Galcon Fusion

First There Was Galcon. Then there was Galcon for iPhone, and soon after a very large cheque. Now there's Galcon Fusion, a result of the developer having given up his day job to concentrate on making games.

Galcon has always been simple. To win, players must conquer planets by launching ships at them: once the number attacking exceeds the number defending, the planet falls. Big planets generate ships faster than smaller ones, and that's all there is to it. Hello realtime strategy for impatient thickos.

Fusion's 2D world has stark, Space War-like polygons bumping against lush new 3D planets. It's an intriguing combination, but one which fits the backwardly modern feel and which also allows thousand-strong battles to be rendered free of any stutter. There are two game types, single or multiplayer, and two sound effects, "doop" and "bosh", both of which carry over unchanged from prior versions. The controls still require little in the way of oarsmanship, in that left click (select), mouse wheel (how many) and right click (launch) cater for every occasion. It's no more complicated than picking your nose, and as such offers addictive fun to small boys of all ages.

This latest rewrite works through Steam. While Valve's whale adds an enormous drag factor to launch times, what it does do is open up Galcon to a massive audience. With improved AI, extra gameplay styles, bonkers retro ASCII-only mode and server lobby, the multiplayer side is where it pushes the score into Recommended territory. But the single player mode won't hold your attention for more than a few rounds.