I had the whim to go see if there were any good bundle deals around at the moment, and found this nice little bundle: http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/bundle-two-indie-games/ 10 games, fixed price of £3.90($6.11, €4.49). I bought it pretty much immediately. I'm also considering this one: http://www.indieroyale.com/ The evolved bundle. Minimum €3.52. 5 games.
Twin Sector is like Portal but harder to control and lower quality. But what I played I found surprisingly interesting.
I can offer a few opinions: I played Grotesque Tactics from the first bundle. It's turn based tactics and pretty much a parody of any game-cliches, with a constantly depressed hero and some kind of fantasy Duke Nukem, also archer chicks who fly for him. It's reasonably funny, but the Tactics side was a big disapointment. Get it if you like one insider after the other, from green mushrooms hidden in bushes to sabertooth rabbits... As for the Indie Royale bundle, I recommend getting it. Unmechanical is gorgeous, a bit like Machinarium as a puzzler, looks great and plays great. It also has Krater, a very flawed ARPG which I still like. A non-desert postapocalyptic setting, in Sweden actually I love post-apo settings, but most are just scorched wastelands with some spires sticking out, and suddenly only ramshackle houses everywhere (I'm looking at you, Fallout!). The artstyle is gorgeous imho, lots of colour, distinctive characters... The towns look great, with lots of neat details. Characters are quest givers basically, and I'm not far into the story. There is an overworld map with random encounters, but thankfully not too many. Dungeons are randomly generated, and there's permadeath. Oh, did I mention that you command a squad of three soldiers? Gives it a bit of an RTS feel, but only a bit. Now, problems: Permadeath feels inconsequential somehow. On normal, a guy needs to be knocked down thrice until he receives a permanent injury, and three injuries to death. Which means he needs to go down a total of nine times till he dies. And you can just return to the surface (extract button takes a whopping 5 seconds...) and reset the knockdowns at a medic. Sadly, that's not the biggest problem by far. The game kind of falls flat in the ARPG part: There is no real levelling. Each class has two skills, that's it. When you level, you unlock upgrade slots, but they are only passive pretty much. To make matters worse, you'll need to switch the whole party at least twice since your starting chars only go to level 5, while you can buy level 15 chars. Which don't have more abilities, only more upgrade slots... Loot isn't great either, you don't see it on the ground and the variety isn't too high. Not sure if there are any weapons with special effects later on, but 5 hours in I haven't encountered anything like that. Which leaves this as an RTS light with some ARPG influences. I still like it for the gorgeous visuals and the audio, but I'm getting kind of bored. It's sad, I had high hopes for this
New nice bundle over at bundle stars. 8 games this time, £3.94 fixed price. 3 point and clicks, 2 puzzlers(though in the same series), an action/strategy, an action/adventure, and a strategy/TBS.
I just picked up the Indiefort Summer Bundle from Gamersgate, mostly because of two games that looked interesting: Underrail (an rpg, currently in alpha, but with some positive talk comparing it to games like Fallout), and "Fortune Winds: Ancient Trader", a turn-based strategy game involving ships and buying and selling. Other games in the bundle include: Sanctum AI War: Fleet Command Zigfrak I'll let you know how the games actually are when I've had a chance to play them. The last 3 are really not the kinds of games that I generally enjoy playing, so I may not get to them.
Sanctum I will wax lyrical about. It's a great tower defence game, but I find it insanely exhausting to play.
I just completed my first game of Fortune Winds: Ancient Trader. It's a moderately fun multi-player game which can be played against AI players or multi-player via hot-seat (no internet games). It's kind of like a board game, where each player sails their ship around various islands, buying and selling goods, fighting battles in a kind of rock-paper-scissors style of play, finding treasures and maps, and so on. There's three different variants of game, each with a choice of 3 different maps to play on. I only played the most basic variant (I lost). In it, you have to find 3 different artifacts, which will allow you to locate the ancient Kraken. Once you find him, you must defeat him in combat. I have to admit that I didn't completely 'get' the game the first time through, and not surprisingly, I lost. That said, I'll probably play the game again and try to win, but I can't see myself playing it a whole lot. It's not bad for an indie game, but also not the greatest game either. It's certainly worth a try if you are interested in the bundle. It would be a better value as a typical inexpensive mobile game.
