IGF Finalist - Dyson
The inaugural article of what should be a bi-monthly column, I'll pick out from the overcrowded sea of "cheap as free" independent games and recommend ones worthy of wasting your life playing. Sometimes they'll be new, some times they'll be golden oldies, so no fussing!
This week it's a finalist from the recently concluded Independent Games Festival named cleverly for a relatively unknown concept, the "dyson tree" (you heard me, "tree" not "sphere"). Theoretical genetically engineered plants aside, the game is a fairly simple, yet incredibly addictive real time strategy where you colonize spheres, grow "flying leaves of doom" and attack, defend, and colonize more spheres until all the "flying leaves of doom" on the map are your color. The mechanics are simple and easy to learn, and seeing as the bang to buck ratio trends towards infinite at a positive limit, it's a smart buy in these hard economic times.
Support your local indie game dev by giving it a play and sending some feedback, or at least tossing him some scraps that he may continue to slave over a compiler for your entertainment.