By Craig Pearson on December 7th, 2012 at 3:00 pm.
Would David Fincher’s Se7en be any better if the revelation at the end was that the box contained a pile of indie games for almost no money at all? It would certainly be less psychologically damaging to Brad Pitt to discover the Lovecraft inspired platformer Eversion in there instead of (a box of fluffy kittens for sale – spoiler ed). And while he lived happily ever after he could think back to that lovely day when he and Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey all hung out in a dusty field playing indie games. That’s the power of cheap indie games, people: they make you forget someone killed loads of people in really horrible ways.
Anyway, to answer the rather insistent detective, the Eclectic Bundle has no theme. To know ‘what’s in the box?’ is to know about a random assortment of oddball games. For the minimum price of one dollar, you’ll be handed the delicately eerie platform Eversion, the deeply dwarvy Delve Deeper and its DLC, the strategic oddness of War of the Human Tanks, the popely pulp of Shadows of the Vatican – Act 1, and Fibrillation. That last one I’m putting a video of below, because I hadn’t heard of it until now and I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be an official sequel to Se7en, reuniting everyone who made the original, but in a game. Let’s watch.
Oh well. I’ve played two of the games in the bundle and can tell you Eversion and Delve Deeper are definitely worth a dollar, and maybe a few coins more. Generous backers who pay more than a paltry $2.70 will get The Adventures of Shuggy, Stay Dead, The 4th Wall, and Flibble in their ‘box’ as well.
07/12/2012 at 15:27 Revolving Ocelot says:
I looked in the box and found a Dahl-manufactured pistol.
….what?
07/12/2012 at 15:37 Low Life says:
I made her look in the box and she found something very special.
07/12/2012 at 15:47 golem09 says:
I hope you followed all three steps.
08/12/2012 at 04:16 meghanlambert2 says:
Mia. even though Janet`s bl0g is flabbergasting… yesterday I bought a great new Mercedes since I been earnin $9419 this-last/month and over $10,000 last-month. with-out a doubt this is my favourite work Ive had. I actually started four months/ago and straight away started to bring home at least $71 per/hr. I went to this website..Read More
07/12/2012 at 15:39 Lev Astov says:
At least it wasn’t Hyperion. Stupid “firing improves accuracy…”
07/12/2012 at 15:59 Frosty840 says:
‘s great for shotguns.
07/12/2012 at 16:48 Chris D says:
It’s also really useful when fighting for your life too.
07/12/2012 at 19:47 Baines says:
It’s not great when the shotguns have to be reloaded after you fire them twice.
07/12/2012 at 15:44 Llewyn says:
I looked in the box and I found Peter Molyneux looking back at me, grinning.
07/12/2012 at 16:24 Gap Gen says:
A kitten caboodle.
07/12/2012 at 15:50 RobinOttens says:
Funny. The only one I’d heard of before this was Fibrillation. So I don’t know about the others, but the demo I played of Fibrillation was ok. The voice acting got really annoying after a while, the (implied) story seemed a bit generic and most of it was just walking around in pretty but empty environments. I’m curious if the full game does anything to mix that up.
Oh wait, The 4th Wall is in this as well? Now I’m slightly more interested.
07/12/2012 at 15:57 hello_mr.Trout says:
i played (and finished fibrillation) – the voice acting was like, super sub par, and the story line was generic, and the puzzles were fairly basic, yet despite all these things, i thought it was pretty ace – apparently it was the work of a single developer, and created in 3 weeks – i really enjoyed the atmosphere and graphics, reminded me of a really condensed version of ‘kairo’ in a lot of ways.
07/12/2012 at 15:51 The Random One says:
“Ecletic” is a good way to describe a bundle with no theme, especially because when I got the email about it yesterday I thought it read “Erotic Bundle”
07/12/2012 at 18:15 ColOfNature says:
I’d buy that for a dollar!
