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chuckroThere wasn’t really a logical connection between the games in this bundle beyond “we thought they were good and you may not have played them.” I can deal with that.
DISTRAINT - Side-scrolling horror adventure game that's a psychedelic dream about a man doing bank foreclosures. It's freaky, though the giant-headed cartoonish nature of the characters makes it hard to call it "horror". Acid-trip depression, maybe?
Replay - VHS is Not Dead - When a movie fan is struck by lightning while holding tapes and a remote, he's trapped in one of the movies and forced to re-create scenes that have been disrupted. Fortunately, his remote will still rewind the action, so he and the movie characters can work in parallel to fix the scenes. It's a puzzle platformer similar to Winterbottom or Another Perspective, but with its own twist. There are some interesting ideas here, but it gets repetitive fairly quickly, even as they add gimmicks like boxes, switches and additional characters who you need to coordinate. Playing the harder levels feels like a chore of, well, re-playing. I'd had my fill by the end of the first "movie."
Adventure in the Tower of Flight - Action/adventure platformer with NES-style graphics. Very reminiscent of Kid Icarus or a Kirby game; it's a not-quite Metroidvania in that there are branching paths and open areas, but no ability to backtrack. You have limited flight capacity and a small weapon, but you also get a dash attack (and eventually a bow) and can collect coins to buy health upgrades. I found the difficulty pretty fair until the last few areas--when the zombie/football player enemies appear, then shit gets real. And then the goddamn bats (which fly like Castlevania Medusa Heads) really bring the pain. I gave up before the final boss rush, but I had fun until then.
Sleep Attack - Tower Defense featuring wacky monsters. Strange creatures try to attack your giant fuzzy sleeping beast, and you need to build giant eyes and spitting mouths to stop them. It doesn't have the "compound interest" feature that many tower defense games have, where spending less on earlier waves gives you more money to spend later, which makes it easier to recover from a bad setup. Also, you can rotate segments of the board to put your towers in the right place to attack, or to force enemies to take a long route past your towers. All of this doesn't mean that I'm great at it, but it's moderately fun. I found that the individual stages start becoming marathons after a while, which is acceptable for Tower Defense games where you can put everything on fast-forward mode once you're set up, but given that you need to be actively rotating your setup made the repetitive nature of things evident for me. Only recommended if you like tower defense and want to try a new spin on it.
Rack N Ruin - A top-down adventure/shooter game that feels a little bit Zelda and a little bit Pocky and Rocky. ("Zelda? More like bullet hell-da!") You're playing as Rack, a little demon who has been making the mistake of destroying planets, rather than corrupting them for his master. He's given one last chance and, accompanied by the ghost of his predecessor, goes out to slaughter innocents, steal valuables, and bring ruin to the world. I found it more interesting in concept than execution, as you have a very limited magic meter that fuels both your shields and most of your weapons; monsters are VERY aggressive as compared to most Zelda games; and I wasn't wild about the control scheme.
MechaNika - A puzzle adventure game about a genius little girl who hates almost everything, who decides to build a giant robot and destroy all non-cool things. You spent the majority of the game exploring her strange local world and gathering components. The art style is very cartoony, the puzzles are almost all item-combination (with two pop-culture trivia bits that earn you achievements, and one brainteaser). It's short and cute, and moderately fun.
Spellsworn - This is an Early Access online multiplayer game, and the matchmaking server for it is apparently currently disabled for development. Which means it's basically unplayable at the moment.
This bundle also included Heckabomb (a shooter), Get Over Here (arena-fighting), Coffin Dodgers (racing), and a bonus copy of Soccer Rage (early access sports/fighting game), none of which appealed to me enough to try. If someone feels I should really give them a try, just let me know.
Overall: There wasn’t anything in here that I felt the need to play a dozen hours of, but just about everything I tried was fun for an hour or two, which is all I ask for from this kind of bundle. I’d only really recommend anything from this bundle if you’re already a fan of that genre, though—nothing stands out as either the best or a particularly good introduction.
