Developed by Soldak Entertainment, Depths of Peril is an action-RPG with a huge emphasis on political/diplomatic strategy. The end result is something new and fresh; an independent, isometric action-RPG unlike anything you've played before, which also won the "RPG Game of the Year" award from GameTunnel.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble is an innovative and award-winning download game for both Mac and Windows that defies classification. It's a unique genre-bending game that includes puzzle and RPG elements, as well as a variety of mini-games. All these disparate elements synthesize remarkably well, and the gameplay quickly becomes intuitive.

In Sandlot's newest addition to the Tradewinds series, Tradewinds Caravans, experience the excitement and derring-do of a merchant's life, without the boredom and general unpleasantness that would tend to come with the real thing. In this loose, fantastical simulation of a merchant's life circa 100 BC, you will explore the silk road, fight your way through swarms of bandits, and uncover the unique story of the character you choose.

PMOG aims to capture the social dynamic of an MMORPG while remaining accessible to your everyday Joe Gamer. However, it wouldn't be much fun if you could just up and create a top-level character – there has to be some sort of dirty work, some progression by which you earn your stripes. This is the part of the game that usually keeps MMORPGs from staying casual. PMOG solves this problem by tying the leveling process directly to your web surfing.

Eschalon: Book 1, the debut title from Basilisk Games, will take you back to the nostalgic days of Ultima and Might and Magic. It's a turn-based, tile-designed RPG, a system that many fans of the genre are familiar with. Eschalon offers a rich, engaging and open-ended world to explore, with a similarly deep storyline. It's a modern-day tribute to the old CRPG's that fans grew up on, at a time when storytelling, adventuring and honing your character's skill took precedence over shiny graphics and cutting-edge mechanics.

Gemcraft brings a lot of innovation to the tower defense genre, quite an accomplishment considering how crowded it already is. The new gameplay mechanics create a lot of strategic depth, and the game adds replay value by keeping track of your high score for each level, allowing you to go back and replay them for much higher scores once your wizard has leveled up and is more powerful.

In Ginormo Sword, you play a pink, ninja-looking hero equipped with a sword that you must upgrade, making it bigger, longer and more powerful. A fantasy action game with subtle RPG elements drawn from the golden age of Atari and Intellivision games, packs a satisfying punch for such a pixelated style, like most other games from Japanese designer Babarageo.

Monsters' Den: The Book of Dread is Flash RPG of extraordinary depth. It is essentially a turn-based, tactical dungeon crawl, and it understands your insatiable clawing lust for magical super-trinkets. If the promise of powerful enchanted do-dads gets your blood pumping even a little bit, then Monsters' Den will have its generous claws in you for quite a while.

If you've ever longed for a game to bring it on with animal-on-animal warfare, as in the tradition of Red Wall, you've come to the right place. Brute Wars is a turn-based RPG tactical strategy game where you pit your team of six creatures against opposing squads. The placement and order of their attacks adds up to a highly nuanced and rapid game of tactics that you won't want to miss.

Tainted Kingdom is a lean, tactical warfare game from Krin, the creator of Sonny. You play a young nobleman assigned to a front-line unit in a lamentable war, only to find that your superiors are not who they seem. The gameplay is taut, playing out as a real-time dance of rock-paper-scissors match-ups. Do you have the skill to lead in battle?

Sonny is most likely the best Flash RPG yet made. Imagine fluid battles that don't feel like a grind, complete with fluid animation and tactics that are actually interesting and fun. Now, imagine that you're a superhuman zombie. Yes, Sonny, this is it.

Aah, gardening. One of the most relaxing and rewarding hobbies one can undertake. There's nothing like planting flowers and watching them grow, especially when you get to sell them for loads of cash and smash gigantic bees and snails with a shovel from time to time! This is the basic premise of Magic Farm, a resource management simulation along the lines of Grimm's Hatchery and Alice Greenfingers. As a magic-wielding gardener, you must plant, water, protect and raise a variety of flowers to sell for cash. You also have three basic skills that can be increased as you play, lending a delicious RPG flavor to the game.

What do you get when you put Global Warming, Peak Oil, Nuclear War and good old-fashioned oligarchy in a blender? You get Fallout meets Elite ...in a browser! Caravaneer is a game by Dmitry Zheltobriukhov that has you playing a caravan leader in a post-apocalyptic desert, trading goods from town to town while fending off hungry raiders. It's got turn-based tactical fighting, strategic economic decision-making, and a political storyline! Tactics, economics and politics!

