The Humble Paradox Bundle will net you Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2, Pillars of Eternity and more
This should keep you busy for a few months
What's your favourite paradox? My current one is 'how can the many awesome games in The Humble Paradox Bundle 2018 cost so little money?'. Wait, that's not a paradox - it's just a really good deal. Looks like I need to finish this news post then head back to paradox school.
Fortunately I won't need to enrol to enjoy the games on offer here. This bundle has 8 in total, with highlights including Obsidian's RPG Pillars of Eternity and the surprisingly funny wizard brawler Magicka 2. This is Paradox though, so best of all is the selection of sprawling strategy games. Let's dive in!
As is the Humble way, the more you spend the more games you'll pick up. At the first tier, $1 (about £0.73) will net you Cities in Motion 2, Magicka 2 and Majesty 2. I haven't touched the others, but I'm currently playing through Magicka 2 for the first time with a friend and we're having a blast. The chaotic spell casting is great of course, but I'd forgotten just how funny Magicka can be - we met David Antenborough in our last session, who got a chuckle from us with almost every line.
Also, that's a lot of 'M2's, which makes me think I've discovered some kind of secret code that'll unlock more games if I hammer my right mouse button. No luck yet.
If you beat the average, which is $7.23 (about £5.18) as I write this, you'll get Crusader Kings 2 and its The Old Gods DLC, Pillars of Eternity, Hearts of Iron III Collection and Europa Universalis III Complete. With the possible exception of Pillars of Eternity you could sink hundreds of hours into any one of those games, and Pillars is a damn hefty RPG. I stopped before too long because the combat didn't quite click with me, though I loved the 'choose your own adventure' style decision making. It reminded me a little of The Banner Saga in its ruthlessness, with one early choice I made to let a climber fall to his death rather than risk helping him. Here's John's review.
Last but not least, pay $12 (about £8.60) and you'll unlock sci-fi 4X game Stellaris. Rich McCormick recently took a look at how Stellaris is faring after 8 major updates. While he still found the late-game petered out even with the "essential" Utopia DLC, the mid-game has been livened thanks to a more in-depth politics system. I'm tempted to dip back in now, but I reckon I'll hold off until the Apocalypse expansion and next update arrive soon. Adding doomsday weapons that can blow up planets should let me revel in playing as a properly evil empire, and the FTL changes sound like they'll make warfare a bit more interesting.
As usual, if you do pick up the bundle then you can choose how much of your money goes to Humble, Paradox and charity. They've highlighted Charity: Water as the default charitable organisation, but you can pick whichever you like from Humble's database of thousands.
The Humble Paradox Bundle 2018 will run until February 6th, and you can grab it here.