Fanatical (formerly BundleStars) – Part Forty-Six: Spotlight Bundle 5

Battle Bruise - Standard arena shoot-em-up against waves of zombies with hand-drawn art as the only differentiation. Nothing special.

Trip to Vinelands - Dodge instant-kill black-and-white scenery and cross 100 screens. That’s all there is to this.

MagiCat – A platformer with decent controls and a plot so routine it doesn't even bother with language—the titular cat just speaks in meows. Not a bad game by any means, and boy there’s a lot of it, but it didn’t win me for very long.

RUNRUNRUN - Slightly advanced Pac-Man, in that clearing levels within the time limit allows you to choose which direction to explore in. Otherwise, the graphics are barely 8-bit and the gimmick is that you're looting gold bars from a bank and escaping security guards.

Murder... - Short, straightforward logic puzzle game of matching names, nationalities, occupations, etc. It doesn’t have the classic grid, and it’s timed, but that’s pretty much all that sets it apart from the logic puzzles I was doing in the “Gifted” classes in elementary school.

SWARMRIDER OMEGA - Extremely simple shooter; aim at the swarm that’s chasing you and try to last as long as you can. (You never stop firing and movement is some simple dodging.)

UBERMOSH:BLACK - Shooter arena-fighter with a blade for defense (bullet cutting). Not terribly complicated but terribly repetitive.

Orbital Racer - 3D space racing game with some vague combat elements (mostly dodging and sending out decoys, as best I can tell). Credit that there’s a “racing” mode with power-ups and such, and a “simulation” mode with no power-ups and more realistic physics.

Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age - Ten years ago, your father stole two artifacts from Hell and left them with you and your brother. Now, in a world where magic and technology intertwine, you need to find your destiny. This feels like it should be an rpg, but its really just a plot-heavy action game. It’s a ¾ view, the magic system is a combination of WASD-mouse shooting and monster summoning, and you only seem to get new spells and stat increases from plot events. (I wonder if this was partially inspired by the cartoon show Visionaries, what with the new age of magic and Merklynn the wizard running the show.)

I didn’t bother with Rocketbirds 2: Evolution, as the first game didn’t really win me.

Overall: I wasn’t particularly enthused by anything in this bundle. MagiCat was moderately amusing and Megamagic had an appealing concept, but most of this set were simple and repetitive games that couldn’t hold my interest.

Fanatical (formerly BundleStars) – Part Forty-Seven: Indie Legends 7 Bundle

Bad Dream: Coma - This is a point-and-click adventure game, though it's definitely an “advanced” one. There are three distinct routes through the game depending on your actions (and at least four endings). There's no hint or skip button, some of the puzzles are fairly original (the computer one in the hospital comes to mind), and they take advantage of the line-art style to screw with the medium and break the fourth wall. I did find it annoying how often things appear or doors unlock after you do something arbitrary, but the eight chapters are all fairly contained, so it isn't that big a deal to go back and check everything after each event. If you've enjoyed the contents of the cryptic bundles, don't mind horror/mindscrew games, and can handle a little challenge, this was pretty good.

Replica - A puzzle game in which you're given a cell phone and commanded by Homeland Security to break into it and find evidence of terrorism by its owner. It's extremely Orwellian (and makes references as such) and like all good satire, cleaves frighteningly close to reality. I'm reminded of Please, Don't Touch Anything, in that there are lots of little secrets and special endings to find.

Barony - A first-person roguelike dungeon crawler (to the extent of taking a lot of roguelike staple mechanics) in which you die a lot. Often very quickly. There's something about exploring the underground remains of a cursed city, but mostly, you meet monsters and they kill you.

GoNNER - This is...weird. In a line-art, partially-displayed realm, you play as a death-blob that falls apart when hit, forcing you to recollect your skull, bag and gun before taking another hit, or it’s game over. And you shoot demons and collect runes, but not always? And the rooms might be random or might not? Suffice it to say, this didn’t do it for me.

Mad Games Tycoon - A game-making company simulator with a Sims-like interface and far, far too many options. I found it to be a more complicated yet worse version of Game Corp DX, because even if it’s a more “accurate” simulation, it’s not fun to play.

Deadlight – A very cinematic platformer with puzzle elements—it reminds me of the Uncharted series, actually, just in 2D. Following what is effectively a zombie apocalypse, a man attempts to flee to a safe place, searching for his family.

The Count Lucanor - A puzzle adventure / horror exploration game in which a young boy goes out to seek his fortune, and ends up in a mysterious castle full of goat-monsters trying to guess the name of a sinister kobold. Early decisions impact later gameplay (and which endings you can get), but the primary set of puzzles don’t change. The action/stealth portions (mostly fleeing from goat-monsters) are somewhat mitigated by the top-down, pixelated style. (At least it’s not first-person, amiright?) It has a grand assortment of ending and is an interesting blend of stealth, adventure and puzzle gameplay.

I got Kingdom Rush from an Indie Build-Your-Own Bundle that I never fully reviewed; it’s a tower defense game (thankfully, with variable difficulty levels) with a “defend the kingdom from monsters” cartoony skin. Jethrien found the random voice acting amusing. I found the lack of a speed-up function irritating. Despite the greater variety of tower options, I think I actually enjoyed Defend Your Life more, because it allows for more growth independent of your skill level (the heroes in this game level up within each level, but always start at level 1; and there are no “bonus” items for purchase).

Kingdom Rush Frontiers was in this bundle, and it’s very similar to the original, but it handles the heroes a bit better (their level gains stay between battles and they unlock faster) and changes around some of the units. (And has new stages, and a slightly stronger plot.) The real change is the necromancer tower, which raises the humanoid units that die near it as skeleton troops to fight for you. This is almost broken in how useful it is in creating and maintaining chokepoints, and I think it compensated for my generally not being great at tower defense games.

Overall: I found Bad Dream: Coma, Replica, The Count Lucanor and Kingdom Rush Frontiers all to be entertaining; the latter being the one that I spent the most time on. This bundle was totally worth the couple of bucks.