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Humble Voxatron Debut adds Gish, three other games
Once again patience pays off for the potential Humble Indie Bundle investor. The Humble Voxatron Debut -- the latest bundle packing together an Alpha version of Voxatron along with The Binding of Isaac and Blocks That Matter -- has added yet another title to its ranks: Gish. But wait, there's more! Chocolate Castle, Zen Puzzle Garden and Jasper's Journeys have also been tossed in. And, as with previous Humble bundles, if you've already paid, you can download Gish and the others for free.
Humble Indie Bundle 2 now includes Humble Indie Bundle 1
It just became so much easier to compare last year's Humble Indie Bundle with this year's Humble Indie Bundle 2 in terms of value -- because as of today, Humble Indie Bundle 2 includes last year's Bundle. It's official: these developers have lost their damn minds (for charity). If you've already bought Bundle 2, you're free to download Bundle 1, which has World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture, and Samorost 2, all playable on PC, Mac, and Linux. If you haven't bought Bundle 2 yet, you're only eligible to get the bonus games if you spend more than the average payment of $7.34. You have through Christmas Day to pick up this year's offerings. You can download these straight from the site, but you can also unlock them in Steam (by getting a keys from the HIB site), with a few caveats. The Steam keys are "a little glitchy," lacking access to Samorost 2 and lacking Mac versions of Gish and Aquaria. In addition, organizer Wolfire only has 150,000 keys to hand out, so if you already have the games on Steam, or you can deal with just downloading the games (DRM-free) and not having that Steam integration, perhaps you could leave the Steam key for someone else.
Humble Indie Bundle moving towards $1 million, still being pirated
The Humble Indie Bundle that we posted about the other day is doing quite well -- they've raised almost US$800,000 by selling five indie games (playable on Mac, Linux, and Windows) for pay-what-you-will. In fact, they've done so well that they've added another game into the mix -- you'll also get Samorost 2 if you pick up the bundle. And a little birdie pointed out to us that if you pause their trailer video at about 1:16, they'll be adding another bonus to the mix if they reach a full million dollars raised. [Spoiler: They say they'll actually release the source code of Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture.] Is there any bad news about this giveaway? Well yes: people are still pirating it. The developers claim that 25% of the bundle downloads are "pirated" -- people who didn't pay anything at all for it. They didn't secure the link, authenticate the downloads, or protect the game with DRM (and they didn't ask users to pay any more than one cent for it), and people are still just rolling up and downloading the games for free. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve any arguments -- those for DRM would say that real security would prevent that, and those against DRM would claim that it won't. At any rate, those are five great indie games that are worth your money -- if you downloaded them for free, put a few bucks in the pot.
One-quarter of Humble Indie Bundle downloads were pirated
Perhaps you've heard of (or purchased!) the Humble Indie Bundle -- a set of five DRM-free indie games, which you can choose your own price for, the entirety of which goes to two completely deserving charities. Despite the bundle's altruism and affordability, Wolfire Games reports that over one quarter of the total downloads of the package were pirated. You read that right -- a grip of people have stolen the choose-your-own-price indie-bundle-for-charity. Talk about sticking it to The Man. This fraction of creeps shouldn't cheapen the fact that the bundle's already brought in $716,944 for the five games, as well as the Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but it's still pretty disheartening. If you'll excuse us, we need to go watch Happy-Go-Lucky or perhaps a few episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition until we regain our faith in humanity. [Via Ars Technica]
Humble Indie Bundle offers five great Mac games for pay-what-you-will
A group of independent game developers have released a "Humble Indie Bundle," and if you're a Mac gamer, it's a treasure trove. For a donation of your choice (the retail value is set at $80, but you can pay what you want, and you can even specify whether your money goes to the game developers or a couple of different charities), you can pick up the indie classics World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture, all playable on Mac, Linux, and Windows. Amazing deal, and this is about the most generous and customer-friendly way to do it. Any one of these games is well worth the purchase, and not only are you supporting developers and charities, but you're supporting the decision to release great games like this cross-platform, without DRM, and without a publisher or middleman getting in the way and taking a cut. Excellent deal -- they've already raised over $31,000, and if you play games on your Mac at all, definitely head over there and put ten or twenty dollars in the pot to support the bundle.
