The Cheapskate's Corner 15 (Aug 23rd-29th)

Welcome back to the The Cheapskate's Corner! We said we'd try to be back on Thursday and it's only Friday, how about that! The downside is that there aren't as much active bundles as there used to be in recent weeks, and we've only got two Brand New Deals. However their scarcity, if anything, makes them even more interesting. But before the active deals roundup, let's take a look at the recently expired bundles and sales:










· The only DRM-free and crossplatform haven remaining in Humble Land, the Humble Weekly Sale, is taking a week off. Could this be a sign that another Humble Indie Bundle is on the way? HIB 8 took place almost three months ago, so it'd be about time for a new one. Anyway, gone is the latest deal they offered until yesterday, a selection of indie games by PewDiePie: Botanicula, McPixel, Thomas Was Alone, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The deal also included non-Linux-available The Showdown Effect, so it actually wasn't a true crossplatform bundle in the end.


· The Indie Gala Summertide Bundle ended just a few hours after we published our latest column. Buying it you could get a Wine-wrapped version of Oniken, and Space Pirates and Zombies, with a couple more titles that will eventually come to Linux: Miner Warfare and Doom & Destiny.


· Bundle Stars' Superfly Indie also expired some days ago, and so went away your chances to grab Steam keys for The Journey Down: Chapter One and for the coming-soon-to-Linux Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers.


· After the "Point and Click Week", ShinyLoot celebrated the [b"]Get Tactical Week"[/b] where they offered many DRM-free strategy games at 50% off like Tales of Maj'Eyal, Desert Stormfront, Tropical Stormfront, and Hacker Evolution: Duality. Speaking of ShinyLoot make sure you don't miss their recent interview at GOL. ;)


· And lastly, the usually Good Guy IndieGameStand became a little Scumbag Steve-ish last week as only one in three featured deals included Linux games. We're talking about the many times anticipated in our "What Could Happen?" section DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale, with the previously featured DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder as a bonus.




















Charlie's Games' Mega Bundle Pack is still going on with no signs of ever stopping You can still pay what you want -$1 minimum- to get Irukandji, Bullet Candy, and Bullet Candy Perfect. For $5 or more you'll also get a DRM-free copy and a Steam key for Scoregasm. Additional Steam and/or Desura keys can be requested to Charlie himself via email, and he quickly delivers them -- we can bear witness of it! :)












There are two ongoing Indiebundle.org's bundles with Linux content in them:


· The Rugged Rogues Bundle contains Tales of Maj'Eyal and Voyage to Farland at the $5 level, with Dungeon Prospector at the bonus $7 level. All three games come as Desura keys.


· The SciFi Bundle includes at the $5 tier the soon-to-come-to-Linux Constant C, and at the $7 Bundle+ level there's Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire alpha, both games coming in the form of Desura keys. Plus Beyond Beyaan was confirmed to be heading to Linux, so this one will end up being a 3-title bundle.












Groupees' Build a Meridian 4 Megabundle is still going on. None of the unlocked bonus games since last week are available for Linux, so we won't bother to talk about them. The bundle is thus still offering a single Linux title (we're not taking into account Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, as Meridian 4 only owns the rights to sell the Windows version), Deadly 30:



It's available as a Desura key, as the DRM-free download is Windows-only. Although it can be yours for $1.50 only a tiny fraction of your money -if any at all- is going to reach the developers. So even though we're as big a cheapskate as you are we'd advice you to buy it directly from them, thus voting with your wallet and rewarding the folks who care enough to release their games for Linux -- even Flash games like this one. :P












Bundle Stars' Superfly Indie is over as we said before, but and old bundle has been re-opened: the Atomic Indie Bundle. It's not a particularly great deal, but it includes SpaceChem:



The game is available as a Steam key and the whole bundle costs around $5, which supposes at least a 50% discount over the listed price.




















If the Build a Meridian 4 bundle was not enough (and it certainly isn't to us), Groupees is also holding the Be Mine 9 bundle. This one's a way more promising deal although at the time of writing it only includes one game currently available on Linux, Particulars:



You'll get for the minimum price of $1. However the next announced bonus game is The 39 Steps, available for Linux DRM-free and on Steam. We don't know whether it will be included in the $1 or the $5 levels. We'll have to wait until the 10k bundles sold to know for sure.

Apart from those two released games, there are two more that should be hitting Linux soon. We're referring to Eador: Masters of the Broken World and Ittle Dew, both on the $5 tier. While the former's current status is a mystery, the latter is already being tested on Linux. Regarding Ittle Dew the developer couldn't tell us for sure whether there'll be a downloadable DRM-free version of the game added to this bundle, so be careful if you're not a fan of Steam. :S:

And if we look onto even more hypothetical issues, the cast of Linux games in this bundle could be eventually further expanded. A couple developers have got back to us with hopeful news. Firstly, Depths of Peril's creators have already done some work to port it to Linux and will continue after they finish an expansion for Drox Operative, another game of theirs. In turn, once they've got a multiplayer mode ready, the developers of Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages might decide to work on a Linux port, although it would take some time as it's made with XNA. Finally, Splatter also has a Linux version planned but only if the Windows release is successful enough.

All in all, here's a bundle with a high potential but we'll have to wait to be able to gauge its full scope. On the plus side you can have it all for as little as $5 so it'd be still a good deal even if some of the prospects don't make it in the end.












The other novelty of the week is Indie Royale's The Prairie Dog Bundle. It's another bundle with no inmediate Linux content, but it includes a pair of interesting possibilities:

· Vox, which will eventually come to Linux as its developers confirmed to us some time ago when the game was featured elsewhere.

· Signal Ops is also supposed to be coming to Linux. At least that's what the developers said on occasion of the Windows release back in April.

· UPDATE: we've just received some good news from the developers of Zack Zero. They are apparently "now working on a Steam and Linux update, along with some bug fixes", so here you have another argument in favor of getting this bundle. :)


The bundle is currently £3.60/$5.60/4.20€ so even if only one of these games came to Linux it'd still be a good deal. Plus there's also a still-unrevealed bonus game. Will for once be a Linux title? We'll know probably soon, as this deal will expire in less than 5 days.

UPDATE: The secret bonus game was finally revealed but, much to our dismay, it's not available on Linux. :(
















· As we said at the beginning of this column, is there perhaps a brand new Humble Indie Bundle in the making? Humble's current deal, the infamous Origin bundle, finishes on Wednesday so maybe five or six days from now we're blessed again with a fully crossplatform and fully DRM-free bundle. :)


· And finally our IndieGameStand watchlist is gradually shrinking, but it still contains some noteworthy potential deals: Pandora: Purge of Pride, SickBrick, and Party of Sin -- this last one only allegedly coming to Linux.






And so it ends! We'll be back next week, hopefully on Thursday and with more content. The former depends totally on us but, alas, the latter is not in our power. Until our next meeting remember to keep tabs on our sales page to be the first to know about new bundles and deals with any penguin content. See you! ;)


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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.