Bundle In A Box: Eclectic Delights Bundle
The third and biggest Bundle in a Box, the Eclectic Delights Bundle, is now live!
The Stuffing Bundle
The Indie Royale has launched their latest bundle : The Stuffing Bundle!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Dsvg04kDA] (more…)
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.
Be Mine At Last
I finally got hold of the Be Mine Indie Game Bundle!
This bundle launched earlier this week, but remained inaccessible to many people after the Groupee servers proved incapable of staying up.
There were originally five games listed in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York, Xotic, Beep and The Ball. However, after achieving the first goal of $3,000, the three DLC packs for Xotic, and point and click adventure game Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, by White Birds Productions, were added to the bundle. The next goal is set at $100,000, with soundtracks for The Ball and Beep, and new EPs, and a third mystery bundle has been listed, but with no goal value as yet.
I’ve been playing Wasteland Angel this evening, and plan to get a quick summary of all the games up soon..
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!
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.
Lucid
I wanted to make a quick meantion of Yeaboing‘s Lucid.. the developer has temporarily made the game available on a pay what you want, if you want, scheme, for PC or Mac, over on their website. Otherwise, it’s available on Steam.
Lucid is a match-all puzzle game, where you clear areas of coloured blocks by drawing a line through them with your mouse. The painted blocks then disappear, with remaining blocks filling in the gaps and more dropping in from the top.
The game is really easy to pick up, and clearing large areas feels quite satisfying.. but there is a trick..
You can only clear an area if your line passes through every block in that area. I thought I was being smart and setting myself up for a huge bonus, but instead trapped a large pile of blocks here!
Despite blocking myself in a bit, I was still able to clear other blocks, fill up the meter, and pass the level.
Lucid is a nice, casual game.. easy to play, lovely to look at, and rather relaxing. The music is rather soothing too.. that’s also available to download in OGG format for the time being, on Yeaboing’s page 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.
Hawken – Mech Combat FPS
Hawken is a multiplayer mech combat game, developed by Adhesive Games using the Unreal Engine from Epic Games.
The team have now announced an official release date of 12/12/12, and confirmed that Hawken will be a free downloadable title, with in-game purchases allowing greater customisation and weapon variety.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA03XsKzbY]
While the 12th December is a long way off, you can get in on the action sooner by enlisting for the beta.
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 🙂