Whether based in Flash or java or php or whatever, I have been on a Browser Game kick lately. I can't really explain why, except that they tend to be easy to play from the office and generally allow me to roam the office, doing my job, as necessary without impeding my gameplay. They make for an acceptible, if not good, diversion to keep my brain from tying itself in knots over this report, that database error, or the user who forgets how to us their computer... every day.

A List of Browser Games from Wikipedia and a Google's directory entry for them.

So, what I am playing with right now...

I am most enjoying Ikariam, a time-based empire building game with a basic Greek theme to it. You start off with a single colony on a Greek-ish island that is one of many. Each island has ample forests to harvest for its lumber mill, a resource shared and expanded upon by all colonies on the island, as well as one of four other resources, also shared and expanded by all of the island's inhabitants. This makes for an interesting dynamic where you are technically competing with your neighbors, but you also don't want to cripple them else they stop contributing to the growth of your resource gathering potential. Of course, if they aren't contributing and just benefiting from the work of others... well, that can be interpretted as an act near to treason... a fact I found out early on, at the pointy end of a neighbor's spears. Thankfully, a bit of diplomacy led to the simple sharing of the "help the island or bleed on it" mentality that I have applied ever since.

There are a variety of different buildings to erect, each offering different options such as training troops via the Barracks or researching various things at the Academy. As expected, these buildings require gathering resources with the costs becoming larger and more elaborate with each successive level of improvement. Eventually you will have to grow and build a second (and third and fourth...) colony on nearby islands to better procur other resources that you will need. Sure, you can stick with your solitary land and just focus on economic means to acquire what you need... but that gets expensive and the market is not a stable place. Best to be self-sufficient, says I.

Along your way you can build armies, war fleets, merchant fleets, spy networks, diplomatic alliances, and trade networks. You have a good amount of options in how you choose to play, be it in building a large army or fleet to bully your way to power or by building a healthy economic strength. I make enough enemies in my everyday life, so I like to play passively online and have favored economy and trade over military.

Everything you do takes time. Not to say that the game is slow-paced, but that each action has a certain amount of real-time that must pass before it completes. From resource gathering to construction of buildings to loading goods on ships to training troops to researching new achievements... the earlier levels are measured in minutes but as you get more and more advanced, it can take hours and even days to complete an action. At first, I thought that this would get stagnant and boring, but with four colonies and no desire to micro-manage any of them, it has actually paced well with me. You can only construct/improve one building at a time and you can't queue anything, which I don't like, but it's not so bad as to really harm the entertainment.

Of all the games so far, it looks the best on the whole, too. The 3D renderings are nice, if without much variety, and the interface is asthetically pleasing and fairly easy to get around. Ikariam COULD use some more instructions, as some things are not as easy to pick up on as they should be, but again... it isn't anything that ruins the entertainment.

Were I rating Ikariam on GS, I would give it a solid 7-7.5. I suggest trying it out. If you join the Delta server (and are close enough to me), I'll even send some trade ships your way to help you out. :)

A very similar game is Travian, which I have seen far more advertising for than Ikariam, so you've probably already heard of, if not played, it. Despite being nearly identical in function and play, I don't like Travian. I think the key reason is that resource gathering does not feel paced correctly with the needs of play and the only way to improve it is to spend time developing it in lieu of improving your town. There is far more to build in Travian than Ikariam but you can't do as much until your buildings are well-developed. It ends up being a much, much slower game than Ikariam, weighed down by its additional complexity. There is a lot of interesting potential in it, but I find myself annoyed rather than entertained.

It works in most ways just like Ikariam. You have a colony and you gather resources with which to build and expand. As I said, there are a lot more buildings in Travian, but glancing across the list doesn't leaving me nodding in approval so much as shrugging in acceptance. While Travian gives you access to all the various resources you may need right from the start without the need to buy or found further colonies, you have to spend time and resources expanding them in order to keep the gathering rate flowing at a level that comfortable supports your work on your village. Except it isn't that easy and I have yet to establish a steady flow or trend of growth. Instead, I wait a day or two for my warehouse to fill up with resources, chew through those resources in one day expanding my village, wait another day or two to fill the warehouse again, chew through those resources in a day expanding my resource gathering and/or recovering from an attack, and then I repeat that cycle.

