STG's

Kudos 2 is a life sim. The first game I played in this genre (and as far as I know the first in the genre) was Jones In The Fast Lane, from Sierra, in 1990. Funnily enough, some aspects of the VGA graphics are probably as good as today, while there was actually more movement (although mostly in a game board format). Kudos 2 is similar in many aspects - you have a number of activities you can take, including work (required, every day of the week - you can choose your method to arrive, such as walking, bus, bycicle or car), solo activities (reading book, baths, cleaning, jogging, taking classes, etc) or activities with friends (eating at restaurant, bowling, museums and many more). Extra activities unlock during the game, and sometimes depending on what you buy (such as chess sets, video games, cars, etc). You can only have an activity per work day, and two in the weekends. You have a whole bunch of stats, with various effects, such as loneliness, happiness, kudos, excitement, etc ...

Stargate Atlantis: Homecoming - by Jo Graham and Melissa Scott - is a continuation of the Stargate Atlantis series finale, where Atlantis lands on Earth. Now the crew wants to get back to the Pegasus galaxy to continue fighting the Wraith (who after all, might end up coming to Earth), but the politicians would rather keep the technology. They end up getting back, but having problems along the way - in almost exactly how they usually would in the series, which is followed by exactly the regular stuff of the series. Of course, if you liked the series, like I did, that will feel like a satisfying (even if not particularly clever) extension of it. Thus, recommended for the fans of the series.

Neptune's Brood - by Charles Stross - is an interesting SF view through a future where humanity (kind of) has expanded to many stars - but never figured out how to travel faster than light. Thus, they can only travel on very slow colony ships - that max out at 1% light speed - or digitize themselves and upload between star systems. The latter is helped by the fact that humans have evolved beyond our current bodies (now named Fragiles) and now are based on a very interesting structure based on mechanical cells. These allow for upgrades (vacuum resistence, wings, pressure resistent, different forms, etc), and you can actually backup your brain state on what is called a soul chip. There are also a few drawbacks, like being attacked with a debugger or an hilarious but short zombie situation. One of the interesting things in the future is that the very rich can just "fork" themselves into new people, adding features to further their interests. They can either transfer ...

Rogue Legacy is a (very hard) platformer with a playing field that changes every time. And every time you kill, you can restart, but with a couple of major details: you keep whatever gold you had AND you pick one of your descendants to play (that is the legacy part, of course). Here is where you upgrade, mostly. Each descendant can have several characteristics, including being a dwarf, a giant, color blind, near sighted, and much more. Later in the game you can also unlock other types - such as a miner (gets more loot, but is weaker), mage (can choose between spells), and more. Each hero has its own spell, although some can switch between several. This hero had dizziness problem. And text is also inverted... This hero is near sighted. Graphics are obviously a little on the retro side, but are pretty good. There are plenty of unlocks, too. What I don't like is - this is in the rogue style, so it is pretty hard and you will probably die often. Also (and that is...

Puzzle Craft is mostly a match-3 game. But there are some clever RPG and very minor city building elements too. First of all, the match 3 action - it takes place either on the mines or the farm. Here is the mine (there are more tile types later in the game). The match-3 scheme is based on choosing a type, and dragging your finger across matching tiles. You can also use diagonals, which makes a huge difference. Both farm and mine are limited by number of moves, and you can get upgrades that give you more moves. The farm has several upgrades that allow some tiles to be extracted for free. Using tool don't count as a move. Some tiles give you bonus elements. For example, matching a certain number of coals will make a diamond appear on the tile grid. You can also note on the top row of the previous screenshot some of the tools. There are plenty of tools - tools to grab all of an elements, transmute elements, remove dirt, etc, etc. These are very useful and can almost always ...

At a first look,  Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten looks like another Flash TD game. The graphics (VERY retro), sound and the fact that it is written in Flash all contribute to this impression. However, the game has a very nice, well told story and the TD elements have plenty of room for different tactics and strategies. TD is done with fighters you either recruit automatically on the story or for scrap (the game's credits) on towns. That alone is a major element as they are expensive and get more so with each added recruit. Types are berserks (sword fighters), archers, healers, knights (sword fighters with heavy armor and that pierce enemy armor), ice mages and dragons. You place them in the maze, as usual. However, each one has a small cost in Psi (power units that you get on the start, as well as for killing enemies), so you can't just hire lots of them without thinking. Each kind of unit has different powers that are only available at different upgrades...

The Frozen Sky - by Jeff Carlson - is a SF novel that takes place on Europa (the Jupiter moon), during first contact with alien species. I like the "Frozen Sky" metaphor, as well as the later insights on how the aliens think. There is some nice AI tech forays in the beginning, but that has little effect for most of the book. It starts well, but the middle really bogs down. Thankfully it picks up in the end. Overall I'd give it a 7/10.