Humble Indie Bundle 5: pay what you want for video games | Hacker News Reader

Humble Indie Bundle 5: pay what you want for video games

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293 pointsjeff18106 comments

This comment isn't really hacker related, but it is related to this bundle:

For anyone that likes playing games but doesn't really follow them, I highly recommend taking a look at both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and LIMBO. Both are available in this pack, and they are both unique, high-quality, and inspired games. The former is a terrifying journey into a nightmarish realm that was created to emerse the player in the environment moreso than any other game in existence, and the latter is a spectacularly creepy 2D puzzle game that looks like it was created by Tim Burton.

Agreed. Limbo is easily worth paying for just on it's own. I purchased it for the Xbox 360 after seeing videos of it online and it is an amazing game with a gorgeous creepy atmosphere.

To add to that, Bastion is an incredible game as well, the music, narration and graphics are all amazing, it creates a great atmosphere. This Indie Bundle really has some big hits.

Sword and Sorcery EP rounds it off to be one of the best Humble Bundles in a while

And Psychonauts is an absolute classic. A game unlike any other. Tim Schafer at his best. As funny as his better known Monkey Island. Well, almost.

This, IMO, is the best Humble Bundle they've released, by far.

Agreed. There are multiple blockbuster AAA level games in this pack.

This offer is just absolutely absurd.

Amnesia - one of the most frightening and atmospheric games in a while. This is the kind of game where you will just decide its time to turn all the lights on and go to sleep.

Bastion - great fluid gameplay, beautiful visuals, a great soundtrack, an amazing voice over which never gets old. I bought this game, and I bought the sound track, independently. I've listened to the songs on loop for days.

Sword and sorcery - Never did finish it, but the art, sound, personality and game play really made it stand out.

For the rest of the games too, I've only heard good things. This is absurd. They could have bundled each of those games in a separate bundle and stretched this out. Instead you are getting them all at one go.

All of the games in this bundle are worth my weight in gold, and I'm not exactly anorexic. To add to those you noted, Bastion is a wonderful ARPG featuring gorgeous graphics (it's 2D but it looks like an oil painting which moves), excellent gameplay and balance and an original and pitch-perfect narration following the player through his journey married to a high-quality soundtrack; Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP is an excellent visual and aural experience sold as an point & click game; and psychonauts is a strange and weird and wonderful and out-of-this-world platform/adventure game, think of a game in the Beetlejuice universe except absolutely excellent and wonderfully droll.

Only thing there is to hate about this bundle is I already have every single game in it.

Now I'll have to buy bundles to gift them.

(actually I'm lying, I'm also buying one for the OSTs, since I only have bastion's)

Is it just me, or does Psychonaut appear to have some Burton-esque feeling to it as well? I've only seen the trailer.

A little, sure.

As a side note, Psychonauts is one of the few games Yahtzee actually gave an overall awesome review: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation...

Same with Amnesia.

> does Psychonaut appear to have some Burton-esque feeling to it as well?

Early Burton aye, it reminds me of Beetlejuice.

Amnesia was creepy, but I wouldn't call it excellent. Psychonauts is the 3D game that really shines in this pack. It's extremely memorable and utterly original. Fun fact: the Metacritic user score for Psychonauts is 9.4 compared to Amnesia's 8.8.

This assumes that the Metacritic user score is a useful measure. For example, Diablo 3 has a user score of 4.1/10 while the critic score is 89/100.

I think you only get that with recent blockbuster releases that garner "fanboys" who feel that game X is either the best thing in the universe or a direct insult to their mother, even though they've never played the game.

I mean, look at Mass Effect 3 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Older games like Psychonauts and Amnesia tend to have more accurate user ratings.

You also get that with games where people felt shafted for one reason or another -- Mass Effect 3's ending, Portal 2's weak alternate reality game, and Diablo 3's launch day server issues.

I think Diablo 3 simply deserves the backslash. The developers are full of themselves and live in a bubble. Lots of people are unable to play the game they've paid $60 (or 60 EUR !!!) money for. "Always online" was supposedly for security, but people trying to play "single player" are getting their accounts hacked. The story and its presentation is an insult to intelligence. Bosses are extremely talkative, and not in the amusing way like in Realm of the Mad God. Cutscenes are used as interruptions. It is also the least random and most linear Diablo game. Low replayability is a big deal because difficulty level (difficulty, no skill level like they were called in Quake) And all this took more than 10 years to make ? It resembles Diablo Nukem Forever.

