

Humble Indie Bundle 5: pay what you want for video games - jeff18
http://www.humblebundle.com/?hib5

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courtewing
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.

~~~
lordlicorice
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.

~~~
ja2ke
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.

~~~
Jach
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.)

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

That was actually Penumbra: Overture

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tomku
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...](http://blog.canonical.com/2012/05/31/humble-indie-
bundle-5-comes-to-the-ubuntu-software-centre/)

~~~
aw3c2
The Linux versions are directly downloadable after buying but you can also
redeem them in the USC on the same page.

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franciscoapinto
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.

~~~
chocolatebunny
Unfortunately I've played all of them except Pychonaughts.

~~~
egypturnash
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.

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technomancy
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).

~~~
aw3c2
In the Humble Bundle you also get FLAC and MP3 downloads of the games'
soundtracks as little additional gimmick.

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CrazedGeek
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.

~~~
CmdrKrool
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...

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Splines
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.

~~~
HCIdivision17
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.

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HazzyPls
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.

~~~
tedunangst
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.

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

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pwny
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!

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

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

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aw3c2
Warning: Limbo for Linux is just the windows game packaged with wine.

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ch0wn
That's sad. I hope this doesn't become a trend for future Indie Bundles.

~~~
jiggy2011
afaik quite a lot of the indie bundle games are basically this.

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jeff18
Negative, this is the first one.

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jiggy2011
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.

~~~
jeff18
Nah, Frozen Synapse was natively ported by Ryan Gordon.

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eupharis
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.

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StavrosK
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.

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ced
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.

~~~
achompas
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.)

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adam-a
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.

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

~~~
dkersten
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!

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freditup
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?

~~~
fishbacon
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.

~~~
Dejital
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.

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Feoh
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 :)

~~~
masklinn
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.

~~~
DoublePlusWill
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.

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Kell
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 :-)

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

~~~
alanfalcon
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!

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

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

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Falling3
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.

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alexleavitt
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

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Kelliot
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!

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bitwize
Sweet, they got Psychonauts in there?

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

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mxfh
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.

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moondowner
Limbo for Linux! Totally buying it!

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powersurge360
It's just wrapped in wine, unfortunately. Still, works really nicely.

~~~
binarycrusader
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.

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kreek
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.

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alainbryden
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.

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aurynn
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.

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

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

~~~
ticks
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.

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

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

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rsanchez1
They really came out with a great bundle. So great, that I have already bought
all the other games. It makes a great gift.

