Raise money to save a forest from being cut down. It's a good cause so it should be easy, right? Wrong! Pick up your trusty clipboard and beat the streets talking to people and trying to stir them into donating to meet your goals. But be warned... getting people to open their wallets is harder than you think when your confidence, trust, charisma, and even job is on the line in this unique simulation/arcade game.

A girl, a guy, and an after-school get together that could turn into something more. Sounds familiar, right? Wrong! Made in just two days, this short and silly but also surprisingly earnest little visual novel dating sim is weird in all the best possible ways.

Rejoice, because Little Giant World has brought us a delightful new resort management simulation, and we can finally put away the exquisitely-detailed dollhouses and model train sets of yesteryear. Between upgrading your rooms, adding new facilities and making sure everything's being well-maintained, Resort Empire is hours of absorbing fun for any resource management fan interested in crafting the perfect life for their virtual townsfolk.

Months after the tournament that decided Kurestal Kingdom's next ruler, one of the knights sacrifices his life to save the new king. In The King's League: Odyssey, the sequel to Kurechii's popular game from 2011, you manage a team of fighters who are looking to fill the job opening.

A False Saint, An Honest Rogue, and one very cold adventurer. Created by Jeremiah Reid for the Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) competition, this unusual game mixes survival and roguelike elements in a strange and often confusing way. But that's why we like it! You're out in the cold, you're freezing, you're starving, and you have to survive. Sounds fairly ordinary until you factor in the fact that you're going a bit mad from the chill, and many things you think you see don't make much sense at all. There's just one thing on your mind: go west.

Currently in playable alpha version, Avant-Garde is a narrative simulation/RPG where you play a burgeoning artist in the Paris art scene of the 19th century. Create your own artwork to sell or display in Le Salon, rub elbows with famed artists such as Manet, Monet, Picasso and Dali, and learn more about art history as you participate in impressionism, surrealism or even create your own art movements. While still incomplete, there is already much here to satisfy both the gamer and artist in you.

Work with other players to cooperatively end the frosty reign of darkness in this gorgeous and deceptively casual looking game of kingdom building and resource management. Blending elements of puzzling with real-time strategy, your task is to lay roads and factories for your little Flans to travel, gather resources, and beat back the winter. But it's not as easy as it sounds, and you'll need real planning, logic, and craftiness to win at this engaging and innovative game.

Have a heart. Or rather, cut one out and put a new one in. Created in just a weekend, Bossa Studios delivers a hilariously morbid simulation of open-heart surgery where you control each finger of a hand separately and try to keep your patient alive with absolutely zero experience... or instructions.

Choice of Games and Alana Joli Abbott deliver a gorgeously detailed and immersive text adventure for iOS and Android set against the backdrop of mystical ancient China. Outwit or succumb to mischievous fox spirits, challenge or support the emperor, become a student or one day a teacher of an ancient art, and craft a legacy that will stand the test of time.

When an evil businessman wants to take possession of a forest that's beloved by the town, it's up to you to stop him... by training up a horrifying beast of mass destruction in this bizarre but addictive training/combat simulation with a fantastic visual style and a surreal premise.

The Papa's series of time-management restaurant sims is back for more, and this time you can be the star! When season tickets for your favourite baseball team don't seem like an option, taking a job at the in-park hotdog stand seems like a great way to catch all the games... right up until you realise you're running the show solo! The core gameplay hasn't changed much, but fans of the series will welcome yet another chance to sling the best fast food around.

Join Jack and his friend Scout on the trail of the dastardly wizard who nabbed the princess, learning to forge increasingly more powerful weapons for the soldiers who are willing to pick up arms for you, and gather new, more powerful blueprints and materials along the way. Despite there being nary a fast food item in sight, gameplay is pretty similar to Flipline's Papa's series of games... only with steel and pigmen.

Sarah Northway's massively popular zombie survival simulation strategy game gets an update in time for its anniversary on its mobile platforms! With the threat of winter hanging over your head and even more secrets and endings to discover, there's more reason than ever to pick up one of the most addictive turn-based sims around... for the first time, or again and again.

