Humble Indie Bundle 8 | Hacker News Reader

Humble Indie Bundle 8

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158 pointsminimaxir65 comments

Here are the games in this bundle I have played, and what I thought about them:

Hotline Miami, in my opinion, is the centerpiece of this bundle. It's about storming a building and killing all of the occupants in interesting ways. It channels this weird 80s rave aesthetic and feels like something between an arcade game, a puzzler, and an action movie. The art uses low-res 2D graphics in a way that's distinct from the usual "8-bit emulation" style, focusing instead on small details. The gameplay complements the art/sound/story elements, and somehow manages to convey more violence than I felt playing Gears of War. I mentioned a story -- it's pretty good, I think, although it's not really the main attraction of the game. Hotline Miami is a game that works very hard to make you feel like you're part of the universe, and, for me, that definitely paid off.

Little Inferno is lots of fun, and casual enough that you can play it in little bites sometimes. If you're going to play it (and you should!), I would not recommend reading past this point. I really like Kyle Gabler's description that "Little Inferno is a quiet introverted art project masquerading as a loud extroverted shopping game." It's fun (although not really challenging or game-y, not that it's designed to be) at first, and then pulls you into its story very effectively. The result is that I didn't notice that my little casual play session had turned into a kind of desperate dash to unlock the next tidbit of story until the game commented on it. It plays on your feelings very well, and the ending is up there with Portal as far as innovation and poignancy are concerned. Both Little Inferno and Hotline Miami gave me trouble sleeping the days after I finished the game, and that's a good thing.

Awesomenauts is like DotA, but 2D and simpler. The graphics look a little childish, but that belies the tightness with which everything handles. It's well made, and fun for the occasional bout of competitive play, especially if you don't have the time/nerves to get good at DotA/LoL like me. That said, I don't find myself playing it very often, although that's probably more because of me than because of the game. Oh -- and it has microtransactions, but they're well-managed and totally optional.

I can't recommend Hotline Miami enough. Excellent game. Fast-paced action, interesting story, and it feels like you're playing through a fever dream.

I've played Awesomanuts and I think compared to DotA it's a bit more simple,yet hard to master. Different nauts have wildly different movement abilities which influence the positioning greatly and knowing which Naut moves how and how to (ab)use it is important (e.g. Froggy has the highest single jump, while Lonestar has the higest segmented jump, with different arcs and what not). It's all about timing, twitch skill and guessing your opponent's action or influencing it.

It's a neat game, but saying it's casual is like saying TF2 is a casual game (i.e. not really). The way it works also leaves a lot to be desired for. It allows premades to play against Solo Queuers which really isn't fun for either side (premades don't learn much and SQ are unorganized and easily dealt with).

NOTE: I had ~400 hrs played and I managed to reach r2 in Solo Queue (though lost it eventually).

I paid a tenner for Miami Hotlines soundtrack.

https://soundcloud.com/devolverdigital/sets/hotline-miami-of...

EDIT: Looks like the soundtrack is not included.

Its extractable though I don't understand if that is legal:"http://blog.hartwork.org/?p=1964

Addendum (because HN won't allow me to edit the parent any more): I just finished playing through Thomas Was Alone.

My opinion is that the game is a mediocre platformer with only a few new mechanics and scores of older, well-trodden ones, amateurish level design, lots of boring repetition, poor conveyance in parts, and lots of little flaws that make it (again, to me) not much fun at all to play. Its only saving graces are the wonderful narration (done by this exciting British guy named Danny Wallace), and the excellent use of color. If you don't enjoy the first 15 minutes, your experience probably won't improve in the many hours to come (on a side note, I feel the game is about 1.5x as long as it should be. there was a lot of "sheesh -- when will this set of levels end?" in my playthrough). You're better off just listening to all the narration (which is great, and really adds a lot of pathos to moving rectangles around a screen).

I should emphasize that I don't think Thomas Was Alone is a bad game. It tries to do a lot of things (probably too many) at once and does many of them right. The ones it flubs up, though, cause the game to be tedious and unfocused and frustrating in enough places that, for me, it ceases to be fun to play. Give it a try -- you may enjoy it! I didn't.

(Sorry if my complaints here are vague. There's a lot I want to say because I just finished playing, but it's late, and I'm trying to keep this to a "should I play it?" kind of blurb. If it would help someone to know exactly what I think is wrong with the game, I could make a longer thing or a video or something. )

Don't you get a little bit sad about the state of the web (assuming you work on the area) when you see how well executed those games are?

