If you enjoy occasional simple and easy gaming and don’t always have the patience to go through a manual and long learning curves in today’s complex RTS games, we have some ideas for instant gratification: Flash game sites are hosting countless free strategy games that can be played in short or long breaks. Here is our top 5 (or top 15).

I have to admit that the PC video game industry has somewhat lost me sometime in the mid to late 1990s after games such as the first Unreal, Quake, Steel Panthers and the Railroad Tycoon series, which I loved. Perhaps the reason was that I started my career at that time and got married soon thereafter and I just did not have much time anymore to play complex video games. I personally do not enjoy first person shooters that much anymore today and I have a hard time buying into lifelike strategy games that require hours of practice.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy games when I have some free time, but that is mainly on consoles today. As far as the PC is concerned, I miss early visual strategy titles such as SSI’s Colonial Conquest (released 1985) on the Atari ST, a Risk-type game that could last for days and, despite its simplicity, was ingenious in its structure and incredibly fun to play with a bunch of friends (even if the game had the potential to destroy friendships as well.) Sid Meyer’s Silent Service (also released in 1985), Silent Service II and The Hunt for Red October, great submarine simulations of their time that looked best on the Commodore Amiga, were another amazing titles. Those games can now be found as abandonware downloads on the Internet. If you enjoy simple strategy games and haven’t played those games, then I highly recommend them (make sure you download the Colonial Conquest manual as well as those games used text in the manuals as piracy protection), even if they are already a quarter century old (OMG!).

But there are great simple strategy games as well, which can be found on one of the many flash game sites that are spread across the Internet. We noticed that we all here at ConceivablyTech were secretly playing those games and felt that it is not a bad idea to share those games with you. Here is our current top 5 (with some alternative choices). And remember, we are not ranking the games here by graphics or sound quality, but purely on how much fun they are.

5. Diner City

Ah, the tycoon type. I have to admit, we are still looking for a great soccer manager game out there and haven’t found one yet. If you know one, let us know and send the URL along. Diner City is a very simple restaurant management game that is not focused on preparing food, but deals with the business side such as attracting customers, hiring staff and upgrading your building(s). After a short tutorial phase (playing through the tutorials in any of those games is a great idea, by the way) you will compete with another restaurant in the neighborhood for the lion’s share of total customer revenue. The game is a bit tricky to figure out at first, and you will have to learn what the best investment may be at any given time. However, it should not take more than an hour or two to go through the entire game. Despite the fact that we have figured it all out relatively quickly, we find ourselves playing it again every now and then.

Alternative Choices: Burger Tycoon, Lemonade World

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