Indie Bundle 9

This is the ninth 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 9 includes: Capsized, Jamestown, Revenge of the Titans, VVVVVV, and Zeno Clash.

Capsized

This 2D platformer kicks off another indie bundle. You're a space traveler whose ship has crashed onto an alien planet and you're off to find your way out alive. The action is very fast paced and you end up just shooting whatever moves.

I found the controls a little awkward, with W to jump instead of space or whatever, but otherwise there's not much to it. Left mouse button takes a beating from shooting all the time.

The music is ok, but the sounds like shooting the guns were a bit ordinary. The game does not natively support multimon at all and only supports a limited range of normal resolutions, but GeneralAdmission has developed a great resolution patcher to allow you to play in whatever resolution you want. Kudos to GeneralAdmission for this fixer! 7/10.

Jamestown

This game is a real throwback to the old arcade games that you used to sit down at. You're flying a ship along, pretty much holding the shoot button constantly, avoiding all the stuff being thrown at you.

It's a cool throwback to the old days but it didn't do much for me. I don't know what else to really say about it. 5/10

Revenge of the Titans

Finally, a game that I can get into! This cool tower defense game has great graphics and addictive gameplay.

The concept is as per most tower defense games - deploy structures that can wipe out the invading forces. At the end of the level, you can research new structures or abilities to help you along your way. The choice is pretty broad; I like the freedom it gives. The storyline is alright too, as good as they get for a tower defense. The whole thing reminds me of the original X-COM in the sense of researching the aliens and new technologies etc.

Random power-ups drop during the game which you can collect to help your cause. The enemies will attack your towers and don't always follow the roads so tower placement and management is critical. The challenges are fun, it really got me addicted. Multimon support caps off a good game, I recommend it. 8.5/10

VVVVVV

Sometimes I judge books by their covers. This game was one of those for me; I thought I'll just go through the motions of playing it and reviewing it, and move on. Only I forgot to move on.

The graphics are super simple and the whole game stinks of basic, but it's so addictive. You can't jump, you can only invert gravity so that you end up walking on the roof or back on the ground. This makes it really hard in some circumstances that don't seem so bad to start with.

I mean, even the storyline was interesting. What's going on! You and your mates start off in frantic evacuation of the ship, only to find the teleporter malfunctioned and you're all spread out. You're then off to find them all, and the interaction between them all that takes place as you move along was good. You can play the game in multimon but it pillarboxes - in fact all widescreen resolutions pillarbox. But I don't even care, it's fun anyway. 8.5/10

Zeno Clash

This game is really weird, but bordering on really excellent. The strange mix of characters is very well done; they really have unique looks to them, a really freaky crew.

You start off in this dream state after almost dying, and learn how to fight in your dream with some stranger. Once you regain consciousness, you're straight into a fight for your life. The fighting is very good actually, I enjoyed it. Sort of like boxing with a bit of 'anything goes'. I enjoy boxing to keep fit so that's probably the appeal.

The game is very clearly built on the Valve Source engine, but once you get past the menus and into the game, you soon forget that. It's well done and the worlds are very vibrant. It's not in my must-play list by any means, but if you're buying the bundle, it's worth a play-through. 7/10

Summary

Tough call to buy this one or not. Revenge of the Titans and VVVVVV are worth buying when they come on sale. If you can get them both for less than 10 bucks, I'd probably just do that; otherwise buy the bundle and give them a crack.