Thursday 31 May 2012

Humble Indie Bundle V

We at Frictional Games are yet again part of a Humble Indie Bundle and this time it is quite the pack. Our contribution is Amnesia: The Dark Descent and it is joined by Limbo, Bastion, Psychonauts and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. This pack of games is offered to a price of your own choosing, and part of the revenue, you chose how much, will go to charity. This video will explain more:





I think the all of the games that Amnesia share the bundle with are quite special, and are all really worth playing if you haven't yet.

Sword and Sworcery was my top from last year and there is a lot to learn from playing it. Foremost, it has this magical blend of music, gameplay and graphics that really shows of the strengths of the medium. It is clear that this is not a game that has been created to be some kind of competition, but to create a special, mystical experience. This is something we need more of.

Limbo manages to create a very tense atmosphere, but more importantly it how to use a very simplistic control scheme to create great variety. Nowadays, game often require you to learn tons of buttons, but in Limbo you understand all required controls after a few minutes of play. And yet the game manages to give you varied activities from start to finish. It also never takes away control from the player, allowing for a highly interactive narrative experience.

Bastion is excellent in the way it builds up its fiction. The constant voice over gives meaning to your actions and also let you see the world in a quite different way than you would have otherwise. As the flowing narrative unfolds, enemies stop being cannon fodder and instead feel like proper denizens of the world. By small means a  lot of depth is added to the game, and I highly recommend it in a lesson on how to do story exposition.

Finally, Psychonauts paint up a vibrant world filled with quirky, interesting and yet human characters. What I liked best about it is how the core theme of the game, to enter people's minds, really merges both gameplay and storytelling. Actually playing the game does not simply servers as some filler between plot points, but actually adds depth to the narrative.

Also, note that the sound tracks of all games comes along with the bundle! I mean, the awesome sound track from Sword &  Sworcery is enough reason to buy the bundle alone. The music from Bastion is not bad either...


15 comments:

  1. Just bought the bundle. I had bought Amnesia already, and I noticed the version in the bundle is 1.2.1. What was changed from 1.2?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The only mac/linux fixes are the support of putting custom stories and total conversion in your local profile/home directory instead of in the game install. There is some information on http://support.frictionalgames.com about it

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  2. It does not require any serial. Also might be some mac/linux fixes.

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  3. Will the HPL Engine 2 get an open-source release if this sells well?

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  4. Hi Thomas, I was wondering what the sales figures were for the three platforms. It is impossible to find any Mac vs PC sales figures on any game. Bf3, WoW, Mass effect 3, portal 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and on and on..no numbers at all! Care to break it down how it looked for you guys? :)

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    Replies
    1. You can find some info here:
      http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2011/09/amnesia-one-year-later.html

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  5. Would it be possible to add an OnLive key for Amnesia to the bundle? The game won't run on my laptop normally. :(

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  6. It is nearly impossible to find a place to report bugs...

    Anyway.. Here you have it and i hope you could do something useful with it.

    http://pastebin.com/gBZQ0Y9d

    PS: this isn't the only HIB 5 game that doesn't work on my Fedora 17 x64 System...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sebastion B, you probably need to add s3tc support on your system. And for Amnesia bug reporting, simply goto the frictionalgames forum. (And the Amnesia and Bastion linux ports were developed on a Fedora x64 system)

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    2. Thank you very much for you response and have to say sorry. I was simply a bit disappointed cause i got nothing to work that time.
      Bastion works fine with s3tc, but amnesia still crashes every time, if i using any input device. Valgrind told me it caused by a bad null-pointer.

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  7. How about you get the Penumbra Collection in there as a bonus for those who beat the average?

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  8. Bought it, love it. Tried Amnesia though, and it terrified us deeply. After four minutes. Gee you guys, I respect you and I look up to you so much in every regard of game design theory. But man I can't play that game, so I will never fully know your brilliance. It is sad :<

    <3

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