…just kidding! Star Traders RPG isn’t about stock brokers–it’s a turn-based, outer space role-playing game where you “trade, battle, pirate & bounty for galactic riches.” Inspired by titles such as Master of Orion and Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Star Traders RPG has a straightforward premise: you captain a starship, and need to make money by trading and performing contracts for various in-game factions.

Your command of the ship is under constant threat, both internal and external. Can you manage your resources, crew, officers well to enough to turn a profit on your contracts and trades? Those that do will be among the Faction’s elite Star Heroes — and those that fail will be branded bandits and Crimelords.

Fail to turn a profit and you become a crimelord? Man, Space Capitalism is even harsher than the regular kind!

Luckily, Space Capitalism doesn’t govern sales of the game itself: you can get Star Traders from either Google Play or Amazon for free. As with Cyber Knights RPG, however, there is also an Elite version available for $1.99. This one adds “2,000 new Sectors, 200 additional Zones…more than 150 exclusive art files…100 ships, 100 planets, more rumors, officers, awards and content.” If that sounds like it’s worth a couple of bucks to you, you can grab the paid version on Google Play or on Amazon.

We’ll start with Gurk, a free game that offers “a 3-character party, 24 dungeon levels, 44 different items, 23 unique monsters and a vast wilderness.” It seems fairly basic, but again, it’s free. And at a mere 100 KB, the game is pretty compact to boot.

Gurk II, released last year, is decidedly un-free at $0.99, but it’s also more ambitious. For your minor expenditure, the devs say you’ll get the following in return:

Quests, boats, potions, music, more boats, tons more monsters, items, spells. The super-charged sequel to the famous 8-bit RPG, Gurk II is a huge new adventure with all of the most requested features added: quests, music, sound, potions, and an improved look! Fans of the original will be shedding tears of joy as they roll for their character’s stats, board ships, summon monsters and cast powerful area of effect spells. Players not previously familiar with the realm of Gurk will simply stare in slack-jawed wonder at the beautifully pixelated graphics, all the while being serenaded by the lush and authentic MIDI soundtrack. Only the viscerally-compressed sound FX and challenging new combat tactics will snap them back to their senses.

I’ve found at least one review that says Gurk II is a tactically involving game well suited for playing in short bursts, and a second that strongly recommends Gurk II over its free predecessor. Interested? You can grab Gurk II for less than a buck right here.

First up, we have a first-person dungeon crawler by the name Deadly Dungeons (created by an unnamed team consisting of Jacob Ensign, Philip Beal, Micha Hoeylarts, Martin Lande and Jillian Hurst). This is a real-time grid-based crawl, very much in the same vein as Dungeon Master–or, more recently, Legend of Grimrock. Unlike those two games, however, Deadly Dungeons is not party-based; you’re all alone down there with a single character!

The basic premise follows:

After being separated from your adventuring party, you must navigate a deadly dungeon, and fight your way through hordes of creatures in a desperate attempt to escape alive.  What first begins as a simple escape to the surface turns into a fight for survival, a confrontation with an ancient evil, and a descent to hell itself.

Interestingly, Deadly Dungeons seems to be something of a roguelike (note the second entry on the feature list):

• Massive and deadly dungeon environments to adventurer through.
• Randomly generated dungeon levels, creatures, and items.
• Pages worth of dialog, journal entries, and environmental descriptions of the dungeon environment.
• Continuous monthly updates that enhance and extend the RPG game.
• First-person dungeon crawling rendered using OpenGL ES.
• Touch-based interface.

A piffling $2.99 on Google Play or Amazon will net you Deadly Dungeons in its entirety. In the meantime, MeAndMyAndroid has a review to help you decide. Unfortunately, Deadly Dungeons is an Android exclusive, so I’m afraid iPhone users will have to give this one a pass.

Swordigo’s feature list is sort of generic, and the website says absolutely nothing about the game’s plot, so I’ll simply observe that it looks a lot like a modern take on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, minus the overworld. Check out the trailer and see for yourself:

The app is currently free for a limited time; after today, it reverts to its normal price (which I can’t seem to find anywhere). Nab it here.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the convoluted method in which it was created, Chain of Retribution sports a simple premise:

When two mercenaries accepted an escort job–thought to be a swift and easy– they found themselves involved into a global conspiracy that would shake the very core of the earth.

