Mmm... greed.

I expected very little out of Greed Corp going in, which might be why it impressed me so much.

It may be a turn-based strategy game with hexagonal map tiles, but Greed Corp's limited number of mechanics makes it very distinct from Civilization V. The basic premise, and brilliant twist, is that the map is unstable: mining it for resources eventually destroys it, along with any structures or units that happen to be there. Air travel and ranged attacks are both possible, but expensive. And some really tricky tactics can come into play when lowering an opponent's tiles, or causing chain reactions through critically-low tiles. There aren't very many actions you can do; but the deep interactions between them are what make Greed Corp interesting.

Ideally - at least, the way I was playing it in the tutorial stages - matches don't last very long, as the game's titular greed (mining the tiles) destroys the map in short order. This balancing act between income and map space, while trying to preserve your units and destroy your opponent's, is easy to approach but rapidly becomes tantalizingly nuanced.

Another surprising victory: while it's clear that Greed Corp was designed for touch devices - every action involves a sequence of clicks on obviously-large buttons - it still works very well with a mouse. A tad unintuitive at first, but ultimately not inconvenient at all.

Progress: Finished the tutorial.