By Quintin Smith on April 4th, 2011 at 8:25 am.
What are you doing right now? Working? Smiling? Breathing? Well, stop with that nonsense and go straight over to the Steam page for The Potato Sack, a new bundle of indie games offering £108′s worth of great indie games, including Amnesia, Super Meat Boy, Toki Tori (which you can read Kieron shouting about here), The Ball (which Jim and John talk about here) and Defense Grid: The Awakening, for a paltry £27. I’d eagerly pay £30 for those five games alone, and there are another eight in the pack.
While if you already own two or three of these games you might have a tricky decision ahead of you, if you don’t own a single one of them then this is an absolute no-brainer. Buy! Buy it now! There’s even a Team Fortress 2 hat in it for you. And just in case only one or two of the participating games catch your eye, each of them is currently enjoying a 50% off sale. Amazing.
04/04/2011 at 08:36 Kaira- says:
New? Didn’t you guys get the message? Everything older than 5 minutes is “old” in internet.
04/04/2011 at 08:38 Corrupt_Tiki says:
I just want the hat.
04/04/2011 at 08:39 BaronWR says:
It’s worth mentioning that there may be some kind of ARG embedded in the potato themed content in the games in this bundle, although it’s not clear exactly what’s going on yet.
More info at:
http://valvearg.info/wiki/Valve_ARG_Wiki
04/04/2011 at 09:52 Out Reach says:
Yes we want more news on the ARG!
04/04/2011 at 10:02 Ryz says:
There is definitely a Portal 2 related ARG going on. The current hint directly from Dejobaan has led quite a few people in the IRC channel to guess that the next step will involve the BBS from the Portal 2 announcement ARG.
04/04/2011 at 10:33 Oozo says:
Implementing ARG-stuff in OTHER people’s games (even though, of course, they were playing along) – is that a whole new level of (ab)using Steam? Anyway, I’m always a sucker for this kind of things, so I’ll be following closely.
04/04/2011 at 11:37 MadTinkerer says:
Woah! Like the wiki says, “The rabbit hole goes deeper”!
Seriously: HOW many other indie developers are involved in this!?!
Guys, this needs to be a RPS story proper.
04/04/2011 at 08:44 Valvarexart says:
I already own half of those, sadface
04/04/2011 at 08:44 ANeM says:
I already own 10 of these games.. Contemplating grabbing the other 3..
04/04/2011 at 11:38 MadTinkerer says:
I only had to grab two to complete my collection, and they were both half off. Patiently waiting for my potato hat. :)
04/04/2011 at 08:45 mollemannen says:
it’s a shame i already own three of them and don’t want five :/
04/04/2011 at 09:03 mollemannen says:
there. i bought super meat boy and audiosurf anyway. are you happy now? why am i talking to a webpage. answer be god damnit!
04/04/2011 at 19:19 somini says:
Good Boy! Now, gift all the other games to someone, and don’t eat this sausage…
04/04/2011 at 08:50 Tacroy says:
Wot a shame :(
I would totally get it, except I don’t have any friends on whom to offload the duplicate games and also I’m not entirely certain I really want the games I don’t have.
(like Amnesia. I just can’t play that sort of game, and if I owned it I might be inclined to at some point (me! who stressed out about Beyond Good and Evil’s sneaking scenes! Who can’t play Thief because of the fear of getting caught! It would be a shambles.))
04/04/2011 at 08:54 Wulf says:
You could just shoot the games to random RPS folks!
04/04/2011 at 08:55 Stylosa says:
I’ll happily be your chum to lend a shoulder onto which sir can offload the duplicate games onto :p. We’ll even throw the games up onto our youtube channel for great win!
04/04/2011 at 09:26 Teddy Leach says:
*Grins politely, in a begging manner.*
04/04/2011 at 08:54 Wulf says:
You can gift the games you already have – so it’s nice to get it anyway and just gift off the games you already own, especially if there are developers involved that you want to support. (And indeed, Dejobaan has quite a presence there, and I’m happy to support Dejobaan. Though I still sadface at them for the distinct lack of Galaxy Rage news, which I fear is now completely dead.)
And there were a couple of surprises in there for me that I wasn’t expecting to enjoy but ended up enjoying immensely. Yay Steam.
04/04/2011 at 09:13 The Dark One says:
Listen to this guy. Unlike some other packs, any duplicates you get in the sale will be giftable. Shower your friends with the neat indie titles you’ve been yammering on about!
04/04/2011 at 09:03 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
The whole sack is a little too much for my budget at the moment, but i really, really want that new Dejobaan game, whose name is too long to be spelled out even though I’m explaining why I don’t write the whole name for way longer than it would take to just c&p it.
04/04/2011 at 09:10 amandachen says:
A potato isn’t a root.
04/04/2011 at 09:18 The Dark One says:
A sweet potato is, though!
04/04/2011 at 09:19 choconutjoe says:
Turns out he’s right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuber#Potatoes
04/04/2011 at 09:33 amandachen says:
A sweet potato isn’t a potato.
04/04/2011 at 10:02 tomeoftom says:
Potatoes are.
04/04/2011 at 11:01 itsallcrap says:
FACT
04/04/2011 at 09:14 StranaMente says:
I think you could say in the news that you can buy the games separately at only half of the usual price too. Just saying…
EDIT:
Didn’t read it through. Sorry…
04/04/2011 at 09:18 Coins says:
“And just in case only one or two of the participating games catch your eye, each of them is currently enjoying a 50% off sale. Amazing.”
It’s quite there, y’know.
