Primarily consisting of a fairly brief single-player campaign and a number of standalone score-driven scenarios, Battleships Forever also features an open sandbox mode and a ship editor to populate it. The whole thing is rendered in nice, clean 2D line line art. There is a high degree of control for each of your ships; though you can give broad grouped orders, you can micromanage down to the point of operating particular modules on each craft, and targeting individual turrets and hull parts on enemies. The single-player section starts off with one ship at your disposal and continually ramps up, giving you time to ease into the complexity if you wish.

As an aside, it struck me as I was playing the game that I would love to see something like Toys for Bob's classic Star Control II (Toys for Bob, which is still around and is currently owned by Activision, would love to release a true sequel to Star Control II, having not been involved with Legend's Star Control 3) using Battleships Forever's combat gameplay. It would bridge the gap between SC2's super-fun but small scale melee combat and its grander turn-based strategy.

I recommend giving Battleships Forever a try. It is accessible, but not overly simplistic, and it falls within a gaming segment that doesn't get much play these days. It is the work of Sean "th15" Chan and his Wyrdsym Games, and he is looking for artists and sound designers--and possibly programmers--to join him in his future game design projects. Seeing what he managed to bang up on his own, hopefully he gets some offers.