There is a lot to complain about. But it's not surprising considering the founders work elsewhere, especially at Runic Games. Torchlight 2 is also very colorful and cartoony, but it's not pretending to be something it's not (a grim, gothic game). TL2 is playful and doesn't treat itself very seriously.

My favorite action RPG game is Nox, though. This video does a good job explaining it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NU3u9sSjE But I feel obligated to add a few highlights - no random loot (!!!!!!!!) - no hit chance. You hit if you aim well and enemy is in range. - no dodge chance. You dodge if you move out of the way. - no shield block chance. You block if you raise your shield in time (and in correct direction :-) - no random levels, but levels very well done and non-linear unlike Diablo 3. Also, some chapters are unique to one of 3 classes. - very unimportant resists: very few arbitrary decisions "You can't use weapon/spell X against monster Y". - as a result, combat is so fun that multiplayer had modes like Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch, where everyone was always on the same level. - huge variety and creativity in Conjurer and Wizard classes.

See the pattern ? It was a highly skill-based game. It's a tragedy that it was labeled as a Diablo 2 clone, because it had fundamental differences. Nox can be purchased very cheaply today.

Amnesia is fantastic example of using gameplay mechanics and rules to create mood.

Amnesia wants to use its interlocking game systems to make you feel afraid: You stay sane longer in the light. You have a limited amount of lamp oil with which to create light. Monsters make you insane (and kill you). Monsters can see you better in the light. Monsters make you go insane more quickly if you look directly at them (in the style of Lovecraft, gazing on things you should not see rend your mind).

The end result of this is a pretty wonderful set of rule balancing where, upon seeing a monster, the player immediately douses their lamp and hides in a dark corner staring at the wall, slowly going insane from a horror they cannot look at, knowing that looking at it will make them go truly mad, and turning on light for comfort will bring them a swift death.

It helps that on the art side, the visuals and audio are all built around creating and enhancing the mood, of course, but it's rare that there are a bunch of interlocking systems which can shape your behavior in a way that's that harmonious with an expected emotional output, a mood, tone, etc.

The game is rough around the edges and definitely created by a small team, but what it achieves is pretty rare.

From the same publisher is the earlier Penumbra series, anyone who's only played Amnesia should definitely play those too. My favorite was the second one, Black Plague, and I think for all that Amnesia does right, Black Plague does it better. (I think it was even in one of the Bundles before but I'm not sure.) Amnesia has gained a lot of traction with the modders, though, and it's sometimes interesting to see what other people cook up. (The mods tend to rely too much on "jump scares" however, just like pretty much everyone else besides Frictional Games. They do it too, just not as much.)

> I think it was even in one of the Bundles before but I'm not sure.

That was actually Penumbra: Overture

Psychonauts is fantastic ( I actually just replayed it a couple weeks ago )

Bastion is quite good, too.

My little brother bought me Psychonauts for the PS2 a few years back. It's an extremely well made game - I think possibly Double Fine's best work, and that's saying something!

I can't recommend Psychonauts enough. It's by Double Fine, who recently had the $1M Kickstarter campaign many of you will remember. Tim Schafer, founder of, and designer at, Double Fine, is celebrated at his craft, and Psychonauts is an excellent example of why. And it's written by Schafer and Erik Wolpaw, who wrote Portal.

In his games, and especially Psychonauts, Schafer is known for creating a beautiful world and characters for the player. In Psychonauts you play Raz, a young child of circus performers who (instead of running away from his boring life to join the circus) runs away from the circus to attend summer camp! Of course, it can't be normal; it's a summer camp for those with mental abilities, training to join a super-powered CIA style organization. You hone your psychic abilities as you go through levels that take place in the minds of characters. The characters, though fun, start off warm and familiar: The militant trainer, the cool, calm, and perfectly restrained agent, and the hippie-dippy counselor who just wants to have a good time, maaan. There's even a kooky old man who may be more than he thinks... But then it gets amazing.

Schafer is well known for his writing, and for me it's his ability to perfectly marry together game concepts and game content that make him great. In Mario you collect coins and in Sonic you collect rings, both existing in story only to their own end. In Psychonauts you traverse the minds of other characters, collecting mental fragments, the doodlings of an inner child. You can also find memories locked away in vaults, sometimes hidden behind barriers (mental blocks), or behind cobwebs. (Talk about not wanting to deal with things!) It's through collecting these memories that we actually get a better picture of the people whose minds we're traversing.

