Just when I thought the last nugget of creativity had been squeezed out of the tower defense genre, a developer like 3 Sprockets comes along to prove me wrong. The developer released Cubemen a few weeks ago, which is a tower-defense game that eschews your standard immobile turrets for perfectly ambulatory men made of cubes. Aside from the ever-changing real-time-strategy dynamic this adds to the tested formula, the inclusion of head-to-head competitive gameplay modes make for some action-packed battles against other humans or computer AI.

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A game doesn't need to feature a tapestry of complex choices and moral dilemmas or a suite of intricate mechanics to be fun. One of the many examples of this notion is the retro-inspired Zytron II by indie developer Trinosis. It's a scrolling shoot-'em-up inspired by classics like R-Type and Armalyte, with a giant helping of Geometry Wars thrown in for good measure.

Read more: Vast stretches of deadly neon »