Harvest resources, expand your operation, and survive waves of enemies, all in real time. It doesn't sound like anything special, but The Space Game: Missions is mesmerizing. You'll build beautiful, sprawling, weblike structures, and then watch as they tear apart enemy fleets and send repair bots swirling through their hubs and spokes. It's intense, and at times quite challenging.

TSG: Missions has a solid tutorial, a fantastic interface, multiple difficulty levels, and a ton of optional missions. If you're going to add another casual game to the already crowded strategic defense genre, this is definitely the way to do it.

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In order to play Upgrade Complete, you'll need to buy a few upgrades. I recommend you start with a menu screen. It's not cheap, but the freedom it provides more than makes up for the price. Plus, it enables even more satisfying upgrades, like menu buttons. From there, you can upgrade your way to full-on sidescrolling space combat, complete with a customizable warship.

Upgrade Everything is all about empowering the player to design and achieve the ultimate game experience. Want more missles? A faster engine? Better graphics and background music? They're all upgradable. Everything's upgradable. And let me tell you, there's no better feeling than earning the very best spaceship virtual money can buy--and then getting an achievement for doing so because you paid to upgrade your achievements.

If you'd like to suggest a free browser-based game for Act Casual, send us a link and a brief description via our contact form.

"Say, its only a paper moon / sailing over a cardboard sea / but it wouldn't be make-believe / if you believed in me." Indie studios Flashbang and Infinite Ammo built a hand-drawn, monochromatic, sidescrolling platformer around Ella Fitzgerald's wistful metaphor, and the results are quite beautiful. Paper Moon plays a lot like a typical 2-D platformer, but it lets you "pop" certain elements from one parallax-scrolling layer to the next. Some items pop into the protagonist's plane, while others zoom right through it. You can pop items to reach new areas, prevent your death, and even smack enemies right off the screen. It's clever, it looks cool, and it sets Paper Moon apart from its sidescrolling peers.

Paper Moon is a very short game, made shorter by the questionable inclusion of a timer that counts down from five minutes. There's no penalty for dying, but once the time runs out, your game is over. You'll probably replay several early stages before you figure out how to reach the conclusion. The good news is that Paper Moon lets you take a few different paths along the way, and with a bit of practice, you can easily complete it from start to finish in just a few minutes. Besides the timer, my only real complaint about Paper Moon is that there isn't more to it. It's a mere hors d'œuvre, when there are clearly enough ingredients here for a main course.

Not surprisingly, Paper Moon originated as a bonafide stereoscopic game, created for the Kokoromi Collective's Gamma 3D showcase last year. If you've got a pair of 3D glasses and an Xbox 360 USB controller handy, you can download it in its original, slightly less-refined, non-Flash form for PC or Mac.

If you'd like to suggest a free browser-based game for Act Casual, send us a link and a brief description via our contact form.

Each new page of Headspin Storybook reveals a tiny, medieval, pop-up scene that doubles as a visual puzzle. The left page of each set mirrors the right, with the exception of a few items flipped on their vertical axes. A horse will graze facing east, for example, instead of west. A castle wall won't quite line up with its counterpart. Or a wishing-well's handle will point the wrong direction. Your job is to click the items on the right to make the scene a perfect mirror image before time runs out.

How quickly can you recognize mirror images? You'll soon find out. As the pages turn, the landscapes get busier. More out-of-sync items appear, and the the charming landscapes begin bustling with distracting crowds. There are only twenty levels to solve, but they demand frantic, meticulous examination toward the end. Refreshing, challenging, and beautifully presented, Headspin Storybook is a perfect little gem of a game.

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Sonny's story begins in classic turn-based RPG fashion, as its titular protagonist is awakened by a friend. But Sonny isn't a starry-eyed adolescent yearning to venture forth from his charming rural village. He's an amnesiac zombie on an embattled freighter, armed with naught but a hunk of lead pipe.

The forgivably silly tale that follows, told via cutscenes and an impressive amount of voice-acted dialogue, provides the backdrop for a lot of very slick, addictive, and deep RPG combat. Sonny's almost effortless initial encounters give little hint of the challenges that lie ahead. Within an hour or two, you'll be selling and swapping gear, assigning tactics to party members, and even respeccing talent trees. The entire interface is mouse-click driven, and its tooltip-enhanced menus are some of the best I've seen in a Flash RPG.

As far as casual, turn-based RPGs are concerned, Sonny and Sonny 2 are the cream of the in-browser, free-to-play crop. Sonny 2 is a slightly more refined game, and it doesn't presuppose much familiarity with its predecessor, so feel free to play them out of order if you're not worried about story continuity. Both games provide hours of tactical combat, and they both let you save your character after each battle, so they're perfect for multiple casual sessions. Click "read more" below to see some Sonny screenshots.