The game is not perfect. There are issues with a level or two. Well, one anyway. Overall, it's reach probably exceeds it's grasp, but that's okay. It manages to reach pretty damn far. And how it gets there is far better than most games.

Just bought the bundle, excellent games. i would have bought the bundle just for limbo and psychonauts. My productivity is going down this weekend.

For anyone who's interested in the Linux versions, Canonical also announced[1] today that HIB5 purchases will be redeemable via Ubuntu Software Centre.

[1]: http://blog.canonical.com/2012/05/31/humble-indie-bundle-5-c...

The Linux versions are directly downloadable after buying but you can also redeem them in the USC on the same page.

Wow, fantastic games! Probably the highest quality bundle ever.

- Amnesia is fantastic. Terrifying, yes, but fantastic.

- Limbo is gorgeous.

- Bastion is a great game.

- Haven't played the others, but I've heard good things.

A big "thank you" to the developers and humble bundle inc.

Unfortunately I've played all of them except Pychonaughts.

I've played through all of them. I bought the bundle just to have a second copy of Psychonauts.

A while back I decided that I wasn't going to play any more AAA games, except the absolute cream of the crop - I just don't have room in my life to spend 40-50 hours glued to a screen playing a game any more.

Psychonauts was one of the games I made an exception for. It was time well-spent.

Anecdotally, this is the first Humble Bundle I bought immediately after learning of it, rather than waiting to get around to it eventually.

Somewhat related: Indie Game Music Bundle 3 is happening now: http://www.gamemusicbundle.com

I'm only a few albums in, but there are definitely some gems. (Impeccable Micro and In Momentum are my current favourites.) The last bundle was absolutely fantastic (especially Impostor Nostalgia and vvvvvv).

In the Humble Bundle you also get FLAC and MP3 downloads of the games' soundtracks as little additional gimmick.

There are a few other fantastic indie bundles going on right now, too:

http://www.indiegala.com/

http://www.indieroyale.com/

http://www.gamemusicbundle.com/

The indie bundle sales are my favorite trend in gaming in a long time.

Don't forget this one: http://bundle-in-a-box.com/

Some highly rated adventure games there, though I haven't played them myself, yet...

Have we reached Peak Bundle yet?

There are also musical bundles, i.e. pay-what-you-want for bundle of albums from independent bands, like musicrage.org (full disclosure: I'm founder of musicrage.org)

FYI for @gmail.com users:

"We've hit a rate limit sending to gmail.com addresses, our email provider is working on it though!"

[https://twitter.com/humble/status/208273636589715457]

Edit: I received mine, so it looks like it is working now.

I'll confirm I didn't get a timely response after purchase, but the key retrieval form seemed to work. Likely I just missed the pulse.

How do you guys divide up your purchase? Default, all to someone, mixture?

I dumped everything to the developers with the mentality that games are hard work - I'd like to reward that - where as charities are much more common, but I'd love to hear other's view points on this.

I usually give most of the money to charity. While I have purchased the majority of the Humble Bundles, I don't actually have time to play games. For many of the bundles, I've not even bothered to download the files. That's how I rationalize it anyway.

I went 75% developers, 25% humble on this one; I'm usually much closer to 50% devs / 30% charity / 20% humble. My reasoning being this is an above-average bundle IMO, and I want to see the developers rewarded handsomely so that more critically-acclaimed games will come to the bundles.

I almost always give everything to the devs, with maybe a dollar or two to HIB to cover things like hosting, dealing with Steam, etc. If I were going to donate to EFF or Childs Play, I would do that directly, not as a way to self-justify paying less of my money to the developers that put a lot of hard work into the games I'm buying. But hey, working in the gaming industry might make me biased...

Mostly to developers, but man are those sliders annoying. It took a lot of fiddling to get all three in line. Some option which would let me under or over allocate temporarily would have been a huge help, instead of this one up, that one down, that one back up, that one down again.

you can directly edit the dollar amount in the field to the right of the slider, and it will bubble-up to the total.

For HIB 4, I did the same thing you did. But this time I think they're doing a good job at selection (and I like the EFF), so I went default split.

The way they give you another game for paying more than average (therefore increasing the average at the same time) is simply genius!

