The bundle comes with 3 Steam keys:
1) ... Shattered Horizon a brilliant first person space shooter
2) ... Waves, an excellent Shmup
3) ... Analogue: A Hate Story, a dark visual novel
Plus three DRM free games that also come with Desura Keys. All but the Shattered Horizon game (read an edited post I made almost 2 years ago about this game below) also come with Desura keys and a DRM free copy as well. Shattered Horizon is restricted to Steam only. The three Steam games alone cost nearly £21 (£6.99 each).
Shattered Horizon was originally a four map multiplayer only game that cost £14.99 two years ago. The developers have added loads of extra content since its release including more weapons, four extra maps (effectively doubling the playability of the game) and a single player mode. This is one of my favorite space oriented games and is well worth the price of the minimum asked for.
Total cost of all six games if you purchased them outside of this bundle is almost £30. You can get the lot for a little over £3 at the moment or if you want the music album pay around $5.
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Shattered Horizon:
I posted the following about Shattered Horizon last year, (with some editing); at the time it was multiplayer only. Since then they have added a single player mode that enables you to play all 8 maps against bots. This really is a game I would strongly suggest you get, even if you don't care for the rest of the games. I've not bothered to change any of the wording for the post I've reposted below as I though it would show you how much I liked it considering I'm not a strong multiplayer gamer. (though I do love co-op multiplayer games)
You can see a video of game play HERE, HERE and HERE
I don't usually buy multiplayer only games, nor bother downloading the free ones apart from America's Army and some commercial ones such as the first Red Orchestra game. It's hard for me to describe why, but suffice it to say I find jumping straight into multiplayer games rather daunting, however when I first saw Shattered Horizon I thought this had to be an exception; even if I find I didn't like the game after playing it (there doesn't appear to be any demos of the game so the only way to play is either buy the game or get a guest pass from someone else that did buy the game as every purchased game comes with 2 or 3 guest passes that give you unrestricted game play for a specific number of days. I checked virtually all of the available You Tube videos of the game and a lot of reviews. The reviews put me off a little because most said despite the game play being different and it having fantastic graphics, the game didn't have enough modes and only a few maps (at the time of release only four), but the videos and the promise of more free content soon converted me; (which they delivered on) So I bought shortly after its release (actually got it for 75% off as it was in the 2010 Christmas sale).
To play the game you need at least Vista or Win 7 installed because you require a DX10 or DX11 ready graphics card (which XP or earlier operating systems don't support). You also need a reasonable computer spec to play the game. Most computers less than four or five years old should be okay. You'll definitely need a DX10 ready graphics card and a minimum of a DUAL CORE cpu and 2 Gigs of RAM. By todays standard that's pretty ancient. You can pick up a decent dual core cpu for around £20 now. I purchased a dual core 3.0GHz cpu last year for my daughters computer. That together with a relatively cheap NVIDIA GTX 450 graphics card (cost about £60) with 2GB of gRAM (and has DX11) and 4GB of RAM plays every game that's been released so far.
You can check out details of the game via Steam (the only outlet for the game) HERE
Despite my apprehension at cold jumping straight into a new game with a different take on the First Person Shooter genre; (that is there is no up or down because you are fighting in the cold starkness of space), plus the fact that I'm usually enthralled by most space oriented games I decided to take a nose dive into the game and was almost awe struck by the beauty of the game. I was expecting to get pawned immediately like I was when I first played Battlefield 2 online; however the great thing about this game is that it relies almost entirely on skill plus some luck rather than someone having a better weapon or armour than you (like in many of the free to play games that include payable extras; for example, when I tried playing Crimecraft last year I emptied a full mag of ammo from a pistol into a player who had obviously purchased some of the decent armour and weapons; I initially hit him in the head and continued to pump bullets into him while he turned around. He took one shot at me and killed me. Thats usually the story with many of those types of games, especially the ones with unlockables. The longer you play them the better the equipment you get. Not so with this game. If you want to play the multiplayer game everyone has the same equipment, so as I said above its skill that counts. Of course there's luck and cunning as well. You can play a stealth game hiding amongst the asteroids, or just go fly through space and gun your way to victory. Of course, being familiar with a game is an advantage as well, but that always comes if you play a game long enough.
If you loved the Gemini and or Apollo space missions and have followed NASA’s journey ever since I think you’ll be captivated by this game. The graphics and physics of the game are good enough to give you a feeling of being in space. Looking down on the earth from the shattered shards of the moon, or the space platform is almost awe inspiring. Its a pity the developer couldn't program in weather patterns on the surface of the earth or the spin of the earth. Still, its a great game IMO.
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Waves:
Shooter fans deserve more. And those who haven’t discovered the pleasure of twin stick destruction deserve an entry point. Introducing Waves, a twin stick shooter that can be played by anyone, but with a high enough skill threshold to keep even the most hardened shooter fan entertained.
Waves has been built from the ground up to be accessible, yet require mountains of skill to master. It cuts away the fluff and boils everything down to what’s really important: Highscores.
The goal is to clear the arena of enemies while racking up a big fat Combo with swift kills and well timed Bombs and if it all gets a bit too much you can use your Time Buffer to slow down the action and turn defeat into victory. Players can compete across five different game modes with online high-score tables and Achievements in their pursuit of perfection.
You can see a video of game play HERE
Key Features:
Slow down time at will with the Time Buffer.
Decimate enemies with well timed bombs.
Chain together kills for massive combos.