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There are times when a soul craves the strategic command of RISK without all the messy player interaction, political machinations or time-consuming play. For these shipwrecked specters, Hex Empire serves as a soothing tincture.

Players spawn into a randomly generated hexmap populated with four rival fiefdoms (Redosia, Violetnam, Bluegaria and Greenland), each occupying a corner of the world. The goal is to spread outward, colonize the lone cities and ports which are ripe for rule, and amass an army powerful enough to crush any would-be usurpers. Each occupied city produces a modest number of soldiers loyal to your cause, which can be combined with other units to make more powerful platoons. Gather enough soldiers together and they’ll transmute into an artillery battery or tank squad.

While there are no special perks to choosing one kingship over the other, players will note that some city capitals –- effectively your national base of world-conquering operations –- are more equal than others: An unfortunate byproduct of the random tileset, some nations are placed closer to the lion’s share of defenseless cities. This is either a source of challenge or an imbalance, depending on your point of view.

Hex Empire lacks online multiplayer, so the novelty of crushing the AI may soon wear thin. But for a pocket Napoleon, it provides a worthwhile lunch-break’s worth of totalitarian rule.

Special thanks go out to Boogle for suggesting today's featured time-waster. If you'd like to recommend a free browser-based game for Act Casual, send us a link and a brief description via our handy-dandy Contact Form.

(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors begins with the following bit of exposition: "Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors." Whether the story that emerges from there is heartwarming or horrific depends entirely on your choices.

Developer Gregory Weir describes The Majesty of Colors as as "a pixel-horror Flash game" and "a tale of love, loss, and balloons with five different endings." It's best experienced with as little introduction as possible, so I think I'll leave it at that.

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"This game is very hard." So says developer Andrew Guillen at the outset of Spin the Black Circle. He's right.

It's no more complicated than a hand-held marble maze. Simply spin each level with left and right arrow keys in order to pilot a ball into a hole. The early levels, which introduce the ball's physics and some basic maneuvers, are boot camp. The real game begins at Level 10.

Spin the Black Circle rewards patience and careful attention. You can't brute force your way around its mazes. You have to finesse the ball home. The more trial-and-error attempts you make, the deeper you're drawn into the physics simulation, and the better you'll get. It's surprisingly rewarding. By the time I completed Level 12 (there are 24 in total), I'd reached an almost trancelike state of concentration. And I'd accomplished something that at first seemed impossible.

Thanks to Al for suggesting Spin the Black Circle. If you'd like to recommend a free browser-based game for Act Casual, use our Contact Form to send us a link and brief description.

Metro Rules of Conduct is a short, simple, and thoughtful game that explores the odd social interactions between public transit riders. Its creator, Kian Bashiri (developer of the equally conceptual You Have To Burn The Rope) describes it as an "accurate simulation of the Stockholm Metro where future travelers can safely learn the unwritten rules without risking making fools of themselves."

As any veteran mass-transit traveler knows, the #1 unwritten rule of public transportation is that eye contact between fellow commuters is strictly forbidden. Being caught glancing (or worse, gawking) at your metro-mates is a major offense. In Metro Rules of Conduct, you get points for sneaking peeks at other commuters' apparel and accessories, but only so long as they don't catch you looking. Press any key to start, then use the arrow keys to direct your gaze.

Thanks to our own Pyroman[FO] for suggesting this week's Act Casual pick. If you've discovered a free browser-based game we should play, send a link and description via our Contact Form.

Nothing says “Holiday Season” like a communicable disease. Behind the fun brought by yule logs, cheerful carolers and pine-scented prefab trees lurks a stew-pot full of microbiotic ne'er-do-wells. Rather than wait until a cute nephew sneezes into your eggnog, Phage Wars asks you to take the initiative in this winter wonderland of biological warfare.

You assume the role of an ambitious virus. Your genetic payload slowly builds within any given infected cell, waiting for your signal to spread out and propagate across the playfield. Unfortunately, your turf is also home to rival pathogens which seek to monopolize the rich genetic machinery at hand. Do you wait to build an overwhelming force within a select few strongholds, or do you encourage several small colonies to gang up on larger cells? Whatever strategy you choose, your ultimate goal is to thoroughly crush any interloping biotics.

Heaping thanks go to Lex Cayman for letting us bum his prescription for addiction. Sinuses clogged with viscous game-goo? Hack up a link, scribble a short pathology, then spread the joy through our disposable Contact Form. If the prognosis looks good, your find might be featured in an upcoming Act Casual!