Humble Indie Bundle: Pay what you want for World of Goo and four others
You've commented on Joystiq posts about oppressive DRM many times before. You dutifully wear your Target-purchased indie game t-shirt every week without fail. And you read every Joystiq Indie Pitch we post. But if you want to put some money towards supporting indie games, you won't find a better way to do it than this. Wolfire Games and a few other indie developers have put together the "Humble Indie Bundle" sale, offering five terrific award-winning indie games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture) for the low, low price of ... whatever you want. That's right -- they're asking you to pay what you feel is right for these bundled, non-DRM, developer-owned Mac, Linux or PC games. And that's not all: You can even specify part or all of your donation to go to a charity, either Child's Play or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That's about as selfless as it gets in gaming -- pay what you think it's worth, to charity or the people who made it. The average donation so far is about $8.00, but individuals have donated as much as $500 to the effort. You get lots of chances to say you support indie gaming, but fewer great chances like this to put your money where your mouth is. And walking away with five great indie titles to play doesn't hurt, either.
Direct2Drive continues $5 anniversary sale with discount indie games
Direct2Drive has elected to show some love to the little guy this week. The digital distribution site continues its impossibly thrifty anniversary sale by offering a number of popular indie titles for just $5. If you've yet to dip your toes into the refreshing waters of World of Goo, The Path or Gish, Direct2Drive has the best deals on them (and a number of other indie games) that you're likely to see for a long, long time. However, if you're craving a more mainstream offering, a bunch of discounted games from previous weeks -- including BioShock, Saints Row 2 and EVE Online -- have retained the $5-discount price. You could just as easily pick those up instead, you conformist, you.
Steam offers 75% discount on indie games this weekend
Steam is offering the "who's who" of independent video games in an incredible sale you'd be silly to miss. For $30, you can get 10 indie games via the service: Audiosurf Blueberry Garden Braid Crayon Physics Deluxe Darwinia Everyday Shooter Gish Mr. Robot The Path World of Goo There's a lower-budget $20 option as well, which only includes half the games above. Either way, you'll be feeding starving independent developers without having to break the bank. Oh, and most of these games are pretty fun, too. It's a win-win for everyone, so make sure you rush to Steam before the sale ends on Monday, August 10.
Gish goes universal
Gish isn't a Mac-only experience, but as a platform game, it's a pretty good one. I played it way back when it was released on Windows, but Inside Mac Games reports that Chronic Logic has released a universal binary of Gish, so now you can play it on Intel or PowerPC Macs alike.Like I said, I found the game pretty fun. You play a ball of tar (no kidding) that rolls through underground locations in search of his lady friend (isn't that always how it goes), and the fluidity of your main character brings a lot of weird physics manipulation into play-- you can squeeze through small places, and even stick to surfaces like walls and ceilings. It's definitely a fun twist on platforming (and Gish can even invade old platformers with "warp zones," little psuedo stages that let you visit other games with Gish's abilities), and if you're in the mood for a great indie game, make sure to check out the demo. The full game is $20 over at the Chronic Logic website.
PSP getting ports from new sources
It's no secret that the PSP (as with any system) gets ports of games from other consoles. Most of the ports to PSP logically come from the PlayStation 2. But all that is starting to change. With the PS3 on the rise and the PS2 on the decline, PSP is starting to get ports from some unexpected places. The DS has many a game that it's shared with the GBA, but recently it seems like more and more GBA games are jumping over to Sony's portable. The most obvious of these are all of the recently announced Final Fantasy projects. From Final Fantasy Tactics to just plain ol' Final Fantasy, these GBA remakes are being remade again for the PSP. But it doesn't just end there, the PSP will also see a port of the GBA RPG title Riviera (which is great for me, since I never played that game). Of course, while it seems like quite a few PSP games are from GBA land, that isn't the only system sending off titles to PSP's library. Xbox games like Xyanide and Painkiller: Hell Wars are reported to have versions coming out this year for PSP and the DS racer Asphalt Urban GT 2 will be out shortly. Even the PC isn't exempt as fantastic physics platformer Gish has a release date for our system of choice. The future though seems to be the Wii and PSP connection. While Alien Syndrome is one of the only Wii/PSP games announced so far, the fact that Wii games have to be developed independently from the rest of the home consoles means many developers may be looking to PSP versions as another source of profit. Of course as with any business move, these ports will have to make money if this is to become a serious trend.
