The Indie Bundle Mega Thread

[MicoSelva]

Fanatical Build Your Own Summer Bundle has some decent titles to choose from, including:

Outcast: Second Contact
Breach & Clear
Hard West
Chroma Squad
Redeemer
Robothorium
Betrayer
Dungeons 2 Complete Edition
Overlord Ultimate Evil Collection
Shadowgate

You are paying up to $1 per game, I believe. Five games for $3. 10 games for $5.
(I am seeing prices in Euro/PLN so not sure what the US$ prices are.)

 

[markec]

https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/killer-bundle-18

Tier 1 for €4.99 you get Warhammer 40,000: Gladius and Shadow Tactics, among other games.

Tier 2 for €7.99 gets you Kingdom Come: Deliverance and dlc.

 

[4249]

The new build your own bundle from Fanatical has some decent titles.

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

3 For €9.99, 5 for 16.18€, 7 for 19.99€

Fallout: New Vegas
Surge 1 & 2
Trine 4
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry

Dunno if any of the others are worthwhile.

 

[MicoSelva]

Fanatical Guardian Bundle 3 features Insomnia: The Ark, among others.
I can also recommend the Diablo 1 love letter game Book of Demons and indie arty-farty puzzle platformer Papo & Yo. I have not played any of the others.

https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/guardian-bundle-3

TIER 1: Pay $1 or more to get Comedy Night, Shift Happens and Papo & Yo

TIER 2: Pay $3.99 to also receive Dungeons 3, The Uncertain: Light At The End, We. The Revolution, FALLBACK, INSOMNIA: The Ark and 3000th Duel

TIER 3: Pay $5.99 or more to get the top tier of games, including all the games in the first two tiers plus Afterparty, Book of Demons and Sense – 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story

 

[MicoSelva]

Shadows: Awakening is in the new Fanatical Omega Bundle, at the lowest price tier.

 

[4249]

New Platinum Bundle from Fanatical has some interesting titles, though not sure if worth it for the price tiers they have (3 for 9,99€, 5 for 14,99€, 7 for 19,99€):

Beautiful Desolation
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
Valfaris

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Absolutely got my eye on Beautiful Desolation but finding 2 other games is the hard part. Thinking Encodya and Shantae, Encodya just since it's a point and click so it's worth consideration and Shantae because I rarely give a shit about platformers but I think they're supposed to be good to decent. Mostly a "$10 for Beautiful Desolation and two throw-ins" though.

 

[Jenkem]

Trüberbrook is also a point and click.

House of Da Vinci is a decent puzzle adventure game

 

[4249]

Might also be good to see what the next Humble Monthly has in store, before grabbing stuff from the Fanatical bundle. I think it runs past the next Humble reveal anyways, although they're not 100% clear on how long the bunlde runs for. Last month's humble monthly already had Encodya for example.

 

[Jenkem]

Might also be good to see what the next Humble Monthly has in store, before grabbing stuff from the Fanatical bundle. I think it runs past the next Humble reveal anyways, although they're not 100% clear on how long the bunlde runs for. Last month's humble monthly already had Encodya for example.

Encodya in the Humble Monthly is GOG key while this one is Steam, if people have a preference. As far as how long the Fanatical Bundle will last it will presumably be the entire month of September, this is like the 3rd? month in a row where they've had a pick/choose platinum bundle and each month has been different (maybe a repeat here and there)

 

[Zann]

Trüberbrook is also a point and click.

PSA : Trüberbrook is a piece of shit.

 

[4249]

Oh wow, they've been giving some false hopes with a couple ok'ish choice months, but the September Humble Choice looks like utter shit once again. PGA Tour 2K21 as a headliner, jesus christ. Even the indie stuff looks like total bundle fodder. Do correct me if there's anything worthwhile there though.

PGA Tour 2K21
Neon Abyss
Not For Broadcast
Roki
Narita Boy
West of Dead
Atomicrops
Heaven's Vault
Swag and Sorcery
Fort Triumph
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Framed Collection

 

[Abu Antar]

Well, I've paused 6/9 months this year. I traded an old bundle key with someone, and in return, I got Fort Triumph.

 

[Rahdulan]

Also pausing for some months now. I just buy one or two games I'm interested in separately.

