Last week, IndieGames.com and Desura presented a new fortnightly event called Indie Royale. For those who haven’t checked it out yet, the idea is pretty simple. A bundle of 4 games are presented for a price of $2.00. As the bundle sells more the price steadily increases. But if users pay more for the game than the minimum the price will be reduced.

It’s definitely interesting to see how the indie games bundle market has expanded since the Humble Bundle started the trend a couple years ago.

Anyway, when Indie Royale first launched I had a lot of questions, as I’m sure you did, about just how the site came to be and what the plans are in the future. Luckily Michael Rose (former DIYGamer.com writer) was able to answer them for me.  Enjoy!

DIYGamer: Can you explain a little bit on how IndieRoyale came about and the motivations behind it?

Michael Rose: It all came about when myself and Simon Carless began discussing ways in which we could further support the indie scene (apart from IndieGames.com). Simon got talking to Scott Reismanis at Desura, and suddenly a vague plan was formed. Over around 4 months, we toyed with the idea until we finally thought what the hell, let’s give this a shot! As you’d expect, the last 4 months have been pretty stressful, but now that Indie Royale has launched, we’re totally happy about it.

Our motivation is getting the word out about all the smaller indie titles that most people pass straight over. I think the majority of mainstream gamers think ‘indie’ means Braid, World of Goo, all those indie titles that you and I class as perhaps ‘high-profile indie’. While these games definitely reflect what indie is all about, it’s a shame that so many titles get passed straight over and don’t get much press, especially the real excellent ones. Indie Royale has been put in place to bring those under-appreciated titles to the foreground.

DIYGamer: Inside the announcement email it says that IndieGames.com and Desura worked together on this, but who actually owns it? Who is actually running the site?

Michael Rose: The site is run and owned jointly between UBM Tech (IndieGames.com parent company) and Desura. Running the site is me, Simon and Scott, along with some of the great people at Desura and IndieGames.com, who have been helping out with support and backend stuff.

DIYGamer: What’s the profit split for the developers and for the people running the site?

Michael Rose: As you’d expect, we’re not fully disclosing details on this. That’s not because we’re ashamed of the split we’re giving – far from it – but rather that it’s a sensitive deal between us and the devs. As I’m sure you’ve seen, other indie bundles in the past (and present!) rarely divulge the exact amount that devs are getting too for the very same reason.

DIYGamer: The plan is to have a bundle every two weeks, why two weeks when, at least, the first bundle seems to be only about 5 days long?

Michael Rose: There’s a cooling down period of 9 days between each one so that we can have a sit down and breathe a bit! While this bundle has been on, we’ve been constantly on the edges of our seats, making sure it’s all going smoothly, answering support emails and patching areas up that need fixing. Imagine if we had to do that 24/7 each single week… I personally would explode. So the 9 days is in place to give us time to prepare the next bundle as perfectly as possible.

DIYGamer: What the relation here to the Humble Bundle? Is this simply a way to capitalize on the indie bundle business?

Michael Rose: We have no relationship to the Humble Indie Bundle, although of course, we love what those guys do. They revolutionized the indie bundle idea, and are doing a fantastic job with it. We’ve tried to take some inspiration from them and make something very different – so we’ve got the every 2 weeks feature, the interesting up-and-down money feature, the stats tracking payments going up and down… plus, we’re aiming at an entirely different section of the indie scene to them. As mentioned above, we’re looking to bring the smaller indies to the foreground, whereas the HIB usually relies on ‘bigger’ indie names. That’s not a bad thing at all, it’s quite the opposite! But I think while they continue to put a spotlight on those, we’ll be helping some of the smaller names out at the same time.

DIYGamer: Roughly 35,000 bundles have been sold so far. How has reaction been to these sales so far? Are they below, or above expectations?

Michael Rose: The initial surge was completely unexpected, and we were overwhelmed – indeed, the Indie Royale servers weren’t very happy on the first night! To be honest, our expectations were all over the place, and we had absolutely no idea how well it would do. We’re now looking to fix up all the holes, bang in all the features that people have been asking for, and make sure that that future bundles do even better!

