Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night headlines this month’s Humble Choice bundle, which includes a host of other excellent indie titles. For the princely sum of £8.69 or $12, you can pick up all twelve games – not a bad deal, methinks.
So: the games. I’ve not played all of them on this list, but I’m a fan of Nowhere Prophet, a card game where you wander randomly-generated post-apocalyptic wastelands, upgrading your deck and trying to survive each stage. It had an unusually buggy release after a surprisingly bug-free beta, and now that its release jitters have calmed it’s a remarkably satisfying way to while away an afternoon.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is another recent gem. Released a couple of years ago, the soon-to-be-sequelled side-scroller has you exploring a demon-infested steampunk castle. The whippin’ n’ slashin’ combat is kept fresh by a good range of environments, bonkers boss battles and regular updates. If you’re a Metroid or Castlevania fan, then this is definitely worth checking out.
Time for our quick-fire round now. Carto is an adorable adventure game with a cool map mechanic and overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews; it’s £15 right now so getting it for £8.69 is pretty outstanding. Another fan favourite is Superliminal, a head-scratching perspective-based puzzler, which goes nicely with Blue Fire, another puzzle-laced title with a cool aesthetic and 3D platforming. There’s also a submarine roguelike (!) in the form of We Need To Go Deeper, which looks absolutely madcap and supports up to four players (animal, vegetable or mineral).
There are far too many games for us to cover in depth, so here’s the full list in article order, with links to RPS coverage (if it exists). Please do share your recommendations in the comments below, as I haven’t yet completed by goal of 100%-ing the RPS website and consequently I may have missed some favourable coverage.
If you’re not familiar with Humble Choice, the idea here is pretty simple – it’s a monthly subscription service, where you get up to 12 games per month to keep forever. You can cancel at any time, so you could – for instance – just subscribe on a month where you fancy the games, download them, cancel the subscription, then escape off into the hills with your lawfully acquired booty. Of course, Humble tend to do a pretty good job of coming up with new titles each month, ranging from indie to AAA, so you may well want to stick around to see what the next seasons bring!