That last is the latest faux-Sims title, and it's a very good entry by Firefly and Gathering (formerly Gathering of Developers). The concept is simple: You've gotta manage a diverse group of personalities while accomplishing goals on a, well, space colony. (Okay, the colony's on a planet rather than in space, but we'll let the semantics slide this time.)

The quirk here is that you'll be working not with trained astronauts but with bikers, punks, cranky old men, a Joisey bridge-and-tunneler and more. As in The Sims, each has a set personality, and each needs objects placed around the station to keep those personalities happy, so that they do their jobs.

For example, there's Tami, an aging cowgirl who can't make friends but gets lonely very quickly. Oh, and Tami's lazy, so to get any use out of her, you've got to make sure she stays amused and socially satisfied. Multiply Tami by five or six or 12, and you'll get an idea of how Space Colony involves plenty of juggling to meet each mission's goals.

That sounds bad, but it's really not. Unlike the Sims, the Space Colony inhabitants will mostly take steps to keep themselves happy. Mostly. In one glaring oversight, you have to manually force colonists to sit down and talk through their problems when they become enemies. (As in The Sims, some colonists' relationships deteriorate over time.) I can see how that may have been a strategic decision to keep players watching the colonists' needs. I expect, though, that I'm like most players in that I would apply the Band-Aid of such counseling only when the bad feelings got to the point of colonists fighting in the halls.

That's odd because while you can control colonists, you don't have to. In fact, you often don't have time to. It's an annoying blemish in otherwise engaging gameplay.

You'll quickly grow to know and anticipate the colonists' individual needs, which is a good thing: You can quickly sort through the various build options and create the best possibly colony to win that scenario. Space Colony provides general categories like basic needs (beds, food dispensers), recreation, tourism, industry, defense and more. In an interesting move, Firefly has thrown in a whiff of RTS with various resource-gathering machines. Just assign a colonist, and you can grow your own food rather than buying it. Or you can mine elements and sell that, or refine the elements to sell them for even more.

The game offers three major modes. Campaign follows the story of Venus Jones, the cute redhead on the cover. So what if there isn't much story there? Basically, this is a series of scenarios with Venus giving hints on how to win. The Galaxy mode features individual scenarios. This is sort of a disappointment, because for each planet - you get to choose from a starmap - there are only one or two scenarios.

Then there's Sandbox mode, which lets you choose a planet and go wild. My only complaint here is that there isn't a way that I could find to fully customize a random game. The planets are pre-set with certain environments and dangers. I'm thinking here of Majesty's excellent Freestyle Game feature. That'd go great here.

The fourth mode, a game editor, lets you create your own scenarios for our heroes. This is where you'd need to go to customize your Space Colony experience, which isn't quite as convenient as I'd like.

The graphics are bright and cheerful, as befits the overall feel of the game. As with most Sims clones, you'll get an isometric view of the play area, though it can't be rotated. A shame, in my opinion. While items ghost when moused over, items can sometimes be lost in larger bases. A rotation feature would easily solve that. A nice graphical touch is the quick-reference system for colonists: Their faces are displayed across the bottom of the screen, and move from green to red depending on whether the individual colonist's needs are being met. Clicking zooms to that colonist so any problems can be easily resolved.

Sound is okay. The colonists have distinct voices, and it's humorous to hear them interact with each other and the environment. Yeah, some of the dialogue gets repetitive, but it's easily tuned out. Strangely, tourists are totally mute. It's almost creepy. I wouldn't mind hearing 'em give their opinions. Especially since the only way to judge tourist happiness is to click through the bridge screen to a tourism rating screen, which itself leaves a great deal to guesswork.

I hope Firefly continues to follow the Sims' lead and releases downloads of new furniture and scenarios. (User-made scenarios are already available online.) Space Colony is a good budget title and deserves another look from fans of the genre. Here's hoping the burgeoning fan community online helps drive the need for downloadable add-ons.