The description on the site claims that there's almost 600 video games here and it seems that about half of them have never appeared in any previous itch.io charity bundles. I had a scroll through to see if there were any names I recognised and I saw things like SkateBIRD, Baba is You, Backbone, GNOG, Wandersong, A Short Hike, CrossCode, Celeste, Superhot, Minit, Glittermitten Grove, Super Hexagon, Sundered: Eldritch Edition, 2064: Read Only Memories, and GoNNER. Here, you can check for yourself with this handy website that someone smart made: randombundlegame.com.
Fortunately guest poster mecha-neko has volunteered to do half of the writing here, so the article will be covering more games than I actually have time to check out! I mean seriously, the bundle ends in just a couple of days and I need to get this published while there's still time for anyone to buy it.
| Backbone | ||
The music's pretty much perfect as well, depending on your tolerance for jazz. This looks and sounds exactly like a game about a raccoon private detective should do, and it's dripping with atmosphere. So put that on the top of the list of things it gets right. There are no voices, but that's very forgivable with all the dialogue it has. 
It's got adventure game style dialogue options but a lot of the time it basically just had me choosing whether my poor raccoon detective was holding it together or not. He's only supposed to be investigating a woman's husband, but he soon stumbles upon something much darker and more disturbing. Put it this way, if you've ever wanted to see a pixel raccoon throw up and then hit the bottle in despair, this is the game for you. If you're into point-and-click puzzle solving it might not be your thing however. 
Sometimes you need to collect items to continue, but I didn't come across anything like an inventory puzzle. On the plus side you basically can't miss the objects you can interact with, as you can only walk left and right and it tells you when you're next to something. 
From what I've seen from the first hour or so Backbone definitely seems to be worth checking out. Just as long as you're into bleak atmospheric dystopian detective horror stories with lots of talking and not a whole lot of gameplay. And also anthropomorphic characters. | ||
| Guest Review by mecha-neko | ||
| Widget Satchel | ||
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I bought Widget Satchel in one of the earlier Itch bundles, and
shamefully (but not entirely unexpectedly) never got around to playing
it. In fact, if I recall, I bought the bundle because of
Widget Satchel because I'm a sucker for cute animal mascot
platformers. So here he is!
You play as a cute little 2D flat shaded ferret named Sprocket who lives on a space station and one day decides to steal everything he can and explode everything he can't. I'm not sure what else you're supposed to be doing or why. What I was expecting was a game where you'd collect components and design and build things yourself to help you get through rooms and to solve puzzles. I don't know how I got that impression because the game is nothing like that at all. It's a straightforward puzzle platform game where you've got to explore the station and collect gizmos lying around so you can exchange them for Metroidvania upgrades like object-pulling magnets and jet boots. 
The camera locks onto individual room puzzles, which gave me a Jet Set Willy vibe at first as I picked up the gizmos, but the game mechanics are nowhere near as mechanical and reliable and sturdy as that. There's always little cogs and debris and explosions flying around the screen with a nifty physics engine, but as far as I can tell that's all for show and none of it really does anything. There's no physics puzzles like swinging from ropes or stacking boxes. Widget Satchel's main flavour of puzzle is pulling levers in sequence to allow slow trundling robots to go from one area to another so they activate stuff for you. So, awkward timing challenges and escorting. 
What absolutely ruins Widget Satchel is that every enemy can knock your money out of you and most of the time there's no way to get it back. How on Earth you're supposed to complete the incredibly long levels and collect enough stuff to afford the higher-level character upgrades without restarting from a (very infrequent) checkpoint every time you make a tiny mistake, I don't know. It's just not a very nicely designed game at all. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the title music reminded me of Jazz Jackrabbit. Not what I wanted to play then, but at least now you'll know what you're getting yourself in for if you decide to give this one a shot. If you'd like to play a game that's a heck of a lot better, look for the game Gateways by Smudged Cat, or maybe Stealth Bastards / Inc. or The Lost Vikings. - mecha-neko |
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| Circa Infinity | ||
 It's basically a platformer which takes place on and inside a series of nested circles. You're running around the outside at first, but if you make it over to the bit with the cutout wedge you can flip so that you're running around on the inside instead. Then you have to jump up onto the tiny circle within and that becomes the next bit you're running around on. And so on. What complicates things is that there are also enemies walking around the circles, which have to be avoided. Also everything's spinning all of the time. 
