The original Empire Builder game, a train-themed boardgame that used an erasable map and crayons, has spawned a series of followup games with maps for different regions. Some are better than others. My personal favorite is Eurorails, though Iron Dragon has some interesting features (notably the rules for engineers). Anyway, I mention them because someone in Germanyh has released free maps you can use with any of the Empire Builder series games. They’re available in both English and German, and so far he’s release a map of Africa and one for Germany. These are definitely worth grabbing if you’re a fan of the Empire Builder series of games.

If you disagree with that statement, you didn’t spend enough time playing arcade games in the 80’s and thus you speak from insufficient experience 🙂

Anyway I mention this because I’ve been playing with a pretty decent riff on the Missile Command theme this week, Strategic Oil Reserve.

You have to thank Geometry Wars for almost single handedly reviving the 8-way shooter genre. Granted, games like Crimsonland had come out before its release, but suddenly it seems like there are a wealth of decent Robotron-likes, and I have to believe its at least in part because of Geometry Wars (which, as an aside, you can now get for PC if you run Vista. From most accounts its pretty buggy though so it may not be worth it). Anyway, today’s example is called Naac, and it’s most similar to the old arcade game SmashTV. Free, windows only, and well worth checking out if you grew up on a healthy diet of arcade games in the 80’s. Note that I had to play with the Windows Data Execution Prevention settings to get this to run. Also note that unlike most games of this type you don’t need a joypad to play – you move using the keyboard and shoot using the Mouse. It works really well.

[Originally via jayisgames.com]

Puzzle Quest, a wonderfully addictive mashup of bejeweled and an RPG, from some of the folks who brought us the Warlords series of strategy games. This is PC only, though it will also ship for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. There’s more gameplay in the demo than you find in many commercial releases, and anyone who enjoys puzzle games or likes Bejeweled should definitely check it out, it’s an absolutely brilliant design. I preordered a copy of the DS version within 20 minutes of checking out the demo, it’s that good. The basic gameplay revolves around battles between your character and various opponents, fought over a bejeweled like screen where you take turns sliding gems around on the board. Making a combination of 3 or more gems causes the gems to disappear and various events to happen. The events vary by gem color and type and can be harmful or helpful. There’s a bit more luck than I generally luck but losing is relatively painless and the gameplay is so quick and engaging that a loss is just an excuse to play another round. My biggest problem is I always played Bejeweled on timed mode, meaning I’m habituated to trying to find combos as quickly as possible instead of trying to think what the smartest move would be, which is causing me no end of trouble against the computer opponents.

Anyway check it out, the release version will even have netplay included as well as a bunch of modes not included in the demo. If you don’t want to wander over to the Kotaku site to get this you can download it directly using this link.

Another variation on the tetris theme today – Blocksum, which is this clever, fun arcade puzzle game. Blocks with numbers in them rise slowly upwards. You can link blocks together to create sums – if enough blocks with equal sums are adjacent they’ll disappear and you’ll get points. It all seems simple enough till the pace increases and blocks with ever increasing initial sums start rising up. This is a great little diversion that takes a bit more skill than, say, solitaire. Windows only, free, for the downloading, and well worth a look.

Originally spotted over at the great Indygamer blog