As you know if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, I love independent game developers. And doubly so if the game kicks serious bottom (like Gish). So I was triply delighted to find out about a game bundle put together by indie game developers. It’s called the Humble Indie Bundle. Cribbing shamelessly from the wolfire blog, this is how it works:

PAY WHAT YOU WANT. Five games are included in the bundle: World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture. You can pay what you want for them and have to do this before you download the games.

Please remember though, we’re just humble indie developers and the more you contribute, the easier it will be for us to make awesome games in the future.

CROSS-PLATFORM. Number two of the reasons that convinced me. All these games are available in Linux, Mac and PC flavours! Oh yeah!

NO DRM. As if you need yet another reason to buy the bundle, there is NO DRM on any of the games.

NO CORPORATE MIDDLE MAN. Every cent you pay goes directly to the developers. Oh, and two other parties….

BUYING THE BUNDLE HELPS CHARITY. You have a choice when paying to have some or all of your proceeds go to two charities: Child’s Play (which donates toys, games, books and cash to sick kids in hospitals in a variety of countries) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the activist organisation for protecting the public at the electronic frontier.

The games are:

• World of Goo: A physics-based puzzle construction game that has won awards for innovation and technical excellence.

• Aquaria: OMG, what utterly beautiful graphics. Go here to see the trailers if you don’t believe me. The Wast and I were mesmerised and so will Little Dinosaur be when she gets her princess paws on this one.

• Gish: Ah, the story of a ball of tar who follows his kidnapped owner, hoping to save her from Teh Ebil. It’s a love story of the ages. We bought this for The Wast a couple of years ago, but I’m overjoyed to see a Linux version so that I can play it and waste even more time not writing. Gish also has user levels (like the other family favourite, Dr Lunatic Supreme with Cheese (over 1,200 levels!) from Hamumu), so you can download dozens of new levels to play.

• Lugaru HD: Killer rabbit with skillz goes head to head with brainwashed bunnies and ravening wolves.

• Penumbra Overture: First-person horror. The Media page shows some pretty creepy (but not violent) stuff.

The Penumbra series’ central character, Philip, is realistically vulnerable, while enemies are fierce and intelligent. Any object can be picked up and thrown in defence, but the end result might only be to buy some time, or more likely, anger enemies further. Avoiding, outwitting and sneaking past enemies entirely provide the best chance of survival.

HAVE I CONVINCED YOU? READY TO BUY? Go here to find out more and buy. And seriously, for five games, you can do better than the average payment which is roughly US$8, right? NOTE: You only have four days to take advantage of this offer!