News - IndieRoyale

14 comments by INtense! on May 16th, 2012

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.

40 comments by INtense! on May 3rd, 2012

The Indie Royale game bundle site is in full bloom with its May Hurray Bundle, offering five fantastic independent games available at a bargain, fluctuating price.

Headlining the bundle is Trendy Entertainment's addictive tower defense RPG Dungeon Defenders, available for Windows and Mac on Steam, Desura and DRM-free. The game puts players in the role of one of four distinctive hero classes, tasked with fending off hordes of invading beasties by strategically summoning a variety of defenses & traps throughout their castle. Rock, Paper, Shotgun called it, "A superb thing: gloriously colourful, robustly made, filled with tonnes of loot and skills and towers." All of this can be enjoyed in seamless online and split-screen local multiplayer. Combining the depth of strategic gaming with the satisfying action of RPG character building, in a beautifully stylized ‘toon fantasy setting, Dungeon Defenders is designed to be a distinctly addictive, easy-to-play experience for casual and hardcore gamers alike!

Also featured is Digital Eel's grand space opera Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, available for Windows, Desura and DRM-free. Set in a randomly generated universe of endless possibilities, this single-player experience will let you explore new worlds, meet exotic aliens, discover black holes, witness the deaths of stars, encounter drifting space hulks that promise untold riches or untimely death, and much, much more.

Next up is Boot Snake Games' radical puzzle title Containment: The Zombie Puzzler, available for Windows on Steam, Desura and DRM-free. Featuring multiple types of units, items, zombies, and bosses, this is not your typical puzzle game. Experience the branching campaign and survival mode, with integrated leaderboards so you can make sure that your past glories are more glorious than your friends’.

Last up are two more indie favorites from the wizards of weird, Digital Eel. First, fight the system as you plunge down a continuously twisting and turning three dimensional retro wireframe landscape in Data Jammers: Fast Forward, available for Windows on Steam, Desura and DRM-free. Rock, Paper, Shotgun called Data Jammers, "Reminiscent of all that is good in the world. Or at least some of the things that are good in the world, like Tempest and speeding through cyberspace." Rounding out the bundle is the otherworldly mind control device, masquerading as a seemingly quaint computer game, Brainpipe: A Plunge to Unhumanity, available for Windows and Mac for Steam, Desura and DRM-free.

Finally, those who support the independent developers by paying $7 USD or their currency equivalent during the May Hurray Bundle get Starscream's acclaimed 'Future, Toward the Edge of Forever' music album (a $5 value from the NYC chiptune futurists now known as Infinity Shred).

As always, generous purchasers keep the bundle price low and give more to developers, as Indie Royale runs on its familiar short duration model where the price will automatically increase as more people buy the bundle.

Grab it now at: Indieroyale.com

10 comments by INtense! on Apr 18th, 2012

As the chilly winter ends, Indie Royale is debuting six quality, independent games for its Spring Bundle - altogether worth nearly $50 USD, and available now at less than one tenth of the recommended retail price, with the price increasing (and decreasing!) as more buyers jump on!

The bundle starts off with Futuremark's standout tower defense title Unstoppable Gorg, available for Windows and Mac on Steam, and Windows-only for Desura/DRM-free. The game is packed with campy 1950s sci-fi film nostalgia, with TotalBiscuit praising its "interesting and innovative [gameplay] mechanics", as the player takes on rubbery aliens by rotating weapons through outer-space orbits.

Also featured is Soldak Entertainment's in-depth action RPG Depths of Peril, available for Windows and Mac on Steam, Desura, and DRM-free. The title, described by GamesRadar as "Diablo meets STALKER" on its original release, features tens of hours of questing and combat in a living game world, where competing factions - run by the AI - battle the player for supremacy.

Also joining the Spring Bundle is Secret Base's smile-inducing 2D platformer, Tobe's Vertical Adventure, for Windows on Steam. The alluring 16-bit experience offers two characters with distinct platforming mechanics. Tobe and his crush, Nana, star in what IGN calls a "standout platformer" with a "classic gameplay hook and charmingly nostalgic approach."

Finally, Indie Royale favorite Radiangames (Super Crossfire) returns with not one, but _three_ intense arcade-style titles - available DRM-free and on Desura for Windows and Mac. Inferno is a 40+ level, atmospheric twin-stick action-RPG starring drones. Slydris is an addictive block-based puzzler with a catchy electronica soundtrack, and Ballistic's intense twin-stick Geometry Wars-style arcade action is filled with concentric waves of devious enemies.

Finally, those who pay $5 USD or their currency equivalent during the Spring Bundle get Danimal Cannon's 'Roots' music album - one of the most acclaimed chiptune releases of 2011, and featuring a combination of wicked Game Boy DMG-01 and shreddin' guitar-centric remixes in 320k .MP3 and .FLAC formats.

As always, generous purchasers keep the bundle price low and give more to developers, as Indie Royale runs on its familiar short duration model where the price will automatically increase as more people buy the bundle.

Grab it now at: Indieroyale.com

17 comments by INtense! on Apr 4th, 2012

The Indie Royale game bundle site has announced its return with the April Fools Bundle, featuring five leading independent games available for a bargain, fluctuating price for the next five days.

