Indie Bundle 1

This is the first 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 1 includes: Anomaly Warzone Earth, Cave Story+, EDGE, Lone Survivor, The Baconing.

Anomaly Warzone Earth

Straight off, this game is probably the best game in this bundle. The game trials the concept of tower defense, where you are the attacker. The best way I can descibe the gameplay is the opposite to Sanctum, so if you haven't played Sanctum, then you have no idea what I am talking about. Being the attacker in a tower defense game is an interesting concept, packaged up with some story about the earth being invaded by some alien thing. Anyhow, the basic game is about assembling your attacking force and guiding their path through the maze of defenses. You control a soldier running around changing the course of the battle, much like Sanctum (albeit from a top-down perspective), healing your forces, changing their path as the defences change, and collecting power-ups etc.

Great multimon support is surely an accident or incomplete, because the HUD elements are still on the outside edges of the outer screens and the menus have some graphical oddities on the edges, but at least it works.

For me, this is the best game in the bundle. I didn't get totally addicted straight away, but it was fun and I'll probably play some more of it. 8/10

Cave Story+

A game for those that enjoy the old school adventure games, this great looking game unfortunately does not support multimon at all. However, the game's simple design and controls make for a fun old style game to explore anyway. My only concern were these strange cut-scenes to some dude sitting at a computer somewhere talking to himself - obviously they were there to attempt to explain the already bizarre story along the way, but some of the dialogue was just plain weird!

I liked the music in this game, it was retro and added to the mood of the game.

A good game to play windowed, I rank it third of this group of 5. 7/10

EDGE

Ever want to roll a cube (yes, roll a cube) around the place? This is the game for you. There is much rolling of a cube. Around many places. In multimon glory, although once again, no optimized HUD or menu says it's probably a fortunate accident, or at least unfinished support if intentional.

Ranks the lowest of the lot for me. Some people probably enjoy this. 5/10

Lone Survivor

This is a bizarre horror type game that is both pretty cool and pretty frustrating at the same time. The old style graphics are neat, but the text is so blocky that I really struggled to read it easily when I was tired, playing fullscreen on a single 27 inch monitor. And you only get to play on one monitor, because multimon is not supported (pillarbox behavior, outside monitors are just black).

This is an old style adventure game, in the typical drip-feed of information to try to get you interested in the story. Once again, I'm not really sure I have a good grasp on what is going on; I think you need to devote a chunk of time to this to get into the story and work out what the heck is going on. The pictures I've attached sum up my thoughts pretty well, using the in-game dialogue.

I think it would be pretty good if the text was easier to read - and there is alot of text - and you had time to sink into it. I ranked it fourth of this lot. 7/10

The Baconing

Any game with the name bacon in it must be good, right? I love bacon! And The Baconing is pretty good also. The graphics remind me of League of Legends or Torchlight a little bit, unapologetically blocky and cartoony but fun at the same time. This game puts the emphasis on fun, with loads of throwaway lines and gags all throughout it (refer to the inventory picture). It's a typical quest-based game, you know the type. Go here, bash this guy on the head, find some item, pick up loot along the way, etc.

On the flipside, multimon support is non-existant, which is a shame because it's about the only things that is missing from this to make it a well polished fun little game.

I only rank it behind Anomaly Warzone Earth because of lack of multimon, so it comes in 2nd of this group for me. 8/10

Summary

This bundle has a pretty good mix of games, with only EDGE being a game I will definitely not play again. Will I get time and have the motivation to time-sink the two retro style adventure games? Not sure, but Anomaly Warzone Earth and The Baconing are definitely deserving of more of my gaming hours. Mmm, bacon.

Indie Bundle 2

This is the second 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 2 includes: Botanicula, E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, Lunar Flight, Splice and Universe Sandbox.

Botanicula

Botanicula is a weird point-and-click adventure game developed by Amanita Design. I'm not even convinced it's a game. It's definitely point and click, and it might be an adventure, but game I am not convinced about. You click on random things until something happens, and then you ask 'was that actually what I wanted to happen?' before realizing that no, you still don't know what the point of all this even is.

On a bright note, Wikipedia says that Botanicula is helping the World Land Trust to protect hundreds of acres of rainforest.

Take a look at my screenshots. For starters, I couldn’t even tell you what my group of people are supposed to be. I appear to have an onion, a mushroom, something in a hat, a feather, and a weed. Along the way I collected a card for clicking on a spider, although I cannot work out how or where to use my card. I eventually came across some baddies that look like a bong and a turd. My wife worked out that if you just keep clicking on your dudes one by one, eventually one of them can sneak by.

I would imagine this game would be very fascinating if you had just taken some sort hallucinogen. Seeing as I’m not into that sort of thing, combined with the fact that the game doesn’t even support widescreen at all, I gave it a 5/10.

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy

So, moving on from the extremely weird Botanicula, we come to the very strange E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. Built on the Valve Source engine, it looks like a mix of the original Counter-Strike stirred together with a big pot of ‘what-the…’. You have to make a character using all these things that you have no idea about, so you just choose whatever you want and hope for the best. Voices talk to you as you walk around. Oh look, there’s a random dead guy.

