Indie Bundle 6

This is the sixth 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 6 includes: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, DEFCON, SpaceChem, Ticket To Ride, and Trauma.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome

Ok, so how many games do you play where you can flip people off while parachuting down the side of a building at great speed? This game is fun for the big speeds and vertigo-inducing views, which is why it's all the more shame that it doesn't support multimon, because it would rock the feeling even harder.

It's a pretty simple concept but it's challenging to perfect. Diving off the top of a building and performing stunts along the way down is easy, but getting as many in as possible and pushing the boundaries often left me calling for an ambulance.

I wondered what was with the name initially, and now I know why. Very fun, highly recommend. 8/10.

DEFCON

This game caused me some angst initially, just trying to get it to run. The game auto-detected my maximum screen resolution of 6000x1080, despite being started in a single-monitor resolution desktop. This saw the left hand screen working fine, while the center and right hand screen did not. However, I soon found the preferences file and adjusted the game to windowed mode, which worked (refer to the DR for details if required). Unfortunately, the game is Vert- in multimon, but a blend of Hor+ (2D overlay) and anamorphic (game area) in widescreen.

The game itself is a nuclear war across the globe, where you setup units to defend your city and attack others. You do feel a bit 'commander-in-chief' with the view you have as you deploy your units to win the war - it's what I always imagined it would look like from Air Force One or in some secret military bunker.

For the strategists among you, this game is going to make you happy. 8/10

SpaceChem

There are educational games, and then there are really really educational games. To the point where I am not sure I am having fun anymore.

I did chemistry at school, but I'm not a budding chemist. Not really that interested about making new molecules or particles or whatever. I'm not very interested in a game that provides you with a copy of the periodic table.

I didn't really play this game long enough to enter into a detailed discussion on the game, because the tutorial mission felt like I was in high school again. Multimon is supported but the game is pillarboxed, and the mouse acceleration sucks, so play in single monitor. That is, if it's called playing. 5/10

Ticket To Ride

Some board game to video game conversions are pretty horrible, but this one is great. I've never really been into board games a great deal (other than Sequence, which everyone needs to try!) and I'm not a train guy. Despite that, this was easy to pick up and easy to get competitive in.

Basically, the board is full of railroad routes across America (or Europe, or wherever you choose). You draw some destination cards; you need to try to complete your railroad to those destinations. You draw cards with different coloured carriages, and once you have enough of the colour you need, you use them to claim railroad routes to assist your cause and stop others. You don't know their routes, but you watch to see where they might be headed and cut them off! You can draw extra destination cards and earn extra points for achieving them, but if the game ends before you've reached them all, the points get subtracted from you instead.

The game plays in multimon but just fills the outside monitors with a stylised graphic, but realistically, it was never going to be useful space. They could have put some train pictures there though, or something.

Lots of fun without having to think too hard. Plus my uncle is impossible to buy for, but is into trains. Based on playing this, I've bought him the actual board game for Christmas; I might even enjoy beating him at it. 8/10

Trauma

Trauma is a great name for this game. It accurately describes the theme of the game: The game is based on a woman that has suffered a physiological trauma, and has been languishing in several dreamscapes while unconscious and hospitalized.

The controls are not very intuitive; I struggled to get the character to do anything I wanted it to. I had very little idea about what was going on at all, to be honest. If the game makers wanted me to feel like that, they succeeded.

The game felt similar to Myst, where you move from snapshot to snapshot, but beautiful is replaced with disturbed. I can't tell if this game is brilliant in its execution or not; I struggled to want to keep playing it. Love to hear other peoples thoughts on it.

Technically, the game doesn't even support widescreen. It's pillarboxed for all resolutions. I'll give it an extra point for benefit-of-the-doubt. 7/10

Summary

Hard to know if I would recommend this bundle or not. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome and DEFCON are two good games, Ticket to Ride is fun but you have to be willing to play that sort of thing, and if you never play the other two games, you won't be any worse off. On the flipside, the 2 and a half good indie titles are worth 10 bucks. If there is only one game that you want, though, just buy it and move on.