The folks at Humble Bundle do good work. I mean, sure, it's possible that some scandal could emerge for the gaming dealmaker/retailer, but nothing short of puppy murder would do much to harm its reputation. The company's been offering quality bundles of games for years, allowing customers to pay what they want - and to decide whether the money goes to the developers or to charity.
Humble's "Freedom Bundle," released today, is absolutely insane. Unconventionally, it has a minimum price of $30, but you get a hell of a lot for your three (or more) Hamiltons. What's more, 100% of the proceeds go towards the International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, and - in a timely move - the American motherfuckin' Civil Liberties Union. Let's take a look at what you get for your donation to the lawyers currently fighting for real, actual American values:
- The Witness, Jonathan (Braid) Blow's sprawling, beautiful puzzle game that we called "a minor miracle" when we reviewed it;
- Stardew Valley, the insanely deep farming RPG that took the indie gaming world by storm last year;
- Day of the Tentacle Remastered, a rerelease of the classic LucasArts adventure game;
- Nuclear Throne, Vlambeer's crazy-popular post-apocalyptic roguelike shooter;
- Octodad: Dadliest Catch, whose physics-driven, octopus-in-hiding gameplay will probably make you giggle at least a little bit;
- Overgrowth, a new game where you play as a ninja rabbit and engage in well-modeled melee combat;
- Subnautica, an underwater exploration game whose sea monsters probably render it too terrifying for me to play;
- The Stanley Parable, a hilarious and surreal video game satire and narrative-design critique;
- 2064: Read Only Memories, a retro adventure game with clever writing and a great voice cast;
- Perennial indie favourites Super Meat Boy, Invisible Inc, World of Goo, Super Hexagon, Sword and Sworcery, Mini Metro, VVVVVV, Ninja Pizza Girl, and Thirty Flights of Loving;
- What the shit, there are still more games: Mushroom 11, No Time To Explain, Guacamelee, Spirits, Human Resource Machine, Rocketsrocketsrockets, A Virus Named Tom, 7 Grand Steps, Retro Game Crunch, Tower of Guns, Waking Mars, Song of the Deep, Monster Loves You, AI War: Fleet Command, Sproggiwood, Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora, Secrets of Raetikon, Girls Like Robots, Ellipsis, Streamline, and Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball;
- For fuck's sake, it's even got books and shit:
- Garth Ennis' The Boys;
- Neil Gaiman's A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff;
- Nate Powell's Any Empire;
- Cory Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want To Be Free, as read by Wil Wheaton;
- and Violet Blue's The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online.
DAMN, son. I even already own about half of those games and this bundle is still an amazing value. Humble even says "more content may be coming soon," which just...sure. Why not.
The Freedom Bundle has already raised over a million dollars, which is more dollars than I've ever seen. Feel free to add your dollars to those ones, so that the ACLU may fight injustice and you may fight your blossoming video game addiction.