The new Humble bundle is out.

Indie bundles are popping up everywhere. You can hardly misstype a URL without getting one these days.

Little big bunch is the latest of the lot. 

This one contains:

Frozen Synapse

Explodemon

Serious Sam: Double D

New Star Soccer 5 (what we Europeans like to call football, because you actually use your feet more than your hands)

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (is this even indie?)

Their website is currently down though.

I can't help but feel like there are too many of these things around. When the first HiB started, it was interesting and fun. Knowing that there would be more made things even more fun, at least I was looking forward to see what the new bundles would contain. Then there were some others that we only got one of, like the buy games not socks bundle (5 games for $5). Indie royale came along as the prime "competitor" to HiB, and it was still fun and interesting. When the indie gala came along I could not help but feel a bit less excited (that is not a comment on the quality of the indie gala, it is actually one of the most generous bundles yet) and now we have yet another one. 

There are currently two active indie bundles:

Indie gala, from which you will get a different amount of games depending on how much you pay (pay $7 or more and you will get 11 games)

and a new humble bunlde, which contains the fun reversed tower defense game Anomaly: Warzone earth as its main attraction (all games works on PC, Linux, Mac and Android phones)

Hard Reset

Hard Reset surprised me. Not only does this game look almost as good as a AAA title, it also plays smoothly and seemed to be very well optimized. From a gameplay perspective, it works roughly like a mid-late 90's shooter, with plenty of enemies and secrets. I'm not a shooter fan, but this game was actually quite nice, mainly due to the fact that it dared to be challenging. Recommended.

Hack, Slash, Loot

Marketed as a simple rogue like, it does actually have 2 things in common with rogue-likes: Perma-death and randomly generated dungeons. Sadly the game missed the whole point of what makes rogue likes satisfying: The sense of progression, not only in game, but from the players perspective, as he/she gets better and better and thus can get further and fruther into the game. This game never really felt like it challenged me in a meaningful way, and I suspect that it tries too hard to ride on its 8-bit "retro aesthetics". Not recommended

Cardinal Quest

This game does many of the same things as Hack, Slash, Loot, but unlike Hack, Slash, Loot, it does give a meaningful sense of progression. Not amazing, but still a fun little diversion. Semi-recommended

Future wars

Very similar to Advance Wars, this is a rules-light TBT/TBS. It is simple and intuitive, and every unit fills a role. The problem is that this game is so incredibly similar to Advance Wars that not directly comparing the two is impossible, after all most units function in an identical way, most Advance Wars units are present in Future Wars, heck even the map features function in a nigh identical way. The mechanical differences that are there are very small (though some are noticeable). The problem with Future Wars is that it lacks the personality of Advance Wars, and the levels don't seem to be quite as well designed, which makes this an inferior clone. Fun, but if you can, play Advance Wars instead. Semi-recommended.

Sol Survivor

Another tower defense game (there are a lot of those out there), this one has quite well balanced levels at least, and there is a huge variety of towers to build. What sets this game apart from other TD games is the fact that you have to chose between different tower-setups before the level starts (you pick from one out of several commanders, all of which have their own mix of towers), and as the towers overall seem to be quite well balanced, this means that you can tailor your playstyle quite a bit. The game is not as well balanced, nor does it have as much personality, as Defense Grid though, so if you have to chose between one or the other, then go for Defense Grid. It is also considerably easier. Still, consider this one Recommended. 

Toki Tori

This is a cute little puzzle game where the goal is to gather all the eggs on the level. Once that is done, you move on to the next one. To help you you have several different abilities (most of which have limited uses). The levels are surprisingly varied, and many of the later ones are quite challenging. Recommended.

Wasteland Angel

Wasteland angel is a simple top down/isometric (somewhere in between) shooter, where you drive around in a limited area, shooting enemies that either try to take you down, or enemies that try to kidnap civilians that you try to protect. The game looks good enough, and has a nice post-ap theme to it, the driving controls feels natural, the car that you drive behaves a bit like a car without going overboard on the realism. The problem with the game is that it is incredibly repetitive. You basically have to protect a single point from wave after wave after wave of enemies, with little in the way of variety to spice things up. After the first level I was bored, after the second one I was seriously considering uninstalling the game. The 3rd level was a boss fight though, which was a bit fun, and the 4th level changed perspective altogether, and you played in a first person perspective, which did not work well for the game.

Basically this feels like a "Me too!" game, a game developed by some people who noticed that indie games were popular. The game lacks anything special, and while it is, from a technical point of view, not bad, there are so many other better games out there that I just can't justify spending any more time on this one.

Not recommended.