The world is over. We lost. But you're not down and out just yet. In Con Artist Games' latest real-time simulation, build a compound in the middle of a zombie-infested city and scrape out an existence alongside other survivors. Gather supplies, build and tweak your defenses, and go on dangerous missions into hives of undead activity. Though currently only in Beta and still repetitive, this is one of the best looking and surprisingly addictive social games around.

Billiard Blitz Pool Skool keeps it neat, simple, and does exactly what you'd want and expect from a little flash simulator. Just line up your cue stick, watch the white direction indicator, ram up the power bar for more umph, and slide the spin control to your prefered setting for a little extra pizzazz.

The end of the world is nigh, and it wants your brains! In this quirky, darkly humorous mobile edition of the zombie simulation based on the classic game Oregon Trail, saddle up with fellow survivors and strike out across the country with the promise of safety hanging in the distance. Manage your supplies, trade with people you meet along the way, deal with boss battles, and above all else hope Lady Luck decides to smile on you. That is, if you don't want to come down with dysentery while someone else has a broken leg and the others have all been bitten by zombies.

A little robot is lost and alone in the galaxy after being crippled by a radiation wave... but hope isn't lost yet. Travel to a series of remote planets and dig for valuable resources in this mining game, searching for everything you need to finally find a way back home. Fans of Motherload will find a lot to appreciate here, with a gorgeous presentation and a few new elements dressing up the familiar gameplay.

Just when you might have thought that everyone's favorite digital restaurant mogul was resting on his pixellated laurels, Flipline Studio's Papa has returned with the latest spicy addition to his culinary empire. Papa's Wingeria is hiring, and only your mastery of time management and a dexterous control of your mouse stand between you and stacks of buffalo wing-scented dollars.

Nature is a cruel mistress in this little gem from Ludum Dare 23. Improve tiles, gather resources, and build cities and shrines to stabilize your world against the next eco disaster. To beat the game you will need to build a level 4 shrine and a level 3 city. Easier said than done, as each disaster will destroy or rearrange tiles, and erase whatever you've built there.

The internet loves nostalgia! The internet loves zombies! What do you get when you take these two great tastes that taste great together? The Organ Trail, a parody of a certain edutainment adventure, developed by The Men Who Wear Many Hats, tasks you with the familiar goal of safely leading a party across the US to the west coast. However, this time your Conestoga is replaced by a station wagon, there are no buffalo, and, oh yeah, there are legions of the undead just waiting for a good ol' fashioned brain chomping. The Organ Trail sticks a little too close to its inspiration in the repetitive mid-game, but overall it is an enjoyable mix of shout outs and classic gameplay.

Many a bank robber has gotten away because of a superhero's random craving for crust, cheese, and tomato sauce. So you'll need to get those pizzas out quick and hot in Superhero Pizza a time management simulation by Miniclip. An extremely well-polished game, Superhero makes up for its relative lack of depth with a good dose of humor.

Who says robots never get to go on adventures? In this short but addictive little casual mining simulation, you play a small robot with a big drill who is out to rebuild the city by bringing in ore to sell. While not as complex as other mining titles, Utopian Mining is cute, accessible, and a lot of fun for an afternoon.

In Louissi's latest action simulation game, it's a farmer's life for you. But, when the sun goes down, the nasties come out and you'll need to trade your shovel for a shotgun or other heavy weapon to stay alive, picking up coins from your fallen enemies as you go.

Come to Siquijor, Philippines, and stay at our lovely inn! Yes, we have a bit of a reputation for aswangs, a kind of vampiric beastie, but who would go to Loch Ness without Nessie, right? Besides, no one seems to stay here at night, anyway... A delightful tropical hotel simulation sprinkled with creepiness, Innkeeper balances local color and global appeal.

Pull on your jeans and work boots, it's time to go digging for gold! In The Podge's simulation game, Boom Town, you'll have to carry out every aspect of creating a bustling town from a mining operation. Place buildings to attract new residents, plant explosives to blast the gold out of your land, drive the truck that picks it all up... you do it all! It's a rootin-tootin good time as you play the life of a frontiersman.