So I find a gun that appears to be wrapped up like a Christmas present. The game says it’s activating an instruction manual, which just tells me to pick up the gun. How about slowly introducing some keys damnit! I had to go through the menus to find the key, which frustratingly is Enter for most things.

I finally find someone else, and the bottom of the text is cut off in dialogue boxes. This is the sort of unfinished feel that echoes through the game. The inventory is not very easy to use either.

I honestly cannot see myself spending the time to work out what this game is about when the graphics feel like they are straight out of 1999 and the story did not engage me in the slightest. It gets a bonus point for semi-supporting multimon. 6/10

Lunar Flight

Finally, a game that makes sense to me. Mostly. You have to fly this spaceship around, completing different types of missions from delivering cargo to surveying new areas. To me, as a non-space type person, it seems more like a simulation than a game, but in a strange way I find the challenge rewarding. I think I just like piloting any type of vehicle, regardless of what it is. But boy did I crash. And I crashed. Bloody hell, this is harder than it looks.

But it looks spectacular. You can configure your views, buy upgrades, repair your ship – there is a fair bit you could get into.

This is the best game in the bundle for me. No multimon support is the only downside for what could have been spectacular. Imagine if the outside two monitors just had a different external view each or something; that would be awesome. 8/10

Splice

This indie game allows you to play God by moving cells with other cells and stuff happens, somehow. At least I think they are cells. Or maybe some sort of DNA. I assume that’s where the name Splice comes from.

You have to move the cells (or capsules, or something) to match the pattern shown. I'm not really sure what happens or what the purpose is, but at least you can do it in glorious multimon. Repeatedly. 6/10

Universe Sandbox

This is one confusing technical simulation when you first stumble into it. Basically, you’re simulating what can happen in space between planets, black holes, asteroids, et al. I made a few things and they flew off into the distance, never to be seen again.

Fortunately, the game has some pre-saved simulations of our galazy, Earth and moon as a pair, all sorts of things that you can load up and check out the interaction between.

What I did get out of it is an appreciation for how huge and busy space is. It’s impressive. But as a game, I didn’t find much to do that was fun. If you were a scientist or space enthusiast, this might tickle your fancy. For the mainstream, I’m not so sure. 6/10

Summary

For me, this bundle just contains too much weird or simulation for me to be happy with it as an overall purchase. For me, I would just buy Lunar Flight and be done with it. The other games were just too weird or cheap feeling for me to get into, other than Universe Sandbox which was mightily technical and while interesting, not fun for me.

Indie Bundle 3

This is the third 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 3 includes: BIT.TRIP BEAT, Bunch of Heroes, Darwinia, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and Runespell: Overture.

BIT.TRIP BEAT

This game would definitely be more fun if it would start. No matter what desktop resolution I had, the game would just launch to a black screen with a spinning 'waiting' cursor. I tried uninstalling OpenAL and re-installing it as per the only real solution offered on the Steam forums to those of us having this issue, but I had no luck. A waste of my time. 0/10.

Bunch of Heroes

Now this is how indie games should all be! Lots of fun with great graphics and working in multi-monitor. This game is great with friends, the co-op system works extremely well. The different characters all have special abilities to affect the outcome of the battles against the zombie armies.

A great weapon pick-up system kept us WSGF-gamers competing to get the best weapons, and many laughs were had as we learned to use them effectively. Nothing like a ticking bomb attached to a crossbow arrow stuck in your character to get the sledging happening between teammates! SHOOT THE ZOMBIES, NOT ME! ARG!

One of the best indie games we've played, behind Shoot Many Robots. Only lost a mark because it can be a bit slow at times to get the action rolling. 9/10

Darwinia

A very interesting concept is fielded in this game, which is probably what indie games are known for. Even better, you can try it out in full multimon goodness.

You enter a computer network called Darwinia, which is the home of evolving digital lifeforms called Darwinians, funnily enough. However, there is a virus destroying Darwinia, and you are the one to save them!

You deploy little snippets of code as units to tackle the virus, and can start or end them as you see fit to achieve this. The tutorial is good and the whole game concept is pretty fun to play out. The graphics have a unique flavour, although sometimes I did struggle to tell what was going on due to the asbtract nature of it, but it was easy enough to work out. Full multimon is icing. 8/10

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

This game starts out simple enough. You fly a spaceship around and use various things that you collect along the way to help you progress. The game gets pretty intense pretty fast, though, which was good.

Multimon is available natively but it's stretched, so I wouldn't call it supported. I ended up playing this sucker on a single monitor, and it lost a point in my final score for it. I found it to be pretty addictive, to be honest, and kept playing it longer than I was planning to. I don't think it's going to reshape your world, but it's fun enough. 8/10

Runespell: Overture

The first thing I noticed when I fired up this game was the great music. I could listen to it for ages, in fact I might even see if there is a soundtrack I could hunt down.