It requires some reflexes and you have to keep remembering that your controls are also inverted when you're upside down, but I think I'd describe this as being a puzzle game more than anything. You can really fly through circle after circle when you get the hang of it, but I found it was worth stopping a moment to observe the pattern of enemies and come up with a plan for how I was going to make it through the gauntlet. Not that the penalty for failure is all that bad, as you just get knocked back to the previous circle. It reminded me a little of that old ZX Spectrum game Jumping Jack actually. You're always trying to run around each level, finding the right moment to jump up. Well, almost always. 
Personally I enjoyed the game, though it didn't really hold my attention for long. I stuck with it long enough to complete the first set of stages just so I had something finished on the level select screen, but after that I needed a break. I think I'd still recommend it though, especially as I've never seen anything like it, and it nails what it's trying to do. The techno soundtrack's catchy enough as well. |
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| Cloud Gardens | ||
 First thing it has you do is put a seed down somewhere on the floating island of concrete among the rusted remnants of human civilisation. Then once you've done that you have to encourage it to grow. Traditionally plants need things like soil, sunlight, water etc. but these particular plants crave trash. There's a swarm of junk hovering in your interface and you can grab items from it to place on the stage. Stick them close enough to a plant and it'll grow.  Large heavy objects have the biggest effect on plant growth though (indicated by the huge green circle). Stick a car down on the level and everything in range is going to grow a bit, and hopefully sprout some seeds. Collect enough of them to fill the meter on the right and you get to place another plant! Any plant you want in fact, it doesn't have to be the same type as the seeds you collected.  Sometimes the game gets a bit stingy with the items it gives you and you have to make sure to place the seeds close enough so you can grow multiple plants with the same bits of junk you're putting down. It is technically possible to fail, but I've played maybe 20 stages so far and most of them I was able to beat by just doing whatever I felt like. I probably would've kept going a bit longer actually, it's weirdly addictive, but I've got all this other stuff that needs writing about! If I had kept going I would've had to turn the music off though, as it's got one of those generative soundscapes that aren't my thing. The game's got a creative mode as well that I didn't try, and a photo mode that I also didn't try, and I'd say that if you ever feel like covering ruins with plants for a bit, this will bring you a suitable amount of joy. |
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| Guest Review by mecha-neko | ||
| SNAAAK | ||
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What a name! What could it possibly be? It's a 'short atmospheric Snakevania' where you play a fluorescent orange energy line that escapes from containment and must explore an abandoned facility in search of the truth and ultimately escape. Back in the day, every game that was similar to Doom was a 'Doom clone'. SNAAAK (or to give it its full title 10mg: SNAAAK) is a 'Carrion clone'. Kinda. Here, your SNAAAK moves like the Snake from, well, the old computer game Snake. 
This is definitely not a game that outstays its welcome. I'd have felt shortchanged had I bought it for money by itself, but as a nifty game you might not have even known that you own, it's worth your time. Go have yourself a SNAAAK. - mecha-neko |
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| A Good Snowman is Hard to Build | ||
There are three balls in each area and they have to be pushed around on the snow so you can make them different sizes and stack them up. You can see on the puzzle above I'm pretty much done, I just need to push the head up one space, and then three spaces to the left. Completing the snowman will open up a couple of exits, giving me access to the adjacent puzzles. 
I like how the creature picks a name for their creation the moment they enter the room though. They're much better than me at coming up with names, and they know exactly who they're making. It's pretty straightforward this one, so I'm sure you can tell if you'd want to play it just by looking at it. If you're staring at those balls up there trying to figure out how you'd shove them around to stack them up correctly, then this is the game for you. It seems like it could get bloody difficult though. |
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| Guest Review by mecha-neko | ||
| Schildmaid MX: Neutral. Shield. Danger. | ||
It's a really professional job with some nifty nifty music and good graphics that are kind of let down by a scruffy-looking outlined style that I don't get along with. Schildmaid MX has a neat Ikaruga-like mechanic. It's a mechanic so neat that you won't be allowed to play the game proper until you can demonstrate you know how to do it. The energy bullets the enemies' fire can't hurt you. I know! Cool, right? When you get hit, your ship's shield automatically activates and, while it's active, energy bullets become powerups for your primary weapon. When it wears off though, you're a one hit kill until the shield recharges again. You can keep the shield going longer by shooting stuff, and there's plenty of stuff to shoot. Sixty seconds in and I guarantee your screen will become a glowing mass of lightning and plasma in every colour known to man. It takes a good while for the various stages to kick in in the tutorial, so I bet the game lost some players simply because it took so damned long. My advice: just grit your teeth and do what it says. The tutorial really doesn't sell the game well. I played on the easiest mode ('Jaeger') because that's all the game would let me do next. First up, the game feels fair. All the energy bullets change colour to indicate your shield state, and there's a nice little computer voice that reads out 'Shield! Danger! Okay!' as you go through your three phases (you can even select the nationality of your computer voice if you like). The colour fade between the phases happens slowly, but the game doesn't zonk you if you brush up on some bullets while it's still changing. The game is always on your side. It even has auto-fire, thank heavens. There's multipliers and did I mention the nifty nifty music? It's videogames. 
