Ten Minute Space Strategy

10 Minute Space Strategy is Exactly What It Says On the Tin: A space strategy game in which a normal paced game doesn't last much more than 10 minutes.

The game is turn based. Players can configure their profile from a set of options describing their race, their credo and their homeworld, which affects their abilities and how the game starts. They can be pitted against a number of computer opponents, ranging from one to seven and controlled by the computer or other human players. The ultimate goal is to eliminate all opponents and become the only living race in the galaxy. In order to do this, you have to research technologies, colonize planets with colonizer ships and form fleets of fighters and bombers to defend yourself and attack your enemies. From time to time, anomalies can show up on the map for a limited time, and if you place a certain amount of fighters over you get nifty advantages.

The game is freeware, and can be downloaded in this page.

This game provides examples of:

 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Mechanic Menace race found a way to become immortal by transferring their souls into machine bodies. This made them become void of emotion, after which they turned into Blood Knights.
 * Death From Above: Bombers are built more slowly than normal, require a separate factory designed to make them before you can produce them and can't defend themselves from attackers without a fleet of fighters escorting them, but they are the most effective way to decimate the population of enemy planets.
 * Eldritch Abomination: The Tentacle race is said to be ancient and originated from an alternate dimension. Their doctrine is based on 'friendship', which for them is turning other races into their slaves. Their default credo also allows them to turn space monsters into fighters with no need to fight.
 * Hive Mind: The Insectoid race is a race of, obviously, insect-shaped creatures that are unified by the psyche of their queen, like a colony of ants. Their default credo is Unified, which makes them more effective than normal at defending their planets and gives them the ability to build hives that act as cities, factories and research centers, all in one.
 * Jack of All Trades: The humans, as is the norm in this kind of games. Their default credo gives them no special building to make in their planets, but it gives them the most points to spend on racial traits.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: What the Machine Menace turned into when they moved their souls into mechanical bodies. Their default credo is Warmonger, which makes them more effective at fighting and lets them build special factories that make fighters and bombers at the same time.
 * One Gender Race: The Amazon race are said to not have males. How they reproduce is anyone's guess, but considering that their default credo is Scientific, perhaps they just grow more of themselves in vats.
 * Silicon Based Life: The Siliconitis race. They are shapeshifting rocks with no humanoid characteristics. Their default credo is Expansionist: Since they can shapeshift, they are very adaptable, and therefore can colonize worlds and reproduce very quickly no matter the conditions of the planet.
 * Single Biome Planet: The biomes of the planets are lava, desert and water. You choose one of those as the biome of your race's homeworld at start. Planets with that biome are populated faster each turn when you colonize them. The Expansionist credo allows you to ignore this mechanic and grow population equally fast on all biomes.
 * Tech Tree: A very simplistic one to match the fast pace of the game. You can research five fields: Enviroment (Better life conditions on worlds that are different than your homeworld), Industry (Faster construction of facilities and ships), Propulsion (Allows ships to move farther from your planets without decaying from lack of supply), Warfare (Makes your ships better at combat) and Empire (Increases the number of planets you can control and fighters you can field). Each of these fields has a cap of level 10, and as you unlock higher levels of one or two techs at the same time, you unlock special, racial-dependant techs that give you a unique advantage.