Microcosm's The One Ring has emerged from the Orc-infested gloom of beta testing, and is definitely worth a few hours of your day. In a nutshell, it's a halfway house between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and a turn-based role-player like MouseHunt.

Having picked a character - be it the high and mighty Gandalf, moody hunk Aragorn or small but indomitable Frodo - you commence moving around a richly detailed world map, thwarting Sauron's machinations one auto-resolved battle at a time.

There are several "victory paths" available, like chucking the ring into Mount Doom or returning Aragorn to the throne of Gondor, and you must polish off one of them before Sauron's little progress metre on the right fills up.

Each region, from the Elven halls of Rivendell to the yawning fastness of Moria, has its share of friends or enemies to encounter, minor or major quests to undertake, treasures and experience points to win, sights to see and reams of marvellously authentic olde worlde text to brood over.

The One Ring's currency is gold, and you can buy it with real-life cash if you can't be bothered earning the stuff fair and square. There's a wee bit of Michael-taking when it comes to "processing" orders to your character at the end of a turn - you'll have to wait seven minutes on the lobby screen each time, though you can choose to skip this by forking out five gold pieces.

Some of the exposition is a little wordy (Gaming Gods be thanked for the "less text" option), but the level of polish here is staggering. They've even built in a fully-voiced tutorial, care of Bilbo Baggins. It's clearly a labour of love.

For non-Facebooky fantasy role-playing, try My Pet Protector.

Play The One Ring