Some Cool Bundles Because You Need A Winter Break…

Posted on January 9, 2015 by geelw

Okay, I’m behind in stuff thanks to this week’s repair shenanigans, but let’s play catch up for a bit, shall we? First off, IndieGala is now running Friday bundles! Awesome. This first one of 2015 just so happens to contain some really great games all at a can’t pass it up price. Did you miss out on the Five Nights at Freddy’s craze last year? Well, you can now get that one-room horror game plus one of Scott Cawthon’s excellent role-playing game hybrids, The Desolate Room. There are also some other cool titles in this bundle, but I’ll let you see them for yourselves…

Meanwhile, over at Bundle Stars, there’s the Bloodshed Bundle to keep you warm on this cold weekend (and a lot more cold weekends, as there are a lot of games here!). I’d say Blood Knights and The Dark Eye: Skilltree Saga are worth the $3.49 alone, but you also get To The Moon (which is a bit of an odd choice for this theme, but it’s a great game nonetheless), Volition’s flawed but decent old RPG Summoner and a few others make this one a total steal.

Okay, you know what to do. It’s going to be freezing this weekend (hell, it’s freezing now at the library I’m in typing this post up) and you don’t want to be caught off guard with nothing to occupy your time except TV Land reruns. Get to it, then!

Buy This! Bundle Stars’ Abstract Bundle Makes The Odd Oddly Comfortable…

Posted on January 6, 2015 by geelw

Bundle Stars, you rascals. Getting out another great deal on this cold and snowy day and me, too damn busy to play anything thanks to poring over CES news. I shake my press release filled fist at thee, then realize this deal goes on for two weeks. Oh, okay. Well, for the rest of you with time enough at last on hand, if you have $2.49 burning a hole in your digital wallet, you should get the Abstract Bundle not because it’s dirt cheap, but because of the nicely weird mix of games this time out. Me, I’d drop that loot just for the chance to play Vangers again after too many years. This 1998 open world driving/sci-fi RPG hybrid is just too offbeat to describe other than to say it’s like a cerebral version of Mad Max as re-imagined by some talented Russian developers who worked in a free-form style of storytelling and gameplay that’s still unique. Intentionally tough at the outset and vague if you’re not reading dialog and thinking about what was said, the game is strangely addictive and those voxel graphics give the game a strangeness that still works in its favor.

The other game well worth that money is Knights of Pen and Paper, a double throwback that references the good old days of Dungeons and Dragons plus some of the classic console RPGs from the 1990’s. This one’s less tricky to describe but still going to be weird to some new to the experience. I’ll let the game page description take over here:

Take on the roles of in-game players taking on the roles of their characters in a traditional pen and paper RPG session in the ultimate meta role playing experience.

Yeah, it’s that quirky, but quirky is good in this case. There are eight other fun games in the bundle from “old” reliable hits like the two PixelJunk games to more recent oddities that will bring a big grin to your face once they click with your smarter parts. Anyway, I’ll shut up now and post this so you can grab this deal and get your own game on. Play a little for me, please. I may not be coming up for air in a while…

Review: Elegy for a Dead World

Posted on January 3, 2015 by geelw

Platform: PC/Mac/Linux

Developer: Dejobaan Games

Publisher: Dejobaan Games

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: N/A

Official Site

Score: A- (90%)

Whether or not you like to write, there’s an excellent chance that you love storytelling in one way or another. Dejobaan Games’ excellent Elegy for a Dead World is a game about writing that’s not just for writers and to some “gamers” out there, isn’t really a videogame in the traditional sense. There are no scores tallied, no bad guys to dispatch, and only three relatively small and short themed planets to explore. But it’s neither the journey nor the destination that’s the selling point here.

The game encourages you to sit down, unhook your brain from its box and let your fingers do the talking as you write anything you wish. Yes, there are numerous writing prompts you can use and there’s great fun in pretending to speak in another voice as some of the prompts suggest. But for some players, the experience of free-styling their way through each world and sharing their stories with others will be the big draw… Continue reading →

Unmechanical Extended Edition: Get A (nother) Grip Games Goodie in 2015!

