This is probably my favorite thread on this forum. Thank you Username for this. It’s shocking how many interesting games totally flew under the radar despite the # of people who bought this bundle.
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Top notch work and a real achievement, my name is Cuba Libre and this is my favorite thread on the Citadel
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Posting in a legendary thread itt.
Thanks Username.
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yeah i saw so many people talk about buying this thing but you’re like one of the only ones ive seen actualy play new games from it!! amazing fucking thread
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This is how you will learn that I have very questionable taste in games and one should never listen to me about their quality 
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this thread was a really nice undertaking in general and i’m really glad it was done. so many of these games get treated as disposable and are forgotten so easily, and it’s sad. hopefully it inspires more people to check out these games, or try something similar in the future. also it was really cool to see several games that i know come up in there (like Rising Dusk, OneShot, Dujanah, and Fumiko)… as well as ones i’d never heard of too.
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Slightly off topic but since I assume you stumbled upon many of these games in a festival-type setting I was curious if you ended up with enough time with them to see them through to the end or were you limited to just the equivalent of a few levels of them?
definitely limited. that’s one of the problems with judging. there’s just not enough time to play through that many things. some people might get mad at judges about that but you have to realize that it’s not just like a film festival or something where you have dedicated time to sit down and watch a bunch of films. so many games require a huge amount of investment. and judges aren’t really compensated much, if at all for it (beyond maybe getting a free pass to a festival or getting some free game keys).
i think this is why sometimes games that a lot of judges are already familiar with tend to do pretty well. because they’re already playing those things outside the context of judging, so they’ve built up more of a relationship with that work. it’s a difficult thing to fight against… esp for more unknown games.
for me i’m trying to keep track of stuff that seems like it has less exposure/interest behind it. but just my general… i dunno OCD/ADHD it’s hard to find the time to play a lot of stuff very much. judging is very stressful in general, so i do the best i can to keep tabs on what’s there and what seems worthy of more time further down the road, etc. it’s less bad outside the context of judging when i can just enjoy stuff though. but you kinda just have to make an educated guess based on everything you can see (or read from others, or watch parts of gameplay on youtube etc) in a limited amount of time
of the four i listed above… only two of them i found through judging. the other two were just from random recommendations from other people. i think i also found Master Spy from a speedrun and thinking the art looked kinda cool. i did played Rising Dusk to the end at some point on my own time. but that’s one where there are multiple pathways through afaik.
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Still loving these.
Great thread!
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Since it’s happening again, I just wanted to let everyone know they now own this game:
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Textreme 2 is extremely cute!! Basically a 10 minute novelty but hey, that’s sometimes exactly what you need:
Shutter Stroll is also cute! I guess it’s…what if Proteus had a photo mode? It’s nice though and I finally found the elden ring
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This is really handy for combing through all the stuff in all the bundles
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God there’s so many funny Joyce jokes to make in this.
You accidentally type the letter o in the wrong font on one page in the whole thing and so you fail the entire game.
Wonder which edition it uses.
Argh my English major.
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Another bundle game:
Self-Checkout Unlimited is…okay? It’s a walking simulator with like, 4 puzzles. It’s kind of a…personality quiz mixed with some philosophy of the mind, set in an abandoned mall…I dunno, it’s hard for me to say I feel strongly about it but I did like the last 20 minutes or so. I took some great screenshots though:
Uploading: 00320 - Screenshot of Self-Checkout Unlimited - 3_9_2022 , 3_30_06 PM.png…
It looks nice but I wouldn’t replay it ever because of a single section that required me to just sit and wait for long enough to get annoyed. That’s a me thing though i guess!
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I went through the whole list twice and made a few collections for my own personal use. These might be useful to you though, if you want:
“Streaming” collection. 60-ish games. These are games that I thought would be fun to hang out with friends, but should also just be good or weird games. Does not include stuff I’ve already played or own on Steam, and is strictly to my personal taste. That means I ignored a lot of nice looking games because I’m sick of platformers or I hated the pixel art.
“Just for me” - 25-ish games. either too quiet, too personal, or too embarrassing to stream but otherwise same criteria as above:
9 TTRPGs I’d be interested in reading/running. This is probably the least informed collection - mostly based around themes I thought were interesting:
16 Solo TTRPGs I thought looked cool:
4 Explicitly Two Player TTRPGs:
7 Co-op button friendly games - mostly tiny little local multiplayer games that I’d never heard of, and also Towerfall:
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Neat looking collections, I would note that if you picked up the Palestinian bundle you also have “Can Androids Pray” in the Blue edition as well. I have no idea what the difference is between that and Red (I’ll get to it eventually) but figured off chance that might be of interest.