I have absolutely no willpower to resist buying these, even though I never have time to play them. I buy them for the fantasy that some day I'll have free time for games again and can spend it all playing good games.

It's the same reason I've bought 50 games on GOG.com so far, and actually only found time to play 2-3 for short periods. The price per purchase (even when purchasing multiple on a weekend deal) is low enough to not make me feel guilty, and I get something to look forward to.

For that reason, I only buy Humble Bundles which have games that I know 100% I would play to completion. (such games that have been in Humble Bundles include Bastion, Psychonauts, Darksiders and Dungeon Defenders). And I still have a massive backlog from the other excellent games in the Bundles.

At the moment, I'll pass on HB8, atleast until I see what bonus games are inevitably added to the Bundle.

If you happen to have a game controller, either an Xbox Controller for PC or a PS3 controller hooked up using DS3 Tool/MotioninJoy, I'd highly recommend Hotline Miami as a fast and fun action game.

I'd recommend it either way. I had an absolute blast with it with a keyboard and mouse, and there are some gameplay elements I could see actually being more difficult with a controller given how fast the game moves.

I buy pretty much every Humble Indie Bundle, even though I'm really not a gamer, and have played I think about six games to completion in my life. I do it to support the indie game phenomenon more than anything else. The $10-15 it takes to beat the average a handful of times a year is worth it to me on that basis alone.

Well, that and the fact that I have several dozen games I could futz around with should I find myself suddenly possessed of the "free time" to do so.

Exactly the same as myself, I haven't played any of them (well maybe one of the android games).. but I have purchased every single bundle to date. I usually buy a few codes for myself / brothers always at over the average...

For the $30 (or whatever it is) / year I can feel good about contributing to indie devs + charity, and that's worth it for me.

I am reminded of Kevin Smith, who will often buy tickets to movies he doesn't have time to see, just to support the film makers.

This would be worth it for the soundtrack of Hotline Miami alone. This is probably a butchered description, but the game reminds me of the most intense scenes from Scarface with the aesthetics and music of Drive. If you're not convinced, listen to some it: http://youtu.be/oKD-MVfC9Ag

Also, the developer deserves some success; he has released 50+ free games over the years: http://indiestatik.com/2013/04/25/who-is-the-next-cactus/

The soundtrack is incredible, but sadly it looks as though it's not included.

Argh. I thought the way this work is you got soundtracks for all the games. Anyway, it's worth it just to play the game and hear the damn music. I linked the full soundtrack, though not in the best format.

Absolutely, the soundtrack alone is worth the playthrough. Here's a link to the studio's soundcloud which has the soundtrack up at what I think is a better quality than youtube is offering. https://soundcloud.com/devolverdigital/sets/hotline-miami-of... (be warned it autoplays at quite a high volume)

It's definitely better quality than the youtube link. The volume is the same as the youtube clip if anyone is switching.

Its included in the game directory itself.

Hmm... wouldn't it be good to display an album icon for it on the bundle page then?

I'm assuming he means that you can go to the game's assets and listen to it yourself, and not that the game has a separate "official soundtrack" built-in.

Very often, good game soundtracks end up on Bandcamp. Case in point for Hotline Miami: http://ozgarden.bandcamp.com/album/hotline-miami-soundtrack

I've purchased Fez and Bastion soundtracks from this site as well.

ADD: See also a link to the Bandcamp page for Dear Esther's soundtrack further downthread.

If you use eight different email addresses to buy each bundle, then you get a glimpse of their A/B test for newsletter subjects: Got lots of "Introducing Humble Indie Bundle 8" and one "Introducing Humble Indie Bundle 8: Name your price for seven amazing games!" and one "Lock, stock, and 7 smoking games: Humble Indie Bundle 8 is here!"

I played Hotline Miami at the Eurogamer expo last year, it was total chaos, you die every 5 seconds, it pumps horrendous techno at you.... and it was great fun! grabbed my attention way more than the trippleAs

Steam won't install Linux versions of Dear Esther and Capsized. (The Steam keys imported okay, and those games now show up in my Steam library, just not as Linux games.)

