As a kid, one of my first games was Maelstrom, a slick Asteroids clone for the Mac by Ambrosia Software (who later went on to publish the Escape Velocity series). I have childhood memories of the two-note soundtrack while playing the two simplest strategies (spin in place without accelerating, and zoom upwards in a straight line firing all the way), of the “You EEdiot” when you accidentally shot a power-up canister, and the “Pretty good, pretty good!” for when you score over 10,000 points in a single stage.

Except if I open up Maelstrom now, it says “Hot damn!” instead.

(Go to belkadan.com)

Last weekend I spent several hours on Tunic’s “offline” puzzle: its written language, dubbed “Trunic” by its fans. Several hours was actually less than I expected it to take! And figuring out the answer was satisfying and I immediately wanted to write something in Trunic myself.

(Go to belkadan.com)

I’ve been enjoying Slipways, a space exploration/economy game with the tagline “Build vast space empires. Still be done in time for lunch.” Roughly speaking, Slipways is a mini version of Stellaris the way Polytopia (also recommended) is a mini version of Civilization.

But Polytopia is a multiplayer game, and I like casual multiplayer games like that. And Stellaris and Civilization support multiplayer too. And even though Slipways isn’t a combat game, or really a competitive game in any way, I think you could make a good cooperative multiplayer game out of it: two empires trying to achieve the highest possible score together.

(Go to belkadan.com)