Giant Army

Orbit is beautiful. There's something incredibly graceful about titanic balls of gas, rock and ice spinning silently in the dark ether of space. It's a trend that's been explored in movies and in music, but more and more indie videogame developers are using planetary dynamics as a canvas for play.

The depths of space have long been a subject for videogames, with early experiments including Space Invaders and Elite, but those didn't really simulate orbital dynamics. The roots of the current trend arguably begin in 1996 with Wikipedia's digital precursor, Encarta '96, which included an orbital dynamics simulator that's still fascinating to play with today. There's a good chance that today's indie developers, who would have been of impressionable age when Encarta '96 was bundled with every new PC, are simply recalling their childhood.

If you want to explore the trend, here are four games that peer deep into the cosmos.

Solar 2
What's it like being an asteroid? Or a life-sustaining planet? Or even a black hole? That's the question asked by Jay Watts in Solar 2, where you play as a space-rock of differing sizes and complete missions. Your rock can overcome gravity, but everything else in the game is subject to its whims, so you'll need to take it into account while playing.

As an asteroid, you might be tasked with helping another rock grow to the size of a planet. As a planet, you might need to clear a star system of debris, while doing your best to ignore the irritating life evolving on you. You can play constructively, nurturing that life and trying to grow as large as possible -- or just smash into things over and over and over. There's absolutely no penalty for doing the latter.

Solar 2 began life as an Xbox Live indie game, but has since made the jump to the PC platform, too. Try it here.

You're familiar with the Dyson Tree, right? Not a new concept from the vacuum manufacturer, but a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant that would be capable of growing on, and producing a habitable atmosphere around, a comet. It was dreamed up by physicist Freeman Dyson, and has featured widely in sci-fi since.

It's also the inspiration for Eufloria -- an abstract game about conquering other worlds by planting your seeds on their surface. It's heavily stylised, but the mechanics revolve around a number of differently-sized planets -- the larger the planet, the further you can travel from it, meaning you need to plan your assaults. Zoom in, and it's a frenetic maelstrom of lasers and death. Zoom out, and it's a more peaceful, zen-like experience with battling armies just clouds of dots.

Eufloria is available now on Windows here.


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