Humble Indie Bundle V launched to great fanfare across the Internet at the end of May and has sold amazingly well – over $4 million has been shared between indie games developers and charity so far. In this part of the review we give you the low-down on four of the eight games included in the bundle: Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, Lone Survivor, Psychonauts and Limbo.
Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP
I started Sword and Sworcery being skeptical. I’d done a tiny bit of research, enough to know that S&S was an adventure game originally designed for iPad and iPhone, released for PC approximately a year after its iOS launch. The game’s menu did little to ease my fears: it’s minimalist, clean, and a bit too elegant. The twee little noises as I clicked on the menu buttons immediately irked me. I was also disturbed by the option in the settings menu to link S&S to Twitter. I muttered “you wish” at the game and promptly clicked away.
You get thrown into the world straight away, playing as a Scythian with impressively long legs. The art-style is a kind of cute pixel art with plenty of colour; charming, you might call it. Sword and Sworcery clearly isn’t going to put any kind of pressure on your graphics card or stun you with ultra-realistic visuals, but it’s obvious right from the start that the game doesn’t need to.
The music and sound fit perfectly with the graphics style. The heavy use of synths, percussion and electronic elements combine to give a brilliant soundtrack. In Sword and Sworcery, the music is an experience in itself. Jim Guthrie’s work manages to match the mood at key scenes within the game, whether it’s dark and foreboding or heart-warming and hopeful. The Humble Bundle comes with the soundtracks for all the games it contains, and Sword and Sworcery’s is worth several extra listens. Have a listen to The Prettiest Weed to get a feel for the music.
The gameplay itself is hardly revolutionary: Sword and Sworcery is a point and click game with simple puzzles and combat. The controls aren’t perfect, and here its origins as an iOS game become painfully clear. Story is imparted to you through speech from other characters, most of it in text form. The small amounts of voice acting are brief and fit well with the overall feel of the game.
Sword and Sworcery might be seen as trying too hard to be adorable, twee and thought-provoking, but the game never takes itself seriously, and delights in poking fun at all the clichés that it so gleefully reuses. The soundtrack is close to a masterpiece, the art style interesting, and the game provides the occasional heart-warming moment that makes playing it an enjoyable experience. The awkward controls only occasionally obstruct that enjoyment, and I will not ever respond to being asked to “Tweet this?” but Sword and Sworcery‘s charms see it through. And in over 10 years of playing video games, this is the first time that my progress has been thwarted by the phase of the IRL moon.
Grade: B
Limbo
Limbo is a platform-puzzler and the début title from Playdead games, an appropriately named Danish developer. In direct contrast to Sword and Sworcery, Limbo is undeniably creepy. The most immediately striking thing is the game’s black and white aesthetic; unlike S&S, colour does not play a starring role, nor does it feature at all.
The game starts with your character, a young boy, alone in a misty forest. There is no explanation, no story, no cutscenes – yet you immediately feel a connection to the lonely child. How did he end up here? How can I help him?
Your task is to navigate through a host of different puzzles. Your character can jump, and push and pull objects, but your own wits are by far the most crucial component to solving any of them. Another thing learnt from the first five minutes of playing Limbo is that your character will die frequently. Each death brings frustration, annoyance, and a little bit of pity as you see your character being killed off in numerous brutal ways: bear traps, drowning, electrocution…the list goes on.
As with most puzzle-platformers, the trick is to maintain a balance between frustration and difficulty, to maximise the thrill a player gets from overcoming the challenges put in front of them. Limbo comes close to getting it right; only two or three times did I ragequit and turn to an online walkthrough. The controls are slick, and rarely get in the way of gameplay. Frequent checkpoints do not detract from the sense of achievement after getting through a particularly nasty puzzle.
Limbo is a game you can play through in a day or simply dip into whenever you feel like it. The lack of dialogue, music and visual variety magnify the loneliness of the playable character and increase your attachment to him. Limbo is a great example of the heights that indie developers are able to reach; it is a gem of a game that a larger developer could never pull off with the same amount of macabre brilliance.