Papa's at it again, sneakily tricking you into running his latest venture... a pancake house! It doesn't matter if you're inexperienced, the customers are at your door and you're going to have to learn that griddle on the fly. Build towers of fluffy golden goodness and decorate them with delicious toppings, earn new items for your menu OR for your shop, and even play a variety of mini-games. It's another dose of the time management action you've come to love from the Papa's series, with all the breakfast artistry you could possibly want. Now I'm hungry...

Zombies Inc., by Aethos Games, is a fun time management game where you run a corporation hoping to gain a monopoly in the field of world-domination. Balance issues pervade, but it should still prove addictive to any fan of zombies, time management or both.

Train up a duck in the way he should run, swim, fly, climb, and jump, and when he enters a tournament he will not depart from it. A well known proverb of Duck Life, well-illustrated in this fourth installment in the series, which takes your ducks from the grasslands to the big city in search of glory and silly hats. Fifteen minigames help keep the grinding fun.

ChatChat is an online multiplayer game by Terry Cavanagh, creator of VVVVVV. It's a highly intricate simulation involving deep-level behavioral algorithms and calculus-based — wait, no it isn't! It's about being a kitty! The wildest dream of every internet human has come true in this simple little game, giving you full permission to nap, purr, meow, and catch mice to your furry heart's content.

Pity the poor dude who is in charge of Middleshire, one of the areas of the kingdom we first saw in Royal Envoy. First, he's late to the meeting with the king, then all he can report is bad, bad news about the region. The King is not happy about any of this, so he once again appoints someone (as in you, the player) to go and get this poor place redeveloped so that the folks will be happy in Royal Envoy 2, the latest time management amusement from Playrix Entertainment.

Santa Lina is an old-fashioned kind of town: big, dark, ugly, and corrupt to its core. One of the small few willing, or even able, to take a stand and protect the helpless is Anaksha, a vigilante sniper dubbed "The Virgo Killer" by the press. A successful businesswoman, the murder of her best friend snapped something in her mind, and so Anaksha took to the streets, a lone huntress with a rifle, dedicated to the destruction of evil, no matter what the cost, ever-pursued by both the police and the criminal elites. Anaksha: Dark Angel is a sniping adventure game by Arif Majothi, and its atmosphere is as thick as blood.

Haven't you always wanted to lord it over an entire tower, Trump-style? Well in Theme Hotel from Toffee Games you can do just that. Inspired by games such as SimTower and Theme Hospital, this simulation game puts you in charge of building a hotel from the ground up and taking it all the way to five stars.

In this action-puzzle, simulation game from Edit Undo, sit at the railway control desk, routing trains through color-coded stations, carefully changing directions on the appropriate junctions. Send locomotives along the correct tracks toward their destinations, all the while avoiding an epic fail: screams, explosions and carnage!

Only the best trained monsters can make it through LittleGiantWorld's Monster Arena, a turn-based rpg, adventure, and sim game all bundled into one neat package. Whether you'd love a fire-breathing companion or a game of rock-paper-scissors, Monster Arena has something for everyone to enjoy

Are all zombies all bad? Maybe they just need a little tender loving care... or, uh, a baseball bat to the head if you so choose. In this surprisingly engrossing simulation from Evil Dog, you are a scientist struggling to study the living dead after civilization has ground to a halt, and how you treat your subjects can mean the difference between one reconnecting with the remnants of its humanity, or becoming even more aggressive than ever... and maybe even whether you discover the truth about the outbreak.

Sarah Northway's incredibly popular and addictive zombie survival game of strategy and simulation gets a big update in this sequel that adds more skills, more items, and a lot of other tricks and tweaks. Defend one of the sole bastions of humanity left in a sprawling city and slowly work to reclaim the rest from the zombie horde, recruiting survivors, scavenging for supplies, and dealing with hazards like raiders, zombie attacks, and even dissension in your own ranks.

Werewolves, dragons, and mermaids, oh my! LittleGiantWorld puts you in control of every monster ever, but the goal is less world domination and more sweet moolah. Gather new creature DNA to create and manage a zoo/expo hall/what could possibly go wrong facility for the customers to visit and bring in more money. Despite some repetition, it's a cartoony, appealing little time management simulation worth a look.

