I'm slowly getting more and more hooked on this game. You have a space ship and fly from star to star through uncharted space. You have a time limit (10, 20 or 30 years) to discover worlds, collect technology and defeat and commune with aliens. Then you return home and cash in all of your loot for your final score. It takes about 15 to 30 minutes to successfully play a game. There is a lot to discover. I was surprised when some of the "useless" items saved my butt on occasion.
The battle simulator is very nice. While most of the game is turn-based, the battles are real time. There are many ships in the game, several of which can join your cause. An abundance of varied weapons make combat interesting. And the graphics... <drool> There is a large amount of risk management in the game, 1: the time limit restricting your exploration, and 2: deciding which ships to risk in combat.
I paid for the download version yesterday. The 28Mb download comes as an .ISO file, designed to be burnt to a CD. However, you can use something like WinRAR to extract the files to a temporary folder and install the game from there.
