You can download a free demo of Weird Worlds by clicking here. I highly recommend it.
It's a sci-fi game that takes about 10-45 minutes to play, depending on how large a star map you set it for and whether or not the dread Kawangi turn your flotilla (or homeworld) into a flaming asteroid belt. You can cram an entire game into a lunch hour, or you can waste a day playing back-to-back-to-back-to-back games.
It's mostly a turn-based space-exploration game. There's a bit of a card game / board game feel to it, as each star has exactly one planet with something interesting on it. Like you travel to a star for your turn, and draw a card from an imaginary deck to find out what's there. Strange creatures, new technologies, violent enemy fleets, intergalactic ambassadors, tech-hungry mercenaries, supernovas, ancient artifacts of long-lost earth, quirky humor, thinly-veiled references to classic sci-fi movies... there's a lot of different types of cards in that imaginary deck, and only a fraction of the deck gets played in any given game.
But when you find those aliens, the game zooms in to a real-time starship battle system. You have command of at least one ship, up to a flotilla of up to 5 on the large map if you recruit all the right allies and befriend the less territorial aliens. Between battles you can swap out systems and weapons on your ships, upgrading them as you find better tech goodies. Certain systems combo to be really effective in tandem, including a few that feel really degenerate and evil when you get them working. Mostly, I really enjoy those, but certain items *cough* *particle vortex cannon* *cough* are a little broken.
But that's where my favorite part of the game comes in: Modding. It's relatively simple to create new versions of the game, introducing new alien races, ships, events, quests, tech, weapons, etc.
I currently have produced three mods of my own, and am working on two others:
Teeming With Life, v1.1: Modding is a bit like house-ruling the original game. If you see something you'd like changed in the main game, just mod it! In this case, I felt that there wasn't enough variety to the non-intelligent life in the main game, making the science mission grow a little stale. So I fixed that. Lots more xenobiology to study and collect.
Drives'R'Us v1.11: Lots of additional tech goodies here. As the name suggests, there's plenty of new stardrives. There's also new weapons, new sensor suites, new shields, etc. New toys to add to your ships, and some "house-rule" style modding to control some of the super-weapons.
Sgqwonkian Crisis, v1: This mod introduces a new race, the peaceful herbivorous Sgqwonk, who are besieged and slaughtered by one of the hostile races of the main game. The player is sent on a mission of mercy or vengeance. This was my first mod, and as a result, it's kinda buggy. One day, I'll get around to updating it.
My other two mods in production but not yet released are The Weirdyssey: Inspired by the tales of brave Ulysses, and an as-yet-unnamed mod inspired by H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Weirdyssey will likely be ready fairly soon, but deep in Ryleh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.
If you'd like to get your hands on my Mods, and lots of other cool WW:RTIS mods, visit the shrapnel games Weird Worlds forums.
If you're interested in doing some modding your self, those forums are indispensible, as is The Modmaker's Guide To The Galaxy
That's all for now, but I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say about WW:RTIS some other day.
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