The Indie Royale game bundle site has just debut their first-ever Alpha Collection, with buyers being able to play and help fund to completion three fully-featured, in-development titles.
This now-available bundle was hand-picked to include three games with immediately fun, playable 'alpha' versions and current or imminent PC, Mac and Linux versions. Each of the developers has committed to providing updates regularly to all Indie Royale buyers until the title is complete.
Leading off the the Alpha Bundle is SMP's Towns, a city building and management game mixed with an RPG that draws inspiration from titles spanning Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress and Majesty. Instead of playing the hero who delves deep into the dungeon, players oversee the town that houses and caters the hero's needs.
Along the way, players can craft unique weapons, obtain randomized loot and build a settlement capable of holding back the forces that rise up from the active dungeon upon which the town sits. Towns is available on PC, Mac, and Linux.
The second title being Alpha funded is developer Phr00t's 3079 -- an alleged lovechild of Minecraft and Fallout, with a block-like world, futuristic action, and role-playing elements played in a first-person perspective. 3079's randomly generated areas, buildings, items, quests and characters make it an entertaining open-world experience, with Alpha funding helping to power many new additions over the next few months. PC, Mac, and Linux funders can dive into the single player and online multiplayer action now.
Finally, the Alpha Collection's sleeper title is Wyv and Keep: the Temple of the Lost Idol is a lusciously pixelated 2D co-op puzzle platformer from A Jolly Corpse. Dubbed as a more fiendish version of Blizzard's classic The Lost Vikings, players can control Wyv and Keep with one keyboard, and two players can play locally or online.
Players use boxes and even their own bodies to traverse gaps, activate switches, collect treasures, and reach exits in dozens of levels. A Windows PC build is currently downloadable, and purchasers' contributions will help fund the Mac and Linux versions of the game. These are planned to become available for all Alpha Collection buyers in the next 3 to 6 months.
The Alpha Collection launches with a recommended €/£/$10 for the titles (downloadable as standalone executables and also redeemable via Desura), but a fluctuating minimum that starts at $5 USD and moves up from there. Generous purchasers will bring the minimum bundle price lower over the seven days of the bundle.
More information on the Alpha Collection, including real-time statistics and its current price, is available at its official website or via its Facebook and Twitter pages.
Nice, hope it goes well for them.
Definitely an experiment - see if we can get a bit of the doublefine kickstarter like love for promising upcoming games.
Personally I'm unsure if having a bundle will work, what I can see happening more than anything will be these developers getting less per unit and having to split capital.
These games weren't expensive as is, so there's no perception of "Value" that wasn't already being offered anyway. As has been said many times before about these bundles, they may be in fact doing more damage than good. I hope your experiment goes well though. I'm very interested to see how you cope with community funding in the future, and I'm glad you beat everyone else by implementing it into Desura ;). If you can generate so interest via game journalists, I think you'll get more traffic coming into Desura. Best of luck Scott ;)
Although they wont be making as much money as if they were to sell individually, they will probably make a fir bit through the bundle.
I wasn't interested in 3079 or that other game, and probably wouldn't have bought towns, yet I bought the bundle at £6. That splits about £5 between them or so.
The other way to look at it is that about 8,000 bundles sold so far, so at about £3 a bundle that is £24,000. Minus Taxes, any cuts for Desura ect they will still have about £18,000 between them so far (so about £6,000 each). I'm sure this amount of money will help with their development (new sounds, music, models ect) as well as Advertising to help sell more copies at full price in the future.
I like the idea but I think this is the fewest games in an indie bundle to date.
True, but maybe they will add in another game soon.
Afaik Overgrowth and NS2 once did a bundle. That was 2 indie games in a bundle, so not yet :P The one game bundle has yet to be invented though xD
The one game bundle was already invented, the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle:
Moddb.com
<- you could get only Frozen Synapse (another bundle ONLY if you paid more than average)
Ah right I remember that.
So there, the one game bundle.
What's next a game bundle with only sounds tracks and dlc but no games?
There was Voxatron Alpha debut bundle with 1 game, but then they added tons of games for free :D
idea behind this bundle is to raise more for the developers - hence fewer games
Towns sure is worth it
Yha, I'm playing the tutorial right now. The music is a tab repetitive though.
bought it even if I already owned towns. nice bundle.
NICE!
bought just for 3079 but I am really liking towns
Seems really cool, I might buy, but I need to find my credit card...
Towns and Wyv & Keep intensely appeal to me, 3079 does in theory but in practice not so much... but I'll go into all three with an open mind. probably my favorite bundle since the days of yore
Good games, however, lately I was into purchasing non-free, but less donation. i won't be trapped again. I will only give money to those freetoeveryone to share/play.
Wyv & Keep so far has been good fun, so it was worth it, hope to check out 3079 soon, towns looks like it will be great but is still a bit far off me wanting to play.
Great job :)
Thanks everyone and indieroyale for your great support!
I must say that even if this bundle isn't a major successful move from our part, at least i am glad it brought wyv and keep to my attention, a game i never (but should have) heard of. it is a superb game.
No Project Zomboid? What a bummer. I was pretty sure it would be on this bundle.
Yeah I'm surprised by this as well. If PZ was added, this probably would've made the bundle work properly, because if you take a successful game and bundle it with relatively unknown titles, then it draws attention where there otherwise wouldn't have been.
I was looking forward to it due to Project Zomboid, but without it, I'll pass... These "Royale" bundle start to get worse and worse =/
Yea, project zomboid and survivals of ragnarök needs a bundle! I purchased this bundle and to be honest, Towns and 3079 sucked. Wyv and Keep isn't released yet =/
NOTE: I'm on mac
:D Agree with the first part! Towns and 3079 are great games though.
All three games actually seems worthy of support. For 10£, it's a fair trade I think :)
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