The Humble Bundle Mojam is Live!

Mojang have teamed up with HumbleBundle.com to create a new game this weekend.. with a livestream of their progress available on the Humble Bundle site!

Fans have been voting on the genre and theme of the game during the week, with the most and least voted categories being combined; the Mojam game will be a RTS Shoot ’em Up, with a Steampunk, Ancient Egypt theme.

So far, over $16,000 has been donated by fans, with all proceeds going to charity: Child’s Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, charity: water and the American Red Cross.

Humble Bundle Mojam

Mojang are teaming up with HumbleBundle.com this weekend, to create a new game with all the money going to charity!

Starting Friday, February 17th, and continuing through the weekend, the team will be livestreaming their progress while they create this game.. follow @Mojangteam and @notch for updates.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8MhLvjoBTs]

By donating, you will get the game produced during the weekend.. and will be some fun and silly incentives for reaching certain levels of donations, as well as giveaways and Q&As with the team.

That’s not all.. Mojang want fans to help choose the theme and genre of the game, by voting on their website here.  the highest and lowest voted from each category will be combined for the game!

Be Mine – Indie Game Bundle

The Be Mine Indie Game Bundle, from Groupees, is launching for Valentine’s Day and will be available through till the 28th February.  This bundle is pay what you want with a minimum price of $1, and 20% of the money goes to Child’s Play.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPSvCqAOMfc]

There are five games in the bundle, and all come with Steam keys: Wasteland Angel, a vehicular combat shoot ’em up from Octane Games, a puzzle-platform adventure called Sideway New York, by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, Xotic, an arcade-style first person shooter by WXP Games, Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, and The Ball, an award-winning action-puzzle game built on the Unreal Engine 3, by Teotl Studios.

There is also a selection of music in the bundle, from: Celldweller, Fantomenk and Damage Vault.

The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle!

The Humble Bundle is a pack of indie games offered at a price set by the individual customer.. literally “pay what you want”.. where the money gets split between the developers, charity and the Humble Bundle site itself.. again as each customer sees fit.

Supporting indies and charity?  I don’t see a downside.. 🙂

This particular offer was headlined by Frozen Synapse, a turn-based strategy game which seems to have rated highly justabout everywhere.  While you could choose to pay just £1 for the game, paying more than the average also nets you some bonus games..

In this case, the bonus pack was the Humble FrozenByte Bundle, including: Trine a puzzle-action game featuring a thief, a wizard and a warrior, action games Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, a fairytale adventure, and Jack Claw, a prototype game featuring a guy with a rather large claw!

Trauma has since been added to the bundle, and can be downloaded by those who had already paid and redeemed their codes simply by visiting the unique link sent via email.  This one sounds like a different sort of game, described on the site as a “photographic experience” in the mind of a traumatized young woman.. I’m half-expecting something on the lines of Korsakovia, but we’ll see! 🙂

Chime

The boss had a nice game recommendation for me this week: Chime, which he referred to as a cross between Tetris and Lumines.. something I’ve not played, but which a friend described as “crack for the PSP”.

The game involves placing puzzle pieces on a grid to form quad shapes, but it’s set to music which actually changes a little as you fill up the grid.

There’s a rather cheesy achievement too: Fairy Godmother, earned for simply starting up the game.  Chime was developed by Zoë Mode for a charity called OneBigGame, which raises funds for childrens’ charities.. so I guess I have done something good by buying the game 😉

With the boss watching my first attempt, I didn’t bother to read the instructions and just jumped in.   It’s very easy to pick up, but on the first try I didn’t get a great score as it turns out to be a little more complicated than just slotting blocks in together..

Once you’ve made the required quad shape, you can add more blocks to the side to make it grow.. this also increases your multiplier.  Stray blocks disappear from the grid over time, though, and when they disappear they take away your multiplier!  It’s rather addictive, and there are scoreboards, so it could well get a little competitive too..

Tonight, with the internet finally up and running here, I’ve been able to get some more time in and have unlocked all six tracks, including the awesome final track: ‘Still Alive’! 🙂

It seems from the developers’ blog that this last track and grid were created for the move to PC.. and initially they were trying to make the grid represent something from Portal!  This made for too-difficult levels though, so it ended up as above.

On the subject of Portal.. I just saw the co-op trailer for Portal 2 this evening.. Ohhh yes <3