The game itself is a card-playing game, which I was not expecting. There is a campaign story that covers all these card games, and as you travel around, meet, and defeat new opponents, the story progresses. The card game is called Mythic Poker, and using the same card layout as Solitaire and the same hands as poker. Different poker hands are worth different values. Once a hand has been assembled, the player can use it to attack the opponent, with the poker score coming off the opponent as damage.

I don't mind a bit of poker and the tutorial got me into the game pretty easily. I found myself still playing after the tutorial, surprisingly. Multimon is not supported, and widescreen could barely be described as supported, as the game simply fills in the extra width on the sides with stylised panels. 7/10

Summary

Other than BIT.TRIP BEAT which was a total loss, this bundle is pretty good. The games are of good to great quality, cover a broad range of gaming styles, and should have something for everyone. Bunch of Heroes was the standout for me, which some of us WSGFers did 4 player coop in; you need to buy it.

Indie Bundle 4

This is the fourth 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 4 includes: A Valley Without Wind, Atom Smasher Zombie, Blocks That Matter, Sanctum, and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP.

A Valley Without Wind

A real throw-back to the old console sidescroller adventure games, this offering seems pretty basic at first, but you soon realise it actually contains a very deep and complex world to explore. Buildings are able to be entered, as well as rooms inside buildings; all in a sidescroller view.

The gameplay itself can be challenging; there was not much of a tutorial and you're left to work things out on the most part, although some tips windows do appear from time-to-time. On at least one occasion, I ended up stuck in a room with no idea how to get out and had to reload. As they tell you during the character creation screen, don't get too attached to your character, because it's not a matter of if but when you will die!

A Valley Without Wind does work in multimonitor, although the HUD elements are on the far edges and the visual scene is limited to around half of the total available width. I would say it was a fortunate accident rather than actively supported. The game looks pretty enough and the action flows nicely, plus some humour in the dialogue never goes astray. 8/10.

Atom Zombie Smasher

I must admit, I had no idea what to expect from this game based on the name, but did not have high expectations. What I found was actually really cool.

A world view is divided into areas, and the player chooses an area to go to attempt to rescue citizens from the zombie hordes, called Zeds. The rescue area is shown in a top down strategy view, and you have to deploy rescue helicopters to rescue as many citizens as possible from the invading zombie hordes. When the choppers come in to land, they deploy a beacon that the citizens run towards. Seems simple enough, but it's actually pretty difficult to position the helicopters to rescue the most citizens possible before the Zeds get to your chopper and you need to make an emergency liftoff.

As you achieve goals, weapons unlock that you can deploy onto the map to slow the zombie advances, with the goal of rescuing more citizens. I found the challenge very addictive, and usually replayed the same map a few times to see if I could rescue more citizens.

Multimon is available but there is no advantage to be had during regular gameplay, although you get to see more in the cut-scenes than any of the single monitor resolutions. However, this is traded off with a HUD that is not optimized during gameplay, so 16:9 is probably the best compromise for this game. All round though, a great indie game. 9/10

Blocks That Matter

Wow, this bundle just keeps getting better. Another game that sounds fairly uninteresting from the title actually turned out to be great. I expected a block type puzzle game, which it is, but it's wrapped nicely in a neat story and fun graphics. The game heavily references Minecraft and Tetris in a fun way, both in the storyline and in the gameplay.

Some game developers in Sweden get kidnapped and you need to rescue them using the robot they developed. You control this cute little robot (called tetrabot) and crank around the platform environment, much like Mario Bros in a way. You collect blocks by destroying them and then redeploy them to get past hurdles as you work your way towards where your developers are kidnapped. It's actually pretty challenging; I kept replaying the levels to try to get all of the bonuses.

Multimon is Vert-, so expect to play in 16:9. I also had some drama getting the game to run, it appears to be related to the fullscreen autodetection on multimon systems. Refer to the DR for how to fix this. Minus a point for multimon issues, I still rate this game highly. Is that a nod to Firefox in the first of the screenshots below? 9/10

Sanctum

This game is epicly good. This game is a tower defense game combined with a first person shooter, and is even better played in coop. Some of us WSGF people have gotten together for some fantastic gaming sessions with this one.

Before the game even starts, you need to work out with your teammates who will be able to build which towers, to ensure you get a good spread. In game, like all tower defense games, you all need to work out the best way to route the oncoming hordes. Although you can view a top-down map, you must do all your tower defense building in the first person view, which is a fun challenge to start with.

Not only do you have to decide what towers to build, you have to decide between spending money on towers or your own weapons, because when the hordes are coming, you get to spend your time shooting as many of them as possible to assist your towers. You get a range of weapons to choose from and upgrade, from guns that slow down the hordes to high powered rifles.

The only flaw that this game has is that multimon is very broken. Otherwise, it's a brilliant idea and very well executed. 9.5/10

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP

You always hope when you fire up a game and then menu works in multimon that the game may actually play in multimon. Unfortunately, this isn't the case for this game. In fact, the whole game is Vert-, except in the unusual circumstance when playing 16:10 and you zoom out. That is the only time the game is Hor+. Go figure.

