Hello world.

Hello dear world. I would like to introduce myself and the concept of this blog. I am a 20 year old German, who lived a year in Wisconsin and spends a lot of time... well I like to call it thinking about important things. Yes. Let's use some phrase to hide that I actually just waste time. But we all remember John Lennon's quote "Time you enjoyed wasting wasn't really wasted" or something in that direction.
AAAAANYHOW. I like flash games and I always think that some of these are so cleverly thought out and well programmed, that there is just so much work in them that they deserve a proper review. Well this may not be proper and adequate, but I often like to think that writing about stuff while at the same time being critical and informative is fun, so its more of a personal thing.

I would like to begin today with one of my all time favorites: "The Space Game" by Kongregate.
(To be found here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/CasualCollective/the-space-game)

The campaign screen. I fail to finish the last mission...

The concept behind "The Space Game" is quite simple. You are a greedy miner who wants to cash some minerals in. The problem is that the wealthies areas are populated by pirates who'd like a slice of the cake. And a slice of your vulnerable space stations. And your workers. Maybe even from you, nobody knows.
So you build your bases (powered by a central generator) over a net of space-power lines. I know, I know. This isnt realistic. Boo hoo.

Cute base, isnt it?

While doing this you have to wisely choose how to spend your budget: do you want to expand quicker, gain more money but have a spread out base that will be hard to defend? Or do you save money to build a massive walls of lasers and missle cannons in the case of an attack?

And you will be attacked. A lot. Depending on what mode and what difficulty you chose, there will be different kinds of enemies that will require different defenses. The king (or queen?) of them being the mothership with powerful long-range lasers and interceptors, that can only be properly responded with upgraded missle launchers.

Aw balls.

 Furthermore it offers 3 game modes plus one if you have an account with Kongregate (hell, if that one company keeps buying websites there wont be a need to create an account, wink wink): campaign mode, in which you have to complete a certain amount of missions with certain varying targets, mining mode, in which you must harvest a given amount of minerals before you got your ass handed to you and survival mode. In survival mode there is no victory, (which is kind of ironic, considering the name of the mode) but instead there is just a lot of cash, a lot of space, and a lot of enemies. IMMO the best one.

But let's get down to what I like about this game.

First of all: I am an absolute science fiction freak. I especially looooove things that are "far out there" and "The Space Game" gives you that feeling. Well, if you zoom in all the way and just look at one of the single mining stations doing it's thing.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the simplicity, yet slight difficulty curve of this game. It's like its saying "Come on, just a little more, I have to show you just one more thing, just one more wave of enemies, can you get that?" - like when your grandparents call you if you could 'just help them build up the new cupboard they bought' and end up working all day covered in grease, sweat and filled with apple pancakes.

Also notable is the writing around it. Its kinda childish, but funny. It's not what a space agency would write to their space mining operator via space mail, but thats okay. I am sick and tired of mini games taking themselves too serious.

And I am even more sick of games making fun of that. This one just comes very natural, like the programmers sit next to you while you try out their newest creation.

The graphics are subtle, the music is fitting and the sound effects are ... well, they're there and you can kind of tell what they are, so I guess they suffice.

All in all very playable and very addictive.