Groupees - Be Mine 8 ($1 Min; $5+ for everything) http://groupees.com/bm8 Gotta say this is the best bundle I've seen so far, bar the Wadjet Eye Groupees a short while back. Drakensang is a great, challenging European RPG based on the German equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons. Love the soundtrack so, so much. Patrician IV is a classic historical strategy franchise (and its expansion is the second bonus - which makes me so glad I've not bought it via a sale!), Blood Bowl is another European game, based on a British franchise (Warhammer!) and its spin-off by the same name. I can't speak for any of the other titles, but I'm going to give Fairy Bloom Freesia and Slam Bolt Scrappers a go tonight, I think. Bundle Stars - Zombies vs Aliens Stellar Bundle ($1) http://www.bundlestars.com/deals/zombies-aliens-indie-stellar-bundle/ Pretty much three very similar games - albeit fun ones - and a game (Alien Hallway) I've never played.
Just don't download the bonus OST yet. At the time I'm writing this, the tagging is messed up. It's supposedly going to be reuploaded soon.
Patrician IV's expansion has now unlocked as a bonus, along with a six-track EP by some group I've never heard of, and now it's working its way towards Radical Roach, whatever that may be. Downloading the Fairy Bloom Freesia OST (again) to see if it's been corrected.
Game thoughts: Fairy Bloom Freesia - Rather obviously a Japanese title, and it's a side-scrolling beat 'em up. Kind of. Well, first impressions (did three or so levels) are mildly positive. It looks okay, sounds okay, plays... clumsily. It doesn't feel particularly responsive on a controller (double-tapping with an analogue stick is a bit ridiculous - might have to try the D-Pad). The control map menu is also kinda broken, so don't pay attention to the image it shows. If you want Jump to be 'A', for example, press 'A' and it should come up with something like "Button 0", even though the image might show the 'B' button flashing. But it's not bad, I guess. Slam Bolt Scrappers - Another indie title, I think. It's a cross between Tetris, tower defence (kind of) and a beat 'em up. That is the only way I can describe it. You have four characters to play as at the start, there's four others to unlock (no idea how one unlocks them, though, nor do I know what they look like), and... yeah. It's another okay game. It feels a bit sluggish and unresponsive again, which isn't particularly great as it's meant to be a competitive game. I'm entirely nonplussed by my experience. Patrician IV + Rise of a Destiny - The expansion still has translation errors. Brilliant. It lets you select your gender and then doesn't recognise it in dialogue, e.g. "Lady Megaboobs has established his company...", which is a little frustrating as this error was present in the base game itself. It does the same thing as DoW2+Chaos Rising, in that if you have both on your account you'll have two entries but only need one download to access both. I remember playing it a year or two ago, and it was... interesting, but I'd have to sit down and have a proper go with it at some point. Paranautical Activity - Apparently the devs are arseholes, and having seen chatlogs I'm inclined to agree, so I won't be playing this. Drakensang - Just play it, okay? It's great.
So, since Wednesday... Blades of Time was revealed to be the first mystery game, and the 'Limited Edition' (i.e. slightly more expensive edition) at that. Not played it, but heard roughly average thoughts on it. The character design is not something I'm going to admit to liking, though. The wave of bonuses has continued, with a bunch of music (meh), RADical Roach has unlocked, we also got Karateka at 13k sales, and at 20k we'll get Eleusis. Whatever that is. Edit: Oh. And the Fairy Bloom Freesia/Ether Vapor soundtrack is now correctly tagged. Kind of. I think I'm going to have to tweak it.
Oh goody! Now I own BOTH games in the "Extremely Dubious Character Art"-Blades duology! Both through bundles, mind you.
I really enjoyed Blades of Time, just don't take it too seriously. Fluent movement, nice combat, varied environments. What's there not to like? It had no trouble keeping me interested until the end credits.
Why? And anyway, things like that fall under the category of colors and tastes: De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. Just give it a try
I'm going to break from my usual pleasant demeanour for a moment and ask if you're serious, because it's a bloody stupid question. She. Is. Wearing. God. Damn. Hot. Pants. And. A. Bra. In. Close. Combat.
