By Jim Rossignol on March 21st, 2012 at 2:00 pm.
On the move, you see, because all of the games have both desktop, Mac and mobile/tablet versions. It’s like a play on words,or something. Writer stuff. Yeah. Anyway, the latest Humble Indie Bundle – the series of spectacularly successful Pay What You Want game bundles – contains mildly creepy rope-puzzler Zen Bound 2, running and jumping phenomenon Canabalt, clockworky brain-befuddler Cogs, and epic turn-based role-play ‘em up, Avadon: The Black Fortress. To be honest this is the first indie bundle I’ve felt a bit indifferent towards – with the exception of Avadon I can’t really see myself giving much time to any of these games. Still, you get to give money to the EFF and Child’s Play, too, so there’s always that feeling of doing the right thing to help out with those other feelings of indifference.
21/03/2012 at 14:06 Lobotomist says:
What makes this bundle special is that all games are on Android.
I mean Avadon for android is just bomb! Easily the best RPG on this platform (albeit only for tablets, yes)
So if you own android, its one bundle you cant skip :)
21/03/2012 at 14:22 Jyden says:
Works on phone too – Text just gets a wee bit harder to read.
21/03/2012 at 14:07 Suits says:
Maybe if I had an Android
21/03/2012 at 15:11 Aninhumer says:
The games are available on PC as well.
21/03/2012 at 14:07 Gundato says:
Yeah, it was a good excuse to get Avadon, but I mostly grabbed this (and the first Android bundle) to get a few games for my tablet.
21/03/2012 at 14:08 RavenGlenn says:
I had the exact same feelings when I saw this one. A big fat resounding ‘meh’. Nothing in it holds any interest for me sadly. I’ve bought all of the humble bundles up till now, but this one just doesn’t do anything for me.
21/03/2012 at 14:10 killias2 says:
Avadon doesn’t help me. I only have an Android phone. The others are ‘meh,’ and I already have a few of the games (including Avadon) for PC. Hell, being an idiot, I seemed to have bought Avadon twice: once on Steam and once at Gamersgate.
I haven’t even played the game yet!
21/03/2012 at 14:15 magnus says:
‘Mildly creepy rope puzzler’ I’ve never heard it called that before, oh yeah I really like Zen Bound 2, even though I only managed to finish the entire first tree and two other puzzles at 100%.
21/03/2012 at 14:17 deadly.by.design says:
Avadon was on my list of “games I would’ve loved & had the patience for 10 years ago, so I’ll buy and never play it” list… so, this is a good excuse. Plus, Canabalt looks neat-ish. The price is over $6… which is odd. Not that a dollar is a big deal here, but I may wait a few days for it to reach 5-ish.
22/03/2012 at 00:49 wodin says:
Funny you should say that. Lots of recent games that i own I just can’t stick with, yet as you say when I was younger I’d be immersed and play them for hours and hours. Must be an age thing.
Games like Combat Mission Normandy. Now when Close Combat BTF and Cross of iron came out I poured hours and hours into them. I know I prefer CMBN yet I’ve barely played it. When I was even younger I played Elite on the BBC B for a year nearly everyday! I find it hard to stick with something for a couple of weeks now!
It’s either age, or the mystery of a computer game has now gone all together. Back then the inner workings of a game where like magic, you thought games had no limits, anything could happen next. Now we know everything about them from start to finish and what all the content is and the limits of AI etc etc etc. I remember my mate having a Spectrum 16K playing I think Jet Set Willy? Now I was always imaging what may happen next, couldn’t wait to see next time I went to see him. Now I’d now it was a side scrolling platform game with pretty much the same content all the way through and has so and so amount of hours gameplay. Not sure if I’m explaining myself well here. I suppose imagination was involved in games then plus being niave or I suppose ignorant.
21/03/2012 at 14:19 Lars Westergren says:
I put down $15 for this, not because I’ll play them a lot, but because I want more quality games for Android.
Avadon I can’t play because I don’t have a tablet. Of the remaining ones, Zen Bound 2 seems like it could be good to kill a couple of hours if I’m stuck at an airport or something. Cananbalt had really atmospheric music but I require more sense of progress towards a goal to keep me interested. I’m really bad at Cogs, and I hate feeling stupid so it mainly annoys me.
Looking foward the most to the port of Red Wasp Design’s “Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land” from iOS to Android and PC. That looks like a proper PC strategy/RPG title that somehow ended up on portables.
http://redwaspdesign.wordpress.com/call-of-cthulhu/
21/03/2012 at 15:15 MondSemmel says:
I really liked Zen Bound 2. Don’t expect to play and enjoy the game for hours at once; but doing a few of the levels in, say, 15-30 minute bursts felt like time well-spent – the puzzles and gameplay were really quite unique and enjoyable. That being said, I only played the game on PC, so I cannot vouch for the Android version.
