I agree. I used to get really excited about the humble bundle. They had a few noteworthy games per bundle (All the games they have are good, but some are less known than others).
Now that it's a monthly affair I get the initial perception that the bundles have less noteworthy games and that I'm getting tired of so many of them. After a bit of thought I realize I /am/ paying just a few bucks for a lot of games and helping charity and I end up buying them, even if I already own al lthe games. but I fear there's a lot of people who won't make that leap and just say "meh, been there done that". It's sad because the bundle is great for devs and great for gamers.
Cave Story+ is an updated-engine version of what is probably the most famous indie game of all time that basically started the modern indie games movement. It would not be unreasonable to say it's one of the best action/platformer games ever made -- a completely indie Metroidvania game that's better than most similar games from major publishers despite being made entirely by one person in his spare time.
Jamestown is a completely awesome arcade-style danmaku shooter inspired by CAVE games and Touhou -- but unlike some recent poor attempts to emulate these styles (e.g. Deathsmiles), it adds loads of creativity of its own, like its so-absurd-it's-hilarious storyline and setting. It was worth every cent on launch, and now you can get it for way less with a half dozen other games included.
This might be the best Humble Bundle yet just because of these two.
uncontrollably clicked purchase when I saw cave story+. I'll buy anything related to cave story. The creator is really missing out with the lack of merchandise.
Jamestown is amazing. I really like that the player maximizes score and effectiveness by using all of the resources available in this game. In a lot of other games, like DoDonPachi or Perfect Cherry Blossom, you ruin your point run if you bomb.
To me, Jamestown alone is worth buying the bundle, but I'll also definitely enjoy Super Meat Boy.
For my money this is the best bundle so far. Cave Story+, Bit Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, and Jamestown are all highly regarded games, which I've been wanting to play for some time. The others I don't know much about, but that's part of the reason why these bundles are cool, to experience some games you wouldn't have come across otherwise?
Super Meat Boy is amazing, it is definitely worth the $5. Although Bit Trip Runner seems engaging from the few minutes I've played, the graphics are little blurry and it ends up straining my eyes. The other games definitely look interesting though.
The way I see it, they have smaller (but frequent) company-branded bundles (eg, the FrozenByte bundle) and larger, more exciting numbered bundles (like this one - #4). The numbered ones always seemed to have more games, more hyped/well-known games and also sell a lot more.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I view them. As long as the numbered bundles can continue to include some big well known games, them I think they can avoid "bundle fatigue". But we will see, I guess. Its still too early to know for sure how repeatable it is, though it looks positive so far - I mean, $900k in one day is pretty good!
One thing I think separates the Humble Bundle from the Indie Royal bundle is that Humble Bundle games always work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I primarily use OS X and Linux these days, so that's a big incentive for me, and helps keep my "fatigue" down.
That said, if this turns into a never ending string, the amount I contribute towards each bundle would likely drop since frequency would be going up.
Probably something for the Humble folks to investigate - which performs better - more frequent small bundles or less frequent larger bundles.
"Humble Bundle games always work on Windows, Mac, and Linux"
The experience of the mono-compiled Atom Zombie Smasher (from Bundle 1 or 2 IIRC) was pretty poor on Linux.
Never got to play it myself - I saw it mentioned that it was easier to get it running using wine + the windows installer (including all the faffing about with dotnet under wine) than natively. Might try that this weekend.
All other bundle titles I have played run well, apart from the occasional dual head quirk (though I am more likely to blame nvidia's poor randr support for that)
I played Atom Zombie Smasher on Ubuntu 11.10 and didn't have any issues whatsoever. I didn't even have to mess with the screen resolution after the game ended (which is generally the norm on my Intel GMA card). It was one of the smoothest Linux gaming experiences I've had.
Yeah. And it's weird because with steam sales I get the opposite feeling. It's because I'm so used to them probably.
I think it's the fact that the bundle used to be a rare happening and now there's a new one at the end of the month. I'll get used to it probably, I hope other people do to. It's a really great project.
Right now we have the Indie Royale Bundle, run by Desura, an indie-game download store. It's not strictly pay-what-you-want, they instead use a shifting scale where people paying the minimum increases the minimum & people who choose to pay more lower it. It has no charity component, and new bundles are run every 2 weeks.
There's also the Indie Gala. It's a straight-up copy of the Humble Bundle model. Both Royale and Gala are actually running bundles right now.
Tomorrow the littleBIGbunch GamesAid bundle will launch, also with the Humble model.
The copycats generally have lesser-known, less-polished games, but there's some worthy titles in each of them.
I rather not give them the traffic & page-rank, but there was something that was literally a 1-to-1 rip off of HIB from some Italian developer & a few others (something with horses I think? really odd stuff).
Honestly, this is just making me spend less on Steam, since I know most of the cheaper games I'm interested in will end up as HIBs sooner or later, complete with Steam keys.
Now that it's a monthly affair I get the initial perception that the bundles have less noteworthy games and that I'm getting tired of so many of them. After a bit of thought I realize I /am/ paying just a few bucks for a lot of games and helping charity and I end up buying them, even if I already own al lthe games. but I fear there's a lot of people who won't make that leap and just say "meh, been there done that". It's sad because the bundle is great for devs and great for gamers.