Humble Bundle 2 Is Live

Dayofswords writes "The first Humble Bundle was a monster success, with over 100,000 people donating over $1 million in total to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and of course the developers behind the games. The second bundle is now live (bundle site), containing five great games: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. Each game is DRM-free, the games work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and you pay what you want and decide where your money goes."

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as with the first Humble Indie Bundle, Linux buyers are more generous than Windows buyers. :)

Re:Cortex Command not finished?

[Anonymous Coward]

from the humble bundle site

Please note, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans are still under active development. You are eligible for all future updates! The bundle makes a great holiday gift that will keep improving over time.

Not wasting any time I see

[QuaveringGrape]

I guess Linux users are desperate for games...the platform sucks for gaming...deal with it.

I use Linux as my single OS, and while I will admit we rarely (if ever) see a big-name release, I'm in no way desperate for games. Here's a list of the commercial games I have installed on my computer right now:

UT 2004
Prey
Machinarium
Osmos
Gish
Aquaria
World of Goo
Minecraft
And yet it moves
Braid
Cortex Command
Penumbra Overture
Penumbra Black Plague
Penumbra Requiem
Amnesia: the Dark Descent
Titan attacks
Revenge of the titans
Droid assault
Ultratron
Lugaru
Caster
Color Cube
Sun Blast
Brukkon
Samorost 2

In addition you have all the ID games, The Clockwork man, Heroes of Newerth, Anchron, Overgrowth(soon) and What makes you tick. That's just off the top of my head. Not to say that I'd be opposed to a big famous studio like Valve or Blizzard bringing games to Linux -- I've said many times that I'll buy every Linux game I hear about if only to support the platform -- but don't make it out like it's worse than it is.

As to your statement that the platform sucks for gaming...I can see that being true if you're using the open-source video drivers, but the binary drivers are exponentially more powerful. I've got an nVidia GTX 465. If I was going to use the open-source driver I could've saved myself $150 or so, but I enjoy gaming, so I beefed it up. Sure, in comparison to the selection for Windows the amount of Linux games is much smaller, but it was the same (to a lesser extent) for Mac before Steam. It's a Chicken/Egg problem; big studios don't port games to Linux because it doesn't seem a viable platform, and Linux is thought of as a non-viable platform because of its lack of AAA titles. Maybe the guys behind the Humble Bundle can upset the paradox a little.

Re:Cortex Command not finished?

[wc_paladin]

I think the Braid and Cortex Command Linux ports were written specifically for the bundle. I tried out Braid for an hour earlier and didn't run into any issues, although what he said is true, you're stuck with arrow keys and space for the controls. Cortex Command seems to run pretty well and seems well polished for an alpha game. Cortex Command is one of those permanent alpha games (similar to Minecraft, but much older), and so I'd hope we get some way to redeem our bundle keys with its creator. Machinarium is a flash game, so it will run as well as you can run flash (fully maxing out one core in my case). Osmos is pretty fun, especially the gravity based levels, but I didn't play very far so I don't know if it gets stale. Revenge of the Titans is tower defense. It appears to be good, but this bundle hasn't been out long and I have more pressing matters to attend to than reviewing games. Oh, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans all come with soundtracks as well.

Re:Open Source?

[Excelsior]

The games that promised to go open source from the previous Humble Bundle did follow through. From the humble site [wolfire.com]:

As of 5/11/10, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture pledge to go open source.

Announcements and source code links:
Aquaria goes open source [wolfire.com].
Lugara goes open source [wolfire.com].
Gish goes open source [blogspot.com].
Penumbra goes open source [blogspot.com].

Re:Cortex Command not finished?

[IICV]

Osmos isn't as good as dozens of free Flash games

Uh... which ones? Have you gotten to the levels where you have to deal with orbital mechanics at all? I can play those levels for hours on end. And then there's levels with actually intelligent AIs who either try to eat you or run away, puzzle levels where you have to use a mixture of blob ju-jitsu and Newtonian physics in order to actually get to something smaller than yourself... the game is remarkably deep, once you get past the first few tutorial levels.

I mean yes, the basic concept is expressed in a shitload of free Flash games - eat stuff that's smaller than you, run away from stuff that's bigger than you - but the polish and scenarios and music all come together to make Osmos worthwhile.

Re:Cortex Command not finished?

[Fallingcow]

Well it seems I am wrong and have judged a game by its tutorial, or whatever the expression is in this situation.

Revenge of the Titans...

[princec]

... is actually finished. We released the game on the Bundle instead of our own site (www.puppygames.net) (though it's still there, but I doubt anyone is interested right now ;)) I hope a few slashdotters give it a play - it's taken us 3 years to make. The devil is in the details. We're working on some Linux .deb installer problems at the moment. Cas :)