The acceptible but flat and not very appealing while the interface leaves a lot to be desired.

My GS score for Travian would be 5, 5.5 tops. Not only would I be wary of suggesting it, I would say just go play Ikariam instead if you are interested in such a game.

The last one, for now, is Tiny Warz. What you get here is a bit of real-time building and economics coupled with a turn-based, but fast, strategy game. It is in instanced MOG, in that you deploy your army to a selected planet at the same time as other players and a global timer clicks down the turns, in one minute increments, while you issue orders to your assorted tanks, buggies, and meka. It is primarily PVP, though there are some NPC bandits that are a common foe and a trio of "training planets", where carebears like me are fairly free from harassment by bottom-feeding veterans out for a bit of newbie harassment.

When you begin, you get some Construx, which are blueprints for building various units, buildings, and mods (ie items to modify your units). You also get a handful of vehicles, mostly combat oriented tanks, and some crews. You, as the commander, have some level points that you can use to improve yourself (though I would suggest playing for a while before you dip into those). Playing is as easy as placing your commander and crews into vehicles, selecting a planet to deploy to, and roaming around to do whatever it is that you elect to do. Your commander and crews will level up by fighting other units, mostly bandits, and while deployed you can have a utility vehicle mine ore deposits or salvage wrecked vehicles you come across (or make via combat). Ore can be used to build things that you have Construx for or sold on the market for credits. Obviously, credits are used to buy things.

The primary resource in the game, however, is Command. Command is used for damn near everything that you do, from building units to deploying onto a planet to issuing certain commands once deployed. You earn 50 Command every night, at midnight, but if you acquire something called Paid Days that jumps up to 100 per night. Paid Days, as well as TinyBucks, are where the game makes its money. Both can be acquired by a skilled player without ever spending a real dime, though the most direct way to acquire either is by forking over some cash. The prices don't seem horrible and there are a lot of options so that you can just spend a few bucks to see if having Paid Days or TinyBucks is worth it to you.

Paid Days, in addition to the increased Command rate, also have the benefit of allowing you to use better units and mods. If you don't have Paid Days, you are limited to only using vehicles or mods ****fied as Simple. No matter how you come to possess Intermediate or Advanced items, if you don't have Paid Days then you can't use them. I find this a little irritating, but it is ultimately not THAT bad.

TinyBucks are a separate tier of currency that can be used to purchase more Construx sets, train your crews more quickly, buy Paid Days, or respec your Commander's selection of commands or abilities. There is ample trading of TinyBucks for Command or large sums of Credits, making it a universal currency that anyone could get and, thus, the road to Paid Days without actually spending any real money.

There is a lot to be said for the complexity of the game, though the community is quite obnoxious in sharing information. Rather than interact with new players and answering their questions, even the supposed moderators just vomit a mean-spirited link to the game's Wiki, which covers everything you need to know far easier than explaining that much via chat but does nothing to encourage a new player to become part of the community. It's a very insular place, with the veterans taking a seeming delight in the inside jokes, hidden tricks, and general torment of the uninitiated. Finding my entertainment in mining and building things, I am leveling painfully slow and have yet to set foot on the PVP planets... and I imagine the vets will enjoy steam-rolling me once I do. I'll probably build up a large stock of ore and credits before I risk deploying, just in case I have to start over nearly from scratch.

While I would give the game itself a GS score of 7, the community brings me down to a 6 without hesitation... which is sad. There are some things about the game's basic design that I don't agree with, but these wouldn't even amount to half a point in their impact.

There are a few more that I have been toying with, but I'll save those for later.