The one boss I fought five times didn't have any special weakpoints to aim for, and there wasn't any big capital ships with turrets I had to knock off. There was stuff in the background, and some in the foreground, but it was all for show. A strange choice, since the screen feels really claustrophobic all the time without big black menacing shapes drifting about in the middle of it. Because the bullet powerup mechanic controls your primary weapon, there's nothing else to pick up like 'Options' or speedups or extra lives or anything. Kinda lame. I got up to the maximum weapon power pretty quickly, but I was too busy trying to figure out how to dodge everything on the left of the screen to dedicate much awareness to actively shooting anything on the right. Around 3-1 the game starts firing out indestructible, non-absorbable bullets amongst the energy balls, which I didn't think was cricket at all. A bit further on, chunks of instant death collision scenery drifted on-screen that looked almost identical to the ships from the scenery I'd been flying over since the start of the game. I hit some, blew up and got upset. When I unlocked the normal 'Krieger' difficulty, the game threw all the things I didn't like at me all at once from the start: unshieldable projectiles, deadly scenery, all kinds of criss-crossing delayed-firing instant death beam things to keep track of. I get the impression that 'Krieger' is the 'proper game', and that the 'Jaeger' mode is repetitive filler levels they chucked together later to try to rope noobs like me in. This one's for pros only. But I think perhaps pros will get a heck of a kick out of it. - mecha-neko |
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| Hidden Folks | ||
Hidden Folks is all about finding hidden folks (and also snakes and other things) in a picture. I got a bit stuck in it right away until I started clicking things at random out of frustration and realised I could interact with stuff. Like clicking on the bushes cuts them away, which is good for when you're trying to track down a sneaky snake. It gives a list of all the items you need to find along the bottom of the screen and it turns out you really need the clues to find some of them because at clicking everything on screen quickly becomes impossible. 
It's actually pretty impressive I reckon, especially with all the stuff that's animated. The people don't typically go wandering, but if you click a nearby stereo (for example) they'll start dancing. It probably won't help you find anything, but you can do it. Oh I should mention that the screenshot is all inverted because I wanted to give my eyes a break from staring at white. There are three colour modes: light, dark, and sepia. 
Speaking of awkward things, the game features "2000+ mouth-originated sound effects" and you can really tell. I was also really put off by the people lost in the desert level, crying out for help. How am I supposed to find a camouflaged reptile or whatever when I've got that going on? There's no music though weirdly. This is basically just a monochrome Where's Wally? game, but it gets the job done and it doesn't go easy on you. I get the impression it's aimed at younger kids, with all the fun things to interact with, but it kept me entertained for a decent number of levels. Even if I kept immediately losing all my enthusiasm whenever I reached a new stage and realised just how massive it was. |
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| Guest Review by mecha-neko | ||
| Menos: Psi-Shatter | ||
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You know how I'm always moaning that there aren't enough 'guns & powers' games? Games where the protagonist is equally skilled with practical, reliable weapons and arcane, bizarre abilities? I feel like Jack Goddard has made a game just for me. In Menos: Psi-Shatter, you play as an un-named mysterious supersoldier infiltrating a place named 'Site Echo' in order to accomplish... I'm not sure what. It's a top-down action game: kind of a stealth puzzle, kind of a mouse-and-keyboard overhead shooter. Stop me if you've played Hotline Miami or Ape Out before - it's one of those. What sets Soldier Sam apart from his gorilla and gorilla-masked peers is that Sam is a merciless telekinetic son-of-a-bitch. Menos has its own weird rules and you are going to die a lot. It takes a lot of getting used to and it's fast. Telekinesis works in some situations, the guns in others. They're both targeted at the mouse cursor, so when the noise of your weapons or psi alerts nearby enemies, you have to really train your mousing hand to alternate between telekinetic throw gestures and aiming your weapon at incoming enemies. There's no way I've found to make a distraction to get guards to run to a specific place. They always know exactly where you currently are, and they will immediately fire exactly in your direction the instant they're able to see you. The game has really high requirements for such a simple game. On anything but the lowest graphic settings, the aiming cursor felt really weighty and delayed, which made it difficult to correctly perform powerful telekinetic throws. Slamming a bad guy against a wall might kill them, and it might not. Desks and windows are both a guaranteed kill and a