The Indie Bundle Mega Thread

[Markman]

I usually pick up $6 humble bundle if there's anything interesting in it that I want to play(Have 50+ so far). I skipped most of the last weeklys and even monthly bundles cause there wasnt anything that wasnt pixalated trash showelware.

I liked Bundlestars bundles more cause they had more value and some nice blast from the past games in em(like Cossacks) and even some good newer shit from EU/Russian publishers.

Groupees is so-so, lots of shitty games I'm never gonna play, Meridian4 was a good bundle and maybe 2 or 3 more, imo.

Got fuckloads of Indiegala bundles too, mostly for the good price but they had some really good games in their bundles. When I look at the history of the bundles I purchased overthere compared to what they bundle in now, the difference is night and day.

BlinkBundle so far had 1 good bundle with Silent Storm: Gold and thats about it. Same for IndieRoyale, lots of greenlight crap and 1 good game per 10 bundles.

And it still pisses me off when people go on and post and ask if the bundle is worth 1.50 or 3 or 5 bucks. If you're not a collector and want to play a certain game in the bundle then its worth it. Its always worth it. Stop asking these stupid fucking questions all the time.
2 bucks aint gonna change your eating/living habits.

 

[Turjan]

I don't think any of the participants in the current discussion can be accused of not buying any games.

 

[Markman]

I don't think any of the participants in the current discussion can be accused of not buying any games.

I didnt mean now, but in general there's always a smartass with "hai guyz, is it worth it 1,50 for 8 games" present.

 

[LundB]

2 bucks aint gonna change your eating/living habits.

Neither would a few thousand but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be stupid to spend on games. Don't question my Jewing over insignificant 5 dorra price differences.

But yes, anything 5 dorra and lower that you actually want is fucking obviously worth it unless you've got a huge backlog and will realistically not play it for ages/ever.

 

[Metro]

Most of the 'regular' bundle sites have been putting out shit lately. Two bucks is nothing but why throw two bucks down the crapper if you have zero intention of playing any of the games included? Do that a dozen times and you can get yourself a game you would play for the amount spent.

 

[RK47]

That bundle with QF-Infamy is pr. good value.
bought n looking forward to have a look at the game.

 

[TigerKnee]

I'm hoping for a Humble Cryptic Comet bundle with all his games in it so he's got a pile of dosh to work on his board games

Is that guy even doing games any more? He went radio silent after the Cthulu mystery game (which was a disappointment compared to his previous games)

 

[Insane Psychic]

Is that guy even doing games any more? He went radio silent after the Cthulu mystery game (which was a disappointment compared to his previous games)

I think he made an announcement in early january that he was shifting to board games entirely.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yep, what Psychic said. He's shifting gears to board games, seemingly because he doesn't want to learn how to make videogames in something smoother than whatever the hell he made AE and SI in, and because he's still angry that Valve wouldn't let him in to Steam. Even though he probably could get in to Steam now if he did Greenlight and promoted his shit. I think Occult Whatever is in Greenlight but he just kinda slipped it out there and didn't do a song and dance for PR so it hasn't gone anywhere.

 

[TigerKnee]

Oh, he's doing ACTUAL board games now.

Ah well, hope it works out for him and someone ports his games into a computerized form then

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The Humble Bundle store has a Games Workshop sale for the weekend.

Good as chance as any to grab those DLCs at a discount.

I took one look and felt sick to the stomach. If it isn't overpriced, then it has tons of DLCs, and most of the titles are both.

 

[t]

King of Dragon Pass for android in the humble mobile bundle. Minute 1 purchase for me.

 

[Turjan]

King of Dragon Pass for android in the humble mobile bundle. Minute 1 purchase for me.

Thanks for the heads-up.

LYNE is also quite a decent game, if you like that kind of puzzles.

 

[stony3k]

King of Dragon Pass for android in the humble mobile bundle. Minute 1 purchase for me.

Same here. Thanks for the update

 

[tuluse]

Since it's relevant, I made a guide for how to emulate android on a PC specifically for KotDP.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/android-emulation-guide-kotdp-edition.95878/

 

[Dim]

Anyone know enough about card games to say if the bundles worth buyin?

 

[TigerKnee]

I tried the demo of Star Realms and I think it's worth $1 if you enjoy Deck-building card games.

And Talisman is rather popular amongst the older school board gamers I think. Doesn't fit my personal tastes, but I'm sure some people would enjoy it.

No idea about SolForge and Scrolls.

Duels of the Planeswalker used to be good as a casual Magic adaptation, but they got too Jewish in this version so if you want to play Magic, download the free program Forge instead.

