Sidestepping our perspectives from the big, flashy mainstream and reveling in the comfy, closer-to-home independent scene, we find that a pair of titles under Shrapnel Games, an independent game developer, has been listed high in Game Tunnel's Top 100 independent games list. We reckon this news offers new bragging rights to the US-based real-time strategy developer.

Two titles published by the company, Tiny Hero Studios' Land of Legends and Digital Eel's Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, have been ranked in the topmost five titles to date, at spots three and four, respectively. In an official announcement made by the company earlier this week, the developers have given their thanks to the patrons of their games, reviewers who've favored gameplay over graphics, and Game Tunnel for their worldwide recognition.

Land of Legends and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space have been critically-acclaimed and highly regarded in their own right by peers of the independent game industry, including the likes of Seth Robinson, the soloist developer known for the popular freeware RPG, Dink Smallwood.

Shrapnel Games, the same company that brought us Weird World and Dominions 3: The Awakening, is introducing its new "promo": Shrapnel's Savings For Scholars and Soldiers. This basically gives a 10% discount to all full-time college students and active (or retired) military personnel.

This 10% is in addition to any other discounts that may be applied to the game. If you pre-order or regularly check monthly Gamers Front sales then the discounts you get are higher (it could go as high as 45% off the cover price). If you live in the bottom 48 states of the US, you are entitled to free shipping if you choose "Priority Mail" as your shipping option. If you've bought into the idea, you're probably asking "How do I get the discounts?"

Find out how to get the discounts by reading the full article.

People from all over have been frantically pre-ordering this title. After its resounding pre-order success, the demand has become great enough that Shrapnel Games and Illwinter Game Design's turn-based fantasy strategy title, Dominions 3: The Awakening, has entered its second print run within weeks of release.

This kind of popularity is rarely seen in the world of indie gaming, but the title's deep and strategic gameplay is bringing in more and more people into the cult of Dominions. Dominions 3 also has thousands of play possibilities, what with the 2000+ units, items, and spells included in the base game, along with the 50 nations and 21 player slots.

Moddability is easy, and thanks to the new random map generator, there are now an infinite number of games available at one's fingertips. Add to that the fact that Dominions 3 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and you've got an idea of why this game has taken off like no other, making it the largest pre-order in the history of Shrapnel Games.

If you're feeling like you're missing out on something, don't worry, because you can still grab a demo of Dominions 3: The Awakening for all three platforms at the Shrapnel games website. So, what are you waiting for? Join the cult of Dominions now!

A couple of the things that have kept ProSIM afloat are their great games and their dedication to providing their community with the best possible gaming experience. It is this whole "gamers first" philosophy that has prompted ProSIM to not only release a series of patches for their ATF: Armored Task Force series of games but to also make their latest engine fully compatible with previous games.

Anyway, the patches. Patches are now available for ATF: Armored Task Force, Raging Tiger: The Second Korean War, The Falklands War: 1982, and The Star and the Crescent. They fix a variety of common errors along with a few tweaks specific to certain titles in the series. Here's a list of the biggest changes that affect all the games:

• When planning a path for a hierarchy with a formation the path would shift every time the path was planned, this has been fixed.
• Insert dismount missions now work properly.
• If starting a game without being connected to the Internet the links file could become corrupted. Fixed.
• Canceling either creating a game or joining a game during the multiplayer setup would cause a crash. Fixed.
• Creating Packages now correctly parses the unit, platoon, and company name.
• Other fixes include items such as the "dismount moving" capability will now allow dismounting over elevated special terrain to replicate parachuting and fastroping, and more.

All of the patches can be downloaded directly from their respective game pages over at the Shrapnel Games website.