Imagine Earth
Imagine Earth is a small indie game about building colonies on planets, while balancing out things like food, energy, renewable and non-renewable resources, emissions, temperate and happiness etc. Effectively it's a placement game - you can plonk down buildings, and they get increased or decreased output based on what's next to them. I think it had a pretty successful trip through EA and has come out totally playable, and in a much better state than it started in. The game starts out pretty slowly, but gets a little more complex the more you play. It can take a little while to get the hang of, but the dev has clearly spent a lot of time and effort making the UI and controls top notch.
Pros
- Nice little animations when districts are built
- It's about balancing tech for immediate gains vs long term planet consequences
- Interesting object names, like the "nitro pumpkins" field
- Voice acted
- There's a research tree for new technology, and separate menu for unlocking new buildings with tech licenses
- You can trade your non-renewable resources for cash
- Includes mechanics for pollution, emissions and global warming
- Buildings have a choice of upgrades to change how they work
- There's a galaxy overview where you can go back to old planets to keep working on them, although the planets themselves have no trade or relation to each other
Cons
- Minor spelling and grammatical errors
- The vacant stare of the tutorial woman is unnerving