Cheap And Fearful: Bundle Of The Damned

Groupees have a bundle of Halloween gaming for your perusal. It's actually more seasonal than the ongoing Indie Royale collection, primarily because this one contains a game called Manor of the Damned, which is exactly the sort of name Halloween entertainment should have. Psychological, nuanced horror is for every other day of the year. Disappointingly, Manor of the Damned is a retro ARPG rather than Realms of the Haunting for a new era. The standout is probably Cryostasis, which is an imaginative first-person chiller that will utilise its fancy ice effects and poor optimisation to bring your computer to its knees. Those can be yours for $1, but spend at least $4 and you'll get more, as detailed below.

The games unlocked at the measly $4 tier are Anna (my thoughts here), audio-only adventure BlindSide and Post Mortem, which is the confusingly titled first entry in the Still Life series. I suppose it's Still Life 1 and 2 that mucked up the nomenclature since they came later. For what it's worth, I thought Still Life was pleasant enough for a violent murder mystery, although I didn't enjoy it enough to play the prequel or sequel.

The bundle also contains music from the Midnight Syndicate, and some other horrifying bits and pieces.

As is now standard with bundles, the price is up to you and 20% of whatever you spend goes to UNICEF. It's available for four days.

The best thing about researching the contents of the bundle was looking up the Midnight Syndicate and finding an endorsement from Twisted Sister's frontman on their website. This is how he is credited: "Dee Snider (Twisted Sister, House of Hair, Celebrity Apprentice)".