance of that point to allow for a reasonable backstroke, but incurs a one-stroke penalty.

11. Once the first dingus is completed, the players shall continue from the second whatsis, striking from within one broomstick length toward the second dingus -- and so on, until all twelve dinguses have been completed.

12. At that point, the player who, in completing the 12-dingus course, took the fewest number of strokes, is declared the winner. Players tied for the lowest score tie. Rather than retiring to the non-existent country club, it is suggested that players purchase beers from the nearest bodega, and drink them while sitting on someone else's stoop.