It Keeps Happening – ‘Indie Royale’ Bundle Back AGAIN For Summer

Okay. Now this is just getting silly – I look away for ten seconds, and there’s another bundle, and each one seems better than the last. Indie Royale is back after about four picoseconds of downtime with a pack of 8 games for a base price currently around $5 and slowly crawling upwards. It’s a big one, this time, and a very oddly mixed bunch of games, although all of them good.

First up is the tragically unknown-to-most Harvest: Massive Encounter. You might have seen this cloned in stuff like The Space Game – Harvest is a Tower Defense game that really doesn’t play like any other (except its clones). There are no lanes and no walls. Your goal is to slowly expand outwards, harvesting minerals in almost trad-RTS fashion, fighting off waves of enemies that can and will come from any direction. It’s all about balance. If you expand too fast, your supply lines are vulnerable to damage. If you expand too slowly, you won’t be bringing in enough money to build the defenses you need. Here’s a video to give you some idea of how it works:

The big surprise of this bundle is The Journey Down: Chapter 1. I reviewed it only just recently, and it’s a damn fine piece of point n’ click adventuring. Not too hard, too complex or too demanding, but entertaining, well-written and professionally produced stuff. Here’s the launch trailer:

Serious Sam 2 is the only really potential low point of this bundle. It’s not a bad FPS, but when taken as a sequel to the original First and Second encounters, and as the game that came before Serious Sam 3? It just doesn’t hold up so hot. There’s a huge variety of environments, enemies, guns and concepts here, but it’s not quite as polished as the rest of the franchise. The humor feels possibly a little too overtly wacky to work, too. Trailer below:

The 4th, 5th and 6th games here are the Gundemonium Collection. Three Japanese shmups localized by Rockin’ Android, and given some serious upgrades for their Steam debut, too. I wrote a full review of this trio over on sister site DIYGamer. For those wanting an expert second opinion, the brains over at Bullet Heaven gave it some glowing praise. All three games are good, although discussion is actually pretty fierce over which is the best of the three. Here’s the Steam launch trailer:

More shmups in 7th position, although rather different from the genre norm. The expansively titled The Acceleration Of Suguri: X-Edition is another Rockin’ Android localization job, and blends shooter with fighting game. Instead of shooting through thousands of popcorn enemies, it’s a 1v1 arena duel, with players circling around each other and trying to force the other into a mistake or a failed dodge. The art is fairly amateurish, but the gameplay is really solid, especially if you’ve got a friend to play against.

Last of the regular games in this pack is Dino Run SE. After those hardcore shooters, you’ll probably want to unwind with something simple – your goal in this little score-attack game is to help your little dinosaur outrun extinction itself. Cute retro graphics, nice music – it’s not a big and flashy game unlike some of the titles here, but it’s fun nonetheless. Here’s some thoughts on it from Anthony Carboni of (now sadly defunct) Bytejacker:

And… yeah, there’s a 9th game. Did I say 8? Well, the 9th is a bonus. It was in the last Indie Royale bundle, and it’s Airmech again. Or, rather, a Steam activation key for the game. It’s currently in beta, and will eventually be F2P, but it’s worth trying out anyway. Take classic action-RTS precursor Herzog Zwei and mash it together with Advance Wars and this is what you get – a damn fine blend of tactics, strategy and shooter. Some folks mistake it for a DOTA clone, but it really is nothing of the sort. Here’s a trailer:

Whew! That’s a lot of game for very little money. There’s not too much Mac/Linux support in this bundle, but most of the games activate on Steam. Those that don’t can be found on Desura. Not sure if there’s any planned bonus content to be added to this bundle later on, but in all honestly? You’d be pretty greedy to ask for more. With the possible exception of Serious Sam 2, everything in this bundle is good, solid fun. Check it out.