 

[pakoito]

Oh wow, they've been giving some false hopes with a couple ok'ish choice months, but the September Humble Choice looks like utter shit once again. PGA Tour 2K21 as a headliner, jesus christ. Even the indie stuff looks like total bundle fodder. Do correct me if there's anything worthwhile there though.

....

I can vouch for Heaven's Vault but it's not a headliner. Narita Boy got a lot of hype that ended in nothing.

 

[Latelistener]

PGA Tour 2K21
Neon Abyss
Not For Broadcast
Roki
Narita Boy
West of Dead
Atomicrops
Heaven's Vault
Swag and Sorcery
Fort Triumph
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Framed Collection

Not For Broadcast, Roki, Atomicrops, Heaven's Vault and Framed all have 90%+ of positive reviews on Steam.
Neon Abyss and Narita Boy have 80%+ of positive reviews.
Orwell and West of Dead are nice bonuses, but they have just below 80% of positive reviews.

The problem is that the headliner is an absolute shit of a choice. It may not be a bad game, but it's bad as a headliner.
Another problem is that 4 of these games were already bundled.

I see a lot of paused / unsubscribed accounts because of this.

 

[MicoSelva]

Shit month at a first glance, but it turns out six of these games are on my gg.deals wishlist for one reason or another. Getting them for $2 each is probably not the worst deal, even if I don't care about the other six.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Röki is a good adventure game. Not worth it alone, of course (it probably costs less at full price than Humble Choice does), but it's definitely not bundle fodder. I mean, many good adventure games ARE bundle fodder and crop up everywhere, but it's not shit, is what I'm saying.

 

[Jenkem]

Shit month at a first glance, but it turns out six of these games are on my gg.deals wishlist for one reason or another. Getting them for $2 each is probably not the worst deal, even if I don't care about the other six.

which six don't you care about and what are you playing to do with them?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Shit month at a first glance, but it turns out six of these games are on my gg.deals wishlist for one reason or another. Getting them for $2 each is probably not the worst deal, even if I don't care about the other six.

That was basically my exact same line of thought. Initially thought it looked bad, but then there were 5 games in the list I was at least a bit interested in and if any of them individually were on sale for $2 I'd probably feel okay buying them so they nabbed me. Not the greatest bundle deal but the threshold to be worth $2 is low enough it's worth a roll of the dice. Usually there'll be one game in those Humble bundles that nearly sells the bundle to me by itself and everything else is gravy, this didn't have anything I was excited about but a lot of smaller games I wouldn't mind looking at at least.

Will give one slightly odd recommendation though, Glass Masquerade. I snagged both of those games, Mindseize, and some garbage (Since 5's the same price as 3) from this bundle and Glass Masquerade's quite pleasant for turning your brain off and doing jigsaws. Relaxing music, nice art, pleasing sound and UI. Grabbed it on a whim since I'd also heard that Mindseize is supposed to be decent to good and surprisingly enough it really hit the spot. Probably because I've been deprived of Popcap for good relaxing casual games.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-gems-bundle

 

[Siveon]

I'm not really interested in randomly generated content right now, which takes up the majority of the list. Neon Abyss was neat from the demo I played, and West of Dead was just fairly bland. I already beat Framed on mobile, which is cute but not worth a double dip.

Heaven's Vault is probably the most interesting game here for me, but I'll probably get it separately.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Will give one slightly odd recommendation though, Glass Masquerade. I snagged both of those games, Mindseize, and some garbage (Since 5's the same price as 3) from this bundle and Glass Masquerade's quite pleasant for turning your brain off and doing jigsaws. Relaxing music, nice art, pleasing sound and UI. Grabbed it on a whim since I'd also heard that Mindseize is supposed to be decent to good and surprisingly enough it really hit the spot. Probably because I've been deprived of Popcap for good relaxing casual games.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-gems-bundle

I was pleasantly surprised by Mindseize some months ago, it's really an excellent metroidvania. Superb exploration, shitton of upgrades, multiple worlds with distinct themes and specific enemy rosters. It's almost straight up emulating Metroid's movement and combat (outside of melee weapons) and that's a plus as far as I'm concerned.
It had a rough launch by the looks of it which where some of the negativity came from. And I guess that the art in the intro might not leave the best first impression.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Going to toss a quick seal of approval toward Neon Abyss. The odd part is it's fairly obviously worse than its roguelite competitors in any 1 to 1 comparison EXCEPT for casual play. It has the "Let the items do what they will and carry me" aspect of Isaac only with less chaff so there's more chance of succeeding if you play like that so it's been really nice to throw a run in here and there. Even though I'm saying I'm enjoying it it's also tough to genuinely recommend just because Hades/Gungeon/Throne/Isaac exist, not to mention Slay the Spire if someone's a card fiend. Certainly a point in favor of the Humble bundle though, since even though it's not a top of the heap time waster I've already put 6 hours into it amazingly enough and enjoyed every one.