Grade: A-
Lone Survivor
Pay above the average and you’ll get access to Lone Survivor, a retro-style psychological horror game. You wake up in your apartment, running low on supplies whilst the zombie apocalypse has destroyed most of the civilised world. You aim to find other survivors and try to rebuild humanity, but first you’ve got to get out of your zombie-infested apartment block.
And that’s easier said than done. Navigating the block is tricky enough thanks to locked doors, ravenous zombies and blocked corridors, but you also have to deal with your own hunger and fatigue. Mirrors warp your character back to your apartment; the only place that you can rest. Sleeping on an empty stomach won’t do you much good, however, so its essential to keep your eyes peeled for prawn crackers, squid sticks and any other morsels you can find.
Early on, you also obtain a handgun – ammunition is rare, of course. You are also able to take a stealthier approach; hiding in shadowy alcoves and luring zombies with rotten meat until they’re out of your way.
Lone Survivor, despite, or even because of, its pixellated visuals, dishes up plenty of scares. What’s behind that door? Shall I make a run for it, even though it might be locked? These kind of decisions make the game seem less linear than it really is, a clever way for an indie game to provide an illusion of extra content on a low budget.
If you’re tired of pixel-art games that aim to bring forth feelings of nostalgia, then Lone Survivor most definitely isn’t for you. If you can endure or enjoy the pixels, Lone Survivor provides plenty of thrills. The character’s battles with fatigue, hunger and his own insanity add another layer of tension on top of that provided by the hordes of zombies. The sound effects and occasional music complement the atmosphere provided by the dark aesthetics and darker story. Lone Survivor may be short, but it does what it does very well indeed.
Grade: B
Psychonauts
Psychonauts sticks out like a sore thumb in this bundle. First, it is not truly an indie game; second, it is by far the oldest game on the list, having released in early 2005. Earlier this year, however, the creators of Psychonauts, Double Fine studios, launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new 2D adventure game; a campaign that was wildly successful. That success led to many more small gaming companies taking the Kickstarter approach and thus indie games were given a new lease of life, justifying Psychonauts‘ place within this indie bundle.
In contrast to Limbo, Lone Survivor and Sword and Sworcery, Psychonauts immediately throws you into a lengthy cutscene where your character Razputin “Raz” Aquato attempts to break into a psychic training camp, Whispering Rock. Raz is soon caught, however, but is allowed to participate in basic psychic training because his potential is recognised.
Psychonauts is a cleverly designed platform game with plenty of humour, interesting level design and a ton of imagination behind it. It shares traditional platform elements that we loved in classic Spyro and Crash Bandicoot games and puts them in a new, intriguing setting: a world that includes the minds of the characters you meet.
Ah, the characters. Their dialogue is snappy. Snappy enough that it’s easy to get a sense of their distinct personalities very early on; they do not fit into the cookie-cutter roles we’ve seen in other platformers where story and character come second to gameplay. In Psychonauts, the characters are loveable, interesting and above all, fun. Early in the game, a stand out character, Sasha Nein, at first appears to fit the role of creepy mad scientist perfectly. In an early mission, you enter inside his mind, and his character really comes to the fore. When training you in marksmanship, what does he select for the targets? Lurid lamps, which he detests. Once you’re successful in your destruction of the lamps, he drily says, “A victory for good taste.” And there’s more. Throughout the levels you’ll come across ‘vaults’; once opened they reveal memories, told through a series of black and white slides. There are some genuinely poignant moments held within these; “Sasha’s first loss” particularly got to me.
Psychonauts has all the platformer elements that you could ever want: tightropes, jumping puzzles and collectibles galore; yet it offers much more than that. With a unique setting, hints of darker elements, a distinct brand of humour and depth to its characters’ backstories; Psychonauts is a must-play. If you missed it back in 2005, the Humble Bundle provides a brilliant opportunity to try out this gem.
Grade: A+
Download the Humble Indie Bundle here for a price of your choosing. The offer ends in only a couple of days, so don’t miss out!
Yes, that veil pun is just gonna hang there staring you all in the face until you check out this incredible cover. I can’t wait to have A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire in my hands!
