I spent most of my free time this weekend playing Race for the Galaxy. It's a card game by Rio Grande games that is thematically right up my alley. You take the role of one of Earth's former colonies, now equipped with faster-than-light travel and ready to build a galactic empire of your own.

The basic game play is pretty straight forward. You have two types of cards - planets and technologies. To play a card, you need to discard cards from your hand - better cards cost more discarded cards. Each turn, you have a choice of 7 different options (the game describes it as 5, but really it's 7). Each player secretly picks an option and then all players get to perform that option.

I had be seriously tempted to buy it a little while ago, but at the last minute put it back on the shelf knowing that it would be a good 12 months before I actually got to play. But Race for the Galaxy AI is a free application that lets you play by yourself, and Rio Grande have the rules available online.

A game against the AI takes around 10-15mins, which makes it perfect for killing a little bit of time. I had a little bit of an issue resizing the window to be able to play it on my netbook, but now I've got that sorted, it's on all the computers I regularly use. I just wish there was an iPhone app.

This weekend has convinced me that I really do want to buy the physical game. So next time there's a sale on, Race for the Galaxy will be going into my shopping basket.