New Humble Indie Bundle Goes Live

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New Humble Indie Bundle Goes Live

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 13, 2011 @08:42PM from the keeping-humble-regular dept.

Physicser writes "The latest Humble Indie Bundle has gone live, consisting of Super Meat Boy, Shank, Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, and NightSky. Also, if you beat the average price, you receive Cave Story+ and Gratuitous Space Battles. As always, the games are DRM-free, and this is the initial Linux release for all seven. I'm also curious to see what will be added later on, as has been the tradition of the Humble Bundles."

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One million! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-13 20:54 · Score: 5, Informative

They have already surpassed the 930,000 $ mark within the first ten hours, will probably reach 1 million within 12h. Maybe slashdot helps it catapult to 2 million? Go Indies!
1. Re:One million! by Larryish · 2011-12-13 20:58 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Having bought the previous 2 bundles, I must say:
  Sorry mate, won't be buying this bundle unless every game has a .deb package available.
  Tired of buying 6 to 8 games, only to find out that only 1 or 2 of them work as advertised without hours of work configging and updating libraries.
2. Re:One million! by lucidlyTwisted · 2011-12-13 21:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I've had to do the odd wee bodge to get sound to work on Ubuntu, but that's mostly because sound is still a joke on GNU/Linux.
  As for .debs everywhere, that'll keep the Fedora users happy. :)
  I'm not buying this one for no other reason that I'm still playing through all the games I bought on the others and there's simply too many Humble Bundles coming. They're ruining a great idea through over-use. Which is kind of a shame as I really like the general idea and the fact these devs are playing fair. No DRM, ports to new platforms and even the source at times. Can't say fairer than that really!
  Hmm...maybe as a stocking filler....
3. Re:One million! by iviv66 · 2011-12-13 21:30 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Sorry mate, won't be buying this bundle unless every game has a .deb package available.
  Just for reference, in this bundle Super Meat Boy and Bit.Trip Runner have .deb packages available. Shank is a bin. Jamestown and Gratuitous Space Battles are .tar.gz. NightSky and Cave Story+ are .zip
  Not entirely sure what any of that means, but hope its helpful for linux users.
4. Re:One million! by RubberMallet · 2011-12-13 21:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Most of the games on the previous Humble Bundles are available via Desura now, and I'd expect that the latest one will get Desura keys as well at some point (the Desura keys seem to lag behind a bit). Install Desura, grab your HB key from the HB site.. add key to Desura.. and it takes care of making your games work in whatever distro you use. I had loads of fiddly missing lib issues getting some of the games working (especially Crayon Physics) in Linux prior to doing it this way... now.. it's like using Steam... click.. install... click play... no drama.
5. Re:One million! by Kjella · 2011-12-13 21:48 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  As for .debs everywhere, that'll keep the Fedora users happy. :)
  They're not exactly mutually exclusive... And you think this is a small thing but fiddling with getting shit to work quickly brings the value down into the negative - you'd actually like a refund for wasting your time on it. That's not very healthy if you're looking for repeat customers, even for free some things aren't worth it.
  
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6. Re:One million! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-13 22:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And here I was wondering why Linux is dead on the desktop.
7. Re:One million! by moderatorrater · 2011-12-14 00:57 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  And you think this is a small thing but fiddling with getting shit to work quickly brings the value down into the negative - you'd actually like a refund for wasting your time on it. That's not very healthy if you're looking for repeat customers, even for free some things aren't worth it.
  Are you talking about the humble bundle or linux?
8. Re:One million! by tepples · 2011-12-14 01:51 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Didn't we use to criticize windows for requiring admin rights to install anything?
  
  No, we used to criticize windows for requiring admin rights to run anything after it has been installed.
  
  And know i don't want to just type "aptget crap whatever" and end up updating a whole bunch of stuff i don't want to update, or download. Your just hiding the symptoms of dependency hell
  The only way to completely hide dependency hell is to make each game depend only on BIOS, such that each game is bootable and runs in a VM. That's the user experience you get when, say, you run homebrew NES games in FCEUX. Is 3D graphics virtualization capable of handling this yet?
hmm.... by justforgetme · 2011-12-13 20:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think that humble bundle inc should slow down a bit..
2 bundles in a month?
I don't know if it's the games or just me but the last one I skipped because the games didn't intrigue me that much and this one seems about the same to me. It might also be that I'm just disenchanted because of the constant presence of some humble bundle to the point where it isn't something special anymore.
Am I being a fart or do others think less frequency more quality would be nice?

