The Humble Indie Bundle 4!

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is now out, with another bunch of games to sit accusingly on my Steam list until I play them 😉

This time we’ve got: Jamestown, a scrolling arcade shooter by Final Form Games, music platformer Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games, Super Meat Boy, the slightly-squicky puzzle by Team Meat, Shank, by Klei Entertainment, and Night Sky by NICALiS, which I already had from a previous bundle.

The bonus games this time were a sci-fi strategy called Gratuitous Space Battles, from Positech Games, and Cave Story+, a 2D platformer by NICALiS, which has been updated slightly from the original for this version.

I’m glad it’s nearly Christmas.. I need more time in the day! 😀

More Indie Bundles!

This morning I came across The Indie Game Christmas Bundle, a set of four games from Intermediaware.

I hadn’t heard of any of the games: shooter Absolute Blue, and puzzle games Captain Backwater, Temple of Tangram and Psychoballs, and aside from the one comment I’d seen on Twitter, I hadn’t heard anything about the bundle either.  This is another on the pay-what-you-want model, with free copies of the games for your friends as well!

I have to admit that I felt this might be too generous to be true, and as the games are delivered on Christmas Eve, any reports of non-delivery won’t appear for a while.  I did feel rather wary of this one, but I have bought it, and I guess I’ll just watch my bank statement.

The second bundle of the day was the Indie Royale’s Xmas Bundle, featuring Wadjet Eye Games‘ point and click supernatural adventure The Blackwell Trilogy: Remastered: The Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, and Blackwell Convergence.  Also in the bundle: a Lemmings-like puzzle game called Eets, by Klei Entertainment, 800 North’s Dino D-Day, which features multiplayer action with Hitler’s resurrected dinosaur army, and an action simulator game, The Oil Blue, by chubigans.  This last game was recommended by the boss, but sadly doesn’t have a Steam code.

Just as well it’s coming up on Christmas and some time at home.. so I can actually get some of these games played! 🙂

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 🙂

Cthulhu Saves The World

Cthulhu Saves the World, by Zeboyd, was part of the Really Big Bundle which released a couple of days back.  This one is like a return to the old-style 2d games I played in the past.. but with a dose of tongue-in-cheek humour too 🙂

Having lost his powers at the beginning of the game, Cthulhu has to undertake a quest and become a hero.. saving the world so he can regain his powers.. although once he’s done, he’ll get back to destroying the world!

The first enemies met are two ‘Gooez’, who have kidnapped a girl on the beach.  Heroism requires that we fight them off, of course!  The combat is turn-based, with attacks selected from menus rather like in Final Fantasy.. physical attacks and special attacks such as Insane Strike, which use up magic points and sometimes apply a status debuff to the enemy.

After winning this first battle, Cthulhu levelled up and got a choice of level up bonus.. one affecting Strength and the other affecting Magic.  I went with the Strength boost.. so now every time Cthulhu causes an enemy to go insane, he gets an increase to Strength too.  Umi, the formerly kidnapped girl, also joined the party after the battle.. and falls in love with our tentacle-faced anti-hero 😮

More random-encounter enemies were to be found in the caves.. providing XP and another little joke in the enemy description!

Zeboyd have capped the number of random encounters in each area, which gives you a little nudge when you’re powerful enough to move to the next area, and also means you don’t end up taking just a few paces and being attacked again, over and over until you’re sick of it.

The first real opposition came from a group of adventurers called the Three Heroes of Goodly Justice.. a Thief, a Warrior and a Cleric.  These guys brought some great dialogue too, and once defeated, Cthulhu notes that we’ll probably see them again because they’re heroes, they’ll respawn at the nearest church anyway 😀

After each fight, the party members HP is restored, and some Magic Points.  I don’t think you get enough back, though.. what you’re given back doesn’t even cover the cost of a spell.  I’ve only found health potions so far, which means my only other option is just dealing normal attacks and waiting for my Magic to regenerate.

Cthulhu Saves the World was originally released for the 360, and was only brought to the PC this summer, where it has apparently done rather well for the developers 🙂

The Indie Royale Really Big Bundle

The Indie Royale team have now released the latest indie bundle: the Really Big Bundle, containing Really Big Sky, Runespell: Overture, Cthulhu Saves the World, Eufloria and Breath of Death VII!

This bundle was made available to pre-order a short while ago, but sight unseen, and I was reluctant to buy in case I had the games already.  However, of these, I have to admit that I’d only heard of Really Big Sky, Cthulhu and Eufloria, and very little about those too..