The graphics are neither moody nor beautiful; the whole world just seemed flat and dull. The game was supposed to have featured special attention to music, but it didn't impress me. The control system sucked, it was difficult to predict and not intuitive at all. Furthermore, the storyline did not grab me in the slightest. Attempts at humour struck me with the same impression as when politicians do it - points for trying, but really, I cant wait to be doing something else.

The only downer on an awesome bundle. No plans to play this again. 5/10

Summary

Ok, so let's pick up the mood a little if you've just finished reading about Superbrothers, coz that's the only bad news. The other games are great; Sanctum is worth the price of admission alone. Do yourself a favour and get this when it comes back out on sale. Best bundle so far.

Indie Bundle 5

This is the fifth 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 5 includes: Audiosurf, Gemini Rue, Greed Corp, The Tiny Bang Story, and Ys: The Oath of Felghana.

Audiosurf

So this game is a weird one! It uses your own music to generate levels where you fly a spacecraft-looking thing along, and try to make color combinations that turn into points. Colored blocks appear in the lanes on your path that are in time with the music, and you move your craft left and right to form combinations.

It's a pretty simple concept and kind of fun, if you don't have anything else to do while listening to your favourite music. Unfortunately the game is stretched for anything wider than 4:3. 6/10.

Gemini Rue

This is kind of a cool game that reminds me of the later Space/Police Quest games. It's a point and click type adventure game where you can look, touch, speak, etc on various items on each scene. The graphics are old style pixelated, and ironically increasing the resolution and anti-aliasing filters makes the game look more fuzzy and less cool. I recommend using the default settings, it's the lowest res but looks the sharpest and nicest. The highest res is only 1280x800 anyway, and the game is anamorphic so you don't lose any scene.

You seem to be a cop from another planet, in a time when space travel is normal, investigating the doings of a ruling or government type organisation. The world seems fairly large and the character interaction and voice acting is pretty good. From other reviews I have read, the storyline is supposed to be excellent too, inluding the ending. I like the feel of this game, even though multimon is not supported. 8/10

Greed Corp

This is a very well-polished indie game other than multimon. The graphics are bright and vibrant, and the game design is simple yet challenging. It's the future and 4 mining companies are battling to control the limited terrain left to mine. This is a turn-based strategy game to outsmart your opponents and win the war.

You deploy a variety of units to mine the land you have and to take over the land you don't. From simple ground units to special abilities, there's enough of a range to keep you entertained but not so many as to confuse.

The game is easy to pick up and fun to play. Fully Hor+ in widescreen, the only let-down is that the game is Vert- in multimon. 8/10

The Tiny Bang Story

I always try to keep an open mind about puzzle-type games. This one has great graphics, brilliant artwork indeed. I was left a little undecided about the gameplay though.

Basically, you need to find puzzle pieces in the scenes that are presented to you. In order to access some areas, you need to solve certain problems or rebuild machines to allow you to progress. This also involves on clicking on things until you have found them all. What I found is that the game just came down to clicking everywhere until you have clicked on all the places you need to.

Maybe I'm not involving myself into this as much as I should, and some people probably enjoy this type of game, but I didn't find it engaging or mega-fun. Still, it looked pretty. Unfortunately you won't benefit from widescreen nor multimon - this game pillarboxes, meaning it fills the extra width with black. Also, multimon has a weird problem where the screen is left justified instead of center justified. 6/10

Ys: The Oath of Felghana

I'm going to be honest straight up - this is another game I judged by it's cover (or box art / main menu). It looked very Japanese to me and I wasn't sure how much I would like it. I found out I do - alot. It feels like a mix of Final Fantasy 7 and The Legend of Zelda - I love the in game feel. The HUD could do with some work and the menus are a bit primitive and overdone, but overall the in-game feel is excellent.

The game has a strong focus on story-telling, and the spelling is excellent. You don't feel like you are playing a cheap translated version full of 'engrish'. The characters are pretty engaging and the scenery is vivid. As with many Japanese games, the relationships between the characters are explored as much as the main story in a humorous but engaging way, without being painful.

Multimon is supported, but unfortunately the HUD is not optimized. The cursor that rotates around the player suffers from some distortion, but it's nothing major and very usable still. I plan to give this game a good crack. 9/10

Summary

This is a pretty good bundle, with a bit of everything. I would say Ys: The Oath of Felghana is worth the cost alone. It's a massive game, and so is Gemini Rue. There are a couple of more simple games for when you don't have as much time, such as Greed Corp and Audiosurf. A puzzle game nicely rounds off the mix. If you can afford it, buy the bundle. Otherwise try to pick up Greed Corp and Ys: The Oath of Felghana cheap.

Indie Bundle 6

This is the sixth 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 6 includes: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, DEFCON, SpaceChem, Ticket To Ride, and Trauma.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome

Ok, so how many games do you play where you can flip people off while parachuting down the side of a building at great speed? This game is fun for the big speeds and vertigo-inducing views, which is why it's all the more shame that it doesn't support multimon, because it would rock the feeling even harder.

It's a pretty simple concept but it's challenging to perfect. Diving off the top of a building and performing stunts along the way down is easy, but getting as many in as possible and pushing the boundaries often left me calling for an ambulance.

