wolfire-games posts

The "pay what you want" business model for selling game has gotten the interest of venture capital companies. The Fortune web site reports that according to a recent regulatory filing, the Humble Bundle team has received a whopping $4.7 million in such funding. The team, John Graham and Jeff Rosen, have yet to officially comment on the funding move.

So far the Humble Bundle team have launched three such "pay what you want" bundle sales for indie games, including the current Humble Frozenbyte Bundle that will end this Tuesday. The first two bundles went over $1 million in revenues and the current bundle has generated over $700,000 in sales. The fact that this kind of business is bringing in outside funding indicates that at least some people believe that offering such a business model can generate profits at some point for the organizer of such bundles.

It's been just one day since the launch of the "pay what you want" return of the Humble Indie Bundle but so far it looks like this second effort to highlight indie games will be an even bigger success than the first such effort. According to the web site the revenues from Humble Indie Bundle 2 have generated just over $500,000 in just the first 24 hours. Nearly 70,000 purchases have been made to get five indie games (Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans) with an average of just over $7 per purchase (together, the games normally sell for about $85). It's currently unknown how much money has been given to each game. It's also unknown how much was contributed to the two charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play) or to a tip for the Humble Bundle organizers.

Some people have spent well over that average to get these games. One of them is Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of the indie hit Minecraft. According to the site he's currently the person who has spent the most with a massive $2,000 contribution. The bundle deal still has a lot of life left in it; it's currently scheduled to shut down on December 21.

Last year the team at indie game developer Wolfire launched the Humble Indie Bundle which let people pay what they wanted for five indie games. The bundle generated over $1.2 million over the length of the deal. Now the same team is doing it again with the Humble Indie Bundle 2.

Five more indie games are a part of this new deal: Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, and two games that technically are still in beta versions: Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans. All five games are DRM-free and come in Windows, Mac and Linux flavors. You can choose to spend any amount of money you want to get all five games and like the last bundle you can also choose to donate a portion of your money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play. This year there's also an extra option to tip the Humble Bundle folks. According to the Wolfire web site, "We have some humble ideas on how to change digital distribution that we're going to try out." The Humble Indie Bundle 2 lasts until December 21 at 4 pm Eastern time. You can check out the launch trailer for the bundle after the jump:

Lugaru is one of those games that straddles the line between mainstream success and indie obscurity. The developers aren't resting on their laurels with the sequel, however, and Overgrowth is looking more and more fantastic with each passing day. The newest trailer shows off many of the features in the current alpha, including the level editor, animation system, physics, and even combat. It's certainly got up pumped for the game, as editing your own levels and creating your own stories and even animations looks so amazingly simple. Here's looking forward to what will no doubt be a fantastic indie game.

Download HD Overgrowth Alpha Trailer
Check out all Overgrowth downloads

Earlier this month two indie game developers, Wolfire Games and Unknown Worlds Entertainment, came up with a nice pre-order bundle for their upcoming action game Overgrowth and the FPS-RTS game Natural Selection 2. Now Wolfire has revealed just how well the game bundle sold and it sound like the deal exceeded expectations.

The bundle deal basically let players purchase two upcoming games for the price of one. While Overgrowth generated a total 1,100 pre-orders in a year before the bundle deal with Natural Selection 2, the bundle deal generated 1,658 pre-orders during the week of the sale. Even during the promotion, regular pre-order deals went up for both games. In fact the bundle got more popular during the last hours of the sale with Wolfire saying, "We had 3 sales in the last 30 seconds alone." One wonders how many more sales would have been made if the bundle deal had been extended for another week.

We've seen bundle offers for downloadable games before but this special promotion is a little different. Two separate indie game developers, Wolfire Games and Unknown Worlds, are teaming up to offer a pre-order bundle of their upcoming games, the "ninja rabbit" title Overgrowth (Wolfire) and the FPS-RTS hybrid Natural Selection 2 (Unknown Worlds).

For a limited time you can pre-order both games for a total of $39.99, compared to the $70 you would pay if you paid for each game seperately. Both games also offer early alpha access. If you have already pre-ordered one of the games you automatically get the other for free. All in all it's a pretty nice deal. You can check out a YouTube video promoting the bundle deal after the jump.

"Lugaru (pronounced Loo-GAH-roo) is a third-person action title available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. The main character, Turner, is an anthropomorphic rebel bunny rabbit with impressive combat skills. In his quest to find those responsible for slaughtering his village, he uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy involving the corrupt leaders of the rabbit republic and the starving wolves from a nearby den. Turner takes it upon himself to fight against their plot and save his fellow rabbits from slavery."

For a short time, players can get a free copy of Lugaru for the holidays.

Download the Lugaru Demo [Windows] (24 MB)
Download the Lugaru Demo [Mac] (26 MB)
Download the Lugaru Demo [Linux] (25 MB)

Welcome to the Indie Showcase, a semi-regular column on Big Download that takes a look at games we haven't covered on the site that we really think you should play.

There may be a lot of quality freeware games out there, but there's also a lot of amazing shareware games. In fact, most of the truly amazing or classic indie games are indeed shareware! So for those of you that want a decent selection of games to spend about $20 on, here's four of the many classic and great shareware indie games for you to pick from. They may not be all that new, but everyone, indie connessoir or not, should play these games at least once.