IndieGala Every Monday Bundle Offers a Nice Freebie For Wordy Folks…

Posted on January 26, 2015 by geelw

It’s a Monday, it’s freezing outside and there’s going to be a ton of snow on the ground in some spots that will keep you indoors wishing you had the whole rest of the week off and then some. What to do, what to do? Well, if IndieGala has their merry way with some of you, you’ll be sitting in front of a warm PC playing some cheap games. Or at least ONE cheap game, as Words for Evil from this week’s Every Monday Bundle is FREE as a bird. Check it out below:

The rest of the games in this weeks deal ($1.49 for six games!) are certainly eclectic as you’ll soon see. Also, if you poke at the IndieGala store page, you can get another free game just because they really want you to shop there at some point and find even more deals. Sounds like a plan, if you ask me. Alrighty then – go do what you need to do. Me, I’m going to build a fire somewhere warm and cook the first thing that crosses my path…

Zojoi’s MacVentures Keep You Inside, Snow Outside!

Posted on January 26, 2015 by geelw

Well, well… the MacVenture series is back and in fine nostalgic form, this time as a set of Steam digital downloads. While you can buy each of these four classics for $2.99 a pop, it’s best to go whole hog and bag the bundle for $8.99. For that price, you get the original Macintosh 128k black and white and Apple IIGS 4-bit color versions of the MacVenture Series: Uninvited, Shadowgate, Deja Vu and Deja Vu II: Lost In Las Vegas. Yes, they will run on current Macs (of course!) and any PC that’s using Windows 7 or above.

Even better, since Zojoi Games is happy to get these classics back out in the fresh air, there’s s 20% launch discount on Steam ($2.39 each, $7.19 four pack bundle) until February 2, 2015. Yeah, so now you can’t say you have nothing to do because you’re snowed in with nothing but the cat to look at. Leave that pet on the bookshelf and go play with something a lot more entertaining…

Review: Citizens of Earth

Posted on January 22, 2015 by geelw

Platform: PlayStation Vita (also on PS4, PC, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS)

Developer: Eden Industries

Publisher: Atlus

# of Players: 1

ERSB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10+)

Official Site

Score: B+ (85%)

Fans of classic 90’s console RPGs should drop everything (as in, NOW) and grab Eden Industries’ Citizens of Earth for anything they can play it on. The game perfectly captures the spirit of the classic Super Nintendo game Earthbound while adding elements such as a more open world to explore 30+ party members to recruit and too many puns to keep track of. Not everything is flawless, however. A few typos, accumulated loading times and one pesky navigation glitch sometimes kick the good bits in the good bits. Nevertheless, this is one of those fun and funny games that can suck you in for hours at a time. Atlus wisely rescuing this failed crowd-funded game project and saw fit to publish it for a few platforms.

In the game, You’re the Vice President of the World (!) and things are somewhat screwy in the post-election phase. Angry protesters are outside your home, there’s trouble at the local coffee shop and lots more wildness that requires your VP skills. You’ll need to round up and recruit citizens from all walks of life to aid you in your quest, so expect to meet up with a wide cast of odd and amusing party members as the game progresses. This isn’t any sort of emotional powerhouse storyline at all, so going in expecting weep-inducing cut scenes or “powerful” moments is a fool’s errand. On the other hand, if you like pun-heavy puns, goofy-looking enemies and creative uses of coffee, pastry and pharmaceuticals, you’ll love what’s here and then some… Continue reading →

Club Nintendo Bites The Dust (Soon). Replacement Parts Available (Later).

Posted on January 21, 2015 by geelw

While I personally haven’t taken much advantage of Club Nintendo rewards other than to nab a few downloads, the end of a relatively brief era is approaching as Nintendo winds the program down in favor of a new (and to be announced) loyalty system. Six years may be dog years in terms of the internet, but as usual, Japan got the best goodies while North America’s rewards were more along the acceptable to “Hey, that’s REALLY awesome!” set of points for stuff “freebies”.

That said, I’ll take what the company says about killing off the club and replacing it with something newer and shinier at face value as well as claim my free copy of Flipnote Studio 3D in February 2015. It’s too bad that freebie isn’t Wii U compatible, though. I could see a lot of people who don’t use a 3DS or even a 3DS XL because of the screen size maybe wanting to try out the image creation software and play around with it on a bigger screen. Ah well. RIP, Club Nintendo!

Bundle Stars Brings The Games – You Bring The Wallet!