As for Dominion, it's the granddaddy of Deck-building card games and a good game, but I don't know if this adaptation is good.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Wellllllllllllllllllll...

Scrolls is apparently normally $5. I've heard that (Supposedly) it's fairly generous with giving you in-game cash to pick up boosters (And it has trading between players and I believe an in-game auction house/store thing so you can more easily go for certain cards if you're building something) but I haven't played it yet myself so I can't really judge if any of that's true or even if the game is any fun. I've heard some fairly good things though. Don't know enough to say how valuable the $12 tier is (Two premade decks and two cosmetic player models).
Edit: Checked out the Scrolls funny money. The premade decks are for sale in their shop and buying both would run you roughly $15 in real cash money dollars. You could also buy them using the in-game currency.

I've played some Sol Forge and it's definitely not a BAD game but I never really got in to it. I assume the "Starters" they mention are prebuilt decks, because last time I played Sol Forge the only way you could buy cards was through boosters or a handful of premade decks. It was (No idea if it still is) fairly generous with the daily rewards, and you could bang out all 3 dailies in like 15 minutes which often would get you something like 2-5 boosters a day, but I've heard the power creep has gotten worse with the new set(s) added so there's a massive difference between well stocked players and not. And since you can put cards 4 deep in a Sol Forge deck that makes building an effective deck even more expensive since you need more good cards. What you're getting from the bundle here isn't terrible but it's not a huge deal.

Don't know anything about Star Realms.

Talisman Digital Edition's good. It's the board game done up on computuh. The character packs are nothing very important, and Talisman Prologue is basically just baby solitaire version which isn't entirely awful but probably won't keep you interested much unless you like zoning out.

Magic 2015 sounds like a mixed bag. I've been a big fan of the modern Duels of the Planeswalkers games since they've been 10+ premade decks you can rub up against one another for a cheap price. Mechanically Magic's a lot of fun to play, but there are two problems with playing it in reality: #1 It's expensive as fuck unless you've got casual bros to casually play it with, which is difficult because #2 90% of all physical Magic players are terrible people. Both of those reasons are why I enjoyed the computer games, since it has surprisingly good AI considering the complexity of the game and let me enjoy Magic again now that my casual bro team has drifted apart. What makes 2015 slightly iffier is it does away with the prebuilt decks (Well, you start with one of three (?) prebuilts in the beginning) and then win boosters and cards while playing, which you then use to improve your deck/build other decks. Makes it much worse as a newbie Magic introduction and tends to piss off other people since you have to either grind or buy full card set unlocks to get all your options open. I still haven't picked Magic 2015 up yet myself though I will eventually.

Dominion is apparently an excellent board game, but I know absolutely jack shit about this free to play browser version. Is it a loyal port of the board game? Is there any free to play cheese in the base set beyond just buying normal expansions? Damned if I know. I just know the board game is supposedly good.

Card Hunter is another free to play browser game (Which is supposedly coming to Steam) but after taking a peek at it I'm sorely tempted to splash on the $12 tier of the bundle myself. Looks like some fun turn based party based card-playing dice-rolling semi-RPG combat. The "Basic edition" which is what's in the bundle is sold for $25 normally in their store, and includes cosmetic alternate figurines for heroes, something like $2.50 of the in-game funny money, and 11 "Treasure hunter" adventures which are/were the only premium adventures in the game. The majority being free for everyone, though they apparently recently added a $15 expansion with a pile of new adventures and figurines. Haven't played enough to say how tactically interesting the later adventures get (My party is level 2-2-1 at the moment, cap is I wanna say 20) but it seems like there's room for some cool battles in their system.
Quick rundown of how an encounter works, each party member draws a hand of cards (Always with 1 movement card) out of each hero's "Deck". The deck being built of shit based on the character's race and class/items. So while a mace might have 6 damage swing, 2 4 damage swings, and a 2 damage swing an axe might have a 5 damage 2 target (In melee range) swing, 2 damage 2 target in melee swing, and a 2 damage swing. Each card is an action that character can use that round, and a round ticks over when both players pass contiguous turns. Then you draw a new set of cards and keep chugging. Most damage is a flat number tied to a card, and the dice rolling mainly comes in from armor (Blocking with shields/parrying with weapons/absorbing damage with armor) checks, which are also cards. So you might end up with a more defensive turn if you drew a bunch of blocks/armors, etc. There's a bit more to it with line of sight, uneven terrain, various buffs/debuffs and movement related cards (Teleport other's cool. I want that on my wizard) and monsters draw and play cards by group. So for example a group of 3 goblins draw a hand of cards based on their type and then only they can use those cards.

