Just got the email. :)
If you haven't bought into this bundle yet, it's just got a whole lot better if you pay more than the average of just under $6. That's less than a dollar per game. some of the games included in the bundle are the best of the indie game scene for their respective genres for example Jamestown a superb vertical shooter, gratuitous Space Battles a space management game with gorgeous graphics, Shatter one of the better and more recent breakout games I've seen in a long time, torchlight a brilliant RPG, Rochard an excellent action platformer with some develish puzzles, space Pirates and Zombies (S.P.A.Z.) a physics and action based, skill oriented, top down space combat game 7 days to go.
Here's the run down on each game in the pack (I meant to post this last week but forgot):
Bit.Trip Runner:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
BIT.TRIP RUNNER is the fastest, most exhilarating music/rhythm-platformer to hit Steam!
Race across the Moon, kicking down crystal walls and sliding under chomping moon-slugs! Bound through the Robotic Mines and face off against the MinerMech! Dash through the Big City on a quest to find friends and defeat the final boss together!
RUNNER is the fourth chapter in the award-winning and critically acclaimed BIT.TRIP series.
Key features:
• You control CommanderVideo as he runs, jumps, slides, kicks, and more!
• Extremely addictive “just one more time” gameplay!
• With exciting modern and retro challenges, you can run through more than 50 levels!
• Chiptune supergroup Anamanaguchi makes a guest appearance!
Join CommanderVideo in BIT.TRIP RUNNER on his most epic journey yet!
Key Steam features:
• Leaderboards!
• Achievements!
• Brand New Easy and Hard Modes!
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Dustforce:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Clean up the world with style! As an acrobatic janitor, you are an adept force against dust and disorder. Leap and dash off walls and ceilings, and deftly traverse precarious environments. Cleanse each level swiftly and thoroughly to achieve mastery in this 2D sweep-'em-up platformer.
Key features:
• Over 50 levels varying in difficulty from elegant exploration levels to intense challenges for hardcore players.
• Compete on the online leaderboard and instantly watch replays of every players' best attempts.
• Play against your friends with local multiplayer matches.
• Roam through a myriad of beautiful environments accompanied by an original soundtrack.
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Gratuitous Space Battles:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Who needs backstory? Who needs resource-gathering? Diplomacy is so last year. Gratuitous Space Battles cuts right to the chase of sci-fi strategy games, and deals with large, completely unjustified space battles between huge opposing space fleets.
Gratuitous Space Battles combines the visual appeal of an RTS, with the addictive unit-placement and design gameplay from tower defense games. In GSB, the player does not control individual ships at all during battle. The ships fight to a pre-determined set of orders and formations given to them by you before the battles.
GSB casts you as supreme space admiral, tasked with the design of individual spaceships, and the composition of your fleet, as well as general orders of engagement. This is not a twitch-based real time arcade game like many an RTS, but a game of careful thought, planning and big-picture strategy. Huge space battles can be won or lost depending on just how cleverly you balanced the needs of defensive shielding and armor against the expensive punch of laser cannons and plasma torpedoes.
GSB also features an innovative multiplayer challenge system. You can upload your ultimate fleet to serve as the enemy to other players, and keep track of how many other players have won and lost against your challenge. That way, you will never run out of cunningly designed enemies to battle against!
Key features:
• 4 different unlockable player races
• Over 40 different ship hulls
• Over 120 spaceship modules
• Choice of skirmish vs AI, never-ending survival mode or play against other player’s fleets with the online challenge system
• Play with different rules as each battle has different spatial anomalies to deal with.
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Jamestown:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Jamestown: Legend Of The Lost Colony is a neo-classical top-down shooter for up to 4 players, set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars. It features all the intensity, depth, and lovingly handcrafted pixels of a classic arcade shooter, with a modern twist: deeply-integrated cooperative gameplay.
Unlike most top-down shooters, which give multiple players a shared pool of lives or continues, Jamestown does something different. So long as any player survives, the team can be brought back from death. By giving every player the power to rescue their team from the jaws of destruction, Jamestown creates an exhilarating cooperative experience where everyone’s contribution truly matters. Win or lose, your team will do it together.