(That being said, owning only the sequel to any game feels somehow wrong in my mind…)
21/03/2012 at 14:19 bill says:
I think i have cogs (unplayed as yet) from a previous humble bundle.. are they repeating themselves now?
21/03/2012 at 14:22 JFS says:
Yeah, they are. We have reached the point of Indie Bundle Singularity, and soon the world will end.
21/03/2012 at 14:39 applecup says:
Well, it is 2012.
22/03/2012 at 04:15 ANeM says:
The first Android bundle also had repeats in the form of World of Goo and Osmos. However, to be fair; the original bundles for these repeat games did not include android support, which is the main draw of the android bundles.
The fact is that in the context of the Android platform all of these games would be impossible to view any of the HAB2 games as “repeats.” They are all debuting on the platform through this bundle.
21/03/2012 at 14:49 Lobotomist says:
Its there representing Android version , before it was only PC(mac)
22/03/2012 at 15:39 El_Emmental says:
So far and if I recall correctly, Cogs was featured in :
- Humble Indie Bundle 3
- the Summer-of-Love/Mega-Love Bundles
- Humble Android Bundle 2
They do love bundles.
21/03/2012 at 14:24 Matchstick says:
The Humble Bundle Android app is pretty useful once you’ve bought this (not least as it’s supposed to alert you to updates to the apps) and you can also use it for the previous Android bundle as well.
http://www.humblebundle.com/getandroidapp
21/03/2012 at 20:40 Lars Westergren says:
Ah, I had missed that somehow. Very helpful, thanks.
21/03/2012 at 14:28 sfury says:
Cogs I don’t mind having, and Avadon is on my list whenever / if I get the time for it. And Canabalt being free…
Basically bought it because of Zen Bound 2 – was curious about it for some time now and glad they made Android port – was not disappointed.
Interesting how they’ve managed the controls on PC for that, will check soon.
21/03/2012 at 15:44 siegarettes says:
Aye, I happen to love those games. I am now up to three purchases of Zen Bound 2, iOS, PC and Android. It has a great physicality to the puzzles. Canabalt I love as well, and purchased even though I have an iOS copy and will be getting the PSN version.
If anything, I keep giving to the Humble Bundle simply because they choose quality games and are consistently innovative. First with the Bundle itself, and now branching out into even more platforms.
21/03/2012 at 14:41 Lewie Procter says:
The android version of Canabalt is amazing. It has 3D buildings!
21/03/2012 at 15:37 siegarettes says:
The animation on the character seems improved as well. In addition, the pc version has a two player mode.
21/03/2012 at 15:16 ulix says:
Let’s not forget the really great Swords & Soldiers, which you get when you pay more than the average.
It sprung to life as a WiiWare game. later came to iOS, PSN, etc. and I think this is the first time we see it on PC.
21/03/2012 at 15:39 siegarettes says:
It’s been on PC a while, actually. If I recall it was part of the Steam holiday achievement hunt.
21/03/2012 at 15:23 Zaboomafoozarg says:
Humble Bundle: Aslan
21/03/2012 at 15:26 Zaboomafoozarg says:
It’s ON THE MOVE!
21/03/2012 at 16:13 elfbarf says:
Started playing Avadon yesterday, it’s pretty good though some of the “features” (being able to open your inventory with a key, but having to close to click it) are a bit irritating, I’m surprised that they haven’t been fixed in a patch.
21/03/2012 at 16:24 JFS says:
Vogel seems to be working on the next game already, so it might or might not get fixed… it caused me some trouble as well.
21/03/2012 at 17:54 InternetBatman says:
This is the second humble bundle I’m not getting. I have all of the games except Zen Bound, and repeating Cogs just doesn’t sit well with me.
21/03/2012 at 22:51 jamesgecko says:
Remember that there’s always at least one surprise game that will be revealed after the bundle has run for about a week. The suspense!
22/03/2012 at 01:39 Guest_84592 says:
In all honesty: That’s the worst Humble Bundle, yet.
I have stopped counting how often I have gotten coc̶k̶s̶gs by now. Avalon is simply not fun, Zen Bound 2 is a game where you ask yourself why they even bother with a PC version, and isn’t Canabalt free?
It’s surprising people are still eating this extremely sub-par bundle up. $500k after one day? An avereage of $6.39? For this? Seriously? That doesn’t seem appropriate.
They should do bundles more seldom, and instead focus on quality games.
22/03/2012 at 01:46 Yuri says:
Sometimes it’s more about the support for indie developers than the actual interest for the games themselves.
$500k is awesome. It just means that there will be more of what you wish for: quality games.