Flotilla

There Are Three amazing things about Flotilla. The first is that its crawling, ponderous-yet-majestic space battles are audially accompanied by Chopin, providing a hit of instant class that, alongside the game's beautifully low-fi art style, makes Flotilla one stylish bastard. Secondly, those space battles are carried out in a way we've very cleverly dubbed 'simulturneous'. (Don't worry, we Googled that, and nobody else has managed to be guite as smart as us).

What our invented term means is that both you and the AI choose your actions for one 30 second turn - planar movement, vertical movement, orientation and priority targeting -before they're all carried out simultaneously. Entry level strategising requires guessing where your opponent I is about to move. More advanced players can worry about guessing where he's guessing you're guessing he's going. Weaknesses on ships' flanks mean that orientation and weapon range are also important.

Thirdly: utter whimsy. Between battles you encounter short text-form scenarios. Your choices here trigger events further in the story. Allow the toucan stowaways aboard, and they might steal some technology. Salvage a haunted ship and you might get stalked by a Brumak. It's nonsense, but it tinges Flotilla with wonderful humour. You eventually succumb to space illness, so properly developing your flotilla is impossible. And the scenarios repeat themselves after subsequent adventures. This leaves Flotilla without any goal, or a feeling of progression. Stylish, funny, but sadly disposable.