I've been geeking out a little bit lately with a game called <a target='_blank' href='http://pc.ign.com/articles/369/369060p1.html?fromint=1'><i>Moonbase Commander</i></a>. Couldn't sound much geekier than that, huh? Well, yeah, ok, but it really is pretty fun and addictive.

This is a turn-based strategy game in which the idea is to construct a base on the moon and blow up your opponents' bases. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, the mechanics of it are very fluid and intuitive, but the twist is that your base ends up being a big directed graph: each node in the base is connected to the node that 'launched' it. If any node is destroyed, all of it's descendant nodes are also destroyed; if the root is destroyed, it's game over for you. This makes for a lot of subtle strategizing in how you build, defend, and attack. It's easy to learn, hard to master, as they say.

The main downside is that AI is pretty bad; after learning the basics, it's only interesting to play against other people over the net. Unfortunately, it hasn't really reached a critical mass of players - finding a game is sometimes difficult. Maybe that will change, though, since its <a target='_blank' href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000645ZI/qid=1051725064/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-1528347-0558513?v=glance&s=software&n=507846'>only <i>10 bucks</i> at amazon</a>.

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