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 Little Big Bunch
The latest in the line of indie bundles arrived today: the Little Big Bunch, with five indie games on the usual pay what you want scheme, with money being split between developers and Games Aid as you wish.
This one has a minimum price.. something I’m glad of after seeing a guy taunting one of the indie devs on Twitter this afternoon. He was bragging about only having paid 1 cent for the game.. less than a penny.. which would have been bad enough without the taunting!
I already owned one of the games: Mode 7‘s strategy game Frozen Synapse, so this one is going to Tim, and maybe we’ll get to play together at some point 😉
Also in the bundle are two platformers, one with destruction: Explodemon, by Curve Studios, and one with aliens: Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee. Finally there’s New Star Soccer 5, a football career sim, by New Star Games.. which isn’t really my type of game. The one I’m most interested in here is 2d platform shooter Serious Sam Double D, from Mommy’s Best Games, and supported by Croteam through their Serious Sam Indie series.
Serious Sam Double D is via Steam code, while the rest of the games are available via Get Games‘ download system. I have to say I much prefer Steam, knowing that I can download the games as many times as I want, and that updates will be applied as they appear. Get Games’ FAQ says that the number of activations per game vary between publishers.. while I don’t mind if I lose a cheap indie game after a couple of reinstalls, I’d be wary of buying anything I forsee playing over and over again.
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 🙂
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.. 🙂
The Humble Voxatron Debut
I picked up the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle at the end of September, paying a rather small figure for a number of rather cool indie games.
The latest Humble Bundle is now out: the Humble Voxatron Debut!
As usual, it’s “pay what you want”,though if you want more than the headline game you need to beat the average paid to date.. an absolute bargain right now, as it’s still under a fiver 🙂
The headline game is an alpha of Lexaloffle’s Voxatron, a “voxel-based, old-school-gone-new platform shooter”, where you explore a world made of destructible blocks; it also comes with a voxel designer and level mapping tools, and the ability to share them with your friends! I wonder if this will be as addictive as Minecraft.. one to explore this weekend, I think!
Also included in the Bundle are the creepy-looking dungeon explorer The Binding of Isaac, by the developers of the equally squicky Super Meat Boy, and puzzle-platform Blocks That Matter by Swing Swing Submarine.
Blocks That Matter sees you play a tiny robot called the Tetrobot, drilling blocks and recombining the materials into other blocks.. it sounds intriguing, but having installed it on my PC at work, I was unable to get it running due to some resolution issue. I’ll be trying this one at home on the Beast instead 🙂
As for The Binding of Isaac.. I saw this advertised on Steam a while ago, and was repelled by the image of a crying boy surrounded by mutants.. however, I’m not going to let that stop me trying the game out.. that would be silly!