Indie Gala Fruit Blitz!

Another bonus game has been added to the recent Indie Gala bundle: Fruit Blitz!

Fruit Blitz is a mobile game for the Android, by Rubicon Development; featuring 90 second games with a simple matching mechanic. (more…)

Another Indie Gala Bonus

Another Indie Gala bonus has unlocked for all those who have purchased the Indie Gala 2!

The bonus is Robot Science’s album “Good Luck”, which was a part of the first Indie Gala bundle.

The Indie Gala 2 is still available for purchase, with this and previous bonuses included for those who pay the minimum price per bundle level.  The levels are: Carebear, with four games and four albumsl The Big-Saver Bundle, with six games and eight albums; and the Epic Gala Bundle, with twelve games and nine albums!

Indie Gala 2 – Quick Overview

I grabbed my bundle of shiny new indie games from the Indie Gala 2 yesterday, adding Greed Corp, Roboblitz, Critical Mass, Fortix 2 and Bunch of Heroes to my Steam library, and to my ever-expanding backlog!  So on to trying them out, in no particular order..

Fortix 2 is a reverse turret defense game by Nemesys Games, an indie developer from Hungary.  The aim of the game is to capture the castle by capturing the land bit by bit, while avoiding the dragons, cannons, and other monsters..

I tried out the Fortix 2 demo a while ago, and found the gameplay rather easy.. maybe too easy.  At the time I resisted buying the game in part due to that, but also because of the backlog.. so I was rather glad to see it in the bundle and have a bit more of an excuse to get it 😉

I’m happy to note that the full game includes more difficult enemies, including Blood Bats which travel along the base line, meaning nowhere is safe!  Maps start to contain hazards such as bat caves, which when captured release more bats to plague you.. the added challenge was certainly appreciated!

One small niggle, though.. the game takes your name from your Steam profile, with no option for renaming.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but with a character limit in place, it trimmed my name to “Sir CoffeeScam”!

Vanguard Games‘ Greed Corp is a turn based strategy, where you need to find the balance between harvesting the land for resources and preserving it. Each hexagon of terrain has a number of layers which collapse as you harvest the land.. these can also be strategically destroyed to throw enemy units and buildings into the abyss!

Combat between walkers is simple.. the larger force on each hexagon wins.. but when it comes to the buildings, you need to look at the layout of the map before doing anything!  Harvesters can be built on any land you own, then on each turn they generate resources out of the terrain they are on, as well as those around them.  However, this erodes a layer as well..

You can use these to sabotage your enemy by destroying the land under them; when a hexagon falls, any buildings or units on it fall too!

I only took a quick look at this game, playing through the tutorial to see how it all works.. I’ll be coming back to this one later, and maybe trying out the multiplayer: you can take on up to three other players across a range of maps 🙂

Bunch of Heroes was next: a four-player co-op shooter by NGD Studios.  Aliens are invading Earth, and summoning a Zombie army to assist them.. and the Bunch of Heroes are our last line of defense! 🙂

There are four playable characters in the Bunch, each with a different special attack:  El Comandante, the Cuban Commander, throws exploding cigars, while Jared Joe, the Quarterback, can make a touchdown for his special move.  Captain Smith, the Duke, can call in a bombing run to assist him, and Agent Liu, the spy, can set enemies on fire!  To use the special attack, you need to kill enemies and pick up the energy they drop.

There are three modes: Campaign, Survival and Timed Mode, with a few different scenarios.  Campaign mode consists of simple missions such as clearing enemies from an area, defending a point for a short time, and rescuing cheerleaders.  I found the cheerleader rescue rather funny, as you have to sling her over your shoulder and carry her..

Aside from screaming when you pick her up or put her down, the cheerleader dances at intermittent points while not being carried.  At one point I died while carrying her, and found it rather funny when she almost instantly started dancing at my corpse’s feet! 😀

The game is designed for four players, and as there are no AI bots, playing by yourself means being somewhat swamped.  After trying the first Campaign, I tried out Survival.. my first attempt was rather brief.. 😉

Roboblitz, by Naked Sky Entertainment, is a puzzle platform shooter featuring a little robot technician who lives aboard a Space Cannon Facility.  The Facility comes under attack from pirate robots led by the MegaNOAD, and Blitz has to get all systems up and running in order to fire the Space Cannon while fending off attacks from the various invading pirate robots.

You start off with only your grabby arms and a spin attack, which is fine for dealing with the Pirate Scouts, but ineffective on larger enemies.  Blitz can also gather collectible Upgradium, which can be used to purchase new weapons: the first of these is the EMP gun, which stuns enemies for a short time, but other weapons are able to destroy them.

I liked the variety of puzzles, spread across different areas which you can access at will, but I found the controls and movement occasionally quite poor.

Blitz’s item handling wasn’t as accurate as I’d have liked, and in getting close enough to pick some items up, I found myself bumping them away instead.  More frustrating was the jumping: in particular, I found jumping into one certain pipe in the Coolant Tower was more miss than hit, with a miss causing Blitz to get stuck on the edge, holding on by the arms.  After a few misses in the fan room, and having to go back to try again, this annoyed me enough that I decided to move on to the final game in the bundle..

