Indie Bundle 3

This is the third entry in my series of reviews for the Steam Indie Bundles. Each review is short and subjective, and is geared to give you a quick look at the game. Indie Bundle 3 includes: BIT.TRIP BEAT, Bunch of Heroes, Darwinia, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and Runespell: Overture.

BIT.TRIP BEAT

This game would definitely be more fun if it would start. No matter what desktop resolution I had, the game would just launch to a black screen with a spinning 'waiting' cursor. I tried uninstalling OpenAL and re-installing it as per the only real solution offered on the Steam forums to those of us having this issue, but I had no luck. A waste of my time. 0/10.

Bunch of Heroes

Now this is how indie games should all be! Lots of fun with great graphics and working in multi-monitor. This game is great with friends, the co-op system works extremely well. The different characters all have special abilities to affect the outcome of the battles against the zombie armies.

A great weapon pick-up system kept us WSGF-gamers competing to get the best weapons, and many laughs were had as we learned to use them effectively. Nothing like a ticking bomb attached to a crossbow arrow stuck in your character to get the sledging happening between teammates! SHOOT THE ZOMBIES, NOT ME! ARG!

One of the best indie games we've played, behind Shoot Many Robots. Only lost a mark because it can be a bit slow at times to get the action rolling. 9/10

Darwinia

A very interesting concept is fielded in this game, which is probably what indie games are known for. Even better, you can try it out in full multimon goodness.

You enter a computer network called Darwinia, which is the home of evolving digital lifeforms called Darwinians, funnily enough. However, there is a virus destroying Darwinia, and you are the one to save them!

You deploy little snippets of code as units to tackle the virus, and can start or end them as you see fit to achieve this. The tutorial is good and the whole game concept is pretty fun to play out. The graphics have a unique flavour, although sometimes I did struggle to tell what was going on due to the asbtract nature of it, but it was easy enough to work out. Full multimon is icing. 8/10

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

This game starts out simple enough. You fly a spaceship around and use various things that you collect along the way to help you progress. The game gets pretty intense pretty fast, though, which was good.

Multimon is available natively but it's stretched, so I wouldn't call it supported. I ended up playing this sucker on a single monitor, and it lost a point in my final score for it. I found it to be pretty addictive, to be honest, and kept playing it longer than I was planning to. I don't think it's going to reshape your world, but it's fun enough. 8/10

Runespell: Overture

The first thing I noticed when I fired up this game was the great music. I could listen to it for ages, in fact I might even see if there is a soundtrack I could hunt down.

The game itself is a card-playing game, which I was not expecting. There is a campaign story that covers all these card games, and as you travel around, meet, and defeat new opponents, the story progresses. The card game is called Mythic Poker, and using the same card layout as Solitaire and the same hands as poker. Different poker hands are worth different values. Once a hand has been assembled, the player can use it to attack the opponent, with the poker score coming off the opponent as damage.

I don't mind a bit of poker and the tutorial got me into the game pretty easily. I found myself still playing after the tutorial, surprisingly. Multimon is not supported, and widescreen could barely be described as supported, as the game simply fills in the extra width on the sides with stylised panels. 7/10

Summary

Other than BIT.TRIP BEAT which was a total loss, this bundle is pretty good. The games are of good to great quality, cover a broad range of gaming styles, and should have something for everyone. Bunch of Heroes was the standout for me, which some of us WSGFers did 4 player coop in; you need to buy it.