But there’s something about the psychological force of the way the whole thing is constructed that doesn’t really sit quite right for me. For the most part, that is wholly irrational - at worst the cost is a few percent difference from the most expensive thing in the bundle and you can think of the rest as freebies that you get for purchasing it. Somehow, the highest one never quite feels like an appropriate price point. That said, I’m not sure how I feel about this new method of creating multiple tiers within a bundle with different buy-in costs. I understand that differentiation between bundles is kind of an important issue in the way that the marketplace has evolved, and that it becomes more and more difficult to set yourself apart from your competitors. If The Howler is worth $3 to you, then you’re go for the Royale. If you’re looking for a voice training exercise, The Howler might actually be the perfect thing for you - so they have that going for them. The art has a hand-drawn, canvas-backed style which is attractive enough and the controls are creative, but it’s hard to imagine someone playing this game for any significant length of time unless they have the pipes of an opera singer. In The Howler you control the hot air balloon by making noise: making noise causes it to go up, silence causes it to go down, and a short sharp sound will cause it to drop a bomb. Your motion controls are limited to up, down, and drop a noisemaking bomb - but you don’t touch the keyboard or mouse to do it. In it you pilot a hot air balloon across a complicated landscape. There is one standout in this group: The Howler, which comes across as somebody’s toy project that they found a really good artist for. Of the rest, you have one fairly reasonable turn-based strategy in Age of Conquest 3, one un-promotable platformer ( Toxic Bunny), one first-person shooter that has confused screen obscuring effects when you fire your own guns for “cool” ( One Day for Ched), and a couple of J-RPG-style games which are not particularly interesting.
I think we figured out why they weren’t getting enough love. I believe that if you’re putting together a debut for your videogame, you probably ought to have at least a very basic gameplay trailer for that one in a million chance that you get actual promotion, which is a lesson that Toxic Bunny HD probably could’ve learned a little better. Indie Royale hasn’t done me any favors by presenting this handful of titles taken from Steam Greenlight, which they believe may deserve a bit of extra love. Sort of like last week, the bundles this week are - at best - disappointing.