The devs (Archeia_Nessiah, Ocean, GreatOldOne, Skie Fortress, JIHAUS, marimo, Khos, and mellytan) state that CoR features a few unique mechanics. In particular:

*New twist on the battle system: Each character is divided into 3 categories. Striker, Balance or Passive. Striker types regain MP in battle by attacking only. They’ll gain 20 MP this way, and are usually more for saving up for a big attack.
Balance types regain 10 MP regardless of what command is used. Their skills tend to cost less but are not usually focused on having a big final attack to use.
Passive types regain 30 MP when you defend. They also start with the most MP in a battle and are Mage-types.

*Encounter Gauge which fills up as you fight encounters (which are seen on the map). Once filled, you can open up a special chest in the area.

The game is free–to nab it, simply head here and download away.

Travel by Princess Loren’s side as she searches for her lost mother, the Queen of the Amazons. Guide her choices and act as her valiant defender, meeting many colorful characters along the way. As the journey progresses, everyone will grow and change — character development in games isn’t dead! It’s also impossible to see all the content in just one playthrough, with so many ways to customize the characters.

Loren the Amazon Princess features turn-based combat, 13 recruitable characters, and 12 possible romances “including all possible gender combinations.” So basically, it’s very much in the same vein as Planet Stronghold. (Incidentally, I’m guessing LtAP doesn’t feature targeted attacks–from the looks of it, every single one of your characters would die with one hit to the abdomen.)

LtAP comes in Windows, Mac and Linux flavors; whatever your OS, however, the game can be yours for $24.99. There’s a free demo [ Windows | Mac | Linux ] as well as a trailer, which just so happens to show off some gameplay as well:

Note: the developer wrote up a post-mortem of the game here, in case you’re interested in reading about his trials and travails putting this game together.

CoC:TWL is a very reasonable $4.99 (or €4.09 or £3.50) on the Intel AppUp store. There’s a catch, though: you’ll have to install the Intel AppUp client in order to purchase it. Whoa, whoa–hang on a second–ha. Okay, all better. Sorry, I had to wait for my eyes to finish rolling.

Anyway, I have a hunch that this game may be worth the inconvenience of cluttering my hard drive with yet another Steam-wannabe. I’ll be writing up my thoughts on this one sometime in the foreseeable future.

VtF runs exclusively on Android phones and tablets, and can be purchased on Google Play for a piffling $1.25. At that price, it’s hard to justify not giving it a go. If you’re the sort of person who hesitates at the thought of dropping $1.25, however, perhaps this trailer will help you make up your mind:

‘Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land’ is a turn-based strategy/role-playing video game based on the award winning Call of Cthulhu RPG. The game is set in the midst of World War One and pits a team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient evil, one older than humanity itself, who is using the carnage of the great war to build an undead army deep beneath the battlefields of Europe.

There’s a very positive review of the game on GameZebo that puts this one squarely in tactical RPG territory, with much of the core gameplay sounding a bit like what you’d find in X-Com or Jagged Alliance:

Your squad members each have a certain number of action points per turn, which are used up by things like attacks, special skills, and movement. Making an attack depends on how many action points you want to use up: You can make a wild shot, which uses fewer points, or you can take aim and sacrifice said points for an increased chance at success.

Different weapons take different amounts of action points to use, too. That means the investigator armed with a pistol can make more attacks than, say, the dude who happens to be lugging around a rifle. Leveling up, too, is rather unique, since you characters gain experience by making successful attacks with the weapon they happen to be using.

Not surprisingly — since, after all, this is game that involves a lot of trench warfare —there’s a fairly complicated cover system in place. As is the case with real life, elevation and cover can be integral to ensuring your team’s victory over the forces of evil.

We’ll be doing a review of this one in the not-too-distant future, so stayed tuned!

In Choice of Zombies, you play an ordinary person caught in a zombie apocalypse. Will you fight using brawn or brains? Will you keep your humanity intact or become a bloodthirsty zombie hunter? Can you stay alive long enough to get yourself and your friends to a place of safety?

Pro tip: zombies like brains. Use brawn.

You can play through this latest choose-your-own-adventure / RPG online right here for free, or get it for Android / iOS for $2.99.