Gaming: Humble Bundle w/ Android 5

Not quite back to economics again, unfortunately.

Today's post is a review of the excellent games in the currently available Humble Bundle at humblebundle.com.

What's A Bundle?

A bundle is a group of games being sold together at a discount to encourage sales and, in the case of Humble Bundle, support charities. It is a particularly popular method of providing exposure to indie games - that is, games developed outside of the influence of major gaming companies.

Current Bundle

The current bundle is a particularly good deal, IMO. Within it is the complete version of a quite expensive cooperative tower defense game, an arcade-style shooter, a puzzle game, an adventure game, and one odd game that more or less defies categorization, but is probably closest to being an action-puzzle game.

All of this can be had for at or around $7.00.

Here are the reviews of the games in the bundle...

Dungeon Defenders

This is the game I have played the most, and the one that I have enjoyed the most. I sunk many, many hours into the console version with a friend of mine about a year ago - well over 50, probably closer to 100 - and I never finished the original content, let alone the DLC that has been released since then.

So, how awesome is this game?

It's a tower defense with a number of distinct classes, each of which can build a specific set of towers, has a certain sort of normal attack, and has a number of additional abilities. Each of them plays entirely differently - monks have passive, AOE aura effects, while squires have your traditional big 'ol barricades and melee damage towers.

Gameplay occurs in real time, as waves of enemies attempt to make it to your crystal. While you have infinite preparation time between waves - unless playing on insane mode, which is really quite silly of you - the remainder of the game you will be jumping around, slashing at monsters, picking up building materials, and repairing or even building towers in the midst of waves.

And that's not even the best part - you can play with up to three friends! While the enemies get progressively more numerous and difficult to kill, combining towers from different classes to great effect can be quite enjoyable.

So, yeah. In short, it's fun, unique, challenging, and you can sink more hours into it than many games you might be paying $60.00 for. The $7.00 price is entirely covered by this game alone.

Super Hexagon

An odd game. You play as a shape attempting to move outwards. There are an arbitrary number of paths determined by the game, and different wall shapes impeded your path.

This is a terrible description. I can't really describe it well, but it's very enjoyable. It looks great, plays great, and sounds great.

Beat Hazard Ultra

Shooter version of Audiosurf. Awesome? Yes, yes it is.

There is literally nothing more to be said. You pull in some music and the game procedurally generates an arcade-style bullet-hell shooter for you to play through. It looks great, sounds as good as the music you pull in, and can be incredibly difficult depending on the music you choose.

Don't try playing with slow classical, though. Game can get boring and slow real fast.

Dynamite Jack

I've only played an hour or so of this. So far it's looked good and sounded good, just like the others, but I think it feels just a little clunky.

That being said, it's a pretty interesting action adventure type game, where you're trying to get out of a mine. Your only real ability? Hiding and blowing stuff up.

Yep. You blow stuff up. For the entire game.

Enjoy.

Solar 2

I sat down with this game one morning. You start out by seeing the creation of an entire universe. Cool, huh?

Then, you are an asteroid. There are some tasks for you to do, but the real progression of the game comes from growing by 'eating' other asteroids - a task accomplished by smashing yourself into other asteroids. You then move up to being a planet, which absorbs asteroids after pulling them into orbit, then a planet with life which generates shields and ships for you, to a star system, and all the way up to a black hole - when you just kind of roll around sucking everything up.

Finally, you eat the whole universe and start over again.

You even have "God" goading you on as you play, giving you tasks for his own enjoyment. Think of it as a 2D version of Katamari Damacy with a slightly less absurd sense of humor and premise. Not quite as good, but, really, what could be good as Katamari Damacy?

Night Sky HD

Awesome puzzle game. Haven't gotten far enough in to say a whole lot, but it looks quite interesting, and the graphics and sound are both good despite it being limited in color and in two dimensions instead of three.

Will update when I have more information.


So, yeah, a little review of all the games, some more accurate than others I'm sure - I've played them all, but only really gotten into two - Dungeon Defenders and Solar 2. I highly advise you check it out, even if only one of these things seems particularly worth it, as the bundle is very cheap for what you get, and you get to give some of the money to charity!

As per always, comments below, follow on the right, and I hope to see you all here again tomorrow. And by see, I mean vaguely realize that people actually visit this site and read what I write.