04/04/2011 at 09:42 StranaMente says:
Gee… proof reading… I jumped at the comment section and saw many people were complaining about owning already some of theme… *goes in the angle, watching the wall*
04/04/2011 at 09:17 godgoo says:
+1 for the uk hip hop reference
04/04/2011 at 09:36 qrter says:
Only very tangentally related, but I see that RPS favourite Precursors (and less favoured Xenus 2) is half-price at GamersGate.
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-PREC/precursors
04/04/2011 at 17:30 Wulf says:
And it’s got Starforce on it. I thought that vile monstrosity was dead. I’d honestly advise that people avoid this for a vast multitude of reasons.
(I have a thing against it because on one of my older computers I kept having all my drives revert to PIO mode, I thought that my computer was dying due to this, but it turned out that Starforce was responsible. I do not like Starforce.)
04/04/2011 at 09:52 Spacewalk says:
What, no “staring eyes” tag?
04/04/2011 at 11:54 4026 says:
Very well played indeed.
But seriously, that tag is now mandatory.
04/04/2011 at 11:56 suibhne says:
Nice.
04/04/2011 at 10:16 Jonathan says:
More like Tuber Manuva.
04/04/2011 at 10:30 Lambchops says:
Oh well played, sir!
04/04/2011 at 10:31 Lambchops says:
i already own most of these and as such any more carbs might tip me over the edge!
04/04/2011 at 10:45 bill says:
It’s gotten to the stage where, when kindly RPS commenters were offering to give their free copies of duplicate games yesterday, I realised I have so many unplayed games that even the offer of some of these awesome sounding games for free was more stressful than tempting.
It’s mostly the fault of Pay What You Want bundles, bargain buckets and steam sales.
Steam sales are going to have to go negative in future if they want my money*
*that they’d give to me.
04/04/2011 at 11:28 Carra says:
Already have over half of these games.
Would be nice if they just let you pay a percentage. Got 6/10 games? Pay 40% of £30 for the other games.
04/04/2011 at 11:29 terry says:
Got em all except Rush and Cogs. It’s a great deal for those that don’t, though!
04/04/2011 at 11:30 Shadowcat says:
Can anyone offer an opinion on “1..2..3.. Kick It! (DTBLAUB)” ? Dejobaan are selling a ‘preview’ version direct for $10, which sounds like a bargain if it’s DRM-free and the music-analysis is decent, but the videos I’ve seen so far don’t really seem to blend all that well with the music, so I’m hesitant.
04/04/2011 at 12:31 Xocrates says:
The most noteworthy thing about Kick it! at this point is that it is a fairly early pre-release version, and music analysis and matching is still very much in flow. Depending on the level and music used the blending can vary from quite good to non-existing at this point.
That said, the game can be great fun, and while at this point it isn’t quite as good as either AAAAaaaa(etc…) or Audiosurf, I would say it’s probably worth the money.
EDIT: Oh, and just a small note. Currently the version on their site is older than the Steam version. Though I expect this to be changed soon.
04/04/2011 at 17:46 Wulf says:
I’m fond of Kick It already, it’s Aaaa with my own music, which I’ve been enjoying. I’m also pleased that it holds up the tradition that the Argon Refinery track from the Shatter OST should make all rhythm games go completely insane. (In Audiosurf it resulted in absolute terror, I’ve never seen that much traffic spam in it.)
04/04/2011 at 11:36 TooNu says:
I want audiosurf and amnesia, but that’s it. Oh gawd, do I? don’t I?
04/04/2011 at 11:39 Navagon says:
It’s a damn good pack at a damn good price. I already own some of the pricier games in that pack elsewhere, so even the giftability of it all isn’t really enough to stop me thinking “wait for a better* deal”.
*for me, that is.
04/04/2011 at 12:17 Malibu Stacey says:
Hmm i already own Amnesia, AudioSurf, Cogs, Defense Grid, Killing Floor, Super Meat Boy & The Ball. Bit Trip Beat is the only other thing that I fancy in the pack.
The change to Killing Floor is that the cash model is now a potato instead of a bundle of notes. Didn’t notice anything else but only played a couple of maps on Friday evening so we may have missed something.
04/04/2011 at 12:57 Matt says:
This is the best pun-headline yet.
Nice up the function
04/04/2011 at 13:29 Mario Figueiredo says:
Quintin sounds like one of these over-hyped guests in the Sales Channel.
- “Buy! Buy it now!”
- “for a paltry £27. I’d eagerly pay £30 for those five games alone, and there are another eight in the pack”
- “Amazing”
Did this change your life?
04/04/2011 at 17:47 Wulf says:
YES! :D Or it’s making me obsess over another Valve ARG, at least.
04/04/2011 at 13:39 Stefan117 says:
Such an awesome bundle but I already own half of the games from the steam sales, might checkout Amnesia though!
04/04/2011 at 16:47 myca77 says:
I already own over half of these, and most of my friends have the ones that I could gift if I got the pack, well I have another hour I think to make my mind up.
04/04/2011 at 17:50 Wulf says:
I’m pleased by this pack, overall. A strong presence of Dejobaan, and delights that I wasn’t expecting to be delightful, if I’m being honest. The Ball was the true surprise, though, in seeing that someone decided to do a Nahuan culture science-fantasy mash-up. That made me smile from ear to ear, because that’s a rare thing and I’d likely tolerate a poor game for something that interesting, but happily it’s turning out to be not a bad game at all.
And I managed to make a friend’s day by gifting him Audiosurf. This was after he found this and realised his need to play that game. Oh and the Valve ARG tied into it is fairly incredible, too.
04/04/2011 at 23:17 rammjaeger says:
Hey don’t forget that Killing Floor is in that pack too!