Really Big Sky is a twin-stick shooter by Boss Baddie, where you face down waves of alien invaders, from actual enemies to laser planets and black holes! There are seven different game modes, including co-op.. and the game is generated from the way you play.. whether that means more of the enemies you do least well against, or simply that enemies grow stronger, I will have to see!

The rest of the pack seems to include games to suit different moods.. Cthulhu Saves the World is an RPG by Zeboyd, where you help Cthulhu regain his powers on a quest of courage, romance, redemption and insanity.. as it says on the tin.  Breath of Death VII is also from Zeboyd, another RPG, but more of a parody.  Sounds like these two are for when I’m in a particularly silly mood, then! 🙂

Runespell: Overture is another role-playing game, but using collectible cards to form attacks.  I think I’m only really going to know what this one is about once I’ve started playing it.. something different to the usual games is certainly worth taking a look at, and might even make me think a little more.

Eufloria is a beautiful, ambient game with exploration and conquest, with new asteroids providing resources which allow you to grow, but also attract rivals.  Like a few other games I’ve played or bought recently, the levels are procedurally generated so you never see quite the same level twice 🙂

I think Eufloria will be the game to calm me down again after the sillier games.. at least on the earlier levels 😀

The Humble Introversion Bundle

It’s time for another Humble Bundle, and this time it’s Introversion‘s games up gor grabs!

The main games in the bundle are hacking puzzle-game Uplink, strategy Darwinia and Multiwinia, a set of multiplayer game modes based on Darwinia.. and strategic thermonuclear wargame DEFCON!  For beating the current average price of the bundle, you can also grab Bit Blot‘s Aquaria, an underwater action-adventure, and Kloonigames‘ Crayon Physics Deluxe.. a physics-based puzzle game where you draw objects such as slides, weights and so on, to complete the objective on each level!

There are also a pair of bonus prototype tech demos: Subversion City Generator, which demonstrates the use of procedural generation by creating a complete city environment, and Voxel Tech Demo which explores destructible voxel buildings.

I already have Darwinia and Crayon Physics Deluxe, and again I find myself wishing I could gift the ‘spares’!

Indie Royale Additions

The topic of indie games was brought up at work today, and somebody mentioned more additions to the Indie Royale bundle.

The bonus games are shooters: Irukandji, and Bullet Candy Perfect, both from Charlie’s Games, creator of Scoregasm.  I have yet to try any of these games.. as I have picked something else up which is taking most of my free time 😉

It’s an Indie Bonanza!

I recently picked up the latest Humble Bundle, and just last night, the Indie Royale‘s Difficult 2nd Bundle.

Today, I saw a note on Twitter about more games being added to the Humble Bundle, and sure enough, there were more games listed on the page!  Lexaloffle, developer of Voxatron, has added three of their older games to the pack as a bonus: Jasper’s Journeys, with exploration, jumping and monster bashing, sliding block puzzle Chocolate Castle, and Zen Puzzle Garden, which I suspect will be anything but Zen after a while 😉

That’s not all, though.. they’ve also added a “developer bonus”, GISH, a side-scrolling platformer featuring a large ball of tar.. who goes underground to rescue his friend.  I actually had this game already, having picked it up as part of a huge bundle on Steam, but haven’t got any further in than the first few levels.  I loved the idea, but found the jumping and sticking mechanic fiddly, especially when trying to collect the little bonus blobs.

Over on the Indie Royale website, I found there was even more win.. DLC for Red Redemption’s Fate of the World: the Extras Pack DLC, Denial DLC and Migration DLC.  All these are set for download on Steam now.. while I go off to play more Gears!

The Indie Royale – Difficult 2nd Bundle

The Indie Royale is another indie bundle scheme along the lines of The Humble Bundle..

This is the second in the series, containing action-puzzle game Night Sky by NICALiS, Red Redemption‘s strategy Fate of the World, space-shooter Scoregasm, by charliesgames, and a pair of games by Size Five Games: point and click comedy Ben There, Dan That! and sequel Time Gentlemen, Please!

The deal is not quite pay-what-you-want, as there is a minimum price, but it’s still a bunch of games for a low price, enough to attract decent numbers.  The price starts low, and goes up as people buy.. but if the minimum price is beaten, the price is knocked down again.  Recent price changes and other stats can be seen on the site too.. it’s rather interesting to see the price change over time.

Currently, the minimum is just over £2, which doesn’t sound much.. but in the six hours it’s been on sale, there have been over 11,500 sales.. 🙂