There's only one way to win the hearts and minds of your people... by obtaining your rank as King by ousting the previous ruler in a violent battle. Kurechii Studios brings you an absolutely adorable little time management/strategy/fantasy action game about recruiting and training a group of heroes to participate in a seasonal tournament. If you win, you win the right to challenge the King for crown and country. If you lose, well... there's always next year. (Plus, you get a "I took part in violent ritualistic combat and all I got is this stupid t-shirt" shirt!)

It's been a rough day. You finally made it to London with visions of super-wealth in your head. Then your backpack was stolen. But, as you stand flummoxed in the rain, someone in a car driving by take pity on you and offers to give you a lift to the police station. That said person turns out to be local millionaire Mr. C, whose ailing health has left him in search for a young successor to his empire can only be described as an incredibly convenient coincidence. Still, now opportunity knocks, and if you make some smart choices, you just make make it to the penthouse at 56 Sage Street. A fine financial simulation advergame from Barclays, BBH London and B-Reel that hopes to introduce teens to the world of financial literacy.

In this time management game, you'll be serving sugary delights in the form of 'Freezer' sundaes to ever picky customers. It seems like it should be a breeze working for Papa at his new shop. After all, it's located on the tropical Calypso Island with a population of only twelve potential customers... oh, and I suppose that mob exiting the large cruise ship over there may decide to stop by too. You'll be fine, don't worry. Just in time to help you beat the heat of summer, sit back, grab a cold one (sundae, that is) and spend a few hours running Papa's Freezeria.

Mega Miner is a mining game that's all about repeated trips to the underground that challenge you to balance your fuel levels and item capacity for maximum efficiency, all so you can make your drill-bot the best it can be. There's something wildly addictive about unearthing gems, and let me tell you, one hip cat to another, I dig it. Can you dig it?

Ever think about the high cost of the clothes you wear? No, not just the price you pay at the register, but the people on the other end you never see or even consider? Littleloud brings us a strategy simulation that tasks you with running a factory overseas struggling to meet demands for the most popular items. Will you be able to keep your boss happy without sacrificing the well being of your workers? Or will the need for speed and money trump health and safety?

From Papa's Pizzeria to Papa's Burgeria to the latest time management game Papa's Taco Mia, Flipline Studios consistently produces great-looking games that walk a delicate line between challenging and straight-up entertaining. The newest in the growing series of restaurant sims puts you in the managing shoes of a taco joint. Take customer's orders, grill up the right kind of meat, stuff the tacos, add the toppings one by one, and present each order to the customer for their evaluation. Make neater tacos, rake in bigger tips, and outfit your restaurant with the best equipment available as you work your way to a taco-making master!

The riddle of the sphinx is invoked at the beginning of Convergence, the flixel-based platformer/life simulator/interactive art piece that serves as the first release from Streetlight Studios: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?"... No, the answer isn't "William the Performing Dog". It's that miserable pile of secrets itself: man. And you'll be be spending an interesting three days in a life herein. Wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across your head and check it out.

Simulation hits home in this advergame meant to raise awareness about poverty. Even though you don't have a job, the bills keep piling up, and you have insurance, a student loan, and a child to think of. You're down to your last thousand dollars... can you make it through the month? A sobering if a little ham-handed look at the lives of some people who aren't quite as lucky.

Think you've got what it takes to succeed in trading? What if you were trading to appease the British thirst for tea? By selling opium? "Not for all the tea in China!" I hear you say. Actually, that's probably something your Grandma would say. Aaanyway... in High Tea, you'll be trading opium for just that, all the tea in China.

Rebuild is best described as a survival sim with sprinklings of defense and strategy themes. You won't be put in the thick of battle... instead you'll be managing the town, using your mouse to send survivors to do the dirty work. It's after the Zombipocalypse and you're in control of a small group of survivors trying to stay alive.

Just a quick update to say that we have been moving a lot of our bandwidth-heavy content (images, hosted games) during the past few days to a content delivery network to help the site load faster. We were hoping this would be completely transparent to you, the visitor, and that we wouldn't have to bother you with a note like this.