guaranteed chuckle, which is important to know since Psychic Psam must kill every guard on a floor before he can move to the next. What I don't like is that when I make my real final attempt to complete a level, I'm improvising less and instead following a routine I've constructed over my previous attempts. When it doesn't work out due to bad luck or the telekinesis not having the effect I needed it to, all I can do is repeat the same sequence of actions until I get the result that I know that I should be able to get. It's almost impossible to tell what areas of the level are safe just from looking, even when using the mode that lets you extend your view a little bit further beyond the screen. You have to learn what's coming up and pre-empt it on subsequent lives. It gets old if you play it for long stretches, but that's a problem with the genre, not Menos. The only thing really missing from Menos is any kind of vocal reactions from the enemies. After the hundredth retry I'm sure hearing the enemy squads panic as their friends are sent screaming across the level into the walls would get old, but those ninety-nine other times it would be hilarious. It also means there's no audible way to know when enemies are alerted so you'll get snuck up upon a lot. And it could do with more explosives. Desks and windows shatter very pleasantly indeed, but I never encountered anything that would explode when I shot it. Too bad. This game is best enjoyed on its own terms: as a $3 game by one man on a quest to make something interesting and new and cool. Menos isn't a game for everyone, but that's alright. I'm okay with it being a game just for me. - mecha-neko | ||
| Ynglet | ||
The penalty for falling is being teleported right back to the last checkpoint, and any rectangle you lurk around in long enough becomes a checkpoint, so you can just keep trying until you get it right. 
Oh plus I can dash in mid-air! 
On the downside the game has appropriately arty dynamic indie game music that doesn't appeal to me, though that's a pretty subjective downside. Plus I couldn't find a map or an objective marker to help me out when I got lost in a level. Otherwise I enjoyed this one. It's interesting and different, and it controls well. |
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| ZeroRanger | ||
In fact this game has all the style, with its cutscenes and flashy effects. It's more sophisticated than you might expect, plus it's got a sense of humour. The soundtrack's pretty solid as well. The graphics aren't going to be for everyone, but they do make it absolutely clear what needs shooting at and what needs dodging. There's no ambiguity about what's going to hurt you in this whatsoever. And there are a lot of things that can hurt you, including the walls at one point, when they suddenly close in on you.   I've also been unlocking each stage as I reach them, so with enough persistence I could find myself starting on the final stage with a full set of continues. I presumably wouldn't suck quite as much by that point as well. 
Seriously, if you've never heard of the game, check its Steam reviews. And then maybe check the bad ones too if you want to be aware of a certain harsh gameplay choice it asks you to make at the end. |
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CONCLUSION
Alright, that's about 2% of the games in the Bundle for Ukraine covered, so I think my job is done.
Though I've already written words about some of the other games included in the bundle, so I'll give each of them a sentence as well just so you know they're in there.
- CrossCode - Twin-stick puzzle RPG where you do a lot of talking and solve problems with balls.
- Minit - A fun little action-adventure with a merciless timer.
- A Short Hike - A loveable action-adventure all about chatting to NPCs and climbing a mountain.
- Sky Rogue - It's like a procedurally generated Ace Combat roguelite.
- Superhot - The closest thing to a turn-based FPS I can think of.
- They Bleed Pixels - Stylish cartoony horror platformer that lets you place your own checkpoints.
- Wandersong - Save the world by singing, and there's also a dance button.
There is a bit of overlap with earlier charity bundles hosted on itch.io, but $10 for all the new games is still a great deal. Plus it has something else in common with earlier bundles: the money goes to charity. I have to be honest, that was the main reason I put the money down on this in the end. Well, that and Baba is You.
The bundle articles are always such a good read, well done!
ReplyDeletea game about a raccoon private detective
ReplyDeleteAha! I knew we were doing Super Adventures in Raccoon Games!
I assume SNAAAK is a Metal Gear Solid reference.
I guess I did promise you Super Adventures Raccoon Fortnight! (That didn't even occur to me until you said it though.)
DeleteAlso there aren't enough 'A's for that to be a proper Metal Gear reference, surely.
I've just won Menos and maybe the most glaring thing that's missing from the game is any kind of secrets to find. I thought there weren't any in SNAAAK, but then I watched someone else play and they were finding rooms off the normal map where I never bothered to try to look. Perhaps if there were secrets in Menos, I'd have a clue what the heck was going on!
ReplyDelete