New Humble Indie Bundle Goes Live 159
Physicser writes "The latest Humble Indie Bundle has gone live, consisting of Super Meat Boy, Shank, Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, and NightSky. Also, if you beat the average price, you receive Cave Story+ and Gratuitous Space Battles. As always, the games are DRM-free, and this is the initial Linux release for all seven. I'm also curious to see what will be added later on, as has been the tradition of the Humble Bundles."
One million! (Score:5, Informative)
They have already surpassed the 930,000 $ mark within the first ten hours, will probably reach 1 million within 12h. Maybe slashdot helps it catapult to 2 million? Go Indies!
Re:hmm.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One million! (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry mate, won't be buying this bundle unless every game has a .deb package available.
Just for reference, in this bundle Super Meat Boy and Bit.Trip Runner have .deb packages available. Shank is a bin. Jamestown and Gratuitous Space Battles are .tar.gz. NightSky and Cave Story+ are .zip
Not entirely sure what any of that means, but hope its helpful for linux users.
Re:One million! (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the games on the previous Humble Bundles are available via Desura now, and I'd expect that the latest one will get Desura keys as well at some point (the Desura keys seem to lag behind a bit). Install Desura, grab your HB key from the HB site.. add key to Desura.. and it takes care of making your games work in whatever distro you use. I had loads of fiddly missing lib issues getting some of the games working (especially Crayon Physics) in Linux prior to doing it this way... now.. it's like using Steam... click.. install... click play... no drama.
Re:One million! (Score:5, Informative)
As for .debs everywhere, that'll keep the Fedora users happy. :)
They're not exactly mutually exclusive... And you think this is a small thing but fiddling with getting shit to work quickly brings the value down into the negative - you'd actually like a refund for wasting your time on it. That's not very healthy if you're looking for repeat customers, even for free some things aren't worth it.
Thoughts on the games themselves (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the comments above are focussing on the "Humble Bundle" system. As I've actually got most of these already via various Steam sales, I thought I'd try to comment on the actual games.
Super Meat Boy is the best of the bunch and is definitely worth a few dollars if you don't have it already. It's ridiculously difficult in places, but also very more-ish. You really do want a gamepad to play it properly, though - keyboard mode is not nice.
NightSky is clever, but I found its appeal fairly short-lived. Bit.Trip Runner isn't really doing anything we haven't seen done better elsewhere. Shank and Jamestown are the two I haven't played.
You'll get a much more interesting package if you pay above the average. Cave Story+ is really very good indeed - and I suspect that between that and Super Meat Boy, you could justify paying over the average. Gratuitous Space Battles is a really great idea, but I've found that it works far better at a level of principle than it does in practice (where it tends to be deeply frustrating and has a learning curve that annoyed even me - and I've beaten and loved Dark Souls). It's the best game in the package from a graphical perspective, if that matters to you (though still a long way behind mainstream commercial offerings).
Re:One million! (Score:3, Informative)
Well if you're one of the newer generation of technically fragile Linux users who can't handle a few .run/.tar.gz files that use statically-linked libraries anyway so you don't have to worry about dependencies, be patient...
http://twitter.com/#!/humble/status/146833629279043584 [twitter.com]
(yes that was a troll, but at least I gave some info in it. I guess I just can't believe people using Linux can't handle non-package software, particularly since you're finally getting some decent games for a change).
Ironically... (Score:5, Informative)
This makes me less likely to buy indie games. I paid full price for Gratuitous Space Battles not six weeks ago.
At least the Trine 2 page warns me: "Linux and DRM free versions will be added to Humble Store purchases in 2012." (Which is why I'm waiting on it. Screw Steam-spyware.)
Re:Why do I need a Steam key? (Score:5, Informative)
The Humble Bundle doesn't need the Steam keys, they are just an optional addition, you can simply download the .bin/.exe/.tar.gz directly if you want.
Indie Royale Bundle (Score:5, Informative)
For those that have missed it: Seems like the Humble Bundle is getting a bit competitions, a few weeks ago the IndieRoyale Bundles [indieroyale.com] got launched, they follow a similar model of multiple games for an almost-pay-what-you-want price (min around $3). it however doesn't have the charity and it only sometimes has Linux versions of the games. Also their game selections seems to be not so great most of the times, however they include a gem every now and then.
Re:One million! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One million! (Score:4, Informative)
Out of the prior bundles, only one of which I've missed, I could not get only two games to work on Linux.
I did not bother to go back and see if the developers fixed them, but I might someday if I am sufficiently bored.
In the current bundle the only game I've downloaded so far was GSB, which unpacked into a directory with two clearly-named executables. I ran the 64 bit one and it worked and went fullscreen and apparently full resolution (if not, it scaled smoothly enough I didn't care) immediately and worked perfectly and had an interface which was not confusing, which was a nice change from some indie games. I don't understand anyone's insistence on a .deb. Just because it's nicely packaged that doesn't mean it will work.