Rolling Sixes – GamersGate Launch ‘Indiefort Bundle 2′, 6 Games For $6

Here’s a must-have for bargain-addicted indie gamers; GamersGate are really set on playing ball with the bundling sites. The recent Humble Bundle and Indie Royale (still running) are impressive packs of games, and so is the Indiefort Bundle 2. It’s a strange set of games with clearly no shared themes or concepts, but that’s what makes this one so interesting. Let’s take a look at what your $6 (or more, if you choose to pay higher) will get you.

First up is 3079. Featured a while back in the Indie Royale Alphafunding bundle, the game is now complete and ready for prime time. It’s an unusual mix of styles – it’s a retro action-RPG set in a very Minecraft-esque procedurally generated world. It’s a bit on the clunky and ugly side, but there’s quite a bit of depth to be found here. What starts out as blind fumbling around the landscape eventually has you grappling-hooking around floating fortresses and shooting down aerial battleships.

Fortix 2 bills itself as ‘Reverse Tower Defense’. It isn’t. It’s Qix, but with Castles. Granted, it’s a bit deeper than that, but it still largely involves careful drawing of lines across the map to trap enemies and open up new paths for you to move across. It’s also a very polished and refined Qix clone, and we honestly don’t get too many of them around these days – it’s a derivative subgenre that seemed to die out in the late 90s when a bunch of strange knockoffs figured that adding porn to the mix would help it sell. Fortix 2 contains no porn, only dragons. Although I guess they are naked, if that’s your sort of thing. I ain’t judging.

Aztaka continues the ‘themeless’ theme by being a side-scrolling Mesoamerican themed platform action RPG. The art is great on this one, no question, although common complaints levelled at it are that the animation is occasionally awkward and the gameplay as a whole gets bogged down too much in RPG tropes and doesn’t really leverage the action/platform parts of the design. Still, it would be silly not to at least try it and judge for yourself if you do grab this bundle.

Fourth, and unquestionably weirdest, is Dark Scavenger. A surreal narrative RPG, reviewed here a while back. The closest possible point of reference would be the obscure DOS RPG Superhero League of Hoboken – a game where everything has a use, even if it’s not obvious or sane, and there’s plenty of offbeat, humorous text to wade through, even in combat. Playing as an alien ne’er-do-well, your goal is to explore a strange planet in search of the gear needed to get back into space. Released quite recently, it’s a surprise to see it in a bundle so quickly.

Fifth in the lineup is Demise: Ascension. Rumored to be in Indiefort 1, but sadly not featured in the first outing, Demise is a labor of love. A Wizardry-style dungeon crawl RPG (with online support) that has been retrofitted, remixed, upgraded and expanded fairly consistently since the 90s. Understandably weak in graphics (it’s unashamedly a 90s game, but upgraded), but enormous in depth. There’s a genuinely complex 3D dungeon world here, and deep character growth, with elements like ageing and physical exhaustion playing into the mix.

They’ve saved the best for last, though. Contra/Abuse mashup Intrusion 2 has officially launched today, and (for the moment) exclusively via this bundle. We previewed it not long ago, and found it to be a generally great and impressively polished bit of platform shootery. There’s strong elements of Metal Slug, Abuse and Contra in here, plus a few new ideas and some absolutely fantastic boss design. Personally, I reckon that $6 is a good price for this one game alone. The fact that you get another five is just icing on the cake.

Interestingly, many of the games in this bundle are one-man projects, which makes every sale go a little bit further to the developers. It’ll be interesting to see whether this bundle moves enough copies to keep the developers chugging for a while longer. The discounts on show are an interesting mix, too. Normally, Demise sells at full retail price – clearly aimed high for a very specific niche audience – and it’ll be particularly interesting to see whether this opens it up to a wider audience. So, what are you waiting for? If nothing else, Intrusion 2 is worth the asking price. It might not have the budget of Konami’s latest Contra outing, but it has the soul.