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It seems like of the games listed, the majority are straight clones of existing games, and three are heavily genre pieces.

Indie games have to be bastions of originality! We need you guys to incubate the weird and wonderful ideas, like Facade, Dada, stagnation in blue, and most everything this guy does. Heck, subspace is still an original indie game, even though it spawned a ton of clones and fell into obscurity. Puzzle Pirates was a risky original take, and it rakes in the dough.

'come on, guys! If you think it is hard now, try creating original ideas and gameplay with a 100 toothbrush salesmen and bankers breathing down your neck. This is your time to shine. This is your proving grounds. Sure, Ambrosia has seen success through polish over originality, but where is the soul in that?*

*Note: I actually really like Ambrosia. I still think Chiral is one of the best puzzle games ever made.

is a game I've repeatedly gone back to since 1996.
Originally it was made by VIE in an attempt to make money charging players for gametime online. Since they dropped the project it has been adopted by numerous techs and suported fairly well. Still a lot of fun. Get it at http://beginners.subspace.net/

My current addiction(s) that were brought back from the dead have to be the re-incarnation of Sub Space (Continuum) and Star Control 2 (Urquon Masters).

I played both back when they were new, was a Sup Space fiend during the early beta testing days up until Virgin started charging for it (and locking guests to one or two type of ships), and completely quit once they killed it off for good. Star Control 2 I picked up from a friend a long time ago and played it for a while until I realized I had started off wrong and would have to start over to have any chance of completing it, and after a few attempts (and computer rebuilds, and College exams and work..) it got forgotten/lost.

A discussion on this very topic (addictive games of the past) had me looking for those two upon which I found they had both been re-built by the fans of the games. I play Sub Space Continuum far more than urquon masters simply because it takes less time, and is generally less involving. Being a Top-view MMPOG shooter, its easy to see why. Jump in, blow up a few ships and get blown up a few times, turn it off... The plot lines involved in Star Control/Urquon Masters makes it harder to leave, especially when you just figure out the next set of clues or get something that you know what to do with. Both are about as addictive as Civ is, to the point where I had to un-install urquon to get any work done.

Tm

ps: Sub Space (Continuum) is up and live at subspace.net
And Star Control 2 (Urqon Masters) is on Source Forge at SC2.sourceforge.net

A month ago, I would have said Continuum (formerly called Subspace)... a wonderful free (as in beer) massively multiplayer online game, the oldest running one in history. Fast paced, extremely addictive, excellent gameplay.

But some nice people hacked WINE and got it working (see also WineHQ Notes), something I've been waiting for for years.

I'm now thoroughly wasting all my time in this game again, without the guilty feeling of booting Windows for it! Screenshot

Subspace/Continuum fits the 'MMOG for the casual player' bill perfectly.

I pick it up whenever I have 10 minutes.

Check it out....

Many of the zones in Subspace are sporting all kinds of various graphical holiday cheer. Alpha zone ships are launching snowballs instead of bombs (beware the yellow snowballs) and Chaos zone was spotted with deadly ornaments flying everywhere and delivery cheerful gifts of doom.

The console public really is not ready for online gaming

Online gaming in general is a really neat sounding idea, but its just not what its cracked up to be. No one wants to pay 40-50 for the game then also have to pay a monthly fee to play online on top of their internet costs.

The analyst is wrong. Game consoles are NOT home entertainment devices, they are game consoles. Everyone who has tried to make them more than that have failed in the extras.

...when you have SUBSPACE!!
I swear, we wasted so much time on this game back in college. That, Command and Conquer, and Duke Nukem 3-D

There's no contest for the best game that nobody's playing: Subspace. Think multiplayer asteroids, but blowing up other people instead of rocks, with varied weapons and specials, and lots of game types, including deathmatch (chaos), ctf (warzone) and soccer (powerball).

Oh yeah, and it's totally free.

(In case the site is confusing, you want to download Continuum 0.37)

Subspace is a kickass game.... I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent on that game. Until I ended up with a vid card that it didn't like :( Would run horribly on it. The new client is called "Continuum". It's an updated, free version of Subspace. Try here to get it.

Actually, just to clarify: The game is called Subspace. The client used to play Subspace is called Continuum. It's a very addicting game.

For a few more sites regarding the highly addictive multiplayer space game:
Subspace Central
Subspace Spectrum
Subspace Zone
Subspace.net
Subspace.nu

Mizery De Aria,
Arwing.net

We do not want this distro method to become the MTV of the gaming industry like gamespy is today. In fact I can only hope that this will kill gamespy before a torrent of vapid, cookie-cutter, corporate researched FPS/RTS/RPG are unleashed upon the unexpecting consumers out there.

I've been playing the same free and fun online game for over 5 years and the corporate replacement even though it too is free sucks the big stinky donkey wang because it was overproduced.