Buying a few bundles for gifts woohoo!

And effective, apparently. The average has been growing a penny at a time for the last half hour that I've been watching.

Exactly! In 2 weeks it'll be over 15$ I bet.

Warning: Limbo for Linux is just the windows game packaged with wine.

That's sad. I hope this doesn't become a trend for future Indie Bundles.

I agree, but so long as they actually tested it to make sure that it works and will support issues with the wine setup, then it is acceptable, IMHO.

Update on that. I downloaded it and gave it a try and sure enough, the sound doesn't work. Looks like they didn't perform the due diligence of testing. I'm currently downloading the windows executable to try with my system install of Wine.

My rule is, if it is proprietary software, I don't fiddle with it. I dislike Playdead for making me break my rule.

That's how 90% of the Mac games you buy work.

uh, citation needed? You'd at least have to specify whether you mean "offered for sale" or "purchased by users", because I suspect a big chunk of game sales volume comes from AAA games which are probably going to be native ports.

Not a complete list, but this is a tricked out wine used by many many games: http://transgaming.com/cider/games

Agreed, working in game development, I've very rarely heard of people using the Codeweaver's approach for commercial Mac ports.

I think this is just a case of playing a game of mishearing/misremembering.

A lot of EA's stuff is ported to Mac with Cider/TransGaming. From memory The Sims 3 is done that way.

afaik quite a lot of the indie bundle games are basically this.

The games I tried on Linux so far, have been really high-quality ports. I know icculus did quite a few of them. I haven't played that many, though.

Negative, this is the first one.

I don't think so. I remember getting a game called "frozen synapse" which was available on the bundle and I couldn't get it to run in Linux without reconfiguring wine.

Nah, Frozen Synapse was natively ported by Ryan Gordon.

Isn't supplying a library for making cheap ports one of the stated goals of wine?

Yes, but all of the previously-released Linux versions of Humble Bundle games have been high-quality native ports.

What is it with that idea that somehow "Wine isn't native"? It's not an emulator and it's not a virtual machine. It runs the native executables and provides a couple of Windows-like folders, DLLs, a "registry", environment variables etc. What's not to like? Sure, would be neat if the game devs had a dedicated Linux build target working with /usr/lib/ etc. paths but -- does any gamer care? As long as Wine is as hidden and stable and packaged in the background as Transgaming's Cider (try the three GTA 3 games on Mac from the App Store -- awesome smooth gaming! -- granted they're quite old) I don't see a problem for the gamer. And the devs are free to concentrate on their games and creative instead of headaches with painful "native porting" code issues.

If you agree that Wine can be an appropriate tool for helping port games, please sign http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/use-wine-as-needed-in-fut...

You are technically correct, but you are belittling the amount of work that Codeweavers put into the LIMBO Linux version.

Is this leading you to have some practical issues, or is it just a technical complaint?

I have used the Limbo Linux port, and didn't have any problems.

Just got this. Wow. Superbrothers and LIMBO just have straight-up 32-bit or 64-bit .deb packages. (Or tarballs.) So easy.

If only all software distribution was done as flawlessly as the Humble Bundle. Spectacular.

I will add my comment to say that I've played most of these games, and they're all spectacular. Limbo is great, Amnesia is terrifying (to the point that I'm too scared to continue it), and I enjoyed Bastion very much too (I finished it).

I'm not one to game a lot, but these are so convenient (I run Linux so I rarely reboot into Windows just for a game), very casual, so you can just play one level and return to whatever you were doing, and just overall great games.

Linux sales are dwindling, sadly. Judging from the "Total Payment" pie charts of past bundles, we went from ~23% (bundle 2) to 12% (bundle 4) to the current ~9%. Total sales across all platforms have remained fairly constant.

That's arguably a result of Linux's small user base. Linux users tend to be tech-savvy but game-thirsty, so it's possible HIB managed to tap that market out first.

My point: "stagnant Linux growth" might actually be "excellent Mac/Win growth," especially since those platforms dwarf Linux's install base (at least for home users, ignoring servers etc.)

Interesting style of trailer. It borrows the art style from Sword and Sworcery and the narrator from Bastion. Strange choices considering their target market is surely people who _haven't_ played those games and so won't get the references.

But yes, a set of great games - at least the half I've played (S&S, Bastion, Limbo) are great - and I've heard only good things about the other two.

