I’ll keep this relatively short. I just want to wish everybody a happy 2012 and I hope that your New Year’s Eve was either memorable or at least enjoyable. Whether it was out at a party/event or just hanging at home playing some games. No matter. I also hope that if you did go out you got home safely. Nobody wants to start off a year with a bad memory.

I spoke on this a little bit earlier this week with my post on indie game bundles, but now I’m broadening the subject a little bit. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a good discussion on game economics and distribution?

Whoa there? Linux as an actual, factual gaming platform? What kind of space aged, year 3000 world do we live in? The answer to that is an awesome one. Linux users today now have one awesome choice for gaming on their OS of choice and that option is Desura, the indie Steam-like alternative digital distribution service.

Time for another weekly Discussionware! This time we’re going for something pretty broad and also something which I think everybody who reads this blog should at least have a passing interest in. Essentially I’d like to know who your favorite indie developer(s) is/are? What abut them inspires you so much.

Obviously this question is posed to a wide range of people involved with the indie industry. Gamers, developers, business folk…

[Correspondent Ken Ellis continues his IndieCade previews with Micahel Molianri's BasketBelle.]

There are a wide variety of games at IndieCade every year. Most are fun, some are strange, and a few are metaphors of human emotion. BasketBelle, by Michael Molinari, is all of these. The game is the story of a young boy, gifted with the skill of basketball, who is on a quest to find something (I don’t want to particularly say what yet) important to him. The opponents you face are not so much actual people, but obstacles he must overcome in his life. A rare sports based game that makes you reflect on life.

The game game plays well and looks fantastic. It has a cardboard/chalk/paint style artwork that works fluidly with the game mechanics. The controls are simple, just standard directions and two action buttons along with a couple trick/techniques. These play great on the basketball court, and on the few adventure style levels that are sprinkled throughout the game.

The game isn’t too terribly difficult–I was able to beat my opponent blob quite handily, but this was only the first enemy, so I’d assume it gets more difficult as the game continues. I should also mention the music in the game, specifically the bass being connected to the basketball. This is interesting in that whenever the ball hits the ground a deep hard bass sound occurs. It connects you to the game in a unique way, I found.

BasketBelle has no official release date yet, but from what I saw it looks like it will come out on a console of some sort. Sports game fans and artsy game fans should find a nice middle ground with this one. Check it out when it’s available, and for now check out some gameplay footage we captured last weekend:

Because statistics are fun and we’re all a bunch of economic/business geeks here at DIY HQ I thought it would be fun to update everybody on how the Humble Bundle is doing about half way through its life cycle. While this isn’t a sequel to the Humble Indie Bundle 3 (it’s more of a spin-off) I’d say it’s performing pretty well all things considered.

Currently the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle has accrued a whopping $700,000 and sold just over 150,000 bundles. As usual Windows users (you’re making me look bad!) bring up the rear with an average of $4.06 per bundle (weak), Mac users are in the middle with $6.24 per bundle and Linux users are leading the charge with a staggering $8.91 per bundle. Very impressive!

One thing that does seem to be conspicuously absent from this bundle as compared to the previous iterations is the glory-hogging marketers trying to reach the top spot on the “leaderboards.” Notch is there, of course, but here’s a distinct lack of “BUYGAMESHERENOW.com” type spiel. Perhaps they realized that advertising via leaderboards isn’t actually that effective.

Anyways, if you have yet to partake in the package, please check it out. If you opt to beat the average of $4.64 you’ll also receive the Frozenbyte Bundle as a bonus as part of your bundle. You’ve got 8 days left to get in on the action…

[Humble Bundle]

Welcome to our our newest weekly feature. It’s come to our attention that even though we produce awesome content every single day, it’s simply not possible for people to visit us everyday and, as such, they very well could miss out on some great content. So we’re introducing this new feature which will premiere every single Saturday and list each and every article we have produced for the week prior and you can simply scroll through and see which ones you want to explore.

We’ll be refining this process as we work out the kinks so please let us know what you like and what you don’t like in the comments!

Boss Baddie has brought back their fantastic Lunar Pack, a pay what you want collection of two of their earlier adventure platformers: Lunnye Devitsy and Wake. In addition to this you’ll also get 26 tracks from Boss Baddie’s upcoming Metroidvania title Tormishire for the low low price of… whatever you want to pay!

Made possible with the help of Indievania, the indie-centric digital distribution site, the Lunar Pack is available right now.

Here are some game descriptions…

Lunnye Devitsy:

Lunnye Devitsy is a mystery/puzzle platformer. You play as a little alien that falls off the moon and you have to make your way back. The objective is to get home again using one of the six possible exits hidden on a large mountainside.

It was made in celebration of the moon landings, which was 40 years before the original release date.

Wake:

Wake is the story of an engineer trapped on a sinking ship. His goal is to navigate through the ship and find his way to the surface above.

• Dodge bullets and fire, most of all avoid drowning!
• Collect keys, torches, flares and even an axe to help you escape
• Discover the secrets of what really happened

Both games are, in my opinion, absolutely fantastic. I’ve been a huge Boss Baddie fan for the last couple years and both of these games rank very highly on my list, especially Wake which I feel had a great concept behind it.

If you’re looking for some great platformers to delve into, you can do a lot worse than either of these games.

[Boss Baddie, Indievania]

Trailer

Crowdfunding is an interesting idea and one that many you may well know that I have an intimate relationship with after launching 8-Bit Funding earlier this year. It’s been a lot of fun figuring out the ins and outs of the economy surrounding crowdfunding, sometimes extremely frustrating and other times very exciting.

Today, I’m happy to report the latter as we got to unveil our brand new design to the world. This is something that I was able to start working on back in June and now have the opportunity to show off to the world.

As some of you who visited 8-Bit Funding in the past, the old design was, let’s just say, ugly. It felt old from the day we went live. That’s because when I first decided to make the website, I couldn’t actually afford a real designer. I remember always throwing out excuses about the design whenever I introduced the website to somebody. Well, no more! As of today, our new design is live and looks 100% better!

Over the next month or so we’ll be patching a few things. We’ll also be gearing up for the next big update which will include private messaging as well as other communal features. If you have any suggestions don’t hesitate to leave ‘em in the comments here!

P.S. If it looks all scrambled, you may have to clear your cache. Sorry!

[8-Bit Funding]

It seems like indie bundles are going to be a fairly regular occurrence from this point on. As gamers look to get the most bang for their buck, it just seems to make sense for developers to package their games together in an attempt to generate mass consumer interest with fantastic savings. Today’s “Indie Deal of the Day” is just such a bundle.

The 5 for $5 Bundle is a bundle that is true to it’s namesake. For $5 you get five DRM free games. And these are quality games too. I can, personally, attest to three of these games being a lot of fun and worth your time. Here are the games involved:

1. Delve Deeper (a personal favorite of mine)
2. Spring Up Harmony
3. Mactabilis
4. Steel Storm: Burning Retribution
5. Digitanks (great strategy gem)

The deal is only going to be around for a little under two weeks though so if you don’t act fast you may have to resort to buying these games at their original prices, each of which is at or over $5 by themselves. Check out the trailer below for more information.

[5 for $5 Bundle]

Trailer