As odd as it may sound, Skyrates is a game about human-like animals flying biplanes between floating continents. Think Star Fox meets The Kingdom of Zeal from Chrono Trigger. You're a young pilot out to make an impact by trading, performing missions, and fighting pirates. Here's the catch: flying between islands takes at least an hour of real-time. The game was designed by a group of then-CMU grad-students to explore sporadic play, something you check like e-mail a few times a day. The result is not only interesting, its good enough to thread its way into your life.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords blends a match 3 game with an old school fantasy RPG. As you roam the overworld you complete quests, earn gold, gain experience, buy equipment and upgrade your stats just like any role playing game. But when you encounter an enemy a Bejeweled-like tile swapping game appears. Match gems to cause damage and collect mana to cast spells to help you defeat your enemy. It's a remarkably well-balanced game that's as easy to pick-up and play as it is to continue playing for hours upon hours. And it's one of the most addictive games I've played in a very long time.

MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction is a souped-up rendition of Missile Command with great art by Brad Baum and clever resource management design by Nic Daniel. Shoot missiles in an attempt to intercept other missiles, just like in the classic arcade game, but with a twist: Each missile you fire garners some resources that can be spent to upgrade buildings.

Twilight Heroes is a free RPG that recently announced its open beta. Taking place in the corrupt and rather seedy Twilight City, you get the opportunity to take back its night by tossing around hoodlums in the act, earning money, and seeing how long you can keep at it before fatigue causes you to run out of turns, five minutes of game time making one turn.

New from Hero Interactive, creator of Bubble Tanks and Light Sprites, is a unique combination of tower defense and role playing genres (with a little BowMaster Prelude thrown in for good measure) called Storm Winds. Defending the last fort against an oncoming enemy, you must purchase and place turrets on the structure and keep them in good working order. As enemy waves fly in, select a turret and start firing. It's an intruiging combination of game types that's both strategy-oriented and action-packed.

An astonishingly creative role playing game made by Brandon Abley and Teo Mathlein using RPG Maker XP. The graphics are eye-catching and have a great fairy tale look to them, while the story and gameplay are pure console RPG goodness. The game is laid out much like a classic Final Fantasy title but doesn't copy anything directly. It's a unique, deep and involving game that deserves your attention!

Mr. Robot offers a little something for everyone, with an incredible mix of visual elements, storyline, RPG, action adventure puzzles, and battle. You play Asimov, a "lowly service mechanoid" at the mercy of the increasingly flaky computer brain of the good ship Eidolon. Move a few boxes, collect a few bundles of energy, and get slapped around by bigger robots. As the story progresses it becomes clear that all is not well on the Eidolon...

Empires and Dungeons has been receiving a lot of praise for its stripped-down mechanics and surprisingly captivating gameplay. Taking on the role of a medieval emperor, you must gather resources to help build an army, both to attack your rivals and to defend your castle. Along the way you'll venture into deep dungeons, meet mysterious traders, pillage in the name of the empire and much, much more.

You've managed to make it to lunchtime. It's been a rough day but you are free for an hour and you'd love to spend it laying the smack down on some monsters RPG-style. However, it's going to be hard to install World of Warcraft on your puny work PC, and besides, you simply don't have time. What do you do? Fire up a game of DragonFable.

Legend of the Green Dragon is a free, browser based homage to, and extension of, the Legend of the Red Dragon, an original and humorous RPG from the golden years of modems and BBSes. The creator, Eric Stevens, has done an excellent job preserving the style of the original while adding tons of new features, characters and monsters, as well as vastly enlarging the world to include multiple cities and an afterlife.

Triglav is a single-player action RPG for IE browsers in which the object is to make it to the top of Triglav Tower, which is 50 floors high. It is an exquisitely detailed effort by SmokymonkeyS and composed in DHTML. Overall the game is an amazing accomplishment, and is truly one of the finest browser-based games I have ever seen.

"Gorgeous" is the only word to describe the award-winning Dofus, a feast of sight and sound in the form of a Flash-based MMORPG created by the folks at Ankama Games. The art and music of Dofus follow in the finest traditions of anime, making the game something of a cross between WoW and Pokemon (with a dash of tongue-in-cheek humor thrown in for good measure).

Urban Dead is a fantastic and superbly original MMOG that was created by Kevan Davis. To put it simply: it is a text-based zombie survival game that runs in any browser. Even if this sort of game isn't usually your thing, I'd thoroughly encourage you to give it a go, as it's an extremely original and absorbing experience.

As I enter Guano Junction inside the Bat Hole, I check my equipment. Chef's hat? Check. Rubber axe? Check. Frilly skirt? Check. Dirty hobo gloves? Check. Pine-Fresh air freshener? Check (well, one can never be too careful). I am ready for anything.