DISTRAINT - Side-scrolling horror adventure game that's a psychedelic dream about a man doing bank foreclosures. It's freaky, though the giant-headed cartoonish nature of the characters makes it hard to call it "horror". Acid-trip depression, maybe?
Replay - VHS is Not Dead - When a movie fan is struck by lightning while holding tapes and a remote, he's trapped in one of the movies and forced to re-create scenes that have been disrupted. Fortunately, his remote will still rewind the action, so he and the movie characters can work in parallel to fix the scenes. It's a puzzle platformer similar to Winterbottom or Another Perspective, but with its own twist. There are some interesting ideas here, but it gets repetitive fairly quickly, even as they add gimmicks like boxes, switches and additional characters who you need to coordinate. Playing the harder levels feels like a chore of, well, re-playing. I'd had my fill by the end of the first "movie."
Adventure in the Tower of Flight - Action/adventure platformer with NES-style graphics. Very reminiscent of Kid Icarus or a Kirby game; it's a not-quite Metroidvania in that there are branching paths and open areas, but no ability to backtrack. You have limited flight capacity and a small weapon, but you also get a dash attack (and eventually a bow) and can collect coins to buy health upgrades. I found the difficulty pretty fair until the last few areas--when the zombie/football player enemies appear, then shit gets real. And then the goddamn bats (which fly like Castlevania Medusa Heads) really bring the pain. I gave up before the final boss rush, but I had fun until then.
Sleep Attack - Tower Defense featuring wacky monsters. Strange creatures try to attack your giant fuzzy sleeping beast, and you need to build giant eyes and spitting mouths to stop them. It doesn't have the "compound interest" feature that many tower defense games have, where spending less on earlier waves gives you more money to spend later, which makes it easier to recover from a bad setup. Also, you can rotate segments of the board to put your towers in the right place to attack, or to force enemies to take a long route past your towers. All of this doesn't mean that I'm great at it, but it's moderately fun. I found that the individual stages start becoming marathons after a while, which is acceptable for Tower Defense games where you can put everything on fast-forward mode once you're set up, but given that you need to be actively rotating your setup made the repetitive nature of things evident for me. Only recommended if you like tower defense and want to try a new spin on it.
Rack N Ruin - A top-down adventure/shooter game that feels a little bit Zelda and a little bit Pocky and Rocky. ("Zelda? More like bullet hell-da!") You're playing as Rack, a little demon who has been making the mistake of destroying planets, rather than corrupting them for his master. He's given one last chance and, accompanied by the ghost of his predecessor, goes out to slaughter innocents, steal valuables, and bring ruin to the world. I found it more interesting in concept than execution, as you have a very limited magic meter that fuels both your shields and most of your weapons; monsters are VERY aggressive as compared to most Zelda games; and I wasn't wild about the control scheme.
MechaNika - A puzzle adventure game about a genius little girl who hates almost everything, who decides to build a giant robot and destroy all non-cool things. You spent the majority of the game exploring her strange local world and gathering components. The art style is very cartoony, the puzzles are almost all item-combination (with two pop-culture trivia bits that earn you achievements, and one brainteaser). It's short and cute, and moderately fun.
Spellsworn - This is an Early Access online multiplayer game, and the matchmaking server for it is apparently currently disabled for development. Which means it's basically unplayable at the moment.
This bundle also included Heckabomb (a shooter), Get Over Here (arena-fighting), Coffin Dodgers (racing), and a bonus copy of Soccer Rage (early access sports/fighting game), none of which appealed to me enough to try. If someone feels I should really give them a try, just let me know.
Overall: There wasn’t anything in here that I felt the need to play a dozen hours of, but just about everything I tried was fun for an hour or two, which is all I ask for from this kind of bundle. I’d only really recommend anything from this bundle if you’re already a fan of that genre, though—nothing stands out as either the best or a particularly good introduction.
