Introducing Humble Indie Bundle 7 (with Legends of Grimrock and more) | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Humble Indie Bundle 7 (with Legends of Grimrock and more)

humblebundle.com

132 pointsglogla56 comments

I have to say that 'Indie Game the movie' is absolutely fantastic. It's the programmer's 'Jiro Dreams of Sushi'. (with added bonus points for their DRM-free delivery).

Well worth your $10 through http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/ or whatever you pay through this bundle. Go watch the trailer and then buy it in some form.

and for reference: 92% on RT

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/indie_game_the_movie_2012/

When i showed the film to my programming class, they said they all seemed "whiny and suicidal". Personally, i liked it, but their opinion, if somewhat pointed, has some merit.

I guess putting years of your life into a project that could easily fail financially is very discomforting. It's understandable when they seem a bit thin-skinned.

But Phil Fish – the guy behind FEZ – made me feel really uneasy. He reminded me of myself in my late teens/early twenties, when I was actually suffering almost constant thoughts of suicide.

I sincerely hope he gets his shit together soon. I hate to see someone suffer for no real reason at all.

I liked the Team Meat commentary. There's a few points where they're like "wow, did we really say that stuff?"

It's also on Netflix.

I just don't feel the magic in "Humble Bundles" anymore. They used to be such a special event, infrequent enough that you eagerly anticipated the next.

Now, it feels as if they churn them out as fast as they can collect enough games to do another.

(This is not to disparage the excellent quality of the games in this bundle; indeed, I already own most of them.)

For me the magic about the humble bundles was never the games, but the charities. In this case more money for them is better, and one can never have too many games anyways. For as long as the bundles are still high quality I'll always get them.

Agreed, I often end up buying bundles where I already own half the games (or books like with the fiction bundle).

I do this too, because I feel like it's a good cause. I'm currently up to 14 bundles, and have a bunch of duplicates, but I keep buying them anyway.

Besides the charity aspect of it, the goal of humble bundles is to showcase indie developers so the more the merrier I say. That way exposure is given to as many game devs as possible.

I think it's a good sign that they're becoming more frequent. It means more DRM-free games out there, and more Linux and Mac games.

The magic is in more Linux games each time!

While I still buy every one of them (twice - one for me, one for my younger brother) - I don't get why they are still posted on HN. I love the bundles, but it just doesn't seem like it is startup news anymore.

They're a YC team and they have fans here. I'd argue these are more relevant to our day-to-days than the endless stream of "Twitter and Instagram battle!!" posts.

YC isn't a start up news service. From their posting guidelines you should post "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Fair enough - but, do you consider this to be news? I wouldn't want to see event Sponsorfied lists, or every deal Dealupa has . I'd be interested in knowing when they have a new feature, are talking about infrastructure, funding, etc. Listing their current sale on HN seems out of place and doesn't really gratify my personal curiosity. As I said - I love the site - I have bought almost all of the bundles and will continue to do so - this just doesn't feel like the news that should be here.

But that is just my opinion.

anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

So where is the intellectual curiosity in online store sells things? That sounds about as mundane as possible. They call it the 7th but considering the other non numbered ones this is more like the 10th or 12th. At this point I would be more curious to see why they stop.

I have previously felt that way, but every so often they bring out a scorcher of a bundle. For example, I'd been rather underwhelmed by some of the Android and dev-specific bundles, and then they came out with HIB#6 which was packed to the gills with games I'd heard of and really wanted to play.

For me, HIB#7 isn't as exciting as HIB#6 was because a few of the games in it just aren't my cup of tea, but I'm sure there's people out there who will love them just as much as I enjoyed Torchlight and Rochard.

I agree. I already own most of the game of bundles that come out. I used to buy them anyways, to give money to charity, but now that bundles are out so often, I think more about it.

It's good that the games aren't coupled in one big Steam key, so I can give the keys to friends or family (not sure if that's OK by Bundle rules though...)

> All keys are for your personal use only. Once you make a purchase, you should receive a unique download page. You shall not, directly or indirectly, disclose the unique URL for your download page to anyone else or use anyone else's download page. You are solely and entirely responsible for all activities that occur on your download page.

http://www.humblebundle.com/terms

They have a mechanism for gifting the entire bundle on the order form. The TOS seems to be an attempt to prohibit giving out the games from your bundle to different people piecemeal. The verbiage hasn't been updated since HB started giving out Steam keys instead of direct download links, but intent often matters as much as what's written in a courtroom.

That said, I doubt anyone would be upset about it. The keys are one-time-use so it really shouldn't matter if you or your relative redeems them.

I think part of the point of the Humble Bundle is that ... it's totally okay to do that.

A humble bundle once a month is probably okay. After a month you might want to try new games anyway.

I have every (but the THQ) Humble bundle so far. I think I've played 2 games so far. Just can't find the time. Oh well.

I wonder if they'll ever offer subscriptions

Binding of Isaac is a marvelous game. It feels like it shouldn't be, but I probably sunk 80+ hours into it, and I've not even touched the DLC.

It has that magic combination of art, humor, gameplay, and actual theme. It's 150+ hours for me, climbing toward all the Steam achievements (just got the Mamas Boy the other night).