Posted on January 20, 2015 by geelw

Yikes. TWO bundles a day for a five days over at Bundle Stars? That’s just wacky under “normal” circumstances… but if you’re looking for deals on a ton of titles all at once you may as well dive in both feet first and get your backlogs aching with some fine indie PC games in pretty much every genre. I’m in the middle of writing a review at the moment, so I’ll just play the lazy card and let you click on each pic below to get on over the deals yourselves. Note that these are only available for a LIMITED time (about 72 hours each), so act FAST and grab a bundle (or bundles) and walk away happy that you now have way too many games to get to.

Okay, let’s go!

One!

Two!

Three!

Four!

Okay, my work here seems to be done… but isn’t. I’m poring through my inbox and see other bundles in there from a few sites. Yaaaaaah. Okay, I’ll get those up tomorrow, as I’m still banging away on a game review and some other stuff…

Now Playing: Citizens of Earth

Posted on January 18, 2015 by geelw

I’ll have a full review up something this coming week, but Eden Industries’ indie RPG Citizens of Earth is so far, pretty awesome. They’ve captured the wackiness of certain 90’s Japanese RPGs (some familiar, some not so familiar) perfectly with a fun and amusing game that’s easy to hop into but challenging if you’re willing to crank up the difficulty. Anyway, that’s all for now,as I don’t want to spoil anything. The game may not have made its crowdfunding target, but Atlus picking it up and getting it out on a bunch of platforms (PC, PS4, PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii U) via digital distribution was a pretty smart move on their part.

Granted, if you despise digital games, you’ll be missing out on some grand fun. Hopefully, some of the die-hard physical-only/mostly collectors will break that ban and give this game some love. Back in a few with that review…

“Wake Up, Time to BUY!” Indie Royale Gives You Coffee and a Mystery…

Posted on January 17, 2015 by geelw

I forgot to add these two awesome deals from Indie Royale yesterday, so here you go: MORE games to buy for not a lot of money, you ~~cheapskates~~ smart and wise savers of money. First up, the Coffee Bean Bundle, which is a misleading title on the surface as you’re buying games, not coffee (or coffee beans for that matter). That said, you’ll probably need to put on a pot of the strongest java you can handle. Blinking while playing any of the high-octane games in this set of five is pretty much guaranteed to make you lose. Hey, sleep is overrated on some days, right?

Do you love mysteries? Good. Have you got a digital dollar? Great! The Mystery 3 Bundle is calling out to you and you know you can’t resist. Three of the games are revealed (a retro JRPG and two intriguing deep water diving/hidden object hybrids) and the other seven are hidden until later. Take a chance, folks. No, you probably won’t get some system-taxing AAA game at all. But surprises are underrated on some days, right? Okay, get to it then. Your backlog isn’t a backlog unless it’s got some games in it!

IndieGala Wants To Scare Your Pants Off Today. Let Them!

Posted on January 12, 2015 by geelw

But make sure to take your wallet out of your pocket first if you keep it there. This week’s IndieGala Every Monday Bundle is a smaller one than usual, but that’s because Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will most likely scare you to death before you get to the other games in the bundle. To wit:

The other games aren’t horror-themed at all, but you do get some nice indie RPGs and strategy games to keep your heart rate calmer. Still, $1.89 is a fine deal for these five games and if you’ve never played the first Five Nights at Freddy’s, fear not (or perhaps fear a lot!). That one’s still on sale in last week’s Friday Special Bundle which has ten total games for a mere $2.89.

I’ll leave you to it to decide what you want to do, as usual. If anything getting both bundles will keep you warm because of all that jumping out of your seat you’ll be doing in the two games noted above…

Archive.org Adds 2300+ MS-DOS Games: So Much For Productivity (Again!)…

Posted on January 10, 2015 by geelw

Oh, good gravy. If the Internet Arcade wasn’t a bad enough way to lose too many hours, Archive.org has just killed off the chances some of you will ever see the light of day ever again. Once again, you can blame Jason Scott and a bunch of other people with too much time on their hands who have very wisely decided to keep videogame history alive and strong for the masses.

All you need to do is point your browser here and hope you aren’t swept away for too long trying out a bunch of classic MS-DOS games. While most are emulated in your browser, you can download some titles and run them on your PC using a decent DOS emulator such as DOSBOX or FreeDOS. I’ll “warn” you in advance that many of these game are really awesome and you may find yourself neglecting basic needs. I’d write more, but a bunch of oldies are calling me to come spend some time with them…

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!