Indie Royale – The St. Patrick’s Day Bundle!
The latest bundle from the Indie Royale is up: The St. Patrick’s Day Bundle, containing Hard Reset, Jolly Rover, Vertex Dispenser and DLC Quest, and bonus game Lair of the Evildoer.
As usual, the bundle is pay-what-you-want with a minimum price; beat the average to knock the price down for others!
Hard Reset is an action shooter by Flying Wild Hog, set in a cyberpunk city with humanity verging on extinction and under attack by machines. The game features over-the-top destruction, loads of weapons, enemies and a plot inspired by the likes of Blade Runner!
Brawsome‘s Jolly Rover is a 2d point-and-click adventure following Gaius James Rover across three tropical islands, facing off pirates, villains, voodoo, love and a lack of loot, while following his dream of starting a circus.
Vertex Dispenser, by brog, is an abstract strategy game with mathematical puzzle elements: the game features a mixture of action and mind-bending challenges, as you collect power-ups and capture territory in the right order to maximise the colour of vertices, defend territory and eradicate enemies.
Going Loud Studios‘ DLC Quest is a platforming action game where you defeat the bad guy, save the world and get the girl.. while taking a swipe at the games industry’s DLC practices!
Bonus game Lair of the Evildoer, also by Going Loud Studios, is an RPG shooter with 20 levels procedurally generated with evil, over 30 types of enemy, 25 weapons with plenty of variation, and a stat-based levelling system. Escape the evil Dr. Odious’ lair any way you want to!
Impressions of each game to follow..
Indie Royale’s The Alpha Collection Impressions
Indie Royale’s latest bundle, The Alpha Collection is now available, featuring three currently-in-development games: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep: The Temple of the Lost Idol by a jolly corpse.
Towns is a city building and management game where you organise your villagers to gather resources, build a town, craft weapons.. and then try to withstand the forces that come up from the depths, because your town is built on top of a dungeon!
Indie Royale – The Alpha Collection
The next indie bundle from the Indie Royale is out: The Alpha Collection! This bundle features three games which are currently in alpha: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep by a jolly corpse.
Indie Royale – Valentine’s Bundle Bonuses
The Indie Royale’s Valentine’s Bundle bonuses have now been unlocked!
They are: the Soulcaster I and II Remix Soundtrack, the Zeno Clash OST and the Lume mini-OST. As a extra special bonus, Soulcaster creator Ian Stocker has created the “Merchant’s Legendary Arrangements” mini-album!
All these bonuses can be downloaded from the redemption page. If you’ve lost your key, never fear – you can request a new email which will come with all the keys connected to your email address.
There’s just under two days left to pick up the Valentine’s Bundle! Here’s what’s in it, and here’s our quick impressions of the games.
Some Love for The Valentine’s Bundle!
I just picked up the Indie Royale’s The Valentine’s Bundle, which came with five games and bonus DLC! The first three games, Zeno Clash, Hoard and Lume, along with the bonus DLC for Hoard, all came with Steam keys 🙂
Zeno Clash, by Ace Team, is an action-fighting game in a strange fantasy world.. the visuals are colourful and varied.. but also a bit disturbing, with repugnant, deformed half-bird half-human creatures in a variety of bizarre, revealing outfits.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the game at first, with the initial cutscene of babies, mannequins and cooking pots, and then the tutorial where player-character Ghat is taught the basics of combat by the growly-voiced Metamoq. The game seemed a bit weird, and I wasn’t sure whether I would get to grips with the melee combat enough to enjoy it. I don’t normally play fighting games, and I found the timing of strikes and dodging a little hard to get right. Fighting felt brilliantly violent, though, with a satisfying thud when I landed a blow 🙂
The story sees Ghat and flee the initial town after killing his “mother-father”, with the assistance of a friend who then faces exile with him. There are flashbacks to previous fights with members of the crazy Corwid, and other combat lessons with Metamoq mixed in withthe journey. More advanced fighting moves were introduced in these later tutorials, but it still seemed easiest to just punch the enemies over and over, and hope not to be surrounded.. many of the fights featured multiple enemies where it became harder to dodge blows. I’ll be trying the gamepad when I next launch the game to see if I find it any easier that way.. I do want to see where this story goes 🙂
I already owned Hoard, by Big Sandwich Games Inc., but hadn’t picked up the DLC: Dynamite Roll! and Flame-Broiled SANDwich. I wrote about Hoard when I got it back in May, and the game itself hasn’t been changed aside from the addition of the DLC here..
New buildings means more variety, and an extra heal from within the Bell Tower is nice if you’ve taken damage while trying to intimidate a town, but the bomb wagon is possibly the most noticeable addition from the Dynamite Roll! DLC, adding a wagon full of fireworks instead of the usual tithe wagon. These wagons still carry gold, but if you don’t back away after setting it on fire, it will take off a large chunk of your health.
