FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL is a game that has you fleeing across multiple galaxies with important intelligence information, hounded by an overpowered "Rebel Fleet".  You move stop to stop across the randomly generated system, each planet a randomly generated event - fighting pirates, rescuing research stations, escaping asteroid fields and purchasing upgrades.  You want to touch as many locations on a map before the fleet catches up to your exit point and you can warp to the neighboring galaxy.

Scrap is your currency from combat and events, spent on upgrades for you ship - hiring crew members, purchasing weapons and upgrading systems.  Not only do enhanced ship systems help you directly in combat, but adding devices like a crew transporter might be important for certain scripted events (for example if you encounter a space station being overrun, you might be given an additional option to rescue a crew member).

If you make it all the way across the galaxy to deliver your information, you have to fight the mother ship a few times.  I have never destroyed it utterly, I beat it down once and didn't realize it would reconfigure and I would have to attack it again, my second attack was pretty pathetic.

Once your ship is destroyed, you have to start completely over - it's not debilitating, and I find a vicious cycle of wanting to take care of the easy first galaxy and get the maximum upgrades to my ship or see if the shops have my favorite weapon stocked (BM2 laser).

I like this game so much that I purchased it for iPad.