Key features:
• Blast your way through historic Mars as a crack team of up to 4 friends in local co-op mode
• Marvel and rejoice at vast expanses of lovingly handcrafted pixels
• Escape into a fast-paced story of swashbuckling redemption
• Epic orchestral scores composed by Francisco Cerda, unique to each level
• Brave the hostile Martian frontier with your pick of 1619’s finest steampunk weaponry
• Master innovative co-op mechanics paired with classical top-down shooter gameplay
• Test your skills against 20+ rule-bending bonus levels
• Run the “Gauntlet” arcade mode, and play Jamestown like it’s 1996
• Leverage the unique scoring system to claw your way up the online leaderboards
• Unlock all 30+ Steam achievements... if you can!
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Rochard:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Grab a G-Lifter - your new best friend! Use it to change gravity at will, manipulate the environment, and throw huge crates at your enemies.
Join the amazing exploits of astro-miner John Rochard and embark on a gravity-bending journey across the Solar System! Rochard is an award-winning side-scroller featuring hours of mind-blowing gravity gameplay, puzzle-solving and action. Narrated in a humorous cartoony style, Rochard tells a thrilling story of villains, a damsel in distress and a mysterious alien civilization.
Key features:
• 5 long Chapters crammed with fast-paced platforming action and mind-bending
puzzles based on gravity
• A beautifully crafted cartoonish visual style, rich with humor and personality
• Incredible items able to influence gravity and grab, swing and throw objects to solve puzzles or get rid of enemies
• A groovy soundtrack composed by Markus “Captain” Kaarlonen from Poets of the Fall, mixing southern rock/blues and 80′s inspired electronic music
• The legendary performance of Jon St. John as the voice of protagonist John Rochard
• The most advanced use of the Unity engine in a video game
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Shatter:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Shatter is a retro-inspired brick-breaking game that merges familiar action with unique twists and a modern crafted production approach.
Key features:
• Innovative controls, physics effects, power-ups, special attacks, and boss battles which combine to provide an experience that is always interactive.
• Includes Story, Endless, Boss Rush, Time Attack, Endless Co-op multiplayer, and Time Attack Co-op multiplayer modes with leaderboards and achievements.
• A Vibrant 3D Style presented across 10 distinct worlds in up to Full HD.
• A fully scored soundtrack featuring over 90 minutes of award winning original music.
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Space Pirates and Zombies:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
At its core, Space Pirates and Zombies is an action based, skill oriented, top down space combat game. It’s similar to the ones we knew and loved in years past, but now using full physics simulation and modern graphics for those oh so pretty explosions. But as you dig deeper, SPAZ becomes much more.
Instead of flying a single ship, you are in charge of an ever growing and evolving fleet, unlocking the rich tactical elements of SPAZ, all accessed at the touch of a button. Issue orders, change ships, apply fleet AI settings, all on the fly. At any moment the battle can change, and the Tactics Panel gives you the tools to make the battle turn in your favor.
As a layer on top of the action and tactics, we have a detailed technology and levelup system akin to what you would expect from an RPG. Learn to build new ships by destroying your enemies. Explore the galaxy to find components, use your hard earned research points to unlock their potential, and then customize every aspect of your new fleet.
Finally, there is the universe in which all this strife and adventure takes place. SPAZ features a persistent randomly generated Galaxy populated with story elements, factions, enemies, missions, items, to provide you with a unique experience each time you play. While you are struggling to survive, uncover the secret of an ever expanding Zombie infestation that spreads by establishing its own real time multi-tiered ecosystem.
Key features:
• 33 ships to research, build, outfit and pilot.
• 70 unique components to discover and customize your fleet’s performance.
• Totally physics based combat system.
• Fight Zombie infestations, battling a full zombie ecosystem comprising four stages of un-life.
• Explore a persistent randomly generated galaxy containing hundreds of star systems.
• Freedom to explore the galaxy and take on challenges at your own pace.
• Aid, flee, or exploit the warring factions in each star system.
• The unique event system lets the player change the balance of power in any star system
• Carefully spend your hard earned research points on hundreds of upgrades across 15 categories.
Just Updated:
Space Pirates and Zombies had just been updated with the Free Bounty Hunters Expansion. This expansion includes:
• 10 highly tunable Bounty Hunter ships to battle, research, and pilot.
• New global Bounty/Respect system that tracks your actions and triggers Bounty Hunter retaliation/assistance appropriately.
• New Extortion mechanic when leaving Bounty Hunter space.
• 150 Arena challenges available at the new Bounty Hunter stronghold starbases. Win Respect and Rez!