The customers are picky in the new restaurant sim Papa's Burgeria. Here comes a customer who wants a well-done burger with a pickle, then a tomato slice, then a dollop of mayo. Put the tomato on before the pickle? You're taking your life into your hands, bub. Get it right, and hear that wonderful sound of a fat tip hitting the tip jar.

What's in a life? What makes up a person? Are we influenced by our environment more than we realise? This free browser port of the classic deep PC "alternate life simulator" from 1986 may just make you ponder that a little. Explore the events of the life you might have had from infancy to death, and see just how much even the little things matter.

Reign over your force! Push for more profit! Build your ivory tower! Buy a pot plant! From hiring people to building the office space - this is your chance to build a corporate behemoth in this new sim resource management game from Armor Games and jmtb02 where the goal is to make money, build higher... and push buttons. Lots of buttons.

You'll be put in the space shoes of Vincent Wake, a greenhorn to the whole inter-planetary trading thing. Luckily, you'll both have the dubious guidance of Hardgrove, a man who lives inside Vincent's eye-patch (or rather I-Patch). Black Market's gameplay is at its most basic a resource trading simulation. You can smuggle illegal items if you want, but there's always a chance your cargo might get searched as you're docking. That's the least of your worries, though. A far bigger threat are the pirates that roam the trade routes.

Record Shop Tycoon is a browser-based business simulation in which you own and operate a record shop. At its core it's a very simple game that is easy to dive right into. Each day is divided into two parts: preparing your store(s) for business, and then sitting back and watching while you rack up the sales. It's not perfect, but it is good and worthwhile of your time if you enjoy business simulation games like the classic Lemonade Stand.

Not a lot can be said without spoiling the fun of playing Srdjan Susnic's entry into our CGDC#8. What you should know is that ZOO Director is a truly traditional sandbox gameplay experience. Your aim is to rise above the rank of humble Zoo Novice to claim the glorious title of Zoo Director, by creating and maintaining your very own zoo. Sounds simple, but this quirky little game quickly reveals its challenges.

Once upon a time, there a was a young llama with a dream. A dream and $200 adorably clutched in his hoof. With that hoof-ful of dollars, he would take the wretched turf left to him by his father and become... KING! King by plagiarizing all the neighboring cities, but still. In A Llama, A World and a Plan, a building simulation from StefanT, you can become a Lama glama and make your every ungulate wish come true.

Sometimes a little duckling in the gutter has got dreams. Big dreams. Dreams of a training montage that ends with a big, shiny crown placed on its feathered cranium. Well, thanks to Sims5000, you can live out those dreams in the new training sim Duck Life 2. It's bigger, better, and duckier than ever.

CellCraft, the part-strategy part-educational part-weird game of cell growth, is an ambitious title that aims not only to educate you, but to SAVE THE PLATYPUS HOMEWORLD.... seriously. Presented with keen detail and fascinating facts, it's an incredibly well made and even a little tricky title that could have you penning a Christmas card to your own enzymes and acids this year.

Have you ever wanted to breed yourself a colony of blobular lifeforms, only to be stymied by the terms of your lease or ridiculous laws against Thing importation? Well, now you can simulate the experience with Thingdom, a game and webtoy created for the London Science Museum by Preloaded, which manages to make learning about genetics fun. Move over, brown eyes and blue eyes; kids today are finding out how to breed for monostalks.

Alan Probe is back! In the new sequel to the popular surgery simulation game that we all fell in love with back in 2008, the good people at Adult Swim have come up with something gorier, more excessive, and far more satisfying than any of us could have ever hoped for.

Trafalgar Origins is a top-down naval combat game commissioned by Channel 4 and created to promote their upcoming television show. It plays similarly to Sid Meier's Pirates, is mission-based, and is an entertaining and educational peek at the age of sail, and one that will take you many hours to beat with quite a bit of replay potential.

Mixing rhythm and simulation elements into one browser-based experience, Punk-o-Matic 2 also functions as a hefty musical editing tool. For those who only sing in the shower, you might want to check out that long tutorial!

