Runner up: Neptune's Pride
Format: PC Publisher: Iron Helmet Games Developer: In-house
Say “multiplayer space-based RTS” and you may think of elaborate simulations and reams of statistics. Neptune’s Pride, meanwhile, pares back the unwieldiness of empire building, instead using its spartan mechanics as a springboard for complexity of a more organic, nefarious kind. It’s either the ultimate office game or an exercise in social devastation: the glacial pace ensures that colleagues will conspire by the water-cooler, while its sadistic machinations fuel real-world fallouts worthy of HR warnings.
Runner up: Super Meat Boy
Format: 360 Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Team Meat
This purebred platformer lost little in its transition from Flash game to XBLA darling, and added a lot besides. Its super-tight controls, which despite only comprising left, right, jump and run, spur you into traversing lethally contorted levels in graceful speedruns. At every opportunity the rest of the game celebrates its heritage, whether with cutscenes that are ripped from classics, playable characters taken from fellow indie games or secret levels formed from homages to aged consoles.
Winner: Minecraft
Format: PC Publisher: Mojang Specifications Developer: In-house
Even while its creator, Notch, is adding new features by the month, to a large extent Minecraft already feels complete. It’s all down to simplicity: of a central conceit which asks you to survive in a world haunted by darkness-loving beasts, and then make sense of survival. And of a world that behaves in elementary ways which combine into a complexity that can support players’ imaginations. Whether building the Enterprise or a 16bit logic circuit, travelling through its vast, randomly generated world or exploring its deep caverns while looking for rare minerals, Minecraft simply provides a platform. It’s remarkable that interaction so analogue could come of a world so digital. Remarkable, too, that Minecraft has seen such success, with over two million registered players and over 600,000 sales, making its creator a studio head as fast has he could find the space and staff.
Click here to read our interview with Minecraft creator, Notch >>