They've crossed the $1,000,000 mark already in the first day. Congrats to the teams, this one seems like a record setter.

Thats what happens when its a good quality bundle! This is definitely one of the best bundles yet - the previous few, while they did include some gems, were IMHO nowhere near as good as this one and the sales figures show it!

I don't normally do that much gaming, but I may give it a try.

Question 1: Can I run the games on a laptop with an intel i3 and no discrete graphics? Question 2: Is it okay to just pay a dollar or so to start, and then pay more if I actually enjoy the games?

1. pay a dollar try it out.

2. I feel this is completely okay, you are not stealing from them because you cover the charges for your purchase and if you use steam for download you are not wasting their bandwidth.

All of the games are excellent so I bet you will enjoy at least two of them.

Further, when you make a purchase, your download link also has an option to increase your donation (in case OP feels that he wants to contribute more than a dollar later one).

And as far as bandwidth goes, there is a Bittorrent download option that probably beats out the Steam servers anyway.

Sounds like a good idea, I think I'll give it a shot.

This does look neat. Now, if only they'd release a bundle that includes extra free time I can use to play the games in said bundle :)

Two of them at least are fairly short: a run-through of Limbo takes about 3-4h tops, and you can go through Bastion in under 10 (although you'll need quite a bit more time to do everything and get all the achievements).

I've yet to finish the other 3 so I don't know how long they last.

Amnesia takes around 15 hours or so. Limbo only took me a mere 2.5 hours. Both Limbo and Bastion are very easy to play in short bursts though.

I can't believe I've just bought 4 of those 5 games last month (Bastion, S&SEP, Limbo and Amnesia). Well at least I supported the Indie Game scene with more money than I would have with Humble Bundle.

The funnier part is... that I'm giving some bucks anyway just to have Psychonauts (because it's from Double Fine) and because I can't imagine not to have ALL the Humble Indie Bundles :-)

Even if you own most of the games in this bundle, the soundtracks for Bastion and Sword & Sworcery are worth it alone.

Never played the games, but I bought the bundle and downloaded these two soundtracks to listen to while I work. You're absolutely correct, these are great and easily worth what I paid on their own. They make me excited to get to play the games themselves tonight!

This is the strongest indie bundle that I've seen to date.

At first, I was excited. Then I realized I owned all of them. ;)

Interesting how the donation numbers stack up across the different platforms with Windows a bit under average, Mac a bit over and Linux over 50% above average.

This is seriously one of the best bundles released yet. All these games have been lauded, and all were on my to-play list. :D

I love the model there using here!

Best aspect for me (and them i guess) is the need to spend an average to get Bastion, arguably the best game in that line up.

Already have 2 of the 6 but ill throw good developers money to take the rest and encourage the model.

Well done to the humble bundle!

Sweet, they got Psychonauts in there?

I'm guessing that's because the publishing rights reverted back to Double Fine, so they can do what they want with it.

Limbo and Superbrothers are worth it alone. Since I already own 4 of the 5, so I'll pass on this Bundle.

Also check out the discounted indie games at http://www.becausewemay.com while its on until tomorrow.

Limbo for Linux! Totally buying it!

It's just wrapped in wine, unfortunately. Still, works really nicely.

Repeat after me; WINE IS NOT AN EMULATOR.

It doesn't make it any less "high quality".

The only platform where I would disparage the use of Wine is on the Mac, where it actually matters. On Linux, it matters very little.

This is slightly off-topic but seeing the soundtracks bundled with purchase reminded me of it. Can you make decent money creating soundtracks for games? Seems like on of the few avenues musicians have left other than non-stop touring.

I've been planning to buy both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and LIMBO for a long time. I've heard nothing but great things about both. Looks like there's no better time than now.

Buying for Amnesia. Don't want to play Psychonauts (didn't enjoy it the first time), and I own all the rest.

And I own all the music, too. ... Wow.

What i only want is gaming on Linux, and here it is.

After so many sales of the same games, mostly on steam, I'm surprised there are still enough customers around for stuff like this...

There's a lot of people out there who aren't regular gamers (i.e. don't use steam), so a high profile bundle like this is perfect.

OT: Anybody know what that typeface is on the "Humble Indie Bundle" logo? I love it.

I found it strange that all five of the games consisted of some guy walking around.

They really came out with a great bundle. So great, that I have already bought all the other games. It makes a great gift.

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