Indie Bundle 5

This is the fifth 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 5 includes: Audiosurf, Gemini Rue, Greed Corp, The Tiny Bang Story, and Ys: The Oath of Felghana.

Audiosurf

So this game is a weird one! It uses your own music to generate levels where you fly a spacecraft-looking thing along, and try to make color combinations that turn into points. Colored blocks appear in the lanes on your path that are in time with the music, and you move your craft left and right to form combinations.

It's a pretty simple concept and kind of fun, if you don't have anything else to do while listening to your favourite music. Unfortunately the game is stretched for anything wider than 4:3. 6/10.

Gemini Rue

This is kind of a cool game that reminds me of the later Space/Police Quest games. It's a point and click type adventure game where you can look, touch, speak, etc on various items on each scene. The graphics are old style pixelated, and ironically increasing the resolution and anti-aliasing filters makes the game look more fuzzy and less cool. I recommend using the default settings, it's the lowest res but looks the sharpest and nicest. The highest res is only 1280x800 anyway, and the game is anamorphic so you don't lose any scene.

You seem to be a cop from another planet, in a time when space travel is normal, investigating the doings of a ruling or government type organisation. The world seems fairly large and the character interaction and voice acting is pretty good. From other reviews I have read, the storyline is supposed to be excellent too, inluding the ending. I like the feel of this game, even though multimon is not supported. 8/10

Greed Corp

This is a very well-polished indie game other than multimon. The graphics are bright and vibrant, and the game design is simple yet challenging. It's the future and 4 mining companies are battling to control the limited terrain left to mine. This is a turn-based strategy game to outsmart your opponents and win the war.

You deploy a variety of units to mine the land you have and to take over the land you don't. From simple ground units to special abilities, there's enough of a range to keep you entertained but not so many as to confuse.

The game is easy to pick up and fun to play. Fully Hor+ in widescreen, the only let-down is that the game is Vert- in multimon. 8/10

The Tiny Bang Story

I always try to keep an open mind about puzzle-type games. This one has great graphics, brilliant artwork indeed. I was left a little undecided about the gameplay though.

Basically, you need to find puzzle pieces in the scenes that are presented to you. In order to access some areas, you need to solve certain problems or rebuild machines to allow you to progress. This also involves on clicking on things until you have found them all. What I found is that the game just came down to clicking everywhere until you have clicked on all the places you need to.

Maybe I'm not involving myself into this as much as I should, and some people probably enjoy this type of game, but I didn't find it engaging or mega-fun. Still, it looked pretty. Unfortunately you won't benefit from widescreen nor multimon - this game pillarboxes, meaning it fills the extra width with black. Also, multimon has a weird problem where the screen is left justified instead of center justified. 6/10

Ys: The Oath of Felghana

I'm going to be honest straight up - this is another game I judged by it's cover (or box art / main menu). It looked very Japanese to me and I wasn't sure how much I would like it. I found out I do - alot. It feels like a mix of Final Fantasy 7 and The Legend of Zelda - I love the in game feel. The HUD could do with some work and the menus are a bit primitive and overdone, but overall the in-game feel is excellent.

The game has a strong focus on story-telling, and the spelling is excellent. You don't feel like you are playing a cheap translated version full of 'engrish'. The characters are pretty engaging and the scenery is vivid. As with many Japanese games, the relationships between the characters are explored as much as the main story in a humorous but engaging way, without being painful.

Multimon is supported, but unfortunately the HUD is not optimized. The cursor that rotates around the player suffers from some distortion, but it's nothing major and very usable still. I plan to give this game a good crack. 9/10

Summary

This is a pretty good bundle, with a bit of everything. I would say Ys: The Oath of Felghana is worth the cost alone. It's a massive game, and so is Gemini Rue. There are a couple of more simple games for when you don't have as much time, such as Greed Corp and Audiosurf. A puzzle game nicely rounds off the mix. If you can afford it, buy the bundle. Otherwise try to pick up Greed Corp and Ys: The Oath of Felghana cheap.