We've been in charge of running a country during a national crisis Pandemic: American Swine Flu. We've led the nation to world conquest Mastermind: World Conqueror. But have you ever wondered what goes on during the downtime? In-between the diseases and the hostile takeovers, everyday decisions still need to be made. NationStates is a massively multiplayer online game by author Max Barry that puts you in charge of your own fledgling nation to create and shape how you see fit.

Smokescreen is a new alternate reality game (ARG) from entertainment company Six To Start. Social networking, blogging, and chat lingo are all part of this game that takes on the task of warning players about the dangers of the Internet in a way that makes you feel like you're experiencing them first-hand.

A tiny world is at your fingertips, ready for you to shape it. Create a cavern teeming with life... provided you can discover all the creatures hiding inside. Using sandbox tools, manipulate the environment to coax each creature into the open, or how to create them. A charming little simulation tool that encourages experimentation.

If you're a big fan of sports games and have been dying for something to play at work on break, this is it. Even if you aren't really that into sports games, Crunchball 3000 boasts quite a bit of accessibility. So gear up, warm up, stretch out, and pay no mind to the 6'4", 320 lb behemoth giving you the evil eye. Scars build character and you ain't got time to be scared. Are you ready for some Crunchball?

This is what you might get if you stapled The Italian Job movie to the Spy Hunter video game, and it doesn't get much cooler than that. You are the getaway driver as your den of thieves recruits thugs, plans robberies, and flees from the scene with the cops in hot pursuit. The Heist 2 may not be pretty, but crime never is.

It's survival of the fittest as seen through a microscope. Genetically engineer the perfect virus in your lab to combat those created by your predecessors. Discover new elements and splice genes in an increasingly hostile environment. Just... remember to wash up before you shake someone's hand.

Pizza City has so much in common with the first two Grand Theft Auto games it seems to fall somewhere between spoof and demake. Like the notorious crime sims from Rockstar Games, you roam a city with virtual free reign in your car via a bird's eye view. There is a main goal (delivering pizzas and working your way up the pizzeria career ladder), but there are also plenty of other side quests to undertake, too. Pizza City isn't for everyone and the relatively simple gameplay may turn some off, but there's more depth lurking here than meets the eye and it definitely rewards those who choose to stick with it.

Think your amp goes up to eleven? Put your guitar where your mouth is in this rock career simulator slash rhythm game, as you attempt to rawk your way to the top!

Dark Cut 3 is the latest visceral surgery title in the Dark Cut series from Armor Games. This time we're treated to a sci-fi, time-traveling angle with the usual historical setting. The game brings you the same intense operations you've come to either love or cringe at. The production values and story are the best so far for the series and give context to gameplay that's been toned down to be less punishing.

You are the CEO of a major international oil company, your job is to make money: Democracy, environment, and global economic health are irrelevant. Explore, drill, corrupt governments, hire mercenaries, engage in covert operations, fix elections (which are clearly broken without you) and most of all: have fun.

A clever world domination simulator, in the form of a humble real-time strategy game, in which you can test your schemes and stratagems without the nagging twinge of guilt that comes with executing legions of henchmen. The game has some of the highest production values you're likely to find in a Flash game, with some decent animation, a healthy dose of humor and a startling amount of high-quality voice acting.

Now Boarding is a tycoon-style resource management game where your job is to run an airport, overseeing everything from flight routes, which passengers go on which plane, and even where to put the soda machines! The daunting task of shuttling people across North America has been pared-down to a simple interface that's as easy as matching letters and clicking cities on a map. Now Boarding is remarkably scalable, meaning you can create as complex or simple of an experience as you desire, giving a world of options to those who wish it and nothing more than a simple time management game to those who don't.

Developed by Dark Realm Studios, Pandemic 2 is the sequel to the morbidly fun original Pandemic, a game in which your goal is to eradicate the human race with the perfect disease. While the original game didn't go on to become hugely popular, Pandemic II is more an improvement upon its predecessor than a sequel, with an improved interface and more features.