I wondered what was with the name initially, and now I know why. Very fun, highly recommend. 8/10.

DEFCON

This game caused me some angst initially, just trying to get it to run. The game auto-detected my maximum screen resolution of 6000x1080, despite being started in a single-monitor resolution desktop. This saw the left hand screen working fine, while the center and right hand screen did not. However, I soon found the preferences file and adjusted the game to windowed mode, which worked (refer to the DR for details if required). Unfortunately, the game is Vert- in multimon, but a blend of Hor+ (2D overlay) and anamorphic (game area) in widescreen.

The game itself is a nuclear war across the globe, where you setup units to defend your city and attack others. You do feel a bit 'commander-in-chief' with the view you have as you deploy your units to win the war - it's what I always imagined it would look like from Air Force One or in some secret military bunker.

For the strategists among you, this game is going to make you happy. 8/10

SpaceChem

There are educational games, and then there are really really educational games. To the point where I am not sure I am having fun anymore.

I did chemistry at school, but I'm not a budding chemist. Not really that interested about making new molecules or particles or whatever. I'm not very interested in a game that provides you with a copy of the periodic table.

I didn't really play this game long enough to enter into a detailed discussion on the game, because the tutorial mission felt like I was in high school again. Multimon is supported but the game is pillarboxed, and the mouse acceleration sucks, so play in single monitor. That is, if it's called playing. 5/10

Ticket To Ride

Some board game to video game conversions are pretty horrible, but this one is great. I've never really been into board games a great deal (other than Sequence, which everyone needs to try!) and I'm not a train guy. Despite that, this was easy to pick up and easy to get competitive in.

Basically, the board is full of railroad routes across America (or Europe, or wherever you choose). You draw some destination cards; you need to try to complete your railroad to those destinations. You draw cards with different coloured carriages, and once you have enough of the colour you need, you use them to claim railroad routes to assist your cause and stop others. You don't know their routes, but you watch to see where they might be headed and cut them off! You can draw extra destination cards and earn extra points for achieving them, but if the game ends before you've reached them all, the points get subtracted from you instead.

The game plays in multimon but just fills the outside monitors with a stylised graphic, but realistically, it was never going to be useful space. They could have put some train pictures there though, or something.

Lots of fun without having to think too hard. Plus my uncle is impossible to buy for, but is into trains. Based on playing this, I've bought him the actual board game for Christmas; I might even enjoy beating him at it. 8/10

Trauma

Trauma is a great name for this game. It accurately describes the theme of the game: The game is based on a woman that has suffered a physiological trauma, and has been languishing in several dreamscapes while unconscious and hospitalized.

The controls are not very intuitive; I struggled to get the character to do anything I wanted it to. I had very little idea about what was going on at all, to be honest. If the game makers wanted me to feel like that, they succeeded.

The game felt similar to Myst, where you move from snapshot to snapshot, but beautiful is replaced with disturbed. I can't tell if this game is brilliant in its execution or not; I struggled to want to keep playing it. Love to hear other peoples thoughts on it.

Technically, the game doesn't even support widescreen. It's pillarboxed for all resolutions. I'll give it an extra point for benefit-of-the-doubt. 7/10

Summary

Hard to know if I would recommend this bundle or not. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome and DEFCON are two good games, Ticket to Ride is fun but you have to be willing to play that sort of thing, and if you never play the other two games, you won't be any worse off. On the flipside, the 2 and a half good indie titles are worth 10 bucks. If there is only one game that you want, though, just buy it and move on.

Indie Bundle 7

This is the seventh 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 7 includes: Avadon: The Black Fortress, Dungeons of Dredmor, Q.U.B.E, Vessel, and Zombie Driver.

Avadon: The Black Fortress

Avadon is a typical RPG dungeon type game, where the player interacts with other characters, forms a little team to go adventuring with, collects loot, fights baddies; you know the score. The fighting is turn-based, and the interaction between players is all text.

The graphics are a bit old but the game is Hor+ and you can center the HUD on multimon, as per the DR. There is always the risk with these that you need to invest significant amounts of time into them just to get a basic understanding of the interface and controls, but they are simple enough in this game for even a casual gamer.

There's alot of gameplay here, and you can enjoy it in sweet multimon. The only downside would be the music and sounds, they just seem like they were recorded from a great distance away and played back through a laptop using onboard speakers. But if the graphics bring back good memories of the early days, you might find alot of value out of this game. 8/10.

Dungeons of Dredmor

Two games that are gold certified in multimon in a row! A fantastic start to the bundle.

This game is more engaging than the last; the graphics are fresh, the humour in the game is actually funny, and the interface even easier. The music is good, the sound effects are good, and the text is more abbreviated. When it comes to unravelling plots, I find less is more. I didn't sign up to read a novel, so a shortened storyline is good. One nice option when setting up the game is an abbreviated mode, where the levels are smaller with less baddies, so you don't spend so much time doing the usual hackenslash treatment for an excessive amount of time.

The game supports multimon, but I highly recommend playing at a non-bezel-corrected resolution, otherwise you'll end up with parts of your menu and game screen hidden. This doesn't work for a top down game, because you can't shift the view. It's only a minor thing, set the res in the launcher before starting and you won't have any issues. The game tries to display as much of the current map as possible, so while the game will track you if you are in the center, you do end up playing on the side monitors when you reach the far edges of the maps as the camera cannot pan further than the map limits.

The battle is easy, and picking up gold is easy. I'm not sure why the character automatically picks up gold and not other loot, which you have to click on, but it's not the first game I've seen like this. Probably to stop you getting over-encumbered with stuff you don't actually want. The game is fairly difficult, so consider yourself warned if you choose the hardest difficulty setting!

This game is better than the first, I like it. 9/10

Q.U.B.E

So we go from a game that is gold certified in multimon to a game with limited support in basic widescreen and no support in multimon. Q.U.B.E. stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion, in case you're wondering.

The game is about manipulating blocks to work your way through a maze. Some blocks simply slide in and out of the walls. Other blocks need to be set, like pre-loading a springboard, so that when you walk or jump on them, you get thrown through the air; like a slingshot effect. Other contain a series of blocks that come out at different lengths, depending on which of the 3 you target. You are presented with situations and need to try a few things to get past the challenge and move on.

The game is Vert-, although it's barely noticeable in this format on a single monitor (don't even bother with multimon). Multimon Hor+ goodness would have been great because some of the views can induce a bit of vertigo; multimon would have enhanced this. I always take a peer back down big drops that I have just navigated up. Surprisingly fun and addictive. 8/10

Vessel

This game is just brilliant. If it supported multimon, then it would get a perfect ten from me. The graphics and art is just superb; the steampunk feel is perfect for the style of game. The game eases you in without any text at all, just really well designed levels and fun challenges from the start. Even the intro cut-scene has no text, just a few pictures on a wall with some great sound effects. The music and sounds are fantastic. I love it.

The game is a puzzle platform game, where you have to manipulate various controls to work your way through the levels. The game has a heavy focus on water and using it to manipulate other controls as well. When you interact with a vessel that can contain water, it becomes semi-transparent to allow you to view the water level to decide when to move it.

To me, this is what indie games are all about. A great idea, covered with great graphics and artwork that work with the theme, mixed with brilliant story-telling and mood setting, accentuated by fantastic sounds and music, enhanced with intuitive controls. Only loses half a mark for not supporting multimon. You should buy this game. Now. If you don't hear from me for the rest of the month, you'll know where I am. 9.5/10

Zombie Driver

Oh boy, what a fun way to end an indie bundle. Drive around running over zombies, blowing up stuff, doing burnouts, saving people? Sign me up! It's like playing with your matchbox cars from when you were a kid, with your imagination cranked to 10!

You're tasked with driving a car through a zombie-filled city, performing tasks to get rewards. There are also optional achievements along the way for extra booty, if you feel the desire. In the first mission, you need to go save some people from a building and return them to safehouse. Run over 100 zombies on the way to get the optional bonus. As if you need any encouragement!

You even get to play this sucker in multimon. The only downside is that the waypoint marker seems to follow the edge of the screen, so when it's off to your left or right it can be hard to see where to go easily, but you soon find it again.

I really enjoyed this for an easy going carnage-filled killing spree. I wanted to play more to find out what new cars and weapons I could unlock and cause mucho destruction with. 9/10

Summary

This has been the best bundle so far. Vessel is worth it by itself - game of the whole series so far. The others are great too; the ones that fall down technically make up for it in awesome gameplay. Just buy this one and thank me later.

Indie Bundle 8

This is the eighth 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 8 includes: Demolition Inc, HOARD, SOL: Exodus, Swords and Soldiers HD, and Wings of Prey.

Demolition Inc

This is a fantastic way to kick off a bundle. Multimon goodness in all its glory, good graphics, and fun gameplay all combine in this destruct-a-thon.

So you're an alien, flying above the city. The population below go about their lives, driving their cars around all innocent and sweet. Too bad they are the pawns in your grand master plan. Your job is to demolish the city by causing the traffic to drive into buildings and knock them down, so they can be replaced by trees. For instance, you can deploy oil slicks to cause the cars to lose control and go swerving into conveniently placed cans of fuel.

It's pretty fun finding different ways to get the cars to go out of control where you want them to - it doesn't always go to plan but sometimes it works out better than you could have expected. I rate this for a bit of fun, and multimon is great. 8/10.

HOARD

Another game that works in multimon, fantastic, although the objective overlay is stretched. The gameplay is fairly good, but just lacks that little something to keep me interested.

You play as a dragon flying around, avoiding people trying to kill you, burning things down, and hoarding the gold that appears. That's about it.

The game is interesting and fun, but just isn't great. 7/10

SOL: Exodus

It's been a long time since a space fighter game has sucked me in, but this did, big time. The biggest shame about this game is that it doesn't support multimon properly, because it would be PERFECT for multimon. At least they have made an in-game option to change the game from it's normal Vert- behaviour to Hor+. You can force a multimon res but the HUD is stretched across 3 monitors and it looks terrible.