DIYGamer: What’s the ultimate goal for IndieRoyale? Is this planned to be a persistent service or is this a limited run thing?

Michael Rose: It’s going to run for as long as we can keep it going! We’re not planning any end to it as of yet, and as long as people still want to buy great indie games, we’re going to keep providing. If, in months to come, people are saying ‘I can’t believe I never tried any of these games before, my whole perception of the indie scene has changed’, then our goal will be satisfied.

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Again super huge thanks to Michael Rose of IndieGames.com. As the first Indie Royale bundle comes to a close today with over 35,000 bundles sold I’d say the first was a success. It will be interesting to see how the indie games market changes with a site such as this and whether or not we’ll see more bundles appearing over time rather than games “going it alone” so to say.

[IndieRoyale]

Let’s talk some Indie Royale in a sec, but before that why don’t you pick up their launch bundle while it’s still available. You have less than six hours at the time of writing to make your purchase, as the four-game offer ends today at 11 AM Pacific.

The non-fixed price is hovering at $5.18 at the moment, a fantastic tag indeed for a quad-ling of awesome indie titles; and if you demand perks on top of getting games on the super cheap, you’re in luck! You greedy son of a bitch, you.

With unit sales going over 30,000 (36,516 at current), the bundle has now added three sets of Sanctum DLC, with individual Steam codes available now on your individual access page. Looking at the updates on the website, the Berzerker Suit DLC for A.R.E.S has apparently also been added in. Additionally, Steam keys for Gemini Rue are now included with the deal as well–allowing access to the recently released achievement-enhanced version, available only through the digital distribution king of the world. That’s quite a few goodies on top of the original deal.

We’ll be keeping our eye out early next week for what’s packed in Indie Royale’s Difficult 2nd bundle, and perhaps later on in the week for what’s added. (Provided unit sale goals are met.)

How do digital versions (in Desura, Steam and direct download formats) of Ares: Extinction Agenda, Gemini Rue, Sanctum and Nimbus sound to you? Nice? Well, how about $2 for all four together? Great? Well, you’d best get moving fast, because Indie Royale looks to be taking a slightly different approach to indie bundle packs. With each sale, the minimum price – this is a pay-what-you-want sale, primarily – creeps a little higher.

In addition, if you do choose to pay above the average, the minimum price gets beaten a little lower. There’s room for some solidarity to be shown here, with possible ‘big players’ such as Notch over at Mojang possibly able to bite a chunk out of that figure, assuming that this draws roughly the same crowd as the Wolfire-led Humble Bundles.

With just five days until the end of the sale, this seems to be a faster, more aggressive take on ‘pay what you want’ sales, encouraging folks to get in early and spread the word before the cheapskates make off with all the cheap loot. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out in terms of overall business and results, but the absolutely undeniable truth here is that this is a pack of four VERY good games in their respective genres, and all for a ridiculously low minimum price.

On top of that, they’re going to be throwing in an item of Sanctum DLC for every 10,000 sales made.

Addendum: Unlike the Humble Bundles, these games are all PC-only. Mac and Linux gamers are out of luck here, I’m afraid.

[Indie Royale]

While the title was met with much acclaim, the developer admits it could be improved. “Nimbus+ will feature new content as well as improvements for areas which were lacking for the PC version, or which were cut due to lack of time,” though the team is not sure exactly what will be added. ‘This is also the reason for why some features which we originally wanted to bring to the PC version was cut short.”

PC owners shouldn’t fret or feel completely abandoned. Numenon said that Nimbus+ enhancements will be ported to the PC where possible. Those who took the initial PC plunge will also receive some “boons,” but the benefit details have not been decided.

For those who want to see Nimbus in action, enjoy this gameplay video:

Indie Superstar has a rather colorful re-interpretation of Noumenon’s Nimbus development here. For now, be sure to follow the developer’s blog for more details of Nimbus+ as they are announced. And again, for those who missed last year’s review, check it out here.

