Flotilla

Flotilla is an interesting amalgam of two entirely different types of game - the Oregon Trail randomized choose your own adventure style and a turn-based strategy style.   Both of these are well done, with humorously written encounters with bizarre use of animals, excellent music (including some great classical piano during the battles) and just a ton of charm, injected in little ways you wouldn't necessarily expect from an indie game.   The game's main weakness in presentation is its graphical style, which involves fairly crude hand-drawn stills or ever cruder polygonal models in space combat (and some really ugly colors, to boot)
 
At the end of the day, however, you end up getting what you paid for, and especially if you purchased through XBLA (which would appear to have a clearly superior price point to Steam at $5.00 and controls just fine), you didn't pay for a whole lot.  This is true in two ways: the actual length of an individual game, and the amount of variety between one game and the next.  The length of a normal game is strictly limited at seven months through a story contrivance that the player has a terminal illness and is just out for one last joyride through the galaxy.   While the limited lifespan mechanic is not original for adventure games (see Sid Meier's Pirates! or Space Rangers), Flotilla certainly has one of the shortest.  It seems that each month amounts to about two turns, and since most encounters are resolved through making one of two simple choices (with consequences the game does not elaborate on at all at the time of the decision), an entire game could be played through in five minutes if it weren't for some mandatory combat.   It's important to note that the game also includes a hardcore mode, which counterintuitively also extends the length of play, along with making enemies harder.
 
Short play-times are not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the game is highly replayable. After all, lots of people like Solitaire. But many mechanics in the game, such as 'cargo' (used to upgrade your ship abilities) and the ability to build up a larger fleet than your initial two ships, including new, stronger types of vessels, leave you expecting an experience that's a bit more robust.  It serves as an incentive to keep playing in the hopes of having a very lucky play-through where you can really rack up a high score, but while doing a little better is always possible, it will only take you a few adventures to see almost all of the encounters Flotilla has to offer.   
 
Combat is the real time-consuming element of Flotilla and certainly the most strategic, though a few tricks are really all you need to grasp in order to beat the AI.  It's primarily a game of patience and positioning, where you move to dodge slow-moving enemy fire, make sure that when you can't dodge it, it hits the front of your ship, and to open fire when it looks like you can hit your enemy in the back.  Additional ship types offer different strategies, but it is in no way assured that you will possess anything other than the standard missile destroyers in any given playthrough.  With the exception of the deer (who appear to represent the government), few combat encounters will be beyond even the power of your beginning pair of destroyers if properly handled.  Ultimately, however, if Flotilla ends up floating your spaceship, you'll probably be playing the hardcore mode, which will strain your abilities a bit more.  
 
I recommend Flotilla as a fun and unique experience, but it's an experience that in no way rivals what a larger studio could produce with the same structure.  Hopefully Flotilla 2 will be picked up by a producer with the funds to make it something really great.