Risk of Rain is so, so good. SO GOOD. So good.
It’s a day ending in “y”, which means it’s time for a new Humble Bundle – and we’re pretty big fans of what’s in this one.
Paying $1 or above will net you side-on skateboarding game OlliOlli, Metroidvania (and 2011 contender for Best Name In Gaming) Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and rogue-lite FPS Tower of Guns. We didn’t review OlliOlli, but the other two reviewed pretty well on launch – although Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was, admittedly, reviewed on Xbox back when we did that sort of thing, so we can’t really speak to the quality of the port. Also, I have played OlliOlli, and it’s a well-designed coffee-break game that is all too skilled at eating up a few hours when you meant to only play it for 10 minutes.
Pay more than the average ($6.61 at the time of writing) and you’ll also get your paws on Steam keys for first-person squealer Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, bizarre comedy thing Jazzpunk, four copies of side-on survival shooter Risk of Rain, and “More games coming soon.” Again, I haven’t actually played More Games Coming Soon (possibly because it’s a description rather than a game), but the others… well, A Machine for Pigs isn’t a patch on its predecessor but it’s still a solid horror jaunt with some lovely design. I am the only person on the planet who doesn’t like Jazzpunk so I shall say no more about that, but Risk of Rain was one of my favourite games of 2013 and I’ve still never played it in co-op. It is brilliant and you should play it, and as this bundle also contains copies for three of your mates, you can potentially enjoy it even more than me.
Finally, paying $12 or more also nets you Shadowrun Returns, the enjoyable-if-flawed tactical RPG set in the Shadowrun universe. This doesn’t include the (apparently superior) expandalone Shadowrun: Dragonfall, but I gave it a 6/10, which is the official IncGamers score of “not particularly brilliant, but still worth considering.” And from what I know a few of the issues I had with it have since been patched, so!
Also finally: as MorningLM reminded us in the comments below, you can get a free copy of Teleglitch: Die More Edition just by entering your email address on that very page. That’s another game we quite liked, so I think we can safely recommend that for Completely Free.
If you have no interest at all in Shadowrun Returns then I’d still argue that the beat-the-average bundle is worthwhile. $6.61 for a set of games that range from “pretty good” to “utterly superb” is, to my mind, a pretty good deal. Not least because Risk of Rain by itself costs about $12, and buying four copies of it will cost considerably more.
