Fall has been full of big name game developers and franchises, with a ton of major releases across every platform. Many unique and interesting independently developed games have come out in recent months as well, but my attention has been so fixated on the mainstream titles that I've had to go back to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything. The Indie Games section of Xbox Live almost always has something worth checking out, and that's where I found Solar.

As the name implies, Solar puts you in control of your own little star as it floats through the galaxy. The controls are exceedingly simple, but maneuvering your sun around the game's endless 2D plane takes a bit of getting used to. Along the way you'll encounter asteroids, planets and even other stars among the bits of space dust. Objects each have a certain mass and inertia, and things can quickly get tricky when one complex solar system is trying not to collide with another. A simple but effective physics model gives sufficiently massive objects their own gravity, too, making it possible to pull things into orbit around yourself.

Asteroids can be combined with planets to increase their size, and in turn those planets can be sucked into your star to increase its mass. Grow large enough and your sun will collapse in on itself to become a black hole, allowing you to wreak havoc wherever you go. The controls get a bit trickier to keep track of when you're juggling a bunch of planets and moons at once, but sufficiently sizeable planets will evolve life, which in turn sends out ships to protect your solar system as it moves around. These ships will blast stray asteroids as well as enemy craft, but can be a hassle when trying to draw in asteroids to beef your planets up further.

Solar's sandbox style of play is a double edged sword, allowing you to explore the complex results that can arise from its simple reactions, yet leaving you with little to do once you've exhausted those possibilities. A series of challenges have been added to give some structure to the gameplay, though some of these can be frustratingly difficult to complete. Seeing how quickly I could cause a supernova or trying to smash a certain number of planets within a given time period, among other challenges, was enough to keep me entertained for a while.

Its universe feels huge and the possibilities endless at first, but it doesn't take long to explore everything that Solar has to offer. This isn't a game that you're going to put hours and hours of gameplay into, but for such a tiny price tag you should more than get your money's worth. There's much more charm and ingenuity here than many of the sixty dollar titles you'll find on the shelf.

Title: Solar
Price: $3
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: N/A
Score: B