[DIYGamer correspondent Ken Ellis was on-sight all weekend at this year's extremely indie-friendly PAX Prime, previewing as many games as humanly possible. To start, thoughts on Giant Army's space playground Universe Sandbox.]

Universe Sandbox is one of the most appropriately named games in existence. It is a astronomy game about creating, sustaining, or destroying your own cosmos as you see fit in a almost limitless spacial sandbox. Who wants to be God? You do. How do you do it? Universe Sandbox. Period.

The game plays heavily on the force of gravity between spacial bodies as it relates to all the celestial objects that you decide to throw in your universe. How big can it get? A demonstration solar system we were shown contained 466 singular objects all of which were turning and twirling in concert with each other. Not an easy task to perform. Dan Dixon, the creator of the game who took us through some basics, decided to throw Neptune into the system and the entire thing fell into a beautiful chaos.

The game doesn’t just have planets, it has almost anything you can think of. Choose from stars, asteroids, meteors, planetoids, and even black-holes! Nothing is set in stone either. Each objects variables can be changed at anytime from its mass, volume, and density. Another demonstration showed that you can turn Jupiter to the size of a star if so desired.

Universe Sandbox is so good at showing the interactions between objects in space, it has already been sold to a handful of schools as a learning program. Any aspiring astronomer, space fan, or gravity nut should pick up this game. It is already out on Steam for only $10, so there is no excuse not to be God for a day. Hey, you may even learn a thing or two.

[Giant Army]

In the midst of John being knee deep in sharing what he saw at this year’s E3 Indiecade Showcase, a ghost from Indiecade past makes its official launch. Last year’s Game Documentary Winner The Cat and the Coup has been released for PC and Mac, and is available now for anyone interested as a free download. For the record, you ought to be interested.

I had a chance to play TCatC at last year’s event in Culver City, and was blown away by the research, artistic design, and overall gameplay experience delivered. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see if this release contains anything beyond what I saw back in October of last year, but if the experience is the same you’ll be reading Wikipedia articles about the history for just as long as you play the game itself — given the fascinating true events the title revolves around.

The PC version is up on Steam, while the Mac installer (as well as the PC) can be downloaded via the developer itself.

Developed with accessibility to kids, Air Forte brings three different game modes, multiplayer support for up to four players, an original soundtrack, and online rankings to submit your high scores to.

The game runs $15 on comps but just 400 MS Points ($5) on Xbox Live Indie Games (presumably because that’s the price cap for an XBLIG.) Demos for each of the supported operating systems are available from the official site as well as the 360 trial on Xbox Live. Check out the trailer: