Gotta have more Bundle! HIB dominates my life for a while

For years, I’ve been making the mistake of equating small, short games with “casual” games. After having spent a little too much time with titles in Humble Indie Bundle 3 (and, actually, HIB2 as well), I see the error of my ways.

A casual game is something like BEJEWELED or DINER DASH. Quick button-pressing, basic cognitive exercise, etc. But a short game can still have a lot of depth to it.

Take, for example, the game OSMOS, which was released as part of Humble Indie Bundle 2. This deceptively simple action/puzzle game is based entirely on basic principles of science. Every action has an equal/opposite reaction. Larger things have a greater force of attraction than smaller things. Larger things tend to consume smaller things.

The game is also pretty as hell, has one of the best ambient soundtracks ever put into a game, and made me want to tear my hair out. Especially epicycles. Here’s a video walkthrough on it. As they say on the page, “This IS rocket science.” I think I learned more about physics playing this game than I did my entire junior year of high school. Maybe.

But that’s just one of the total of 12 games I got with my $7 donation. Quick breakdown:

The original Humble Indie Bundle 3 included five titles: CRAYON PHYSICS DELUXE, COGS, HAMMERFIGHT, VVVVVV, AND YET IT MOVES

Two more titles were added as bonus additions to HIB3: STEEL STORM: BURNING RETRIBUTION and ATOM ZOMBIE SMASHER

After the first week of the HIB3 promotion, the creators of the Bundle program threw in an extra special bonus. Those who had already donated got access to all five HIB2 titles. And for the second week, as long as you donated more than the mean average donation, you’d also get the HIB2 pack.

The five games from HIB2 are: BRAID, CORTEX COMMAND, MACHINARIUM, OSMOS, REVENGE OF THE TITANS

I have completed the main single-player “campaign” content for 10 out of 12 games, and gone even more hardcore with some of my favorite titles. Here’s a quick summary of my experiences with these games, listed in alphabetical order. If you didn’t buy these bundles, you’ll discover that each of these games sell for $5-$10 each. So you’ll be feeling silly that you missed out on the deals. But if you bought the games and haven’t yet played them, I hope this blog post will help you prioritize your time with them. Note that the “stability rating” is something special I added since indie games and PC games tend to have glitches. If they get less than a perfect score, I’ll tell you why.

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AND YET IT MOVES
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What it is: a 2D platformer that involves rotating the screen in 90 degree increments to get your relatively fragile dude across a variety of obstacles.

What stands out: paper-ish hand-drawn art, good ambient music, interesting game concept

Time required to complete game: 3-5 hours

Stability: 5 out of 5

ATOM ZOMBIE SMASHER
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What it is: aerial perspective RTS with a twist. You’re running rescue missions to save citizens from hordes of zombies in a fictional South American country in the 1960s.

What stands out: addictive gameplay, comic book art and mini-vignettes to solidify the setting

Time required to complete game: 2-5 hours

Stability: 3 out of 5 (game crashed on me randomly, and experienced lag once or twice)

BRAID
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What it is: if you don’t know, I can’t imagine you being a gamer. But basically, it’s a platformer that features a variety of time-bending concepts in each of its six worlds.

What stands out: absolutely everything. This is a top-notch game. And you’d be foolish to think this game is lacking in story or concept. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Time required to complete the game: 5-8 hours

Stability: 5 out of 5

COGS
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What it is: slide puzzles go 3D with multiple planes and different mechanical objects.

What stands out: steep difficulty curve, lots of levels, lots of great concepts

Time required to complete the game: 4-12 hours (huge variance depending on how awesome you are at solving these things)

Stability: 4 out of 5 (weird graphical glitch happened one time when I launched the game)

CORTEX COMMAND
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What it is: an ambitious, unfinished game that takes the graphics retro and the gameplay micro-managed.

What stands out: the fact that it’s still an unfinished game with no single player campaign, even though it was “released” a year ago with HIB2

Time required to complete the game: N/A (and I didn’t spend much time with it)

Stability: 1 out of 5 (glitchy and ridiculously slow load times considering the resource requirement ought to be minimal)

CRAYON PHYSICS DELUXE
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What it is: a clever mix of Scribblenauts and Kirby’s Canvas Curse. Get a red ball to a star by drawing objects.

What stands out: its openness, and its difficulty level when you realize the “extra star” requirements are wild.

Time required to complete the game: 6-8 hours (if you’re shooting for 120 stars to get the end credits)

Stability: 3 out of 5 (crashed individual levels multiple times by drawing too many objects, and one time after playing the game my video card went nuts and I couldn’t watch YouTube videos until I restarted my computer)

HAMMERFIGHT
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What it is: fly in a hot air balloon with some giant weapon attached. Wiggle your mouse around and fight enemies.

What stands out: punishing difficulty level, and the thought that meatspin (aka helicopter dick) would be a better input device than a mouse

Time required to complete the game: I have no idea, because I refused to play it after the first “escort mission.” Screw. This. Game.

Stability: N/A (again, I don’t really know)

MACHINARIUM
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What it is: point&click adventure. Compare to The Neverhood in terms of unique world concept and obscurity of puzzle solutions.

What stands out: art style, music, surprising “humanity” of robot characters

Time required to complete the game: depends on whether or not you use walkthroughs (or the in-game “walkthrough” unlockable with some silly minigame) … I’ll estimate 7-10 hours

Stability: 5 out of 5

OSMOS
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What it is: you’re a blob of stuff, and you have to become the biggest. To move, you lose bits of yourself to accelerate in different directions. You can only absorb blobs smaller than you.

What stands out: variety of game modes/objectives, best music of all the HIB titles (seriously), crazy hard endgame

Time required to complete the game: depends where you stop (anywhere from 3 to 20 hours. The “Forever” levels will blow your mind.)

Stability: 5 out of 5

REVENGE OF THE TITANS
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What it is: tower defense with accumulating wealth and “research” upgrades. Remaining at the highest difficulty level requires smart playing through of the 50 campaign missions.

What stands out: fantastic level design, unique concepts for tower augments, awesome retro graphics

Time required to complete the game: depending on the difficulty level, anywhere from 3 to 8 hours

Stability: 3 out of 5 (no game-breaking glitches, but my mouse would stop functioning between every level and I’d have to SHIFT+TAB in and out to restore its use)

STEEL STORM: BURNING RETRIBUTION
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What it is: free-roaming vehicle-based shmup with lots of single-player content.

What stands out: the fact that it was basically built from the ground up by 3 guys, and yet it is a wild amount of fun

Time required to complete the game: both episodes (“Burning Retribution” is the second, and ultimately superior, episode) took me about 8 hours

Stability: 4 out of 5 (weird graphical glitches happened in one level, and the UI seems a bit unpolished)

VVVVVV
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What it is: free-roaming platformer/adventure game. Oldschool graphics. Oh, and you can reverse gravity whenever you’re standing on a platform.

What stands out: addictive, fun challenges, the six “V” characters (they’re all so cute!), the post-endgame content

Time required to complete the game: ignoring the 20 trinkets and the speed runs, about 5 hours

Stability: 4 out of 5 (game froze once when using a teleporter; this is apparently a known/common glitch)

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So there you have it. I’m hooked on “short” games that are packed with awesome content. Thanks to the coordinators of the Humble Indie Bundle. Guys, I can’t wait for round 4!!