Well I wish vie had opensourced subspace. Gladly though it has been reverse engineered and has two counterparts snrrrubspace for linux and continuum for windows the windows client being far more advanced. In fact besides needing windows for brushing up on my office support and exchange admin skills this is one of the only things that I boot into windows daily for.

I can't get enough of this massive multiplayer space game.

I have RCN, my neighbor has TW and has had it since it went into beta. Here are the two stories:

My Experience With RCN

RCN was pretty good initially. I got it soon after they were out of beta in my area. Then they grew too fast. Their entire network was overloaded for about a month. After a few hassles including 2 modem swaps (they use Hybrids which aren't that good) and numerous short outtages, I would say their service is now pretty good. I usually get decent speed (up to 3 megabits/sec at 3am), my ping times are usually good enough for online game play (under 250ms) which is a necessity for my occasional Subspace fix. I still get occasional problems. Their customer service isn't that great. I've been on hold an hour on more than one occasion.

My Neighbor's Experience With Time Warner

My neighbor got her cable modem last year while TW was beta testing. In the beginning, her speed was unbelievable, mainly cuz she was only one of a few people on the network. Now, it is similar to mine. She isn't really a techie, she mainly browses and sends mail, so she doesn't notice high ping times and such like I do. She said she's gotten good customer service when she called in with questions, too. Oh, and they do use better modems (don't remember which, offhand).

Random Thoughts

If anybody would like, I could do some traceroutes from both of our boxes to a few servers, test turnaround time and packetloss. Let me know if you're interested.

Also, you may wanna pick up the Linksys BEFSR41 4-Port Cable/DSL Router. Great unit. Two of my friends swear by them, mine is on the way. And you can update the firmware using a TFTP client from a non-windows box. Most of the others require windows to update. Plus, the manual is totally written by geeks with FAQ questions like "How do I get my quake server to..." No cheesy business questions here.

Subspace was one of the first massive mutliplayer online games. Based on a top-down asteriods view model; you battle it out against hundreds of other players in other space ships.

The graphics leave much to be desired, but the gameplay is fantastic. Like Othello, the game is easy to learn but has incredible depths and strategies of gameplay to master. Games like capture the flag, soccer, king of the hill, trench wars, and 4 on 4 leagues are all different zones available to play.

Originally the game was released and supported by Virgin interactive entertainment. Although soon after the game was released, VIE was bought out and Subspace was abandoned. But thanks to the efforts of players and former VIE programmers the game development continues. Players help program extensions to the game and provide servers that are free for everyone to play.

I encourage you to visit some of these links for more information on this incredible game:

#4 on tweak3d's most addictive top ten

General Subspace info and downloads

Powerball info, the best zone in Subspace

His name is Nick Fisher. He lives in Minnesota and plays with his dad's money, which he desperately wants everyone to believe is his, and that he earned it all from scratch. I swear this guy was the valedictorian of the Elmer Fudd School of Self-Esteem. "My name is Nick Fisher. I am a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht."

I had the misfortune of making his acquaintance about 5 years ago in the online game SubSpace. I was pretty active in the SubSpace community and was witness to countless incidents where he proved what a prick he is. He did things ranging from getting people banned from the game even when they had done nothing wrong, to ping flooding individuals during League matches so that his squad would win. He pulled the same stunt on one of the more popular Quake servers and was cold busted by the guy that ran it. He had about a 60-page ping log, all coming from Nick Fisher's IP address.

Anyway, to anyone who has ever met this jackass, this type of behavior comes as no surprise. Download SubSpace and see for yourself. Go into any zone, ask about 'trixter' (his rather fitting online name) and the Gamefan debacle. You'll get an earful. He still plays rather frequently, so you may even get the chance to tell him how you feel in person. (SubSpace only runs on Windows. Sorry.)


Talisman

His name is Nick Fisher. He lives in Minnesota and plays with his dad's money, which he desperately wants everyone to believe is his, and that he earned it all from scratch. I swear this guy was the valedictorian of the Elmer Fudd School of Self-Esteem. "My name is Nick Fisher. I am a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht."

I had the misfortune of making his acquaintance about 5 years ago in the online game SubSpace. I was pretty active in the SubSpace community and was witness to countless incidents where he proved what a prick he is. He did things ranging from getting people banned from the game even when they had done nothing wrong, to ping flooding individuals during League matches so that his squad would win. He pulled the same stunt on one of the more popular Quake servers and was cold busted by the guy that ran it. He had about a 60-page ping log, all coming from Nick Fisher's IP address.

Anyway, to anyone who has ever met this jackass, this type of behavior comes as no surprise. Download SubSpace and see for yourself. Go into any zone, ask about 'trixter' (his rather fitting online name) and the Gamefan debacle. You'll get an earful. He still plays rather frequently, so you may even get the chance to tell him how you feel in person. (SubSpace only runs on Windows. Sorry.)


Talisman