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Torchlight:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Behold Torchlight, a fresh new Action RPG franchise developed by Runic Games. Torchlight is being developed in Seattle by a veteran team composed of the designers and leads of projects like Diablo, Diablo II, Mythos, and Fate. Our team has spent many years honing and evolving this unique style of gameplay.
The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a boomtown founded on the discovery of rich veins of Ember - a rare and mysterious ore with the power to enchant or corrupt all that it contacts. This corruptive power may have dire consequences however, and players set out into the nearby mountains and depths below to discover the full extent of Ember’s influence on the civilizations that have come before.
Runic Games will initially release Torchlight as a standalone Single Player game, Torchlight will be released in the latter part of 2009 as a download or in box. Following the single player release, work will commence on a fully-featured MMO version.
Single Player Version:
Players will choose from among three character classes, and venture from the safety of the town of Torchlight into randomly generated dungeon levels, with a huge variety of creepy monsters, endless variations of loot to find, and quests to complete. The endless randomization ensures a long-lived gameplay experience.
Key features:
• Randomization - Our level layouts are randomly created, so each adventure is unique. Monsters, treasures, puzzles, and items are also different each time you embark on an adventure.
• Easy, approachable interface - Torchlight is designed to be easy to play right from the beginning. The intuitive interface gives players easy access to a rich and varied world
• Retirement System - Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks to new characters
• Pets - Players will choose a pet to accompany them. Pets can level up along with the player, and will help in battle, carry items, and perform a variety of helpful services
• Character Classes - Players will create and customize a character from one of three classes available, and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character will be custom-tailored and different
• Fishing - Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to visit one of the fishing holes and relax and see what they can catch. Fish have interesting benefits for the player and pet, and other rewards can also be discovered
• Included Editor - Runic Games is embracing our modding community by including an editor so our players can create and design their own content
• Steam Cloud - Save your game progress to the Steam Cloud and resume from another computer. However, save games are not cross platform; PC saves will not migrate to Mac and vice-versa.
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Vessel:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
Living liquid machines have overrun this world of unstoppable progress, and it is the role of their inventor, Arkwright, to stop the chaos they are causing. Vessel is a game about a man with the power to bring ordinary matter to life, and all the consequences that ensue.
Key features:
• Liquid Gameplay - Vessel is built on an optimized liquid simulation featuring flowing water, scalding lava and steam, reactant chemicals,glowing goo, the mysterious 'protoplasm', and more. Each liquid has unique properties and mixes with other liquids for dramatic effects.
• Bring Liquid to Life – Interact with 'Fluro' creatures that are formed entirely from simulated liquid. Each retains the properties of the liquid they're made of, giving them the ability to melt, reform, absorb, explode, and more.
• Unique Puzzles – Solve puzzles by combining the unique behaviors of each creature with the fluid they're created from. Every aspect of the world is physically simulated, and all puzzles are based in the liquid simulation. Drop a 'Drinker' Fluro and lure him by spraying goo. Create a 'Dark Fluro' and chase him with light. Liquid and physics are not an aesthetic in Vessel, but the foundation of gameplay.
• 2D/3DHybrid Art Style – Explore a world of fantastic, detailed machines and strange, wondrous environments. 2D hand-drawn textures combined with 3D normal maps, lighting, and depth creates a unique, other-worldly look to the visuals.
• Upgrade your Equipment – Use the mysterious protoplasm liquid found in the world to upgrade your equipment, obtaining powerful new ways to manipulate liquid.
• Jon Hopkins Soundtrack – Features a full-length soundtrack by electronic music prodigy Jon Hopkins, internationally renowned for his work with Brian Eno, Imogen Heap and Coldplay.
• Full Game Experience - Vessel features over 10 hours of content across multiple worlds, featuring several unique types of liquid and Fluros.
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Wizorb:
You can see video of game play HERE & HERE
The once peaceful Kingdom of Gorudo is threatened by an evil presence. The only hope for salvation is Cyrus, a wizard versed in a secret magic art called Wizorb! Explore many strange places from the derelict monster infested town of Clover to Gorudo Castle atop Cauldron Peak. Danger lurks around every corner so you'll need to keep your wits about you and have quick reflexes in order to survive.
Key features:
• An all-new block-breaking game set in a fantasy world.
• Use your magic wand to bounce the orb and cast various magic spells.
• Over 60 levels in 5 different Worlds.
• Earn gold to buy charms or to help the citizens rebuild their homes.
• Epic boss fights.
• Multiple endings.
• Character animation by Paul Robertson.
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