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As a heads up a few games got added to the bundle in the last day or so (I think they were submitted in time but the link grabber missed them for whatever reason) and a couple of them don’t look bad.
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16 hours left, here are some more games I played in the bundle:
Demonizer
Fuck this game is hard, but I really enjoyed it. Great soundtrack and not nearly as horny as the premise would lead you to believe.
The main gimmick is that you get little helpers as you Succubize everyone into being your friend. It’s…not very gimmicky actually, it’s mostly just “more bullets”. This is definitely closer to a modern bullet hell than the retro aesthetic would lead you to believe though.
I got stuck on a boss in the 5th level that I genuinely have no idea how to get past so I’m done with this game, but I got a good hour+ out of it!
Lots of cute setpieces and sound effects and shit.
I didn’t take a single screenshot because the game is too hard.
Penance
Sorry to say it but this is the worst game I’ve played so far. Any retro-style shooter runs the risk of just making me ask myself “Would it be better if I just played DOOM again?” The answer here was a resounding “YES”. Great style but abysmal to play.
Throw Cubes into Brick Towers to Collapse Them
Exactly what it says on the tin - no goals, just highly customizable brick towers that you can collapse by throwing shit at them.
Maybe more artful than 95% of games though? Screenshot dump below:
Love to live in the future where this many physics objects are not just possible, but almost trivial. Worth spending 30 minutes poking at
10mg SNAAAK
What if Snake was a…puzzle…platformer?? Not sure how to describe it but it is about 10-15 minutes long (10 minute game) and pretty much exactly what I want from these kinds of bundles. A great idea that isn’t driven into the ground, some good art, and atmospheric music. Highly recommended.
Toree 2
Better than Crash Bandicoot.
Anyway this is part of the wave of PSX retro nostalgia but it’s actually a good and fun game to play? More of a straight platformer than most 3D entries, but with very few threats. Kind of a speed-running game. My only tip is to increase the camera sensitivity to the max.
I think this and Toree 3D are not like…essential? But they do exactly what they set out to do, and I got to see some cute low-poly models.
It also does that thing where it’s…a little creepy, but I don’t think it’s heavy-handed about it. The screenshot above is about as weird as it gets - it’s otherwise very straightforward.
Also you can play as Macbat who has infinite jumps
Macbat 64
A very small homage to Rare platformers on the N64, specifically Banjo games. It’s about 10% of the scope but it contains the same flavor and…I dunno, not worth writing home about exactly? But I enjoyed it tremendously.
It honestly jumps all around the N64 history, the above screenshot is from a Kirby 64 homage level, and part of it has the blocks from Mischief Makers. There are two arcade-like minigames, just like DK64, and then…a Meat Boy level?? I dunno, if any of these things stuck around for very long it’d be annoying but this game basically lasts an hour and manages to not outstay its welcome at all. Also it’s easy as hell.
Also it has a Terranigma easter egg so, that’s a win
It also does the thing where it has creepy stuff in it for no reason, but it’s a little more heavy-handed about it. There’s a level that’s just silent hill. Like, just straight-up fixed camera angles, jumpscares, low lighting, eery music, etc. It’s one of the bonus levels so it’s not part of the main game but…yeah, it’s weird. Not sure it works all that well but again, the level lasts like 5 minutes.
I would highly recommend it to anyone with the same sort of proclivities as me. It has enough cuteness to recommend it and consistently made me laugh with the little jokes and dialogue. And it’s not anywhere near as mean-spirited as Rare games on the N64 are, which is honestly good!
Also the music sounds remarkably like something Grant Kirkhope would compose.
Kill the Superweapon
Part of the “Tales of the Renegade Sector” universe. A twin-stick shooter that does the sinistar thing of having an unkillable boss that follows you around until you collect the right items. I like it a lot stylistically but it feels kinda like poop to play, unfortunately. Also one level had two different softlocks in it so I did not finish this.
Still, I love love love to see these kinds of “connected universe” things made by amateurs, and I adore the art style tremendously. It’s not a punishing game (except for the softlocks), and it’s probably worth playing just to get more of those colors into your eyeballs. I want to make it a project to go and play the rest of these games, because the last one I played (And All Would Cry Beware!) is genuinely great.
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It’s still so damn frustrating to figure out what the hell I actually own on Itch, between stuff from the bundles needing to be manually added to your library and the library not filtering out doubles. There’s some games I have like 5 copies of on there.