In this game, you're a fighter pilot in a large fleet that are investigating a possible replacement planet for mankind as the sun for Earth is dying. Naturally, not everything goes as smoothly as one would hope, and you're thrown into the mix. The game teaches you the controls under the tutorial of a test flight for your ship, which works well, and then before you know it, you're put to the test hardcore. I will admit to dying on my first attempt.

Perhaps it's the flight sim nature in me, but I instantly wanted to start kicking butt and learning how to get the most out of the craft I was in. I will add that this is probably best played with a joystick. Loses a point for what could have been in multimon, but still fun and I'll be playing it again. This is a contender for the best of the whole indie bundle series. 9/10

Swords and Soldiers HD

This game is pretty fun, driven by nice graphics and humour that is actually funny. The game is a sidescroller where you deploy rather large breasted women who mine gold for you to fund your campaign. This allows you to unlock units and spells with which to attack the bad guys.

The game doesn't work well in all multimon resolutions. At 6000x1080, the screen flickers and the mouse acceleration sucks. I think it's because the map is smaller than the resolution in width that it struggles.

The game is simple enough yet keeps you busy trying to keep your dudes alive with the available spells. Alternatively, you can just brute force and try sending as many fighters as you can muster.

It's fairly simple, it's fun, I'll be having another crack at it. 8/10

Wings of Prey

I love flight sims, what can I say. I work in one. And this one is epicly great.

The graphics are stunningly beautiful, I could just fly around looking at the scenery. The planes are incredible, and the missions really give you a feel of how incredible and desperate it was living in World War 2.

Multimon is supported, although some parts of the game don't work with it, such as the aircraft hangar. However, for flying, it's just great.

This game ticks all my boxes. The difficulty can be scaled for all types of players, and the action is fun and challenging. I also enjoy the option of flying back to the airbase if you want, although players can end the mission once they have completed the objectives if they wish to save time. If the aircraft hangar wasn't broken, this game would be perfect. It's one of the games I keep coming back to, and it's one that I use when I want to show off how glorious multimon is to my friends when they visit. 9.5/10

Summary

There is a great deal of value to be had in this bundle. Probably don't worry about Hoard too much, but you'll get countless hours of gaming value from the others. Wings of Prey is worth it by itself. This is definitely the best bundle for people who enjoy flight sims, and still excellent if you don't. Do yourself a favour, get into a beautiful WW2 plane in full multimon and just go for a flight; enjoy how far gaming has come.

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.

Indie Bundle 10

This is the tenth 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 10 includes: All Zombies Must Die, Beat Hazard, BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Eufloria, and Machinarium.

All Zombies Must Die

This is a fun little top-down zombie shooter game. It features some cool funky music, great graphics, and some good humour along the way. As with most zombie shooters, you run around shooting zombies who drop ammo or health to let you survive long enough to shoot more zombies for more ammo and health drops.

The controls are easy enough and it's simple enough to know what's going on without reading through excessive amounts of tutorial text.

The game plays in multimon but mostly pillarboxes. Curiously, some HUD or 2D overlay elements are drawn on the outside monitors. Anyhow, it's a fun game when you want to do some mindless zombie slaughtering and have a good time doing it. 7/10.

Beat Hazard

I hate Indie titles that do not give you proper resolution control. This game is Vert- in multimon so I attempted to play it in 16:9 instead. I would select a new resolution from the menu and it would inform me that I needed to restart the game for it to take effect. When it restarted, it was still in the same fullscreen resolution. I HATE GAMES LIKE THIS; you need to spend time just to get the cursed thing running. Giving me options but not taking them is worse than no options at all.

The game is supposed to be some sort of rhythm game where you shoot asteroids and spaceships and stuff. It seems ok but I could think of more enjoyable things to be doing while listening to my music.

If you suffer from epilepsy, stay away from this retina-searing eye-blaster. I couldn't get it running in any other res so enjoy the Vert-multimon goodness like I did. Stop wasting my time now. 3/10

BIT.TRIP RUNNER

Ok so this is a bit of a retro gaming experience. A full on fast-paced sidescroller, at first all you need is the space bar to jump. As the levels go on, new functions such as sliding are introduced. The pace gets very quick very fast!

You can collect gold and power-ups along the way, but it didn't see to matter how many I collected, once you hit something, it's back to the start for you. One thing I always loved about getting powerups was that the music seemed to get more involved and pumping.

If you collect all the gold in a level, you get to play a retro type gold-grab bonus level which is pretty fun. Multimon is stretched and due to the blocky nature of the graphics, it's bloody hard to work out what text is supposed to be. I just enjoy playing it windowed. 7/10

Eufloria

Did you ever have a burning desire to send seedlings to asteroids so that you can grow a tree, but were frustrated that no-one had made a game for this yet? Stop your frustration, Eufloria is here.

After playing two levels of this riveting game, where something is sure to happen once every few minutes, I am pleased to announce that I had grown at least 6 trees. The little seedlings orbit your asteroids like moths around a light.

