Developer: Mistaril
Genre: Strategy
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Space Station Manager does exactly as its title implies--it lets you build and manage your own space station. You'll choose from different parts and form your own structure, but you'll have to keep track of things like the flow of energy and life support from one section of the station to the next. You'll also have to turn a profit to make sure your space station can continue to grow.

You can start from scratch with only a little bit of money to get started, or you can choose from a handful of prebuilt starter stations and dive right in, but either way you play it, the game remains the same. You are tasked with designing a functional space station by adding various modules to the station's structure. Adding solar panels allows the station to collect more energy, which it needs to power things like your life-support systems and crew modules. Manning the station gives you a crew that can conduct experiments in a laboratory module, which in turn provides funding for further station development.

Build your station up from nothing into a huge orbital installation in Mistaril's Space Station Manager.

You'll also have a series of specific goals to reach. As you fulfill requirements, such as making a 15-unit station or getting your thermal or energy flow up to specific numbers, additional station modules become available for use. On top of that, the game allows for the downloading of additional modules, some of which are player-created.

Space Station Manager also allows you to separate the building from the management portion of the game, if you wish, so you can just spend some time connecting the modules in ways that you find pleasing. Furthermore, the whole game takes place over a relaxing shot of the spinning Earth.

Developer: Three Rings Design
Genre: Massively Multiplayer Puzzle
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Three Rings Design's Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates combines two seemingly disparate elements--pirates and puzzle games--and puts them into a massively multiplayer online RPG setting. The Java-based world of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates offers plenty of activities for swashbuckling sea dogs. All of your seafaring activities--sailing, navigating, bilging, gunnery, carpentry, and swordfighting--are accomplished through simple puzzle games. Alternately, if you don't have very strong sea legs, you can stay on land and try your hand at a trade. Currently, the only trade available is distillery--the fine art of making rum--though Three Rings promises games for other trades, including weaving, smithing, shipwrightery, and tailoring, among other skills that would serve the needs of buccaneers who have come to port. The games themselves are all relatively simple affairs, many of them modeled after existing puzzle games such as Bejeweled and Puyo Pop, though Yohoho! makes extended play more appealing by including a large number of unique puzzles.

You got your pirates in my puzzles! You got your puzzles in my pirates!

Adding purpose to all the puzzle games is a persistent world with tens of thousands of players and a player-sustained economy, which is driven largely by the trafficking of goods such as wood, iron, hemp, spices, and sugar cane, as well as the occasional chest of buried treasure, and, of course, plenty of good old-fashioned piracy. The game also features a strong social element. You can challenge other players to swordfights or drinking contests at random, keep a list of your "mateys," and form your own pirate crew. Keeping in line with the accessible puzzle games that make up the meat of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, the game's visuals feature colorful island locales and pirates that look something like Lego people crossed with Playmobil people. You can be sure to hear plenty of "Yarr!" and "Avast ye!" shouts while playing as well. If nothing else, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is certainly a change of pace from your average MMORPG.