07/12/2012 at 16:12 yogibbear says:
Imagine if you hadn’t seen Se7en yet… how terrible your taste in movies must be… and how Kevin Spacey’s name being dropped just ruined part of the movie for you…. AHAHAHAHAHAhaahahHAHAHAh I’m so glad I’m not one of those people.
07/12/2012 at 19:30 AngoraFish says:
Surely there’s a seven year statute of limitations on spoilers?
edit: Also, Soylent Green is people!
08/12/2012 at 00:04 belgand says:
Perhaps it’s the wrong time and place, but I never understood the problem there. I mean, yeah it’s people, but you already enjoy it and it’s not like they were hunted involuntarily or something. Frankly it sounded like a humane, sensible solution to their problems.
07/12/2012 at 16:18 Lambchops says:
Eversion is a pretty good platformer, though I gave up through frustration at some point. I seem to remember it inspired me to write some foul mouthed MS paint illustrated nonsense about how those platform jumps where you have to jump out then move back in without bashing into the block one space above you or else you’ll fall into the fiery bit of doom below you. You know the ones . . . bloody irritating they are.
07/12/2012 at 17:08 manitoo says:
It’s been said before, but these bundles totally reorganize one’s idea about a game’s value. I’m sitting here deciding whether $3 is too much to pay for Eversion, Shuggy and The 4th Wall–all games I’ve heard great things about.
Has anyone played Delve Deeper? The concept looks good but it could easily be terrible.
07/12/2012 at 17:15 echoMateria says:
Delve Deeper plays like a board game, like the ones where you make the board piece by piece as you play along. You can put the pieces for your dwarves to explore on your side or on your rivals paths to direct them into dangerous places. Then you send your dwarves to grab loot and try to have them return back safely. It can be played solo against AI or with up to 4 players hot-seat. I got it some time ago and had fun playing it. But I love board games, it may be a factor on whether you’ll like it or not.
07/12/2012 at 17:27 manitoo says:
I love board games. Sold!
07/12/2012 at 18:02 Baines says:
I bought it back during a Steam sale. I’ve really only played it once, losing badly to the AI, but it was fun.
But yes, it is a board game. You place tiles to expand the map. You take turns with the AI to move and act, and then all the monsters act. Etc. It just wouldn’t have been made as a real board game because of all the things that would have to be tracked.
07/12/2012 at 23:05 echoMateria says:
Oh I have boardgames like that, ones that give me a headache to try to run it smoothly while keeping all the players entertained; playing the monsters side, keeping a thousand gears turning to keep everything working. @_@
08/12/2012 at 02:03 Jad says:
Shuggy is great. Got in one of the Humble Bundles, loved it.
One of the things I like about it that while it is admittedly yet-another-indie-puzzle-platformer, it mixes up the format a little bit: the standard template is introduce a mechanic on a simple level, then explore the mechanic in the next couple of level, ramping up the difficulty, and then once the designer has beaten that mechanic into the ground move on to the next mechanic.
Shuggy gleefully just does whatever it wants whenever it wants, this level is a brain-bending time-manipulation one, the next is crazy gravity, the next you’ve got clones of yourself running around, then back to time travel but with some wild twist, then mix a couple of them together, then a new mechanic, etc.
Also the style is charming and the music is great and the puzzles are nice and it doesn’t try to do to much or get overly ambitious with plot, just fun.
07/12/2012 at 17:13 qrter says:
The thing about Seven that drives me round the bend is how eager and willing people seem to be to spell its title with that stupid “7″ in. It has to stop! IT HAS TO!
07/12/2012 at 17:45 xao says:
Yes, how dare people refer to something by its name?
07/12/2012 at 19:41 AngoraFish says:
Se7en is not grammatically correct and unpronounceable as written.
Perhaps it could be written Se-Seven-En (like I-Heart-Huckabees) but either way, it’s not English, it’s gibberish.
