turn-based

If patience is not one of your strongest traits, then perhaps a turn-based strategy game is not for you. Otherwise, sit back, and get ready to be consumed for hours by the chesslike pace of this Great Little War Game.

In GLWG, you are the bird's-eye-view commander of a comical yet brutal military force. You get one turn to move your units and wage attacks, then it's your opponent's turn to do the same. The strategy comes in as you attempt to attack your enemy, while still maintaining a safe-enough distance that you avoid being attacked yourself. … Read more

Hero Academy is a fun and addictive fantasy-themed combat-strategy game in which you play short, asynchronous turns against friends (through GameCenter or Facebook) or randomly matched opponents.

Each game is a face-off between two teams trying to advance and destroy the other team's fragile "crystals," with combatants moving horizontally or vertically across a small, chessboard-style grid. You have a "hand" of six tiles that you draw from a limited deck -- including new units, such as knights and wizards, and temporary and permanent power-ups, such as shields and healing potions. Each turn, you have to … Read more

Hearing tales of everyday regular folk skipping work to play a new game happens a couple of times a year, usually around the release dates of a new Madden or Halo installment. Much more rare is seeing same "taking the day off" messages via Twitter or Facebook in reference to a PC game. That's part of what makes the Civilization series so unique; it's a serious turn-based PC strategy game that manages to have similar mainstream crossover appeal as some of the big-console action hits.

What makes Civilization V even more of an anomaly is that … Read more

Angry Birds Lite is a free, 12-level preview of Angry Birds, an addictive physics-based puzzler with a lot of personality.

You're helping a bunch of birds, as they wreak vengeance upon a crew of smug little egg-stealing pigs. Basically a one-player, turn-based artillery game, Angry Birds has a dead-simple interface: you just pull back on a slingshot to launch birds one at a time, with your finger position determining the speed and trajectory of each bird. The only other interaction comes when new birds (essentially, different ammo types) are introduced: a tiny, MIRV-like bluebird and a speedy yellow bunker-buster, … Read more

This week, Apple surpassed an amazing milestone at the iTunes app store: one billion downloads. Apple had been running a contest called the Billion App Countdown promotion with prizes including a chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, a MacBook Pro, an iPod Touch, and more. Though the contest ended once they reached their mark (winners will be announced soon), it's still an amazing feat and clearly implies the apps are going to keep on coming. That's great news for iPhone app lovers like us!

It's no secret that the most popular apps at the … Read more

Reign of Swords Free is a limited version of Reign of Swords, a complex and challenging turn-based strategy game in which you engage in a wide variety of fantasy battles, from bloody fortress sieges to epic battles royal. Reign of Swords Free definitely takes some effort to learn--and much more to master--and arcade fans might be put off by the chunky graphics, relatively slow pace, and sometimes clumsy use of the touch screen. However, this game definitely offers deep gameplay and lots of satisfying options for fans of similar games (such as Advanced Wars on the DS). The free version … Read more