To highlight a few of the negatives though, it looks like it's lighter on content than basically any of those (Throne might be lighter though it's more tightly put together. The mechanics gel a lot more) but it's also hard to tell because in another negative, they put a lot of the goddamn gameplay mechanics behind unlocks. Secret rooms are an early unlock, special shops and minigames are unlocks, a hell of a lot of items and characters are unlocks, etc. Another sad part is the hitbox for the player feels off. Since I'm not recording myself I can't tell if it's a matter of perception (As in, the bullet did actually hit me but the slow motion dying animation is off-kilter to such a degree that it LOOKS like it should have missed) or if the hitbox is just a little bigger than the sprite, but it feels wrong. That said a lot of the negatives aren't as bad if you're just playing on normal and smashing dumb items together to see what happens. It'd probably grate on someone more if they were playing with the specific intention of gittin' gud, which the other roguelites are much better at for various reasons.

 

[pakoito]

Can anyone explain why they like StS so much? I won a handful of runs and the deckbuilding aspect was just meh. Maybe as you unlocked more cards, but I'd rather play dunno...Erannorth instead.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Can anyone explain why they like StS so much? I won a handful of runs and the deckbuilding aspect was just meh. Maybe as you unlocked more cards, but I'd rather play dunno...Erannorth instead.

Solid balance, roughly an hour long for a good run, and player skill has a particularly large impact on it. There isn't much in the way of unlocking when it comes to StS (Each class can unlock a few relics and a few cards, but you unlock them after a few plays so it's less of a continual goal and more "Here's the class with some of the weirder mechanics held back so you can get the basic gist of it"). Player skill having a larger impact on it than, say, Erannorth is because StS is a much more contained experience. Erannorth's got umpteen encounter compositions so there's no realistic way to plan for the future. Further, a lot of the encounters in StS will specifically punish and be punished by certain deck compositions, so you might want to take a card to strengthen yourself against X future encounter even though it might weaken you in Y encounter. Encounters in Erannorth usually aren't as punishing based on your deck composition. You might be playing a rogue and focusing on bleed and run into undead so you're SOL, but that's one of the more extreme examples and a little easier to build around (Namely, making sure you have some non-bleed shit). In STS an enemy might power each time you attack, or each time you play a card, and "Playing lots of cards" and "Making lots of attacks" are common mechanics among the classes so even if you're not as skilled playing one class you have a decent idea you might run into that kind of enemy during your run and can pick cards accordingly.

Speaking of picking cards, the power level per-card in StS tends to be higher than Erannorth and deck management itself is more important. In Erannorth you want to accumulate all the cards you can because you can edit your deck on the fly (More akin to something like Shandalar) while in StS you may want to pass on good cards simply because removing cards from your deck is a precious resource. There are some cases where having a fat deck is a good idea in StS but typically you want to keep yourself at a light and consistent level. There's no minimal deck size like in Erannorth too so having infinite combos is a bit easier to pull off if you get the right cards and can trim your deck enough.

Also regarding fat deck sometimes being good, that's a good segue into relics. Relics in StS can be ridiculously powerful and can be great build-arounds which is just another thing to consider when you're offered cards. Equipment in Erannorth is useful since you can guarantee a card or two in hand and can shore up weaknesses but I can't think of an example off the top of my head where you'd dramatically change your deck because of it.

I'll settle down my rambling but StS is far and away my favorite deckbuilder and probably up there in my favorite games period. The style of deckbuilding is a bit different between Erannorth and StS since Erannorth is collecting cards and then building a deck out of what you have, while in StS you're playing with your deck while building it which can mean you can take some cards you might not otherwise simply because you really need some AoE/more defense/etc. That could be where our different stances on it stem from, you might prefer having all your cards laid out and then building something out of them while I get my kicks weighing up card choices on immediate needs and future needs.