The charitable website Groupees has launched a Valentine’s Day promotion that will let you pay what you want for a bundle of five terrific games from independent developers. The “Be Mine Indie Game Bundle” has a minimum price of one dollar, but the money goes to charity and generous gamers will be rewarded with incentives for donating above the minimum.
The five games include Wasteland Angel, a post-apocalyptic car combat game developed by Octane Games, who also brought us the pirate game Raven’s Cry. Wasteland Angel lets players live out their Mad Max fantasies with a bit of Twisted Metal thrown in too as players fight against mutants and other drivers on the highways. This game normally costs ten dollars.
Also part of the bundle is Sideway New York, another ten-dollar game. This one is by Fuel Entertainment, and uses an urban graffiti theme to put a 2-D character in a 3-D world. It has a distinct visual style and a unique take on 2-D platforming in which the character can only travel on flat surfaces.
There is also Beep, a 2-D platformer starring a cute robot. This is by a design team called Big Fat Alien, and would usually cost ten dollars. Beep puts players in the wheels of a robot that is exploring the galaxy with some help from his anti-gravity ray, which manipulates objects in the environment as part of the physics-based gameplay.
Also participating is Xotic, a science fiction first-person-shooter by WXP games. It has some jumping and platforming elements too. Aside from killing enemies in typical shooter style, players can also try to rack up XP and high scores by triggering chain reactions of exploding icons throughout the levels. Xotic also normally costs ten dollars.
Fans of the Portal series will want to take notice of The Ball, by Teotl Studios and Tripwire Interactive. This puzzle/shooter hybrid built on the Unreal Engine puts players in control of a giant mystical ball that can be used to crush enemies or manipulate traps and puzzles. The Ball alone costs twenty dollars, so this adds a great deal of value to the bundle.
There are also other incentives to give beyond the minimum, and there will be group rewards, and special bonuses for the top donors. But getting sixty dollars of awesome games for as low as one dollar should be enough for any gamer to take interest in this bundle.
Aside from helping out some smaller game developers, players can also help their fellow man with this bundle; twenty percent of the amount raised will go to the Child’s Play Charity, which gamers should know is run by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade fame. This charity provides toys and games to children’s hospitals during the holiday season.
The bundle isn’t just for Valentine’s Day, gamers will be able to grab this at any point up until February the 28th. It is available now, and you can see video of the games in action or buy the bundle at groupees.com
