Treo games: Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Village Sim
I know this weakens my case with Jenn that my new cell phone is a work device, and not a toy, but I just want to rave about two shareware games I picked up, since I now have a phone robust enough to play them:
- Strange Adventures in Infinite Space is a quickie game, lasting to a maximum of about 15 minutes. You pilot your ship around the sector, trade, fight hostile aliens, avoid intestellar hazards and collect technology and biological specimens for big bucks at the end, all with a somewhat retro look and feel.
Other than wishing there was some better way of knowing what the value of the various items was (the final score feels a little like a crapshoot), it’s a lot of fun, and extremely well-done.
- Village Sim is a very different sort of animal than SAIS. In it, you help primitive castaways survive life on a new island with a mysterious past. You have to help them gather food, build shelter, learn medicine and handle the mysterious things on the island that predate them.
The interesting part is that the game continues even when you’re not playing (well, it notices how long since you’ve been playing and plays a bunch of turns instantly when you log back on). Fortunately, it goes slowly enough that I haven’t managed to, you know, do work or have a life and come back to find my five little castaways dead, but I have had a few surprises, like finding an old drum with something inside or my castaways picking the local berry bushes clean. An interesting little sim.