Posted on December 31, 2014 by geelw

Grip Games is at it again with a cool enhanced update to one of its popular titles. Unmechanical Extended Edition is coming in 2015 for PS3,PS4, Xbox One courtesy of Grip and developers Teotl Studios and Talawa Games. Given that the original game was a critical success on multiple mobile platforms and PC, a console version with a bit more content was pretty much a no-brainer. Exclusive to the console versions is a new chapter that allows playing of the puzzle/adventure/platormer hybrid as a new character. Grip has also announced the Vita version of the game has been canceled, at least for the time being. The press release notes this, however:

While it is possible that this version will eventually be released, it definitely won’t be simultaneously with other versions.

Ouch. If speculation must be made, I’d imagine that getting Unreal to play nice on the Vita is probably trickier than expected. That or there are other issues keeping this one from its Vita debut. In any event, if Grip and company manage to work things out and get the game up and running, an update will be posted as soon as any news arrives in the inbox here. In the meantime, here are five screens to check out.

Right now, sometime in January 2015 looks like when we’ll see Unmechanical Extended Edition land safely on home consoles. Stay tuned for more on this one…

Some Monday Year End Bundle Deals to Scoop Up…

Posted on December 29, 2014 by geelw

if your year-end plans involved spending as little money as possible on games so you can afford an extra few bottles of bubbly stuff, well… you’re in luck this week.

Like fast cars? Got a fast computer? Great. For a dollar (and ONLY for the next 24 hours!), Bundle Stars is offering up a stupendous deal in the form of the Born 2 Race Bundle. Seven racing games plus a bunch of expansion packs for such a low price that you’d be off your rocker if you passed this deal up. There’s a mix of realism here with a few more fanciful games to dink around with and more than enough content to make this one of the best deals of the year.

If driving around at high speeds isn’t your thing, how about some story-driven adventures on the cheap? Well, the IndieGala Every Monday Bundle has got you covered and then some with eight games for a mere $1.89, which is yes, nuts. Fantasy, fake historical, sci-fi and horror genres are represented here in this nice variety of brain-bending games. There’s even a dash of humor here if you like your games with a comical bent to them.

Whaddaya mean you ONLY play mobile games? Okay, okay… I got you covered. Well, the Humble Noodlecake Studios Mobile Bundle has you covered. Sure, you need to spend a little bit more to get these games. Nevertheless, like the other bundles here it’s worth it because you’re helping support charity. That and you get thirteen games for eight bucks and MORE content that unlocks as more people buy the bundle and break the different targets noted on the game page.

Finally, you may as well check out Indie Royale for more cool stuff for low prices. Or to be more precise, The Debut Bundle 23 gets you eight indie games for $2.58 with a ninth to be unlocked later. I think that should take care of your gaming needs for the end of this year, right? Well, I kind of hope it does. Don’t forget to get out and get some air every now and then, okay? We don’t want people to think you’ve gone and pushed up some daisies somewhere…

Bundle Stars Reminds You That You Don’t Know (And Should Buy) Jack!

Posted on December 24, 2014 by geelw

I should write a snappy holiday-themed poem here for you to chuckle at. However, as I’ve been up since just before 6am and it’s an icky rainy day that’s not getting any better, I’ll have to save my brainpower for this latest Bundle Stars deal. $3.99 for NINE You Don’t Know Jack games and expansions is more than a steal, it’s a trivial trivia fanatic’s dream plus tax!

In case you’ve been living under a rock, are that antisocial guy or gal with zero friends, or heck, just don’t play PC or board games but happen to love trivia, here’s what’s up, Jack!

Get it? Got it? GOOD. Now go get it so you slap it on a laptop and distract the family during that usually disastrous holiday dinner. Uncle Charlie won’t be getting gassed to the gills if he’s busy answering trivia questions only he knows the answer to because he’s been watching too many reruns on TV Land, correct?

BUY IT! Monday Bundles Will Keep You Warm and NOT Broke!

Posted on December 22, 2014 by geelw

Let’s see now:

A few days before Xmas and you need a fix.
Some cheap games to gift yourself for some kicks…

Okay, this week’s IndieGala Every Monday Bundle, go! Six indie games for $1.89? Sure, why not? Well, you do get a gory and hilarious holiday-themed game (not for the kiddies at ALL!) called Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage (yuk!) that’s bound to tick off the believers in the fat man with the red suit and reindeer. Heck, the description is bound to get your eyeballs floating in boiling brain soup if you hold the myth sacred and dear:

Tragedy! Santa; the toy giving folk-hero, and purveyor of fine Christmas goods, has had enough. Endless requests from greedy children wanting more and more every year, tax increases, pressure from elf unions, bills, reindeer!

