Indie Royale is proud to present a very special game bundle - the All Charity lightning pack - featuring four awesome indie games and three outstanding chiptune albums/EPs, with 100% of the proceeds going to four extremely worthy charities.
The bundle's generous developers have each hand-picked a charity for their game, including UNICEF's Haiti aid, vital human rights work from Amnesty International, free speech and privacy advocacy from the EFF, and the global poverty programs of ActionAid.
Headlining the bundle is Hemisphere Games' dreamlike physics puzzle game Osmos, available for Windows and Mac on Steam, Windows and Linux on Desura, and DRM-free on Windows, Mac and Linux. The game puts the player in the role of a single-celled organism, tasked with growing larger by absorbing all the other organisms around it. A.V. Club called it, "Moving in every sense of the word" and Indiegames.com says, "Osmos mixes puzzle, action and strategy remarkably and all the while does it with great finesse and style." Blessed with an elegant minimalist electronic soundtrack, you'll progress from serenely ambient levels to varied and challenging worlds in this peaceful and engaging puzzler.
Next up is Erik Svedang's interactive fairytale Blueberry Garden, available for Windows on Steam, Desura, and DRM-free. An Independent Games Festival Grand Prize-winning experimental game about curiosity and exploration, you take on the role of a creature investigating a mysterious world. Try various fruits and use their effects to navigate the landscape more easily, and explore this playground of oddities in a living world with a marvelously offbeat soundtrack and multiple endings.
Making its bundle debut is Wadjet Eye Games' rabbinical 2D adventure game The Shivah, available for Windows on Desura and DRM-Free. In the first title from the creator of The Blackwell Legacy you play as Russell Stone, a Jewish Rabbi at a poor synagogue in New York City. After a former member of his congregation dies and leaves him a significant amount of money, Rabbi Stone is led on an adventure through New York City that will test his faith and uncover unsettling truths. PC Gamer says, "It's in games like this that gaming really starts to measure up to conventional literature for emotional and intellectual integrity."
Finally featured is Copenhagen Game Collective's offbeat local multiplayer party game B.U.T.T.O.N., available for Windows on Steam, Desura and DRM-free. After taking a few steps away from your controller, race back to your controller through physical space, and do whatever it takes to win (or to avoid losing). While the game will display various rules for each round, there is no way to keep track of whether the players obey the rules or not - and unfair tactics are majorly encouraged here in this crazed improvisational party game.
Those who pay $7 USD or their country's currency equivalent during the All-Charity Pack get three incredible music albums/EPs from leading composers. These include Jake Kaufman's 'FX4', a virtuoso NES-style jam from the Shantae and Retro City Rampage composer, as well as Fez soundtrack creator Disasterpeace's acclaimed 2008 concept album 'Level', and a brand new EP from Super Time Force composer 6955, 'IN1ep'.
You can decide exactly how much money goes to each of the four charities when you donate to this bundle, and your entire donation amount (after third-party credit card/Paypal fees) will be received by the worthy causes picked by these charitable indies. Please give generously!
More information on the limited-time All-Charity Pack, including real-time statistics, its current minimum donation price, and the total amount raised so far for charity, is available at its official website or via its Facebook and Twitter pages.
This is my obligatory "disappointed about the Linux games" comment.
(There is Osmos, though I already own it)
Kudos to you and the developers for doing an all-charity bundle though, am spreading the word. :)
I'll buy it for Osmos.
Spread the Linux!
I think it would be good if Desura could do some charity stuff as well. Maybe a small portion of the money from game sales could be donated to a different charity or free software project etc every month.
That would, indeed, be great. Every company should do that. It would have to be for open discussion which charity /free software project to support, though. AS there are oh so many false charities/non-profits used by corporations as their haven for evil stuff.
Yep..agree with you. Giving a choice between a few charities/free software projects to the gaming community every month would be the way to go.
I almost never buy these bundles, because they are garbage for linux owners. That being said, Osmos is an excellent game and is well worth more than 7 dollars.
All these indie bundles are going downhill in terms of quality... At least HIB manages to get 5-8 quality games every bundle, Indie Royale on the other side started out with a fantastic bundle and since was getting worse and worse... This is another example of why the market is entirely flooded with indie games, and since all the good games are taken, they keep throwing some unknown/random ones... The only worthy game in here is Osmos personally, so buying this bundle for just one game, I'll have to pass...
Have to agree with this.
The quality of these bundles are getting abysmal.
Sometimes, I've been surprised by unkown titles that didn't seem all that great at first glance (ex. Hammerfight), but bundles like these can't consist SOLELY of such POSSIBLY worthwhile titles, if you want people to pay for them.
Hmkay, I could rant again about nothing interesting in this bundle for Linux AGAIN. Sure I do have Osmos already. I say off with the indie game companies/developers who don't care about free software (Linux) platforms. They should realize what they are doing and educate themselves about free software philosophy.
Actually guys, I'd argue that "The Shivah" is an extremely good-looking game, especially considering I'm a sucker for interesting adventure titles. Already own Osmos from the HiB, but I'd definitely get this one just because of the Rabbi. However... unfortunately, no Linux support is a no go for me, especially when there's money in question. I'm just tired of being considered a second-rated customer by publishers/developers, and even more so considered less important by the gaming community because I want Mint as my operating system...
You know what? Eff it. I'm maybe quite unhappy with the way many look upon us non-Windows folks, but I'd feel like a real douche-bag if that was my reason not to give a few bucks for a honourable cause. I'm not going to drop dead without lunch for a day or three, and the games are a bonus anyway. That, plus good karma.
This would be a more unselfish act if you didn't feel the need to broadcast the fact that you are going to give up eating in order to give money to charity. Sensible folks give to charity regularly in a planned manner, some percentage of their income. They pick the charities themselves, set the direct debits from their bank account then leave it quietly alone.
Normally I'd agree with you completely. However given the discussion above I've only written my thoughts as they came. This financial crisis isn't helping us students at all.
Just have to point out to those stating about the quality of the bundle: the developers of these games aren't exactly swimming about in oodles of cash.
They're giving up a game to this bundle to make zero profit back - *all* of the takings are going to the four charities.
Please take that into consideration when regarding this bundle's quality, and then ask why other developers weren't offering their own "better" games for this bundle, or compare it to the quality of any other *all charity* bundle...
(Btw, I still agree with the lack of Linux support, though The Shivah works perfectly in Wine: Appdb.winehq.org)
It was a very nice bundle
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