Like I said before, there’s never been a better time to be an indie gamer. And as I also referenced in that post, there’s the amazing Humble Indie Bundle, in which I had the chance to play most of the games (sorry Cogs, you’re the last one), and have to say I was thoroughly impressed, and highly recommend giving these guys a go, especially since it’s pay what you want, and a portion of each purchase goes to charity, if you so desire – you can change the distribution between devs/charity as you see fit.
First off, one of the best parts is that you can import these games into Steam and keep them in the cloud for-ostensibly-ever! It’s as simple as typing in a product code into the “Add Games” >> “Activate a Product” box, and bam! 5 new games in your library (note though, if you already have one of the games you don’t get it as a gift).
So let me go through each of the games and give a quick review/thoughts:
And Yet It Moves: For some reason, I can never remember the name of this (Any Way It Moves is what keeps coming up). This game is a platformer with a twist – you can change the direction of gravity by turning the 4 walls. It doesn’t take too long to pick up, and you end up being able to do some pretty neat tricks. Note that momentum is still conserved though, so you can’t fall 500 feet then turn gravity and land softly, despite the ground being right there. Also, the art design is a bit eerie, with the all paper style. The only drawback is in the music, but the gameplay more than makes up for it. Oh, and their trailer is pretty neat.
Cogs: I haven’t played this one yet, but from the trailer, it seems like a cool designer/fix-em/put-it-together kind of game. And for some reason, it sort of reminds me of Pokemon Puzzle League, with the 3D aspect to it. And feel free to watch the way epic trailer.
VVVVVV: This game is a platformer, without the Mario elements – instead of jumping, you can only reverse gravity. This presents some very different type of puzzles, and when you get fluid with the whole scheme, it looks pretty darn cool. The music is retro, and the world entire world is accessible from the start – you just go to different ends of the map to do some damsel-in-distress type saving. I bought this game before it was in the Humble Bundle, and I definitely enjoyed it. Plus: this game is very conducive to speed running, and like I said, it looks pretty darn cool.
Crayon Physics Deluxe: Drawing. Physics. Making cars out of what you draw (two circles + a stick connecting the two). Moving a ball to collect a star. Lots of puzzles. Multiple solutions. What’s not to love? And it involves crayons. Brings back my inner child.
Hammerfight: This is the game I was most surprised by, in a very pleasant way. The game has you spinning your mouse around (don’t try it with a trackpad) to swing a mace and destroy things. Simple right? But then you have to destroy a lot of things. That’s where it gets challenging. The game does a wonderful job of imparting a weightiness to your mace, and the smack of it against enemies is cathartic and rewarding. The story is a bit of a bore/I didn’t get into it, the “3D” graphics portions are a bit meh, and there’s one section that it just seems stuck and left running for a while to see if anything would happen (and nothing did…), but once you get past some of those drawbacks, it can be a lot of fun when you get into the “swing” of things.
And that’s that! Indie games galore! Go buy it!