You can use the explosion to damage enemies too 🙂
The Flame-Broiled SANDwich DLC is a new tileset, with a new look for all buildings, units and terrain, and even the dragons have more feathery scales. Tilesets can be swapped in the game options, under graphics. Available tilesets are: normal, snow, desert and random, and there’s also an option to set the game to night-time, for a completely different look to the map 🙂
Lume is a point and click puzzle adventure, with beautiful paper and cardboard scenery.. the game was nominated for the IGF’s Excellence in Visual Art award. When I first glanced over the contents of the Valentine’s Bundle, it was Lume, by StateofPlay, that really got my interest.
The story follows Lumi, who has gone to visit her grandfather.. but he’s left to find out why there’s no power in the nearby village. In the meantime, he left lots of little puzzles for Lumi to figure out, with the goal of restoring power to the house.
The first few puzzles were fairly easy.. finding a broken solar panel and re-wiring it, for instance, was a matter of clicking the squares to rotate them and get all the lines to join up. I quite liked this one 🙂
When it came to the later puzzles though, I found one in particular a little frustrating. There is no hint system in the game, which meant looking for a walkthrough.. something I’m not keen on, as I often end up seeing the whole solution when I only wanted a quick pointer. After dealing with that puzzle, I went on and completed Lume fairly quickly.. in part because it is a short game, but also because completing each puzzle led straight to the next and the next.
Lume is actually the first part of a larger story, with the next part currently in development.. progress can be followed on StateOfPlay’s blog!
Completing Lume left me with MagicalTimeBean‘s retro RPG defense games, Soulcaster and Soulcaster II. Soulcaster was previously released on Xbox LIVE, followed by Soulcaster II: this is the PC premiere for both titles.
Soulcaster is the tale of a wizard who manages to awaken the undead in his travels.. fortunately, he also discovers the statues of three heroes, and gains the ability to summon them in order to assist him. The heroes are: Shaedu, the archer, Aeox, the warrior, and Bloodfire, the alchemist. You can summon an image of the heroes by pressing Q, W or E, for Shaedu, Aeox or Bloodfire, with as many summons as you have Summoning Orbs.. you can also summon three of the same hero if you wish.
Each have different strengths and weaknesses; for instance, the archer can do a lot of damage, but needs a clear line of fire, while the warrior has little range but can take lots of damage. Positioning the summoned heroes matters; Aeox can be used to block the path while Bloodfire stays safe behind him and throws bombs to destroy attackers.
Enemies spawn as you progress through a level, sometimes coming from behind you, which can mean repositioning your heroes to face the oncoming attackers. To reposition the heroes, you first need to recall them by pressing R; however, this recalls them in the order they were summoned, rather than allowing you to select just the one you want to move. A shame, as otherwise the controls were great.
If one of your summoned heroes dies, you can re-summon him after a short delay. Bloodfire explodes on death though, which causes damage to all around him including you.. after being backed up in one dungeon I managed to get myself killed this way!
There’s also a merchant on some of the levels, where you can spend all the gold you find laying around in the dungeon. He supplies health potions and scrolls, and upgrades for the heroes’ gear, as well as the rather expensive Summoning Orbs. You have room for up to five Orbs, which would allow you to have up to five summoned heroes in play at once.
This game surprised me.. I hadn’t expected it to be this good, and hadn’t expected to want to carry on playing as long as I did.
As a quick look at the bundle wouldn’t be complete without it, I also took a very quick look at Soulcaster II.. and found it very similar to the previous game. I quickly found that I wanted to carry on playing, but ended up cutting it short because I really want to finish the first game before getting too far in!
For a quick look then.. just the first few levels.. this seemed to be more of the same gameplay, with the three heroes from the previous game along for the journey, and undead attackers springing up to try and ambush us. The description of the game on the dev’s site promises new puzzle elements and a new upgrade system, so I shall look forward to those! These two games really reminded me of my old Spectrum days 😀
The Valentine’s Bundle is available for a few more days yet.. go and get it, and show your love for the indie devs 😉
The Indie Royale: The Valentine’s Bundle
Indie Royale’s The Valentine’s Bundle is now out, with five games, and bonus DLC! As usual the bundle is available on a pay what you want scheme, with a minimum price, although you can pay more to unlock the bonus, show your support, and knock down the price for others!
The games are: action fighting game Zeno Clash, by Ace Team, Hoard, a strategy game featuring dragons, by Big Sandwich Games Inc., adventure puzzle game Lume, by StateofPlay, and world premiere PC versions of retro RPG defense games Soulcaster and Soulcaster II, by MagicalTimeBean!
The bonus DLC in this bundle is for HOARD: Dynamite Roll!, which adds nine new maps and extra units, and Flame-Broiled SANDwich which adds a desert continent and remodelled buildings, units and terrain!
For those paying more than the current minimum, there’s also One Life Left’s music compilation, “Music To Play Games By Too“.
We looked at all the games in a bit more detail.. you can read it over here.
The Indie Royale Valentine’s Bundle: Pre-Order
The Indie Royale have now opened their Valentine’s Bundle for blind pre-orders, with a recommended £10 contribution and a minimum of $3.99 USD.