Maybe they're just being slow getting them uploaded, but it's a disturbing trend. I think there are now 23 games in my Steam library that claim not to be available for Linux, even though Linux ports exist. Writing games is very hard. Porting games is hard. Uploading games is easy.

Is there a reason you care about Steam (social? something else?)? I mean in the spirit of free software, why do you want middleware to play your games through that just gets in your way and at times, could potentially prevent you from playing your games?

You don't need Steam to play these games.

Ease of use. The downloads from Humble Bundle come with all kinds of random installers that work in different ways, and by default install your games into different places. Additionally there's no notification of updates being available, let alone downloading + installing the updates automatically or with a single click.

It's like the difference between distro packages and stuff you've compiled from release tarballs.

Ok, thanks. I get that it is more convenient, but be careful with this:

It's like the difference between distro packages and stuff you've compiled from release tarballs.

Steam collects information about you, and when Steam is down, there's a possibility that you won't be able to play your game. If you bypass steam you don't get these issues. Given this, that simile isn't apt.

Upvoted for being a good comment, but also for the (unintentional?) "apt" pun.

Using the Steam DRM is optional for developers. There are DRM free games on Steam, which means that even if Steam is down, they will still work. That said, I've never had problems with DRMed Steam games not working if the internet is down (you just need to make sure you check the "remember my login" thing when authenticating).

Oh, one other thing, is my son. He's eager to download anything resembling a game, but I've managed to get it across to him that he can't just download random 'games' and not expect bad things to happen.

I expect a little better vetting from games that are on Steam, so he has the ok to download whatever he wants from there.

Convenience. But more as a proxy to whether the game studios really care about their Linux ports, or are just checking the box then forgetting about them.

(I like the convenience of Steam, but I think having DRM-free downloads is important too.)

If you can get Steam working, pretty much any Steam game should play. You can play them outside of steam, but the headache is sometimes there. Not sure how steam is going to stop you from playing your games normally, and if it did, you can just play the regular version from humble bundle.

While I've put in some effort to get random games to play, I can tell you if Wizards of The Coast would turn their client over to Valve and let it run through Steam, it'd be a hell of a lot better than what they have now.

But I can add a game to my Steam library and never have to worry about it. I can download the game often under a minute, play it, and just as easily delete it. One day in the future I might download it again.

Another vote for convenience. As others here, I've bought games I haven't played and I can't recall any digitally purchased games that I never played.

Even though in this particular case, I can log into humble bundle and see a list there. But, it's still easier to launch steam and see what's the best way to kill a couple hours before bed.

"The Dear Esther Linux build on your download page was made by CodeWeavers, which means that it is based on a custom-tailored version of Wine ... [we] commission[ed] Ryan Gordon to create a fully-native version of Dear Esther, as well. ... [which] is not quite ready yet. ... The native port is planned to come soon to Humble Indie Bundle 8 customers"[1]

So download the crossover version from their site now, or wait for the native port to appear on steam when it's ready.

It's not like they're hiding this, there's a link to that page right underneath the words "Dear Esther" on the landing page.

[1] http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/116...

Man, is there anything that Ryan Gordon doesn't port?

I'll be uploading the Linux/Mac versions of Capsized to Steam before the end of the week. There isn't really a reason for the delay - this is the initial launch of Capsized for Mac/Linux though

Thanks. I was hoping it was just release-time rush.

All games in the Bundle grant separate Steam keys.

This allows you to give the game away if you own it already.

This does not seem to be encouraged behaviour.

via http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/243...

        If I already have a game(s) in the bundle do I have the ability to
    gift the extra copy in the bundle?

    Unfortunately, if you already have a game in the bundle you will
    not be able to gift the extra games to a friend.

    Please consider your bundle a "unit", and not to share copies of the
    games or Steam keys from it.

    If you'd like to give a copy of the games away, we have a system in
    place that allows you to buy a gift key from www.humblebundle.com so
    your friends can have access to direct downloads as well as any Steam
    or other keys we have included.

Then how come they are separate? If they want to discourage people from giving away the games as a non-unit, shouldn't they make it one code like they used to?

It's probably harder to create a "unit bundle" key with Valve for Steam if you're only going to sell this bundle once and never in the future. You don't need any coordination with Valve to give away Steam keys. You only need coordination with the game developer.

I've never heard of humblebundle and I never play video games but the production quality of those games and the pay what you want model has me sold.

Bought it just to play Little Inferno, the soundtrack of which is incredible:

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/kylefromthefuture/sets/little-inferno...

