Gordaen's Blog

(Update: Of these games, I am only currently playing AstroEmpires.)

Anything that is free is good. Well, that’s not entirely true. A lot of free things really suck, including online games, so I thought I would post about a few of the online simulation games that I have enjoyed. With these kinds of games, the player doesn’t “control” a character like in a typical game, but, rather, the player makes choices that will affect the outcome based on strategy. I’ll probably post on more action-oriented games (i.e., flash games) in the near future.

BatRacer
Previously, I had talked about BatRacer, a free, online racing simulation. You can enter various leagues (F1 2006, Supercars, etc.) and attempt to optimally tune your car. Some leagues have teams and some do not. You attempt practice runs on the track and adjust the car according to the feedback you receive. You can have your driver race harder, potentially having more feedback as the car is pushed to the limits, or the driver could wreck the car and you will enter the race with an untuned vehicle. You also control your driver’s choices for the race, but you set them before the race. For instance, you can say what tires to use, how hard it has to rain before he switches tires, when to pit, if he should pit during a caution, etc. It can take a bit to get the hang of it, but the game is fun. Overall, it’s an investment of about 5 minutes per day.

CyberNations
A game I’ve been playing regularly for almost a month now is CyberNations. Obviously, since I am playing it, this game is free as well. You create a nation and simulate control over it. You can choose to be aggressive or defensive. In a way it is like a nation-version of SimCity. Your income is based largely on population happiness, but your goal is to make money (and spend it on your nation in order to grow stronger), so sometimes it is generally better to tax your citizens heavily rather than being a nice ruler (who ever heard of one of those anyway?). You start out with a tiny section of land and only a few followers, but you gain land, infrastructure, technology, and more as you go. With a higher technology you can buy tanks, cruise missiles, even nuclear weapons. You can join an alliance for strength in numbers or you can go solo. The game is very fun, but it takes a little bit to get the hang of it. Be sure to read the wiki to help ensure your money is spent correctly (e.g. don’t save up and buy technology, focus on infrastructure in the beginning). This game can be anywhere from 10 minutes a day to as long as you want to spend on it. I would say, once you get the hang of it, it will generally be around 15 minutes, but it can vary quite a bit.

AstroEmpires
The game I’ve started most recently is called Astro Empires (see the more detailed post about AstroEmpires). I’ve only been playing it for a few days, so I can’t say how great it is yet, but it is interesting so far. This one is different from the previous two games in that the game is continuously running. You start out with a colony on one planet and you build structures and research technology in order to improve and expand your control. Each thing that you build or research takes a certain amount of time. You can actually watch the clock tick down until you can do something else. Each building costs an amount of credits, takes energy, and requires citizens to run, so you can’t just sit there waiting for the timer to run out. You have to plan out what is most important (economy? technology? expansion?) and spend accordingly. So far the game is cool, but it does look like more of a time commitment than the others. It’s also a fairly new game, so documentation is a bit limited.