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1. Re:hmm.... by mindsofpsi · 2011-12-13 21:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Well, it has been five months since the the last numbered humble bundle came out, but I get what your saying.
2. Re:hmm.... by Mathinker · 2011-12-13 21:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  I also skipped one of the bundles (Voxatron) because, yes, it isn't "special" anymore. I started to actually research the games to see if I am really interested enough to buy.
  However, the fact that it isn't special anymore is fascinating because it indicates:
  
  It is a viable business strategy to sell DRM-less games for "pay what you want" (even if it's only after the first sales "surge" has finished)
  Providing a Linux version has (at least some) marketing value
  There are a lot more quality indie games out there than I was aware of
3. Re:hmm.... by blahplusplus · 2011-12-13 22:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "I think that humble bundle inc should slow down a bit.."
  Compared to what the game industry right now is, everyone should want to keep these guys in business. Sure the games aren't that great but you need money to increase the quality of your games. The first games they release aren't going to be the greatest, games take huge amounts of money and resources to develop. Modern AAA games take teams of hundreds and years of development.
  These guys can't simply spend AAA budgets on games they have to find a viable business model before they can expand and grow to higher quality games. Gamers expectations are so high because of 50 million dollar games these guys have to start somewhere. We're seeing an industry reset in a way whether they will make enough money to make more AAA like games or they will just milk it for all it's worth remains to be seen how much money they can get and whether or not they want to grow or not.
4. Re:hmm.... by daid303 · 2011-12-13 23:15 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually, these are great games. Or, Super Meat Boy, Shank, CaveStory+ and Bit-Trip-Runner are. I already own those, which makes the bundle not that interesting for me. But these are not "low quality" games. I have more playtime in Super Meat Boy then in 2 big AAA combined. (new Deus Ex + Portal 2)
  These game studios don't have big bucks for big graphics, they make it up in gameplay value.
5. Re:hmm.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-13 23:16 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  These aren't AAA titles, with the budget to match. That doesn't make them mediocre. It may make the graphics less polished, the game a little shorter but it also allows for games that would never be possible in a AAA format (throw money, people see if it sticks now days).
  "Sure the games aren't that great" - many would disagree.
6. Re:hmm.... by blahplusplus · 2011-12-13 23:28 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  "We should reward mediocrity and just hope that it gets better because...?"
  If you buy any modern games you are already rewarding rehashes and mediocrity, so gamers clearly don't have a problem with it (see call of duty, etc). So please spare me your BS. Most games today are cinematics /w little gameplay. Most PC games have been sloppy ports over the past 10 years.
  Next many of the games come with source code (so if you're a tinkerer you can modify/learn from it/update it/ make it your own, etc). Try getting that in the game industry at all these days. The whole idea that you start out producing amazing stuff with the budgets of these smalld developers is nonsensical. The game industry had decades to get to where it is at today. Your expectations have been colored by decades of advancements.
  You really need to load up some old NES games on emulators and look at all the shit games then, many indie games today out-shine most 8-bit NES and some 16-bit games from the SNES/GEN era. You don't start at the top when you're a small business, you start small and work your way up. The games are a reflection of the finances of the developers themselves, they'd rather not go out of business.
  How many AAA dev houses are in debt? What's the stock of THQ lately? Oh yeah look at that stock price!
  http://bit.ly/s9ZUIX
  Making high quality games don't mean much when you don't have a viable business model to survive to make more games.
Thoughts on the games themselves by RogueyWon · 2011-12-13 22:01 · Score: 4, Informative

Most of the comments above are focussing on the "Humble Bundle" system. As I've actually got most of these already via various Steam sales, I thought I'd try to comment on the actual games.
Super Meat Boy is the best of the bunch and is definitely worth a few dollars if you don't have it already. It's ridiculously difficult in places, but also very more-ish. You really do want a gamepad to play it properly, though - keyboard mode is not nice.
NightSky is clever, but I found its appeal fairly short-lived. Bit.Trip Runner isn't really doing anything we haven't seen done better elsewhere. Shank and Jamestown are the two I haven't played.
You'll get a much more interesting package if you pay above the average. Cave Story+ is really very good indeed - and I suspect that between that and Super Meat Boy, you could justify paying over the average. Gratuitous Space Battles is a really great idea, but I've found that it works far better at a level of principle than it does in practice (where it tends to be deeply frustrating and has a learning curve that annoyed even me - and I've beaten and loved Dark Souls). It's the best game in the package from a graphical perspective, if that matters to you (though still a long way behind mainstream commercial offerings).
Ironically... by SomeGuyFromCA · 2011-12-13 22:40 · Score: 5, Informative

This makes me less likely to buy indie games. I paid full price for Gratuitous Space Battles not six weeks ago.
At least the Trine 2 page warns me: "Linux and DRM free versions will be added to Humble Store purchases in 2012." (Which is why I'm waiting on it. Screw Steam-spyware.)

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if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Re:Why do I need a Steam key? by grumbel · 2011-12-13 23:32 · Score: 5, Informative

The Humble Bundle doesn't need the Steam keys, they are just an optional addition, you can simply download the .bin/.exe/.tar.gz directly if you want.
Where is EFF? by ElusiveJoe · 2011-12-13 23:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't see it in the donation list. Where is EFF when it needed most? I may be an evil person, but I don't want to donate money to US and UK hospitals, I don't care.
Indie Royale Bundle by grumbel · 2011-12-13 23:41 · Score: 5, Informative

For those that have missed it: Seems like the Humble Bundle is getting a bit competitions, a few weeks ago the IndieRoyale Bundles got launched, they follow a similar model of multiple games for an almost-pay-what-you-want price (min around $3). it however doesn't have the charity and it only sometimes has Linux versions of the games. Also their game selections seems to be not so great most of the times, however they include a gem every now and then.