So yeah. Bundle's weird. The pricing doesn't seem very good but I'm a sucker for card games and (Importantly) seem to like Card Hunter so I'm thinking about going in for $12 but I'm waffling myself because that's a lot of free to play, buuuuuut muh card games. It's worth at the very least a dollar if you haven't got Talisman, but beyond that just depends on you.

 

[Turjan]

It's worth at the very least a dollar if you haven't got Talisman, but beyond that just depends on you.

Yup, I dropped a dollar on this for Talisman.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I JUPED ON KODP ATER I GOT THE EMAIL I WAS STOKED

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Continuing my rant about card games, I took a look at both Scrolls and Dominion.

Scrolls (Like most card games) seems like it would be a lot of fun to casually bro with, but I could see it being a massive pain in the ass playing against skilled players while you're a newbie. Each turn you can either sacrifice a card to gain 1 land (Or mana crystal if you're a Hearthstone player) or sacrifice a card to draw two cards, so there's no mana screw but even a simple mechanic like that could really fuck you if you don't know what you're doing. Plus keeping track of how many turns until each dude attacks (And moving units around the board) is another layer of fiddliness, and I assume there are cards to quicky shove units around the board but since I'm new I have no idea if there actually are or how to play around them.
It does seem relatively generous with the in-game money, and oddly enough it seems like you could get a full set of common cards for almost nothing. I opened up one booster just to see what it was like, and if I was to sell the rare and one uncommon out of it I would make back more than the gold I spent buying the booster. Either I got lucky with the booster (Possible) or Scrolls' economy is such that the commons are basically useless (Also looks likely because commons were selling for 10-30 gold on the auction house and a single round of the game against the easy AI earns you 100 gold). Don't think I'll get super in to it but even if I don't buy in on the bundle I'll probably fuck around with it for a while.

Edit: Although messing with scrolls again it seems even weirder. I've got some commons that are apparently selling for 300 gold, the ones I glanced at yesterday were just some oddly cheap ones. So that one booster would probably run me 2,500-3,000 gold if I sold the individual pieces. What the fuck.

Dominion runs like absolute ass. I don't know if it's because they're getting crushed with Humble buyers or what, but I had an absolute bear of a time even getting the buttons on the main menu to do anything. Once I did get in to a game the computer completely mopped the floor with me (Had watched a video explaining the basics of the game beforehand since the goddamn tutorial button never worked) but it was pretty enjoyable. Kind of a fun snowballing feel to building your deck up. If their web program wasn't such a piece of shit (Or better yet, was a normal videogame) I'd probably be all over it. The performance is so bad I can't really play the damn thing though (Or register an account, my one game was as a guest) so that kind of ruins it. If they get their shit straightened out it would be pretty enjoyable though.

 

[Minttunator]

I just played a few games of Dominion with my girlfriend and it was pretty fun. We both love the real life card game and the web version is a faithful port of that - so it definitely has the potential to be great, but the program does need a lot of work in terms of usability and responsiveness.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yup, was working well earlier and I played a bit more and was able to register an account. Game's mighty enjoyable. There are a hell of a lot of expansions beyond just the three you get from the bundle, but even the base set seems pretty large so it wouldn't feel like it's lacking.

Overall the bundle seems surprisingly good given the number of free to play (And almost-free to play) games in it. Still don't know anything about Star Realms, but Dominion, Card Hunter, Scrolls, Magic 2015 and Talisman are all varying degrees of . The Sol Forge pack is a bummer though, I only just now noticed the "Two deck pack" you get in the BTA tier includes a second copy of the dinosaur deck in the $1 tier. Apparently you can activate both which just means more cards in your card pool, but it is a bummer that it's two copies of the same deck.

In fact, if you want to see a little bit of Card Hunter I streamed some for a buddy who was curious about it last night. http://www.twitch.tv/m_hc/b/613976705 Still pretty low level adventuring but it gives you the idea.

 

[MicoSelva]

Star Realms in basically Dominion IN SPACE. The mechanics are very similar, but I actually like Star Realms a bit more (even ignoring the more attractive theme). Also, it has a single-player story mode and Android app which works also on phones (unlike Scrolls and Hearthstone).

Talisman Digital is decent, but it gets repetivie just with the base board - too few cards - and needs expansions to stay fresh longer.
Not that it makes any difference now, that I have KoDP on my phone.

 

[Astral Rag]

http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/codemasters-raising-hell-bundle/

The Overlord games + other stuff for 3.7€