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HfqnBfYcg

Thanks for pointing this out, I'm a big fan of Kyle Gabler's work on the soundtrack for World of Goo.

He makes them both available for free download here:

http://kylegabler.com/WorldOfGooSoundtrack/ http://tomorrowcorporation.com/little-inferno-soundtrack

Awesome links, bookmarked thx!

I found out about Kyle Gabler as the score to the final animation composition (50:00) in Bret Victors fantastic "Stop Drawing Dead Fish" talk: https://vimeo.com/64895205

I just want to point out: Gabler writes about what he was trying to accomplish with the soundtrack as a whole and on a song-by-song basis on both of those soundtrack pages. Readers skimming this section who are interested in music, game design, or both would do well to give those summaries a read, as it gives some neat insights into why he made the game sound the way it does.

Already bought Little Inferno based on the rave reviews. It's so much fun playing with fire.

I've played 5 of these:

Dear Esther is a first person explorer that plays with narrative in an interesting way.

Thomas Was Alone is a platformer about a rectangle named Thomas and his quadrilateral friends. They become self aware. Story narrated in a great British accent. Lovely short-form game.

Proteus is a first person explorer where the soundtrack mirrors the landscape. It has a lo fi beauty.

Hotline Miami is a very violent, very tightly designed kill em up. It is the meatiest of the five I've played.

Little Inferno is a graphically beautiful comment on skinner boxes and recent trends in game design.

I've wanted to play Dear Esther for so long. I have NO idea what it's about other than you're alone in an island with no soundtrack or guns, etc. Just you and the open field. Love the idea!

There is a soundtrack, actually. It was even nominated for Excellence in Audio at the 2012 IGF awards. http://jessicacurry.bandcamp.com/album/dear-esther

It's a lovely experience (I wouldn't use the word game).

We had a wander over the weekend, it was surprisingly good as a joint adventure and I'd definitely recommend going through it with at least one like-minded person.

If you like the idea of Dear Esther, you will probably enjoy yourself, as I think it achieves its goal quite well.

As a critical piece in the "Games as Art" movement/feud/war, Dear Esther is certainly polarizing, but I am of the opinion that it should be experienced with a certain amount of Shoshin because enjoying it might require a bit of unlearning.

Hey (long time no see, btw) there. I played it recently. You've definitely got to go into it expecting what it is to enjoy it. Exactly nothing happens in the game. You don't really interact with anything, you just walk around a beautiful set of landscapes on the island and listen to the story. The game is just short enough that it doesn't become too boring to play in my experience, and it's an excellent experience to relax to.

Hope you enjoy it!

Too much awesome not to buy. Really like Thomas Was Alone.

FYI, the lead programmer for Awesomenauts has a fantastic dev blog that delves into the inner workings of the game: http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Awesomenauts

(And it's a really fun game too! Easily worth the price of the bundle by itself.)

For anyone who's played 'Thomas Was Alone',

On my system (running Linux) whenever the game starts playing a new song it keeps playing the previous song too. The longer I play the louder it gets - eventually it's impossible to hear the narrator.

I'm assuming that isn't supposed to happen. Is anyone else seeing similar behavior? Also, is there a bug list (or some other method of reporting issues) anywhere? Looking around, I don't see anything - and I'd like to keep abreast of what's going on with the port.

It's a wonderful game otherwise - reason enough to buy the bundle all by itself, in my opinion.

There's a secret ending to Hotline Miami that made it one of the most thought provoking games I've ever played.

Rarely am I moved by a game nowadays. It's heavy. Hotline Miami alone is worth it.

Awesomenauts is fantastic; I have over 100 hours played on that game alone. After 80 hours or so, I made the jump to Dota 2, where I have 300+ hours played in a much shorter timespan. In my opinion, Awesomenauts should be a mandatory 20+ hour tutorial before anyone is allowed to play Dota, Dota 2, League of Legends, etc. Think of Awesomenauts as the helpful Sherpa/Mountain Guide to the Everest-like skill cliff that is Dota 2.

Hotline Miami is great as well!

And Notch just paid 5000$ for the bundle.

This is something I can never resist buying. DRM-free cross-platform games where you can decide what portion of what you decide on spending gets sent to who.

Its a brilliant business model and it proves it can be profitable.

There goes my productivity for the next 3 days.

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