Intermission: Humble Indie Bundle

Humble Indie Bundle is an interesting concept.

Essentially, you get a selection of indie games, and you get to choose how much you pay for it.

A friend sent me a Humble Indie Bundle gift... thing [I'm hesitant to call it a 'bundle'] which gave me access to all the games available.

So I did what any rational human being would do - thanked said friend and downloaded all of them.
Wait, except one. But I downloaded the rest.

So, lets go through the games the site has to offer;


Gish
Gish is a platformer where you control a 12 pound ball of sentient tar.

Gish was taking a stroll through the park with his lady friend before said lady friend was kidnapped and taken by this big... thing. It might have been an enormous blob.
Anyway, our titular hero jumps down into the sewers after his lady friend.

Story out of the way, it's onto the platforming, and I have to say the gameplay is really quite cool.

Gish can cling to walls, make himself extra slippery (to slide down small tunnels) and, through sheer willpower, make himself heavier to smash through walls. Because you can cling to most surfaces, though, it makes the platforming kind of interesting. They introduce spikes early on, and as Gish walks over them he takes damage. In order to get over the spikes, he has to cling to the ceiling.

Further on, Gish comes to a set of suspended blocks. If he's careful, he can make the blocks swing, cling under them and grab the coins that are below.

And because he can stick to stuff, he can grab blocks to maneuver onto a button.
Music's good too, but that's not terribly shocking because it's an indie game - the music's almost always good.

Of course, Gish isn't perfect. It doesn't you tell what to do or where to go, and the enemies can be quite unforgiving. But that could be forgiven because the game is essentially linear.


World of Goo

...is out next game. I must confess, I downloaded WOG because it was there. I already have the actual game, but it isn't that big and I reasoned it wouldn't make that big a dent in our 50 gig a month broadband plan.

Anyway, in World of Goo your goal is to reach a pipe. To reach said pipe, you must (usually) construct a tower out of goo balls. At first, it seems very straight forward, but as it introduces different types of goo it starts getting interesting.

There's usually only one way to complete any given level, but it's still cool when you figure out how to do it. And it teaches an important lesson about structural integrity.

Third up, we have...


Samorost 2

Said game is one by a company called Amanita Design, the same guys who did the game Machinarium, which is my favourite point and click puzzle game to date.

Anyway, the first level introduces us to the story (at least, the story for the first level). Aliens, while collecting fruit, have stolen some kid's dog. Said kid is the protagonist, and he takes off in his "house rocket" after the dastardly aliens.

Point and click games all have this problem where it's not immediately obvious what's clickable and what isn't, and the very first couple of screens for Samorost 2 illustrate that, but from then on it's reasonably easy to decipher what they want you to do.

Figuring out the puzzles will make you feel all clever and smart, and most of them are somewhat easy, if a little easy. At the time of writing, I haven't got to the second half yet.

It's an interesting world this game takes place in - apparently, you can breathe quite happily in space, and asteroids can actually grow grass and plants without having any atmosphere.

But who gives a damn? It's supposed to convey a sense of fantasy.


Lugaru

Game number four is Lugaru. Jumping right in, I get a flash of red screen and a massive black eye staring at me.
Not the best way to start off, guys. I feel like the thing before me has been freshly killed.

The tutorial showed me the ropes, as tutorials do - you play a anthropomorphic rabbit, and in most of the tutorial you spend your time fighting a rabbit illusion made of smoke.

The gameplay seems to be built around the combat, which is a shame, because exploration would have been a good direction to go in for this sort of game.

Combat can get hectic and panic-y, and whenever you're hit with a particularly hard attack and sent flying ragdoll style (which happens very often), you loose your weapon and the enemy can pick it up, meaning you spend most of the fight punching the guy to death.

Whats worse is that combat in this game is extremely unforgiving. When the enemy send you tumbling, they often hang around your ragdoll'd body waiting for you to get up and do it again, and with two or more enemies it becomes insanely difficult.

Worse still is that Lugaru lacks a quest log, or indeed quests at all. The map you see every time you progress to a new part of the game is pretty lackluster, and there isn't much of a ultimate goal hovering overhead, apart from "kill the bastard who betrayed your village".


Last up is Penumbra. My laptop can't hack it when he steps off the boat, so I'm currently transferring the .exe to my other computer. Give it a sec.
...
...
Here we go.

Penumbra draws you in. There isn't much doubt about that. The most interesting aspect of Penumbra so far is you need to really use the mouse.

For example, you need to smash a piece of ice that's frozen up a wheel to an underground bunker. You need to do a little bit of exploring to find a bunch of rocks.

In any other game, it would do the smashing for you. But in Penumbra, you need to heft the rock up using the mouse and smash down using the mouse too. Turning the wheel needs the mouse as well - you actually need to turn the wheel as opposed to just clicking on it.
You want to do a melee attack? You have to swing that bastard.
There isn't any hud either, deepening the immersion.

Once you figure out how to open the big steel hatch that was closed for a damn good reason, your taught about stealth. This means turning your flashlight off, something your not going to want to do.

You know something is out there. You just... can't see it. Or hear it.
It's the whole psychological horror thing - it gets into your head and screws with you. It makes you fear the slightest noise, the faintest flicker.

Did I mention your totally alone? No audio logs (yet), no NPCs, not even any monsters that you can see (so far). You are totally, completely alone.

In short, Penumbra isn't for those who consider themselves "jumpy". And even of you aren't, this game will make your skin crawl.