Dyson has no real story to speak of. Taking place inside an asteroid belt, you control mining nanomachines as they propagate and spread throughout the asteroids. However, the nanomachines don't appear as machines. They appear as flying seedlings instead, and the factories that produce them appear as trees. It abstracts the concept of mining nanomachines to something familiar as well as interesting. The eventual goal of the game is to control all the asteroids by having a single tree on each one.

The graphics of Dyson are procedurally generated, but only to a point. For example, asteroids will appear larger and smaller depending on their stats, and seedlings will appear different depending on the asteroid they came from. However, certain elements, such as the segments of a seedling or the shape of an asteroid, will always be the same. The trees also look mostly alike, although the fine details of their growth are randomized. The graphics overall reflect a very minimalist style which tugs at the heart while being very relaxing and soothing. The music accentuates this by being composed of dreamy, ethereal sounds and never being particularly pulse-pounding. This is a game for those with low heart rates, and it wants you to know it!

The gameplay of Dyson is obviously the major focus of the game, and the developers have poured a lot of time and effort into making it as unique and engaging as possible while retaining the simplicity exemplified by the minimalist graphics and sound. The basic gameplay revolves around attacking asteroids with seedlings created by your own asteroids. Seedlings are created from normal trees every few seconds, and by clicking and dragging from your owned asteroids to other asteroids, you task your seedlings with traveling to - and attacking, in the case of ones you don't own - the asteroid. Dragging with left-click sends all of the seedlings on their little mission, where right-clicking and dragging sends one. Right-clicking on the asteroid will add more to your group, allowing you to create task forces of seedlings for your invasions.

Upon capturing an asteroid, you may expend 15 seedlings to build a tree on said asteroid. Trees are separated into two kinds: normal trees, which spawn seedlings every few seconds and are defenseless, and defense pod trees, which attack invading seedlings but don't produce any seedlings of their own.

Each asteroid has three attributes that determine the qualities of the trees on it and the seedlings produced from it. These attributes are:

• Energy: Another term for Health, this determines how durable your seedlings and trees are to attacks. The larger the bar, the more Energy seedlings and trees will have. On seedlings this is represented by a larger midsection.
• Strength: This attribute determines the strength of seedling attacks and defense tree pods. The larger the bar, the more damage seedlings and pods do to other seedlings and tress. On seedlings, this is represented by a larger snout.
• Speed: This attribute determines how fast your seedlings are. The larger the bar, the faster they move, both while in orbit and when moving between planets. This is the most important attribute, as a high speed is necessary to effectively reinforce troops on certain asteroids. The larger the wings are on a seedling, the higher its speed rating.

In Dyson, there's a few very important concepts that must be worked with. These simple concepts are recon and supply. In the case of recon, it's often most beneficial to send a single seedling to an unexplored asteroid to see its stats before committing an entire task force to attacking it. This lets you set up great strategies to clean through the field as quickly as possible. The other element, supply, is basically the distance that your seedlings can go from an asteroid. Each asteroid has a set distance that seedlings can travel from it, which can cover anywhere from one to five asteroids. To finish off your enemies, you must hop from asteroid to asteroid instead of just moving your force across the entire map, making the game a bit more strategic than its original incarnation.

The game is divided into 5 missions which each have different conditions. For example, the first mission has average starting stats for your starting asteroid and 5 trees per asteroid, where mission 2 has one low stat on the starting asteroid and 3 trees per asteroid. The AI also changes tactics depending on the mission. On the bright side, all the other asteroids are randomized, making multiple mission playthroughs different each time you have a go.

Dyson has come a long way from its rather humble origins to become a great game, freeware or otherwise. The minimalist style, simple-yet-addicting gameplay, and low requirements, both on the user and the system, make it perfect to just sit down and play. You can check out the developer's blog for continued updates to the game as well as news on the project. The game can be downloaded for PC and Linux from our downloads section, and the official site also has downloads for the latest build. The Linux version requires certain packages which are listed on the official site and in the readme of the install.

For another look at freeware games, take a peek at Joystiq's Free Game Club weekly feature!