Arachnophilia is an arcade-style simulation of a night in the life of a spider. Your goal is to survive as long as possible, your venue is the empty midnight space between tree branches, and your method is to trap and devour the hapless insects who blunder into your web. It's a simple but sophisticated game, made with a deep love for both arachnids and early 80s arcade games like Tempest.

Alan Probe: Amateur Surgeon is a cartoonish and casually offensive entry into the simon-says-surgery genre made famous(ish) by Atlus' Trauma Center. Your job is to follow the exact requirements of each surgery as quickly and as accurately as possible. The game is blessed with the finest production values a second-tier television network can buy, with bright, detailed environments and an ever-present sense of self-conscious irony. The violence is so over-the-top that it's not really gross, but there's still plenty of comically intense moments to go around.

What do you get when you put Global Warming, Peak Oil, Nuclear War and good old-fashioned oligarchy in a blender? You get Fallout meets Elite ...in a browser! Caravaneer is a game by Dmitry Zheltobriukhov that has you playing a caravan leader in a post-apocalyptic desert, trading goods from town to town while fending off hungry raiders. It's got turn-based tactical fighting, strategic economic decision-making, and a political storyline! Tactics, economics and politics!

As odd as it may sound, Skyrates is a game about human-like animals flying biplanes between floating continents. Think Star Fox meets The Kingdom of Zeal from Chrono Trigger. You're a young pilot out to make an impact by trading, performing missions, and fighting pirates. Here's the catch: flying between islands takes at least an hour of real-time. The game was designed by a group of then-CMU grad-students to explore sporadic play, something you check like e-mail a few times a day. The result is not only interesting, its good enough to thread its way into your life.

The Dark Cut series consists of two surgery games where you use the mouse to make incisions, stitch, scrub, saw, whatever is required to save the patient in each case scenario. These are not games for the faint of heart, both in terms of graphics and gameplay, and are therefore recommended for mature audiences only.

Sushi Go Round carves out its own niche in the crowded field of customer service oriented time management games by taking customer service out of the equation. You are the chef, rather than the harried waiter, and all that matters is getting food to the patrons of your humble sushi shop in a timely manner. You don't even have to carry the food out to them. You have one of those newfangled automated sushi joints, where a conveyor belt brings the sushi round, and the customers feed themselves.

Like an updated version of the classic Lemonade Stand game, Coffee Shop puts you in a young entrepreneur's shoes with the power to make or break your budding business. Buy ingredients, adjust your secret recipe, and set the price per cup to sell as much coffee to passers-by as you can. Strike a balance between customer satisfaction and profit and you're on your way to java-induced bliss.

Papa's Pizzeria is more than your average resource-management game. While a typical entry would require little more than clicking on various hot spots to make and deliver the food to customers, Papa's Pizzeria gives it a more personal touch. Rather than clicking on an order and then on a station for topping the pizza, only to watch the pizza top itself, you must actually top the pizza yourself.

A casual-ified Alpha Centauri-type simulation management game that is so much more fun than it sounds. You play the president of a colony of human refugees who have escaped the calamity of Earth to found a new home on a planet whose orbit keeps it on the opposite side of the sun. Hence the name "Via Sol", which means "through the sun" in Latin.

A desperate man grips the detonator of the explosives belted around his waist, his thumb hovering ever so slightly above that little, harmless-looking red button. On the other side of the room a cop stands, gun drawn, his finger trembling over the trigger. You are the invisible observer, responsible for helping the cop find some way out of this seemingly impossible situation.

Luke Whittaker's Baseball is easily one of the best online baseball games I've ever played. The gameplay mechanics do a perfect job of capturing what it feels like to be several runs behind in the final innings of a ball game, and have only three outs to fashion a miraculous come-from-behind victory.

Nanny Mania follows a formula similar to downloadable games such Cake Mania where you play a working woman going through the daily grind in order to make a living. The Mayor of Suburbia and his wife are too busy to cook and clean up after their growing family, so it's your job to straighten furniture, do the laundry, and perform all the little tasks that need to be done during the day. It's an extraordinarily well-made game that beats the competitors by leaps and bounds.