Be sure to play this in full multimon glory to maximise your Eufloria experience. 6/10

Machinarium

It seems to be a common theme that the games with the best gameplay, humour, and atmosphere have the worst multimon support. Here's another classic example. Machinarium is pillarboxed in any wide resolution, widescreen or multimon.

It's easy to see why the game designer would do this, though. The game is made up of small areas that you interact with, working your way through the challenges. There is no text or dialogue - if the character wants to convey a message, it's done through an imagination box. Some of the interactions with objects are entirely unexpected and funny. After you take a witch's hat which you need to solve one of the area challenges, any subsequent witch's hats you take get thrown over the edge of the chasm, telling you without question that you probably didn't need that one!

I really don't think widescreen or multimon would achieve alot in this game. I am grateful that i can play it at my desktop resolution without having to change it and it just works. I like this game, keeps the brain active and kept me laughing. 8.5/10

Summary

For me, Machinarium is the only real must-have of this group. Ironically, it's the one with the lowest grade on our site for widescreen and multimon support, but it's the best. Everything else is take it or leave it. I'd wait for Machinarium to come out on sale and just buy that one.

Indie Bundle 11

This is the eleventh 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 11 includes: Hydrophobia: Prophecy, ORION: Dino Beatdown, Star Ruler, Waveform, and World of Goo.

Hydrophobia: Prophecy

I find it hard for games to build atmosphere for me. I usually get hung up on something silly like some graphical issue or dodgy play-acting, but this game actually pulls things off fairly well. You start out trying to escape from a collapsing building that is being systematically destroyed, and it's actually somewhat intense. The story is engaging enough to keep me interested, and the more I played, the more I wanted to keep playing.

Be aware of the setup issue with this game - if you don't have the same desktop resolution as the chosen game resolution, it will appear stretched or squashed.

It's a pity that the 2D overlay is Vert- in multimon; you can't see your instructions about what to do so it's unplayable in multimon, which is a shame because this game would be great. Hayden has said he'll have a look at fixing it so if you want a fix for this game, please reply to this article and register your interest! I'll still give it a play-through anyway, I really like it. 8/10.

ORION: Dino Beatdown

So in this game, you need to protect items from the waves of incoming dinosaurs and just shoot em and stuff. And shoot dinosaurs. Beat them down! Dino Beatdown. Sorry, I just don't have much else to say about it. Did I mention that you shoot dinosaurs?

The game has a FOV slider so you can tweak it to your hearts content if changing resolutions. Unfortunately it stop at 100 which is way too narrow for multimon, so probably best played in 16:9 (I used a FOV of 90).

You can play online and work with friends to beatdown dinos. Unfortunately, over the course of the review period, I checked the online servers many times and only ever found 1 person in a game - refer to my screenshots. This means you're pretty much by yourself all the time. And this game sucks by yourself.

This game scored the lowest on Metacritic of any of the games that I have reviewed, that I can remember. It's a contender for worst game, but I am not sure it would even win that. 4/10

Star Ruler

Star Ruler is a large scale, real-time grand strategy set in space. You can design and build ships that you send out to trade and fight your way across the galaxy. Researching technologies is a vital part of the game too.

To me, it's all too complex. I personally am not the sort to sit down and take the time to work out a bazillion strategies for each type of ship and which technologies I am researching, let alone trying to set up trade between planets.

I totally understand that this appeals to some people, and you can play in glorious multimon, but be prepared to throw a great deal of time at it to have fun. 7/10

Waveform

"You control a wave of light as it transmits through space and you’re able to modify the wave’s amplitude and wavelength to line it up with objectives, avoid obstacles, and interact with a slew of objects that affect the path of your wave, and the world around you, in interesting ways." And by interesting, they mean repetitive. In fact, this type of game comes free with Hydrophobia - it's how you hack into terminals in that game. But here it's a stand-alone game with a few twists.

You click and drag the mouse to make your wave taller, shorter, more spaced out, or compressed. Line the wave up with the dots and giggle with glee when you collect them. Repeat repeatedly. Gets an extra point for multimon but it barely deserves the ones it gets. 6/10

World of Goo

This game follows in the likes of X-Construction and other building type games. You use your goo (nothing suss) to build your way to the vacuum pipe, which sucks your goo. Ahem.

Underneath the cute goo graphics is a fairly basic building program, although the physics are pretty good when your structures get large and are not properly supported. It's enjoyable and doesn't require a massive investment of time to get into it, but there isn't a great deal to the game either.

To play in widescreen, you'll need to edit a config file. Refer to the DR for more info. Attempting to apply a multimon resolution sees the game launch at 800x600, but it played fine at 1920x1080. Might just play this one on my phone while spending quality time on the throne though. 7.5/10

Summary

Ok, so this bundle is not worth it. Hydrophobia is the only game I would spend money on (other than World of Goo for the mobile, which I am pretty sure I picked up in a humble bundle somewhere), and it's only $4.99 regular price. Even that's a bargain price for a good game; if it goes on sale, buy it and enjoy. The rest, don't worry about.