Battle against your friends scores with the online leaderboards.
Crunch Time – 3 minutes to get the highest score you can.
Level up and defeat the fearsome Cubes to extend your time in Rush.
Survival mode - 3 Lives and more baddies than you can eat but watch out for ambushes!
Bombing Run is all about the Boom. No guns but lots and lots of Boom. BOOM!
Challenge mode puts your skills to the test with 20 levels and only 30 seconds each – Try and 5-Star them all.
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Analogue: A Hate Story:
You can see a video of game play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHG0ruWYiYU">HERE
Back in the 25th century, Earth launched a generation ship into deep space, with the goal of establishing the first interstellar colony. It dropped out of contact and disappeared, never reaching its destination.
Thousands of years later, it has finally been found.
Uncover the mystery of what happened to the final generation aboard the generation ship Mugunghwa by reading through its dead crew's logs, with the help of a spunky AI sidekick!
Two pursuable characters. Five endings. A dark visual novel that further extends the non-linear style of Digital: A Love Story in a mystery featuring transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay.
Welcome to the future.
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Da New Guys:
You can see a video of game play HERE
A nostalgic throwback to comedy games like The Secret of Monkey Island with the feel and pacing of a Saturday morning cartoon, Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass is a point-and-click adventure with humorous dialogue, clever puzzles, and a quirky art style. Under somewhat sketchy circumstances, Brain -- a member of Da New Guys wrestling trio and the worst brawler in Wrestle Zone history -- has won the title belt. (Not even his teammates Simon and Defender can believe it!) When an angry mob shows up to protest, Brain and the precious belt end up kidnapped. Now it's up to wrestling's most eclectic team to get their buddy back and defend his unlikely title -- not to mention Da New Guys' Wrestle Zone reputation
The Good:
Witty script; good variety of puzzle elements; impressive 3D finale; secondary characters are well voiced; nostalgic soundtrack.
The Bad:
Underwhelming visuals; puzzles are pretty simple; the three protagonists are poorly voiced and not particularly interesting; best ideas are underused.
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Super Amazing Wagon Adventure:
You can see a video of game play HERE
There are many great stories told about the American frontier and the bold folks who forged it. War hero and adventurer Davy Crockett. Johnny Appleseed's mission to bring fresh fruit to the pioneers. Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack, and his blue cow sidekick.
Then there's the story of Luke, Donna and Rebecca, and their journey to the west in a simple covered wagon. They faced skunk, bandits and even narwhals. They were helped by a B-52 bomber and laser guns, but to no avail. Luke was shot in the throat and died. Donna got trampled by bison. Rebecca soldiered on a little further, all by herself, before a bear mauled her face off.
Your experience may vary, however. Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is a delightful 80-Microsoft-Point Xbox indie game: a chunky Atari pastiche that comes in randomly selected bite-sized vignettes, sending the story down increasingly surreal avenues with every branch.
The educational classic Oregon Trail is an obvious inspiration.
There are two broad play styles - side-scrolling shooter while in the wagon, top-down twin-stick shooter while on foot - and the game always starts in the same way. You're gunning down animals when bandits attack, you collect berries and check out a cave. After that, however, all bets are off. You may end up blasting piranha underwater or soaring high above the Earth. You may get whisked up in a tornado or stuck in a river. You may investigate a cave in one game and find a cache of shotguns, only to be attacked by giant bats when you check it out in the following play-through.
In its own weird way, the game actually tells a compelling yarn, as deadpan plot twists pile up and you start to really invest yourself in the survival of your randomly assigned characters. There's a breathless child-like quality to the way the scenes tumble along, the free-wheeling tone strangely reminiscent of Axe Cop, an amazing comic book written by a five-year-old and drawn by his adult brother.
The game can be beaten in ten minutes or so, but don't expect to see the happy ending for a while. True to its retro inspirations, this is a brutal and ruthless game that is nonetheless utterly fair and never stops being fun, simply because you can jump back in within seconds and try again, facing completely different challenges.
A PC version has been updated with more scenes
There's more going on here than just ironic parody, too. Beneath the delirious pixel art there's an actual game, with surprising depth for such a simple concept. Animal skins can be collected and traded, while certain encounters will unlock a series of survival modes. Multiple weapon types make a huge difference, each with a small tactical advantage. The laser gun, for example, has a wide powerful shot but vaporises your target, leaving no pelts to collect. The sniper rifle automatically aims at enemies but is slow to fire.
There are also a variety of different wagons to earn, their criteria tipping you off to some of the story twists you've yet to experience: aliens, time travel, dinosaurs and more. You'll replay because it's fun, but also because there's a natural urge to see what unexpected diversion the tale will take next time. And, who knows, maybe this time you'll get to the end, by luck or judgement.
review accessed HERE Aug 30th 2012
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Miniflake:
You can see a video of game play HERE
MiniFlake is a roguelike with 1-bit pixel graphics (although it uses an overlay effect that means it technically employs more than two colors).
Developer description:
MiniFlake is a roguelike rpg with a simplified interface and a minimal use of keyboard button use, arrow keys and space bar, and the escape key is all you need to play. The game features amazingly retro 1bit graphics, chiptune music and retro sound effects. The dungeons as well as the overworld map and the names of locations and npc’s are generated at random using complex generation algorithms.
The story is fairly simple, the player has joined the Crawlers Guild and goes from town to town dungeon crawling for loot and fame. Each new town’s dungeon gets progressively deeper and harder to pillage.
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