The fact that the name requires prior knowledge of the director’s preferred pronunciation is a huge warning sign, since written English is primarily about comprehension.
In this case, the movie has always been discussed as “Seven”, which in English is spelled S-E-V-E-N. Movie companies are not entitled to change English for promotional purposes, or at least, we are not obliged to adopt their self-imposed exceptions.
Introducing symbols into normal words is a cheap gimmick invented in the 90s to con journalists into reproducing corporate logos in text.
07/12/2012 at 22:29 ArcaneSaint says:
I’ve always pronounced it SE-SEVEN-EN, ’cause that’s what it says on the box! Haven’t watched it yet (I think), but if the producers decided to give it a silly name like sesevenen, than who am I to go against that? It’s their decision, the least you is respect that, instead of changing the title to “seven” just for your convenience, since you’re too lazy to say it the way they clearly intended it to be said: sesevenen.
And yes, I do this with all names, like Thifourf and Fthreear (or should that be spelled F.THREE.A.R.?).
07/12/2012 at 23:22 lordfrikk says:
It’s a stylized title, grammar doesn’t even come into play here.
07/12/2012 at 23:36 limimi says:
Take the Jewish name Joab for example. In the western world, that name would be misspelled more often than not. Would someone then tell a Joab that ‘In the Lawnmower Man, the character is named Jobe, not Joab, therefore Jobe is the correct spelling of your name.’ or alternatively ‘In the bible, the name is spelled Job, so your name is spelled Job’?
No, that would be insane and rude. Joab and Se7en are proper nouns and proper nouns have no cares for legibility or ease of communication.
(note: I feel like the best position to take is to not care how its spelled, which is the position I take. I don’t care if it’s Seven or Se7en or SeSevenven or whatever.)
09/12/2012 at 20:45 Dances to Podcasts says:
The 7 is just a sideways v.
08/12/2012 at 00:07 belgand says:
The early posters and such didn’t use that spelling. AFAIK it only became common later once the DVD was released. It was even on the VHS box. It was used in the titles, but that’s about the only place it was commonly used until recently.
07/12/2012 at 17:41 Totally heterosexual says:
War of the extremely anime human tanks.
Was there ever a WIT about that game?
07/12/2012 at 18:25 Baines says:
I want to say that the demo was covered on RPS at one point.
EDIT:
Ah, this is what I was thinking of. Not a WIT.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/18/now-playable-by-humans-war-of-the-human-tanks/
Google also turns up a brief mention in the forums.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?6055-War-of-the-Human-Tanks-demo-released-today
07/12/2012 at 23:07 echoMateria says:
There was also this one:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/26/war-of-the-human-tanks-is-a-very-good-name/
Source for one of the popular quotes on the game’s page. ;)
07/12/2012 at 21:45 Slinkyboy says:
I think RPS is on drugs sometimes. Maybe every time, because I don’t read most of your articles, but when i do, it’s stupid bat shit in-between.
07/12/2012 at 22:58 Lucid says:
Man, that’s why I love it.
It’s refreshingly insane.
08/12/2012 at 01:26 wu wei says:
I don’t read most of your articles
And yet you remained convinced that your opinion is somehow of interest to everyone else.
Here’s an idea: start your own blog!
08/12/2012 at 12:44 ffordesoon says:
What does “stupid batshit in-between” mean?
Seriously, I’m asking. It’s a hideous descriptor. Maybe if you read their articles, you could learn how to write a proper putdown? Just a thought.
08/12/2012 at 19:27 echoMateria says:
Awesome people at Kyttaro Games that are hosting this bundle are also directly supporting upcoming game developers:
“For every 100 bundles sold $10 will be added to our Indie Dev Grant and the whole sum will be awarded to a developer selected by vote; no strings will be attached as to how the grant will be used.”
Our next release 99 Spirits is one of the candidates for the Indie Dev Grant. You can vote for your favorite from the bottom of your keys page after purchasing a bundle.