It is your duty, as an employee of Polar Sanitation Inc, to clean up the grisly aftermath of Santa’s bloody rampage. Elves, reindeer and ruined masonry from Santa’s brief breakdown are all strewn across his famous workshop.

So don your cap, grab your mop, and get this place sorted out so the company can get a replacement in here ASAP, and restore Christmas for another generation!

Well, I’m not shocked at all at this kooky indie game. It’s a good thing I realized at about age ten or so that “Santa” was mom or dad and other relatives with that holiday cash or credit cards going into debt for us kids. Hey, I’m not sitting on a stranger’s lap in public just to hope I get a present! Ewwwwwww. Fun financial fact: If you take out a loan for $5000 and repay it only with minimum payments at about 21% interest, you’ll end up paying $8000 extra over 20 years. YIKES. Hell, that would get me on a nifty little rampage to the nearest credit card company that buries that crap in the fine print, that’s for sure. Remember, cash is king, kids! if you don’t have it, don’t borrow it unless you don’t have to pay it back!

Meanwhile, back at the bargain ranch:

Nice but what about Bundle Stars? Funny you should ask. The want you to become KING for a While thanks to the $4.99 King Arthur Complete Bundle that gets you King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame, its sequel, King Arthur II and six DLC expansions. That’s a huge hunk of fantasy gaming to get in, folks!

Review: The Marvellous Miss Take (PC)

Posted on December 17, 2014 by geelw

Platform: PC/Mac

Developer: Wonderstruck Games

Publisher: Rising Star Games

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: N/A

Official Site

Score: A- (90%)

The fun thing about having such a huge backlog of games to go through is it’s genuinely surprising to finally stumble across stuff in the digital stack that’s worth taking time to fully explore. Granted, this sometimes means later than usual reviews. But hey, at least they get done. Wonderstruck’s fantastic sneak and steal game, The Marvellous Miss Take is one of those excellent indie surprises you can’t gauge solely from ogling screenshots and movies at all. It’s a game that needs to be played even if you’re a stealth game veteran who thinks you’ve seen it all. Quirky visuals, snappy writing and mostly tight gameplay are all here for your enjoyment and the game excels at making you smile as you stylishly sneak back your stolen inheritance… Continue reading →

Review: Falling Skies: The Game

Posted on December 16, 2014 by geelw

Platform: PlayStation 3 (also on Xbox 360/Wii U/PC)

Developer: Torus Games

Publisher: Little Orbit

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Official Site

Score: C+ (70%)

You could say that there are two types of turn-based strategy game fans out there: those who’ve played XCOM and those who yet haven’t. Falling Skies: The Game works better for those in the latter category as well as those XCOM fans who won’t bash this too harshly for its intentional lifting of much of that game’s mechanics. While it’s a well-made game and plays just fine with only some pesky camera issues in tight spots, a few gameplay flaws knock it down from being a great entry in the genre. However, if you’re a big enough fan of the show, the game will probably warrant a buy right off the bat. Just don’t expect anything revelatory in the plot or handful of familiar characters you’ve come to know and love and you’ll more than likely have a fine time over a rainy weekend… Continue reading →

Some Games for Your Mad Monday, Mister or Missus?

Posted on December 15, 2014 by geelw

Yeah, you know the drill by now. Sometimes you absolutely need a pleasant diversion on a manic Monday, so here’s some of what’s up on a few of the usual bundle selling suspects you should be frequenting regularly because they have deals you just can’t pass up:

IndieGala Every Monday Sale: Six games for ONLY a measly $1.89? How DO they do it? Well, no matter because it’s always a great deal even if you only actually play one or two of the games you buy. This week gets you some adventure games, a strategy game, a hidden object game and more fun all for a song. I’ll bet you that $1.89 that you’ll be happy with at least one of those games…

Bundle Stars has a small army of The Lord of the Rings games in this week’s bundle, so get ready for the silliness of two LotR games and their DLC and the straight up seriousness of War in the North and the online only competitive madness that is Guardians of Middle Earth. To paraphrase one Gandalf the Grey, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS (this offer up)!” A ha and ha-ha. Okay, enough with the puns, as I don’t want the Eyebrow of Sauron to raise itself any higher than it’s gotten after reading that last line.