Wow, I can't believe Gemcraft didn't win hands-down. That game (and its predecessor) was mindblowing. Oh well, can't have everything (where would you put it, as Stephen Wright says).

You should probably just start calling this category Best Tower Defense Game

[Edit: Tower defense games are the zeitgeist of browser-based strategy games of late. I doubt that it will remain like this forever. -Jay]

I kind of have to agree with Andrew :) TDs are killing the "strategy" categories because they are so very very fun and addictive. But in my book, Casual Collective's The Space Game (TSG) actually made the TD style game move forward a bit and even splashed fame on another cool game (Harvest). So TSG, in particular TSG Missions really had my vote this year.

I dont know why but i really don't like bubble tank TD. I think bloons TD 4 should have won with gemcraft.

I agree with 13anaan. I felt like there wasn't any replay value in bubble tank TD, you were always working on the same upgrade path every map.

Agreed...played it once and didn't go back, whereas I am still going back to Gemcraft all these months later to try to grind through all the levels and win all the skill points. It's so gorgeous and I love that the challenges of each level changed so much between the first iteration and the second. Still, this was another great category with some excellent games. I do look forward to getting some different sorts of strategy games in 2010 (not that I don't love TD, but I'm just as big a fan of the Sonny-type games and need a good one in that realm to make me deliriously happy!).

1066 is a highly overlooked adventure into the past.

I'm so glad BTD won. IMHO an awesome game, that really put a spin on the BT series

I quit playing bubble tanks when they actually straight out said you should use "juggling" to beat some of the later levels. If you can't beat a level without juggling, I don't want to play it. Bloons ftw!

I played both to conclusion, and gemcraft was so much deeper and better than bubbles, as tower defense goes. Bubbles was one-dimensional in upgrades meta order, clumbsy in it's level restrictions, and the bonus point system for calling waves was poor. Some of the other JIG awards were well done, this one was a bit of a fail. If editor's are exercising judgement to make 4th place games tie with 1st, the inverse should have been done here, bubbles was cute but did not, remotely, deserve the strategy win.

TSG was fun and different, although it was true you could meta trick the more difficult levels with a clever overbuild in linkages as useful repurposed shielding, which the enemy would attack.