The games in this bundle include a fantastical first-person action-adventure game (Steam for PC), an IGF-nominated puzzle adventure title, a ‘scorching’ single and multiplayer arcade-strategy game, and a world premiere on PC for a pair of retro RPG-defense games.
Those who pre-order the bundle will also receive a bonus compilation album, Music To Play Games By Too from One Life Left, and will gain access to the games when the bundle officially launches.
The Valentine’s Bundle will launch later this week on a pay what you want scheme, starting with the minimum price of $3.99 USD.
Indie Royale – The Serious Sam Lightning Pack
Indie Royale‘s first Lightning Round brings us a bundle of Serious Sam themed indies, containing Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, Serious Sam Double D, Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack, and Serious Sam: The First & Second Encounter. The bonus game is Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter, a top-down, 8 bit version of the game.
This bundle is on sale for just 100 hours, on the same pay what you want scheme all the previous sales have used.
The Serious Sam Indie Series was commissioned by Devolver Digital with the support of Croteam around the release of Serious Sam 3: BFE. More information on the pack is available here.
The Indie Royale – New Year’s Bundle
The Indie Royale New Year’s Bundle has now opened for purchase!
There are four games in the bundle at present: Nuclear Dawn by InterWave Studios, Max & the Magic Marker by Press Play, Fractal by cipherprime, and Indie Royale exclusive Super Crossfire by Radiangames.
As usual, the bundle is pay what you want, above a minimum price. All the games are available on both Windows and Mac, with Steam keys for Nuclear Dawn, Max and the Magic Marker and Fractal, and Desura keys for Max, Fractal and Super Crossfire.
This bundle will be available for only five days.. so go and grab it now, over on www.indieroyale.com!
The Oil Blue
The Oil Blue is an indie action sim by chubigans of Vertigo Games, where you drill for oil and sell it on the world market in order to remain profitable, as well as completing missions for your employer, the United Oil of Oceana Company. I picked this one up in the Indie Royale’s Xmas Bundle, along with a few other games.. they’ve now added greenTech+, an earlier game by Vertigo Games which has you save the world from global warming using a hurricane!
The tutorial shows you how to use your first drilling machines: the Groundwell and the Oil Derrick. Keeping the Groundwell running seemed easy enough.. strike a balance between speed and power consumption, and keep an eye out for flat batteries. The Oil Derrick was a bit more complex..
While the drill is working, you get oil signatures coming up on the right hand side.. these are revealed as either pockets of air or oil. When you see oil, you have to slow the drill down, move it left or right to position it above the oil, pump the oil, then re-start the drill until the next pocket of oil appears. You also need to watch the Pressure and Stress gauges. Pressure can be vented at regular intervals, and increases more quickly while the drill is slowed down, while Stress accumulates through use, until it reaches critical levels, where you have to shut down the machine and go for repairs. Pressure also increases Stress. Not venting pressure leads to the machine breaking down..
Repairing the machines involves mini-games. In the tutorial I saw two types, one to keep a laser within a moving red circle, and another to make a set of four target lights come on simultaneously by turning on different adapters and switching between different levels of lights until you hit the correct combination.
Once in the game itself, “Rotary Misfire” came up as my repair mini-game three times; I managed to complete the puzzle by chance on my first two attempts, but I couldn’t get it the third time. This puzzle requires you to hit the spacebar just before the lights complete a full circle.
I had to actually come back to the tutorial and have this puzzle appear in the set of three to see the instructions.. whether they were obscured by previous messages on the right.. or whether they just don’t appear all the time, I don’t know.
The next two machines, the Pumpjack and Drill Rig, were unlocked as I played, with brief tutorials showing how to use them. The Pumpjack requires less interaction than the Oil Derrick, with plenty of time during setup or calibration, where you can check on the other machines and the market. The Drill Rig follows a path you plot for it onscreen, and will gather oil as it travels over it. To get all the oil from a bubble, the path has to be set to go back and forth over it: two options here, then.. to be efficient with a short path over a bubble to maximise oil collection, but have to watch the machine while it does it, or plot longer paths and be able to flick back over the other machines. As the Drill Rig is a rare machine, it doesn’t appear on every island.
On the islands I played, my set up was a Groundwell, an Oil Derrick and a Pumpjack. I started up all the machines, then parked myself over the Oil Derrick because of the pressure release requirement, as well as needing to catch the oil pockets as they were revealed. This was also the machine I found most likely to blow up, as the pressure led to stress if I wasn’t fast enough in venting it. In fact, I found the Oil Derrick needed so much prodding that I kept missing the Pumpjack’s window of drilling opportunity!
I can see it getting even harder to adequately manage when there are more machines,.. although they level up with use. When a machine levels up, parts are added or replaced, improving performance.. an example being the Groundwell’s additional batteries which allows you to go faster. The improvements are only effective per mission.. you leave the machines behind when you move to the next island.
You do keep your own rank though, which increases as you sell oil and unlocks more machines and different challenges.. You also get some funny titles as you increase too: eg the Rank 40 title: “Useful Bum”! 🙂