Sunday, August 12, 2012

Indie Royale: The Gone Fishin' Bundle



Indie Royale's new bundle is out. It features seven-ish games.

The headliner is SOL: Exodus, a space dogfighter game. This is really not a genre that interests me. Maybe at some point I'll play Star Fox 64 or something, I dunno, but I'm not excited by the trailer for this one and I suspect I'd never get around to playing it unless I forced myself. Not a selling point for me.

Next is All Zombies Must Die!, an arena-type shooter of some sort where you shoot zombies. So, like Zombie Shooter except different, I assume. It has a co-op mode, but realistically, I'm never going to play the co-op mode. This game interests me a little...I might pay about $1-2 for it.

Then we have Cubemen, which is another Tower Defense game. The market is saturated with these. My Steam library is saturated with these. I really don't need any more. Especially since this one is aesthetically unappealing. I would not buy this game on its own, and I probably wouldn't play it.

Squids is next. It's an RPG that is clearly intended for iOS. I'm watching the gameplay footage in the trailer and imagining playing it on a non-handheld, non-touchscreen system...yeah, that's not happening. Sorry. To its credit, the game looks cute and amusing, and I probably would play it on an iPad or iPhone. I just wouldn't play it on my laptop.

VectorGeddon is...well, remember that old game with the missiles that would rain down on your cities and you had to shoot the missiles with your own missiles to protect your cities until you eventually died? I don't remember what that game is called, but this game is the same general idea. Guys coming at you, you blow them up, and there you go. Again, this is the sort of derpy casual game I might play on a portable system but not on a PC. I'd consider it a neat bonus if the bundle were already worth buying, but not a selling point.

Finally, Platformance is nominally two games, but from what I can tell they look pretty much the same. There's one where you're a knight in a castle, and another where you're an explorer in a temple. They're "Platform Hell" games along the lines of Super Meat Boy or N. From what I can tell, they look like games I'd enjoy, but they're also very short, so I wouldn't pay much for them. Maybe $1 for one or $1.50 for both.


So the question looms: to buy or not to buy?

I am leaning towards the not-buy. There's nothing really exciting here for me. Platformance and All Zombies Must Die! look interesting, but not worth $5.50. The price I'd be willing to pay on this one is more like $2-3.

Now, you may be thinking, "But that's only a couple dollars less than the actual price! Is it really that big a deal?" Well, yes. It's like double what I want to pay. You can't just go around paying double the price on everything. Remember, the main draw of these indie bundles is that they're cheap. These aren't games I want because I'm excited about their content, they're games that might be worth trying because of how heavily discounted they are. And if they're not actually discounted, why should I pay attention to them at all?

That being said, I'll sleep on it.

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