Headlining the bundle is Hidden Path Entertainment's Defense Grid: The Awakening, an acclaimed, futuristic tower-defense game for Windows on Steam, Desura, and DRM-free. GameSpot calls it a "quintessential example" of the genre and "compulsively playable" for newcomers and skilled players, as they attempt to fight off hoards of increasingly complex alien assaults. Defense Grid includes the free Borderlands expansion built into the main game, and we're also adding Steam keys for all four Resurgence map packs as a special bonus. (They're also bundled into Defense Grid Gold, via Desura key and DRM-free.)

Next up is Gooey Blob's accessible, retro turn-based dungeon crawler, Hack, Slash, Loot for Windows and Mac in a Steam debut, Windows and Linux on Desura, and Windows/Mac/Linux DRM-free. True to the Roguelike genre, dungeons randomly generate, providing a unique experience every time, as players uncover thousands of items to loot and monsters to hack and slash, accompanied by attractive retro pixel art.

PomPom Games offers a pair of frantic shooter titles in the form of Alien Zombie Megadeath and Astro Tripper for Windows on Steam, Desura, and DRM-free. In Alien Zombie Megadeath, players attack, dodge, and perform gloriously intense tasks while playing as 'ill-fated spacemen'. And in an update for to the award-winning Space Tripper from the talented UK studio, Astro Tripper affords players a tiny ship against hoards of other crafts and big bosses.

The final featured game is Curve Studios' incendiary 2D platformer, Explodemon for Windows on Desura and DRM-free. The title is an explosive homage to SNES-era platformers mixed with a modern physics-puzzle twist, and the PC version of the quirky PlayStation Network game offers all kinds of intense fun. And watch out for an Indie Royale-exclusive bonus related to this game a little later in the bundle.

Finally, those who pay more than the minimum for the April Fools Bundle receive an awesome vocoder-heavy bonus: Sexy Synthesizer's Japanese '80s-style chip album Rock: Deluxe Edition, available in .FLAC and HQ .MP3 file formats.. Those who pre-ordered the bundle also received this bonus.

As always, generous purchasers keep the bundle price low and give more to developers, as Indie Royale runs on its familiar five-day model where the price will automatically increase as more people buy the bundle.

Grab it now at: Indieroyale.com

1 comment by INtense! on Mar 23rd, 2012

Indie Royale returns in a flash with the Ninja Lightning Pack, an eclectic, Windows PC-compatible collection from longtime indie developers NinjaBee. Five full games from the veteran developers are available, starting at a total of just USD $2.99 and trending upwards or downwards until the frantic 100-hour countdown ends.

First up, NinjaBee brings side-scrolling, puzzle-platforming console hit Cloning Clyde, co-developed by Bacon Wrapped Games, to Windows PC users. Players use mutant Clydes (including Chicken-Clyde, Frog-Clyde, and Sheep-Clyde) to help the real Clyde escape the 40 levels of the evil Dupliclone, Inc. IGN considered the XBLA version of Cloning Clyde "one of the most extensive and enjoyable games available," and the Windows version packs an equal punch.

Players can also enjoy building and managing on land with the signature NinjaBee citybuilding title A Kingdom for Keflings. Playing as a giant, players progress by unlocking new blueprints, buildings and tasks on their way to constructing a Kefling kingdom, and the game includes the ability to build cities online cooperatively with your friends, as well as extensive customization to buildings, villages, and tasks for in-game citizens.

In the humorous space station sim game Outpost Kaloki, players must "solve challenges, entertain visiting aliens, keep your ratings high, defend your station against alien attackers, and rake in the money on your way to fame, love, and glory". With dozens of scenarios to play through and a number of "sandbox" environments to extend the experience, Outpost Kaloki has since expanded to Xbox 360 and iOS, but Lightning Pack purchasers get the Windows title that started it all.

Also available is Cloning Clyde's spiritual sequel, platform puzzler Ancients of Ooga. NinjaBee and Bacon Wrapped Games' 2011 title substitutes clones for fallen tribal chiefs with ancient, elemental powers necessary to clear over 50 levels, all full of new puzzles and platforms. Ooga also boasts a unique eat/carry/puke inventory management system. Eurogamer claims that the game has a "twisted humour and mutated style lending a pleasantly Oddworld vibe to proceedings," adding to the game's overall charm.

Finally, the SRPG genre gets a relatively rare Windows outing with Band Of Bugs, a fast playing, accessible tactics strategy game. The game, also an early hit on Xbox 360's Live Arcade service, features a full story-based campaign, online play, and a level editor that lets you design custom scenarios and share them with your friends, as well as allowing compatibility with bonus campaigns and map packs available for free online.

All five titles are available as DRM-free or Desura Windows PC downloads, with Steam keys included for the two games available on that service, Cloning Clyde and Ancients of Ooga. The Ninja Lightning Pack will run for just 100 hours, under the same pricing model as before: the price will automatically increase as more people buy the pack. Those generous purchasers who pay more than the current minimum can keep the price low or even decrease it.

Go buy now at: Indieroyale.com