I haven't said much about games recently.. Here's what I've found cool over the last few months and felt I should review:

• Aquaria - probably the best indie game I saw in '07; it's an arcade adventure game with a lot of depth, as well as a lot of breadth. That is, its game play elements provide for diverse and interesting experiences, and there's a lot of them. You play a Naija, a water nymph lost in an underwater cave system, full of placid scenic schools of fish, great crabs, forgotten temples full of strange magic, monsters in the hidden depths, and back again. It's very well constructed - the music, graphics, and game play fit together seamlessly to create moods ranging from calm relaxation to rampant fear, all strung together into a non-linear game of exploration. An absolute delight - I thoroughly recommend it. Windows only, unfortunately.
• Battle for Wesnoth - fantasy turn based strategy game with a whole pile of user-created campaigns, some brilliant, others not. Feels a lot like Fantasy General (1996). Units gain experience and skills as they go. Nice, deep, interaction between different types of weapon, terrain, armour and unit. Pretty well-balanced, and fairly addictive. Worth a look, even if you're not into strategy games, simply as it's provides an example of a user-expandable game design done well. Available on most desktop platforms
• Chromadrome 2 - simple, mouse based game of skill. You control a marble, racing along a track covered in traps and obstacles with variable speed, attempting to finish in the shortest time possible. Slick, flashy visual design. Surprisingly deep play, despite its simplicity. Highly addictive. There's a lot of game play packed into the demo, so it's well worth a download.
• Chocolatier 2 - a thoroughly addictive blend of management, recipe construction, and light weight adventuring. You start as a young entrepreneur hoping to challenge the great Baumeister chocolate empire in San Francisco of 1925 or so. After learning to manage the supply of ingredients and completed chocolates, you slowly move into wider markets, with new ingredients ranging from six types of varietal cacao, exotic spices and so forth. Essentially a classic production management games, but with sufficient diversity of factors and supply chains to manage that it becomes challenging without declining into furious mouse clicking. Simple, well implemented, distraction. Addictive, but not too long - the core game has about 15 hours of gameplay - long enough to suck me in, but not long enough to drive me mad with boredom.
• Darwinia - not a new game, but one I've only recently gotten into, Darwinia is from Introspective, a three man game development studio in London, also famous for Uplink (a surprisingly realistic hacking game), and Defcon (a game of Mutually Assured Destruction). To some extent it's a real time strategy game, in others it's more a tactical shooter with a top down camera view. You are a programmer who has intruded into Darwinia - a simulated world in which a researcher, Dr Sepulveda, has been experimenting with artificial life. However, many of his creations, the Darwinians, have been corrupted by some sort of viral infection that turns them violent and unpredictable, destroying most of his research, as well as the simple, placid life of the uninfected 'green' Darwinians. Game play consists of creating and controlling squad processes with which you eliminate viral infections, engineer processes which harvest the souls (resource allocation units) of lost Darwinians, and various other units that allow you to affect the otherwise independent Darwinians such that you can lead them to freedom. Though there's only about 8 game levels and the basic premise of play is laid out clearly in the first, there's quite a lot of depth and diversity. In many cases, your enemies can only be defeated by carefully prising open their defenses with skillful use of your squads, then pressing your advantage with legions of Darwinians. Unfortunately, the Darwinians have minds of their own, and often require substantial cajoling before they'll willingly enter battle on your behalf. Lots of fun; the real time strategy formula is present but subverted by indirect control and a focus on tactics rather than economics.

You've probably heard of micro-loans and the Grameen Bank - where business loans to very small scale entrepreneurs in developing countries have proved extremely effective in speeding development - certainly more so than direct financial aid has. The founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, and the bank itself, won the Nobel Peace prize in '06, and, for those who are interested, there's an interesting interview with Muhammad Yunus on the Charlie Rose Show.

The idea itself sounds enormously obvious - why encourage dependency by giving money to corrupt officials when you can encourage growth by lending money directly to people trying to establish businesses in their local communities? I've got questions about the security of such investments, but, by all of the accounts I've read, this has been fantastically successful. The Grameen Bank website reports 7.3 million loans, an amazing 97% of which have been granted to women.

So, I was particularly impressed when I read about Kiva.org in the NY Times Magazine. It's an elaboration of the basic idea whereby a web based service connects small lenders (you, me, anyone with a hundred bucks spare to invest) with small borrowers. Again, I've questions about security, but again, this seems like a fantastic idea. Apparently, so much so they have had to, at various occasions in the last few months, post on the site a message reading "Thanks Kiva Lenders! You've funded EVERY business on the site!!". For a charity (of sorts), that's an amazing thing to have to say.

There's plenty of businesses listed at the moment, and, given that I'm sitting on a little cash at the moment, it's quite tempting to do some research and consider investing a small amount, just out of sheer curiosity. In most cases, the amounts asked for are low enough that I'd be happy to consider them charity, so there's no real risk.