The FINAL FRONTIER

You know whats awesome? Space. Know whats even better? Flying around in space in your own spaceship. Even better than THAT? Flying around in space in your own space ship meeting alien species and going on SPACE ADVENTURES. Unfortunately its unlikely that you or I will be able to go into space today, so I got a game for you today that is all about doing just that. Take a look at Star Control 2, brought to you by the Ur-Quan Masters Project!

Hey I dont think that alien is friendly, just FYI

Just what IS Star Control 2? Well let me tell you! Its an adventure game that originally came out in the November of 1992. It takes place in space as the title implies, with the plot taking you all across the galaxy, being diplomatic with alien races, getting into fights when diplomacy fails, maintaining and upgrading your ship, pouring over star charts to see where to go next, all in an effort to save the galaxy from things I'm not going to reveal because spoilers.

UPGRADING

What is the Ur-Quan Masters Project? Well let me tell you! The original developers over at Toys for Bob made an effort to port the original 3DO game to work on modern systems, the Ur-Quan Masters Project team took over when the open source of the unfinished port was released to the public. Its been a long project, going back to at least 2003, but the game is in a playable state so its all worth it.

EXPLORATION

Star Control is one of those games that people look back on when they're waxing nostalgic. From the game play to the art to the number and range of alien species, the guys over at Toys for Bob hit the magic formula. So if you like SPACE, SPACESHIPS, SPACE ADVENTURES, ALIENS, or adventure games in general, then Star Control 2 might be for you

DIPLOMACY

You can snag Star Control 2 here

Dance, puppets! DANCE!

HEY YOU! Yeah, you! You ever want to command legions of little, helpless people and send them off to die, but DONT want to join the army or get into politics? Well then do I have a game for YOU! The name of the game today is Lemmings, I hope you're prepared to get REALLY frustrated trying to figure how to save them all on the harder levels.

Developed back in 1991 by DMA Design, an eight man team, and published by Psygnosis for Amiga, Atari, and PC among others, Lemmings is looked back on as one of the best games to come out at the time, and is considered by some to be THE best Amiga game ever. A numerous amount of expansions and level packs came out for it, making the end result level total fairly absurd. 

"Aw, I ran out of builders"

The internet labels Lemmings as a puzzle-platformer and I'd have to agree, each level is basically an obstacle course you need to guide your lemmings through from start to finish, using skills you can assign individual lemmings to make a path through destructible walls, over pits and around traps to get to the exit. The skills themselves are fairly self explanatory: Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, and Digger.

It takes hard training to be able to punch through a wall with your bare hands

This version of Lemmings was remade entirely with Javascript, and is playable from your browser. It doesnt have any multiplayer capability like some versions of the original, but its more than enough to help you kill time, especially with the original difficulty levels in place. If you want to maliciously torment things that cant fight back, or sob at your computer helpless wondering "WHY CANT I SAVE EVERYONE" then Lemmings might be for you!

"What? NO! DONT GO THERE STOP KILLING YOURSELVES"

You can play Lemmings right from the internet here, just dont try it on a toaster

Steam powered sword wielding robots on another planet

Know whats great? Robots (When they aren't rising up against us). Know what isn't all that great? Crazed wild life, rabid animals, demons, sentient plants, and violent elemental creatures (unless they're attacking someone you don't like, then its great!) So lets talk about a game that has all of that, and way more! That game is Spiral Knights

SPIRAL KNIGHTS

Spiral Knights is of those massively multiplayer RPGS. It's pretty action oriented, instead of having a large overworld to explore, the game play mostly takes place in the semi-randomly generated dungeons, full of treasure, traps, monsters, and boss fights. The gameplay feels like the Four Swords Zelda game, especially with a party fight along side. Like all MMOs, you can play it solo if you want but its not as good as playing with a group, so your mileage may vary. The art for the game is great, lots of color and fun designs, you can tell the artists had fun with this project.

"Hey"

The reason why I never talked about this game before was because of the system that would limit how many dungeons you could enter per day, and how many times you could resurrect after dying per day, and seeing as they let you just buy more time that was HOW THEY GOT YOU, but in a recent patch they've eliminated that system and the game is getting a second wind because of it, so if there's a time to jump in, its now.

ADVENTURE is calling

If any of that sounds good to you, or you just want to play dress up in a video game, or you like the idea of robots wearing armor, or you're one of THOSE people and just want to scream obscenities into the chat to bug other people then Spiral Knights might just be for you!

Time to go fight EVERYTHING

You can snag Spiral Knights here