Critical Mass, a 3d action puzzler by Manic Games Studios!  There are four modes: Classic, Survival, Meditation and Rush, but the core gameplay is the same in each.. destroy the mass by creating colour combos of four or more blocks.  Simple to understand, but difficult to master! 🙂

I tried Classic first, and quickly realised that this has the makings of an addictive game.. winning a level means proceeding to the next, slightly more difficult level, while defeat means retrying the level.  In this mode, the camera zooms in during play until the whole structure shakes and destroys itself.. producing a combo pushes the camera back and gives you just a little more time, while Survival ‘rewards’ a combo by throwing more blocks into the fray.  Rush mode times your efforts, with the object to clear the mass as quickly as possible, and Meditation is the calm, thoughtful mode where you can aim for the biggest combos on the board, without distraction.

The bundle came with music as well, and I have to note I don’t really listen to game music outside of the games themselves.  However, games without music wouldn’t be the same, so it’s good to see some support for indie music too 🙂

The Indie Gala 2

The Indie Gala has returned with their second set of bundles, containing indie games and music albums, with proceeds being split between developers, charity and the Indie Gala itself.

While it is a pay what you want scheme, this time it’s a little different, with three tiers of bundle available depending on how much you pay:

The Carebear Bundle contains Critical Mass by Manic Games Studios, Fortix 2, by Nemesys Games and Bunch of Heroes by NGD Studios along with Casey Lalonde’s Skitter EP, Giraffage’s Comfort, and The Numbers’ Beautiful EP.

The Big Saver Bundle contains all the contents of The Carebear Bundle, two more games: Greed Corp by Vanguard Games and Roboblitz by Naked Sky Entertainment, and music: Casey Lalonde’s Thank You, Robot Science’s Square, and Jack Butler’s Fit the Paradigm.

The Epic Gala Bundle contains all the games and music listed here, but also contains all the contents of the previous Indie Gala bundle: inMomentum by Digital Arrow, hacking sims Hacker Evolution: Duality and Hacker Evolution: Untold, by Exosyphen Studios, puzzler Your Doodles Are Bugged! by Spyn Doctor Games, and Sigma Team‘s Zombie Shooter 1 and Zombie Shooter 2, with Robot Science’s Doodads album too.

Impending Indie Bundle Overload?

Yesterday, I got the latest of the indie bundles, the Indie Gala bundle.. though I felt a little of the excitement for these bundles had gone.

Now, I see that yet another bundle is coming soon.. the LittleBigBunch, which will include five games, with the pay what you want price being split between developers, site and charity.  The LittleBigBunch website isn’t live yet, but the games are reported as: Frozen Synapse, Explodemon, Serious Sam Double D, Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee and New Star Soccer 5.

I already own Mode 7‘s strategy game Frozen Synapse, so right now I’m looking at the other games in the bundle.

Explodemon, by Curve Studios, is an action platform game with puzzles, and could go either way.  I’m curious about the next game on the list: Serious Sam Double D, from Mommy’s Best Games.. this is a 2d platform game with lots of guns and silliness, and is supported by original Serious Sam developers Croteam as part of their Serious Sam Indie series. Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee looks like a fun adventure platform with added alien abduction, from Oddworld Inhabitants.  New Star Soccer 5 is a football career sim, by New Star Games.

As the purchase of these bundles supports indies and charity, I feel that I should carry on and support them too.. but I am starting to feel that it’s becoming a little mechanical now, especially as some of the bundles release every two weeks already.

The Indie Gala

Another indie bundle?  Oh yes.. and at this point I’m starting to wonder how many different bundles the market can sustain..

The Indie Gala is another indie games bundle, where you pay what you want, money being split between developers, charity and websites.. these games arrive via email Steam codes, which I prefer to downloads as I don’t have to worry about backing it up anywhere.

This bundle contains another set of games I hadn’t really heard of: inMomentum, a sci-fi racing platform game by Digital Arrow, hacking sim Hacker Evolution: Duality, by Exosyphen Studios, 2d platformer Saira, by Nifflas Games, creative puzzler Your Doodles Are Bugged! by Spyn Doctor Games, and Zombie Shooter 2, an action RPG with zombies, by Sigma Team.

There are also some bonuses, only available for the first two days of the gala: Bonus DLC doodles for Your Doodles Are Bugged!, Sigma Team’s earlier game, Zombie Shooter 1, as well as the official theme for the series, and one of Exosyphen Studios’ other hacking sim games, Hacker Evolution: Untold.. their website lists a lot of similar games for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Windows Mobile too.

Over the day, IndieGala.com have sold over 18,000 bundles, but the average price paid is on the low side at just $1.30, or about £1.  I suspect they’d have had larger payments if they’d kept the bonuses for those who paid above the average.. though then again, those who didn’t know the games might have been put off that way.

I was a little reluctant to pick up the bundle at first due to not recognising the games.. but meh.. I’ve come across plenty of random games and loved them 🙂