Humble Indie Bundle 3

[Sapient]

I saw the story on Slashdot:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/07/2 ... 3-Released

The games look much more interesting this time.
Well worth a few dollars in my opinion.

[enchilado]

I won't be able to buy it for a few days as I need to wait for money to go into my Paypal account, but I'll definitely be doing so. I wanted to buy VVVVVV anyway and the other games look pretty nice as well.

[Velensk]

I've got to ask what is VVVVVV? It's name isn't very descriptive and it's site appears to be down for the duration of the charity effort.

I've come to purchase humble indie bundles on principle and will grab it even if even one of the games looks interesting but at times I have trouble figuring out what the games are.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVVVVV

[boru]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf06P-_1lkU Looks like one of those where I die twenty times in the first ten seconds of gameplay ... YMMV

Cogs looks pretty cool though. I'll probably buy.

Crayon Physics is a clever idea, if you have one of those pens. http://www.crayonphysics.com/

[Sapient]

I've just been trying it out.
Here's my impression of the games so far:

Crayon Physics: I find this to be a very relaxing, casual puzzle game that encourages thinking creatively and, most importantly, it is very fun. This game reminds me of all the fun I used to have playing Geometric Golfer back in the day. My one complaint is that clicking "New Game" wipes out all your previous save data without even a warning prompt. In case you were worrying about needing a special tablet for this: nope... the mouse works just fine.

VVVVVV: It starts out as a cute, addicting platformer with extremely simple look and extremely simple controls (since it is intentionally retro). You soon come to realize that the guy who made this is not only creative and funny, he is also extremely sadistic. Your little dude zips along at an incredible rate and you must somehow make him stop on a dime lest he be impaled in rows of spikes. The good news is you never have to go back very far because the checkpoints are scattered everywhere. It kinda reminds me of MegaMan, just because of the constant spike hazards and tricky platforming. It's a pretty short game, too; I finished it in about 3 and a half hours, but I gave up on collecting some of the really tricky orbs.

Hammerfight: I find myself *wanting* to like this game. I like the idea, the concept, the backstory, the graphic style, even the odd scriptural references on the load screens. But the play control kills me... and this game is *all* about the play control. I guess you will either love it or hate it. I was hating it as I ran my mouse back and forth across the mousepad like a madman and the vehicle barely sputters around no matter how much I tuned my mouse settings. Due to the momentum of your weapon, you must get very close to the enemy as you then continue to swing away from them to land a nice hit. This is all fine in theory, if the enemies weren't twice as fast as you and zooming around in swarms. I gave up on it after a few levels. I guess I can blame myself for choosing the HARD path, though.

[Velensk]

About hammer fighter, I agree. I've never seen a game that needs full screen mode more without having it.

[Sapient]

About hammer fighter, I agree. I've never seen a game that needs full screen mode more without having it.

Fullscreen worked for me... I opened the file Config.ini from the install directory and set GFX_SCREEN_WIDTH & GFX_SCREEN_HEIGHT to screen resolution, then set GFX_WINDOWED=false

There may be a way to set it in-game too, but I didn't check

[Velensk]

Alright, once I figured out how to get full screen (the answer is to leave by hitting escape not com+Q or closing the game window so that the change is saved). I have much less problem with the controls.

[usr-sbin]

I bought this because I thought that I would like Revenge of the Titans, it turns out that whilst it's a good game, I love Atom Zombie Smasher much more. It's a nice change and strangely addictive.

As for Hammerfight, I took an immediate dislike to it when I loaded it up and the first menu said press mouse 1 or esc if it crashed (which of course it did!) The controls seemed to be hit and miss, I ended up closing my eyes and flailing my mouse around madly!

[Velensk]

I'll bet you didn't get very far that way.

I rather liked Hammerfight after I solved my problem with the controls. That said, I think that it suffers from a certain lack of replay-ability despite the multiple endings (after you've figured out how to duel the AI and the weaknesses of every machine/monster enemy it stops being overly fun to fight them) and some weapons (any type of gun but especially bombs) are simply not fun to fight with or against.

EDIT: I might have some fun with multiplayer if I had someone to play against. I don't suspect it would be something I'd do very often.

[enchilado]

Well, since I've now played most of the games:

Crayon Physics Deluxe is nice, but a bit screwy when you try to draw through an existing object. It hasn't really got any harder in the ten or fifteen levels I've played, either.

Cogs is hideous. The puzzles might be alright, but the graphics... they're absolutely terrible.

VVVVVV is great. I like it very much indeed, and some of the levels are soo difficult - the Veni Vidi Vici sequence must have taken me hundreds of attempts.

Hammerfight ran too slowly on my computer. I couldn't even get past the story sequence.


From the second Bundle, which I somehow missed when it was first released and so am very glad about getting in this one:

Braid is amazing. I adore its story, its graphics, its music, everything about it. The time-warping concepts are great and the way they tie in with the story is nice too. The puzzles are ingenious. I haven't finished it yet, but I can see that it's not going to have much replay value at all - however, with this game, I think that works. I really, really like Braid.

Machinarium has some very nice graphics too, but while its puzzles are clever there's a lot more experimentation than there is in - for example - Braid, which for the most part can be solved before you even attempt it once you've got your abilities figured out.

Revenge of the Titans is pretty cool too - I like the gameplay a fair bit, and the graphics are alright, but the levels go past a little too quickly for my liking.

[usr-sbin]

I'll bet you didn't get very far that way.

Of course not, but it felt like I would get the same result with my eyes open or closed, the controls were interesting but I couldn't configure them to a way that worked for me.

It hasn't really got any harder in the ten or fifteen levels I've played, either.

I found that at the harder levels Crayon Physics just introduces more concepts, generally you know what you have to do but the levels require minor tweaks in order to get them to work. Have you played Armadillo Run, that's quite an interesting physics game.

[Gambit]

No comments on the games themselves thus far. Haven't made it that far through any of them yet.


But the quality of the Linux ports this time was absolute crap. These things are just throwing their files wherever they feel like. Making a mess of my home directory. And they won't work any other way. I either have to deal with it, or get rid of them.

Also hammerfight is dreadfully slow here. I have a pretty beastly machine. Their forums are full of people with 64-bit Debian and Ubuntu complaining of the same thing. I mean, why would you not test for compatibility on a combination of: the most popular Linux distribution + the fastest growing processor architecture.

Atom Zombie Smasher gets confused by my dual monitors. I have to manually specify the exact window size I want with CLI switches.


I feel like maybe this was the result of rushing to get another bundle out. It really hasn't been that long since the last one. And none of these games supported Linux or Mac before the bundle...

Back to the files, I'd almost prefer they wouldn't try to integrate with my system at all if this is the way they're going to behave. Just keep everything in their untarred directory in ~/Downloads and let me make the desktop and menu shortcuts myself. And certainly don't put your files unhidden right in the top level of my home directory. That's just crazy.

Crayon Physics is the big offender here. Why is there ~/Crayon Physics Deluxe and ~/.CrayonPhysicsDeluxe

[Shinobody]

Small comment: Some of these games had Linux versions made right before being added into HIB; I remember for example on site of Crayon Physics, news piece saying that they made port only because it was required for the Bundle.
It would explain something, wouldn't it?