RTS

"In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles,. [...] The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: 'What appears is good; what is good appears.' The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply."

-Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

Gratuitous Space Battles (GSB) is hardly the top-down big-corporate mass-media product that Guy Debord denounced in his in/famous 1967 Society of the Spectacle, but neither is it the pointed procedural commentary of, say Molleindustria's Kosmosis. It's not a RTS, though it looks like one, and it's not a tower defense game, though the game's own advertising copy comperes it to one. It is a limited-resources design game, a little like Spore was supposed to be; a quirky, original little strategy game; and a procedurally-generated spectator sport. The game is a bit of a paradox, being a “casual” game for grognards and/or a RTS for turn-based strategy gamers. GSB is playable in small chunks, simple in interface, complex in statistical model, and hands-down the prettiest 2d game to hit the market since Peggle. It is also, intentionally or not, a commentary on the state of the gaming industry and the evolution of “the society of the spectacle” in the digital age.

Like The Space Game, Creeper World combines the resource extraction of RTS games with tower defense. But it's quite original in one regard; rather than fighting creeps, you fight a sort of blue ooze.

Just when you get jaded about genre derivations and overly "zany" aesthetics from the casual game sector, coupled with a sense of market saturation and imminent collapse oddly reminiscent of the US housing market, something like this comes along. Plants vs. Zombies is the latest hyper-polished, QAed-to-the-max casual fiesta from PopCap, a company whose success is driven by one part design innovation, three parts user testing, and two parts production value.

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.

09 IGF Winner in the Audience Choice and Technical Excellence Categories

This is retro. It's a sidescrolling combat game with graphics that look out of the early 90s, a very classic look in turn-based strategy (which this is not), with little soldiers gunning at each other in what at first glance looks a bit like a cannon game, but isn't.

This is novel. Everything is destructible, the control system is original, you can switch bodies instantly while setting other bodies to routine tasks (like patrol or defend), and the physics feels real.

Mario Zechner took the basic ideas behind Dyson and developed a multiplayer version in Java, along with a series of maps that are much larger than the ones in Dyson. (With the approval of the Dyson developers.)

The Space Game marries the resource extraction component of an RTS with a tower defense game. No surprise here; The Casual Collective is Paul Preece and David Scott. Preece created Desktop Tower Defense, though this is Scott's game.

So a guy walks into a bar... no, wait let me start again. A girl walks into a bar... no, the girl walks out of the bar, that's it.

Hey I've got an idea, let's start making games about rape, just to explore the limits of the high, and maybe see if games can show us something about being human that narrative about rape cannot. Ok, what would be a good title for such a game? How about Rape?

Maybe I´m tapping into something fundamental about the human animal, but riding a bastard sword through a guy´s neck is fucking satisfying. It´s like the thwack of a Wii Tennis ball, the chime of a Tetris, the clink of gold coins being collected, the closing of a profitable trade; carnal base-hormones are triggered, edifying the beast, galvanizing the spine. This is core gameplay at its purest, an unceasing reinforcement exercise, like the thrust of procreation pushed on endlessly, taking lives away rather than risking new ones. Real visceral kind of fun, just like our ancestors used to have when they ran each other through with long swords over land and women, back in the day. When I made another pass on my horse and cut down two blokes in a row, I turned to my chica and said "this kind of thing happened a lot back then." At least, it feels like it should have.

Dyson is a 4X (explore, exploit, expand, exterminate) space game with unusual technology and a curiously serene feel. You play an alien lifeform that colonizes asteroids, but competitors are doing the same (RTS-like), and your ultimate goal is to exteriminate them.

Your mobile units are "seedlings," which both battle enemies and can be used to build "trees" on asteroids; it takes 16 seedlings to initiate a tree. Trees are of two types -- ones that create more seedlings, and ones that grow defensive pods that are launched at enemies attacking your asteroid. Asteroids range in size and energy, and can each support between one and five trees.