Since you've already hit it pretty hard, I would add the DLC, it adds lots of Fun to the game. It does make performance take a major hit though, because of the way the developers used Flash.

My other piece of advice is: don't get spoiled. Don't read about the enemies, levels, powerups, etc. online. Just play the game and let it teach you.

I keep the wiki handy for a list of what all the powerups do (since I can never remember), but I can definitely see the fun in just tinkering with them if you're an "explorer" type.

To anyone getting it: there is some way to play it "properly", I think you should play the base game before you _install_ DLC, or something like that.

I cannot find any source to this, so please someone who played, correct me.

Some players recommend beating the game several times (yes, it makes sense in context) without the DLC, because the extra content makes it harder overall. Unfortunately this Humble Bundle includes both game and DLC in a single Steam license key, and includes the DLC in the download, so there's no way to avoid installing the DLC in this case.

Thanks to both you and the parent for the heads-up; I've got the original without DLC in a previous bundle, now I know to install/play it first.

Pretty sure that you're right, and that the game becomes a lot harder when you install the DLC, so you should play it sans-DLC first if you're new.

For those who haven't played Legends of Grimrock before: it's fun, but some of the puzzles are difficult to the point where you'll stop playing the game or look up solutions online.

Some of the puzzles are difficult to the point where even with the solution online it still means you have to repeat it 5-10 times to pass.

There's a small community modding new maps for the game: http://grimrock.nexusmods.com/mods/top/

It's very old-school, meaning a lot of the puzzles are rather mean and frustration without looking up a solution.

I actually used a speed hack to slow the game to 25% speed for one puzzle, because it needed a perfect sequence of moves to make it to a switch in time and it wasn't worth practicing until I could do it at full speed.

Then I quit because a solve-riddle-and-put-object-in-container puzzle required a rock, and the last time I saw a rock was 6 dungeon levels up. I get that "keep everything" is a thing in the old-school dungeon game, and I had the other stuff I needed but rocks? Who keeps them around just in case they are needed?

Anyone who has played the old-school Eye of the Beholder games. :P

(I gather Dredmore is in somewhat the same vein.)

No way. Dredmor is a fantastic game and largely forgiving in that sense. Not in the "kill you dead" sense, though. There's a lot of that.

I'm disappointed that none of the devs of games in HIBs have open-sourced their games since the first one. It was always fun to have a glimpse at the code. I guess the Lugaru source fiasco[0] may have discouraged other devs from open-sourcing their games.

It's also a bit odd that Indie Game: The Movie shows up as a game on Steam. I'm somewhat surprised that Valve hasn't properly expanded into the video/music space given that they sell both movies and soundtracks (to games) on Steam.

[0]http://blog.wolfire.com/2011/02/Counterfeit-Lugaru-on-Apple-...

Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon, Multiwinia) have released all source code of their previous games (they no longer working on) and afaik plan to do the same in the future (Prison Architect). The code was included in the Introversion Bundle, including read access to their developer svn repository. Still available here: http://www.introversion.co.uk/store/

Also Revenge of the Titans from HIB2 https://github.com/imaginationac/revenge-of-the-titans

edit: it was actually part of HIB2 not of HIB3(where it was added as bonus)

This is not "pay what you want" anymore.

In contrast to their initial "pay what you want" culture, now they are basically giving away few free games to encourage you to buy their paid games.

In the long run I think this will create a huge quality difference between the locked ones and the others.

Indie Game: The Movie is excellent. I guess I'll have to buy this one.

It's a really sad and depressing movie, but I did enjoy it.

Yes, I am ho-hum on the games available in this bundle but as a game developer dilettante, the movie makes it worth getting.

Well-timed for sort-of last minute Christmas presents.

In that spirit, is there a place where you can gift extra keys (for games you already own) and they distribute them in a charitable manner?

There is a subreddit on Reddit called Play it Forward for giving away games to other Reddit users: http://www.reddit.com/r/playitforward. It’s not fully automatic – you need to choose a winning commenter on your thread manually.

It seems they added a movie this time. Interesting. And the soundtracks (which became a tradition it seems) make it all sweeter.

They had a movie before in Humble Botanicula Debut Bundle: http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/21385865235/introducing-th...

I like the fact that they split the keys into different steam keys this time than grouping them together. Allows me to do interesting such as not unlocking Binding of Issac DLC at the moment (already owns the original Binding of Issac).

Lots of really good games this time around, I highly recommend this one to everyone. I swear my love of indie games is a double-edged sword, every time a new humble bundle comes out I already own the best games.

I find that, more and more, I'm only buying Humble Bundles for the soundtracks (or maybe the one single game I don't already own). Still tends to make them excellent value, IMO.

I love to see how Linux players always pay more than average: We are less, but we are willing to pay more :P

More Linux goodies, thanks HB!

Always love these indie bundles, Shank 2 should be worth it alone

I just bought Shank 2 yesterday. Darn.

In those instances I slide the devs money slider down and let it go more to charity. (And then give that copy to someone else to share the love.)

You can even expand the "developers" slot and adjust the portions per-game.

Same here. Those sliders always make buying a Humble Bundle a fun and very personalized experience.

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