Source: Noumenon Games blog

Calling it a ‘Racing’ game is stretching the truth a fair bit – if this is racing, then so is Super Meat Boy – but the puzzling elements are definitely something special. The controls can feel a little fiddly at times, but in general this is a cheap and cheerful experience definitely worth partaking in.

GAMEPLAY

Taking control of a missile-like object, the idea is to navigate increasingly difficult mazes and reach the goal at the end of each. Holding left and right causes the missile to turn in a clockwise or anticlockwise manner and initially this feels quite confusing, especially when moving in a downwards direction. A few levels later, however, and you’ll be powering towards the finish with full understanding under your belt.

The main concept is that your vessel cannot stay airborne on its own – it needs to touch a bouncy wall or fire from a cannon or use other assorted useful appliances. Here’s the thing, though – using one of these objects does not push your craft, but rather it gives your craft a boost of energy. In other words if there is a bouncy wall on the ceiling and you touch it, you won’t be catapulted towards the ground – instead, you’ll earn a boost which can be used to then move in any direction you wish.

It’s a difficult idea to grasp when saying it outloud, and you really need to try it out to see how it all works. If your craft stops moving and rests on the ground, you become stranded and die – hence, you need to keep moving until you reach the end. Of course, it’s never as simple as that, thanks to lots of obstacles and spikes in your way.

It’s all really enjoyable and we found ourselves whizzing through the whole game in one sitting. Every new level is fun to explore, and there are secret exits and hidden coins to find that really boost the replay value. Then you’ve got global leaderboards to top and lots of ship customization to mess about with. In other words, you’ll easily get a good several hours of play out of this bad boy, and then some.

What makes Nimbus really addictive is the quick stop-start elements. When you die, you’re instantly respawned either at the start of the level, or at the latest checkpoint cannon. This means that dying isn’t such a huge hassle, as you’ll be back at that point within seconds. It’s like an airborne version of VVVVVV in a sense, especially when you start messing around with gravity later on in the game!

Only a couple of niggles threatened to ruin the fun. While the controls are perfectly reasonable, later levels get incredibly difficult. This isn’t a bad thing – in fact, we love a challenge – but the lacklustre feeling of control can be a little too much when faced with tight spaces and sharp corners. It’s nothing a few dozen attempts can’t solve, but it can still feel quite frustrating.

The other issue is the lack of indication as to where all the coins are. We don’t mind hunting down collectables, but since many of the levels are pretty big, it would be nice to know which ones we should be looking in! We wouldn’t mind all that much if we knew that there was one coin in each level, but we found quite a few levels in which there were multiple coins! A small symbol next to each level that has a coin in it would do wonders and definitely make us want to grab every single one.

STYLE

There’s a lovely visual style throughout Nimbus, with bright colourful backdrops and a wonderful variety of objects to navigate. However, it does all being to feel a little samey towards the end, as every world is the very same, but with a few colour changes.

The world map is set in a Super Mario World style layout, with levels joined together and secret routes seemingly out of reach until you find the special goals. The feeling of progression is really great, and leaderboards are loaded on the fly so you can check out your top times against the rest of the world in a very easy fashion.

The Nimbus soundtrack is a mix of good-to-great tunes, and every track fits well with the general feel of the game. Throughout each world you’ll hear the same track repeated, which can become a little annoying, but we still found ourselves humming the tunes afterwards.

STORY

The Steam description for Nimbus states that the game is ‘Light on story, but heavy on gameplay’, and it’s not wrong there. There is some intro about a girl vessel thingy being snatched away by a big nasty robot, but really it’s all just an excuse to zip around some cool-looking mazes and beat all your friends’ times.

OTHER

With plenty of Steam features integrated into the game, including Steam Cloud, leaderboards and achievements, Nimbus has got tons going for it. Fun? Check. Addictive? Check. Plenty of reasons to keep playing once it’s all over? Double check. This is a game that looks good in trailers, and plays even better.

There’s no demo available at the moment which is a bit of a bummer, but honestly, for the $10 asking price, it’s not exactly a huge risk to take. Nimbus is charmingly unique and immensely entertaining, and will keep you going for a good six hours or more.

Nimbus on Steam