ElectroCity is fun little Flash game intended "to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning" about the issues involved in power generation, cost, and environmental impact. It is obviously a very simplistic look at those issues, intended to give a broad overview and invite further research on the part of the player. It's also not a bad little town sim game to boot.

Dotville is a city-building Flash game along the lines of Civilization, but greatly simplified. You play the leader of a tribe of Dots (yeah, Dots) and must rise to the rank of Emperor in fifty turns, then defeat the evil empire of Squares. It's a simple game, and yet somehow very complex; a bit flawed, and yet fun despite it's quirks.

Stop Disasters is one of those games you could easily dismiss before even launching it. However, the ISDR group has not drenched their game in messages and important life lessons that we all should follow. Instead we get a game which is easy to pick up, figure out and get in to, but hard enough to challenge and reward not only planning but learning about successful planning.

Funeral Quest is a travesty of lemonade stands, sim games and common decency in general. Basically you open a funeral parlour and handle customers. The aim is to gain Burial Points (which is your ranking) and earn tags (currency), while engaging in a spot of skullduggery to advance your standing and income.

Developed by Red Redemption and funded by the BBC, the Flash-based Climate Challenge is a thoroughly researched, compelling resource-management sim. As the "President of the European Nations" you must radically reduce your people's carbon emissions over the course of a century, while remaining popular enough to stay in office.

Bacteria Salad is the latest entry in Persuasive Games' Arcade Wire series. Another attempt at "persuasion, instruction, and activism," Bacteria Salad is a light, humorous depiction of the complexity of the agricultural business.

Subpoena Power is a politically-charged side-scrolling Flash game by NoEvil Productions. Your mission is to eliminate corruption on Capitol Hill by circumventing lobbyists and serving subpoenas to Senators and Congressmen to separate the Honest Tribunes from the Perfidious Scoundrels. Thwart cash-carrying lobbyists to keep the politicians honest and help enforce the laws that keep the government running smoothly. It's a surprisingly entertaining game that carries a strong message of civic responsibility.

Things don't feel right out here... despite the optimism. Ayiti: the Cost of Life is one of the best political web games released this year, right up there with The McGame and the comic genius of Airport Security. Unlike most games with a political message, such as September 12th or 3rd World Farmer, Cost of Living actually has a strategy that works, but it's buried in a heap of faulty (and revealingly so) tactical blunders.

While drawing up my packing list for an upcoming trip, I quickly became confused. What's allowed on-board aircraft these days? Can I bring a bottle of water, or is that still banned? Will my laptop be confiscated at the border? Will I need to remove my pants before boarding the plane? These issues are all part of the gameplay in Airport Security, a fast-paced and thoughtful Flash game from Persuasive Games.

Have you ever harbored a secret desire to see gas prices soar? Have you always wished you could manipulate the politics and economies of the world to double the cost of fuel? Who hasn't? Now with Persuasive Games' new simulation, Oil God, you can!

As the US readies to go to the polls for the mid-term elections on Tuesday, the phones have been ringing off-the-hook from campaigners trying to earn votes for their candidates. I usually try to avoid politics since my single vote seems so minuscule in this world dominated by corruption and greed. As they say, "you can't fight city hall," right?

Cake Mania is a fast-paced arcade game where you play the role of Jill, a new graduate from culinary school, who returns home to discover her grandparents' bakery is closed. Business fell when the new Mega-Mart opened and not even their special recipes could help them compete. Jill decides to open her own old fashioned bakery to earn money and re-open her grandparents' store. Through nearly 50 levels and four different locations you'll help Jill serve customers as efficiently as possible.

Added to the mysteriously vacant Flash flight sim category, Goggles Flight Sim dares to let you go places where you may only have heard about. Using information collected from Google's mapping service, Mark Caswell-Daniels has created this Flash application that allows you to fly around the world to destinations of your choosing. Casual fun.

The McDonald's Videogame is the newest Flash creation of Molleindustria, an Italian design team dedicated to the discussion of the social and political implications of video games. Overall the game is an entertaining distraction that is definitely worth your time for the satire and laughs or if you enjoy a challenge.