Humble Indie Bundle #3 Review

In case you haven't heard of the Humble Indie Bundle at all over the last 2 weeks, it was a event designed to allow users of indie games to pay what they want, literally any dollar amount, for 5-11 games (depending on how much you donated) for the purpose of supporting independent game developers and two charities.

The charities, which are the most important thing in the event, are Child's play and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Child's Play is a charity that helps to get toys, books, and games for sick children in children's hospitals across the nation. EFF is a non-profit organization designed to protect our rights on the internet, things like free speech, consumer rights, privacy et cetera.

Unfortunately for my readers, the event just ended but on the upside, over 2.1 million dollars was gathered for the developers and charities. On the upside, this is the third time they have done the event and they plan on doing it again in the future, you can even sign up for news about the next event on their website (a link will be posted at the bottom of this article).

The games!!!!! The Humble Indie Bundle #3 basic package came with 5 different games, if you were willing to spend greater than the average amount of money spent per customer (which ended up being around 6 dollars) you got between 9-11 games depending on when in the event you donated. The basic 5 games which I will provide a brief review of each were Cogs, Crayon Physics Deluxe, VVVVVV (yes, that is actually the name of the game), Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves. Most of these games are fairly simple puzzle like games (with exception to Hammerfight), and each is still available at a great price on Steam if you have an interest in any of them. Support independent developers!

The first game I tried out from the Humble Indie Bundle was Cogs, it is a simple puzzle game about moving gears or pipes to get things to crank or flow in the direction the game wants it to go. The game play itself is simple, click to move a piece, right click to rotate the camera (yes, 3d puzzles!), but the game itself gets incredibly challenging at an unbelievable rate. I quickly ran into challenges that were taking me minutes to complete and shortly after, ones that I just couldn't complete at all. If you are a puzzle nerd, this game is for you, I consider myself to be pretty good at this style of game but in contest it was Game: 1 Nerd: 0. The game itself runs smooth, the graphics aren't over the top and the only real complaint I had was that the game limited max resolution, so it just didn't fit right on my 23 inch screen.

The second game I played was VVVVVV, which by the sounds of its title is a umm, wait I'm just not sure. The title certainly grabs your attention and once you get started in game, the game does as well. You play a character running around these levels trying to find your ship mates on this huge, strange ship covered with deadly spikes on walls and a ton of different physics involved. You control gravity and have the ability to invert it (only up and down, not side to side) but you lack the ability to jump. The game is VERY colorful and started to hurt my eyes after an hour or so but the music is fantastic, it is very challenging but not over the top difficult, and the developers attempt to tell a story to hold onto your attention (it wasn't bad, I just didn't want to read much at the time). The controls for the teleportation devices, which you will find shortly after starting the game, are difficult to understand and optimization of game play is non existent but VVVVVV makes for a good side-scrolling, gravity wielding, colorful and musical game.

Next up was Hammerfight, and even though it had the potential to be my favorite, because of its steep learning curve and lack of direction, it was my least favorite. You control this flying wheelchair (it's not actually a wheelchair, that is just the first thing I thought of) like thing with a number of different attachable weapons swinging them around killing everything you hit with it.The game doesn't tell you what's an enemy, what the objective is, and what needs to be saved versus killed, so you will quickly be stuck on the same level over and over. It may have just been my impatience at this point but the learning curve was so steep that I couldn't get past it and enjoy the game and its pretty good looking style. In my opinion, this one was an unfortunate miss.

Crayon Physics Deluxe, the surprise of the bundle! and I sincerely mean it. I had played a similarly titled game on the iphone before and wasn't impressed at all, and I thought this would be basically the same game but for the computer which would take away from the game even more. Fortunately, I was wrong. It's another puzzle game, you get preset maps and you have to get your circle to the star to get to the next level. You do this by drawing lines to make bridges or creating swinging hammers to launch your circle in the direction you want it to go, or in the wrong direction if you mess up the drawing. The possibilities of what you can draw and do are pretty much unlimited, once you understand how the game reacts with what is drawn, it is a pretty easy game with decent music. The game runs great, it has a pretty cool art style, and I didn't run into any problems at all with the game play. I personally recommend this one to anyone of any age. Instead of drawing with crayons on paper and it not doing anything, you get to draw on the screen and see it move. It takes boring old drawing to the next level in a way I like.

The last game in the basic package of the Humble Indie Bundle that I played was And Yet It Moves. This game is very simple. You control a paper model of a human and have to get from point A to point B. You can control gravity by turning the screen to the left or right to help get where you need to go. The game play is pretty basic, nothing super challenging even after they add in levels that destroy themselves and bats/lizards in the fray of things. Personally, my favorite part of the game was the art, the game looks like paper on your screen and generally speaking just cool to look at. In the Humble Indie Bundle this was my second favorite game, it runs smooth, it looks great, and its not impossibly difficult.

The Humble Indie Bundle doesn't aim to sell you your next go to game that is going to last months or even years, it really doesn't matter what it is giving you. It is about supporting the developers and charities, and for that reason is why I supported them. Indie developers are the developers making the truly new games right now because big name developers who invest a ton of money and time into their games want to make a return on it, so they are playing it safe with what they make. Look to indie developers for those innovative games in the future. And look to future Humble Indie Bundles as a way to get a bunch of good games for a great price while supporting charities for a good cause.



Humble Indie Bundle Rating: Not needed, it's for the cause, not the games.

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Link to the Humble Indie Bundle website where you can sign up for news and info about future bundles. http://www.humblebundle.com/