{"id":6135,"date":"2020-06-14T00:06:59","date_gmt":"2020-06-14T07:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=6135"},"modified":"2020-06-16T22:49:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T05:49:55","slug":"bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality-my-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/6135","title":{"rendered":"Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality: My Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Probably anyone reading this blog knows, but: Itch.io has a truly monumental bundle going right now, called the <a href=\"https:\/\/itch.io\/b\/520\/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality\">Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality<\/a>, consisting of &#8220;1,659 items&#8221; (as of this writing; the number keeps going up <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_6135_1('footnote_plugin_reference_6135_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_6135_1('footnote_plugin_reference_6135_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_6135_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_6135_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">The final count is 1704.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_6135_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_6135_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> ), mostly games, many of them good, for a minimum price of $5, all proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund. It&#8217;s running for just two more days. A more ambitious games blogger than myself could spend the rest of their life blogging just about this bundle.<\/p>\n<p>Since such a massive collection is in obvious need of curation, people have been posting lists of their picks on social media. I figure I might as well do the same here. I&#8217;m not saying these are the only games in the bundle worth playing, just that they&#8217;re the ones that I personally have played and would recommend to others.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Interactive Fiction and other largely text-based stuff<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Voyageur<\/em>: There are quite a few choice-based space-exploration games out there, but this is probably the most polished. Sort of a cross between <em>80 Days<\/em> and <em>FTL<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><em>What Isn&#8217;t Saved (will be lost)<\/em>: A sci-fi meditation on memory and difficult choices. Almost unbearably tense.<\/li>\n<li><em>Wheels of Aurelia<\/em>: I&#8217;ve mentioned this one in passing before. It&#8217;s an interesting experiment in interactive dialogue: you&#8217;re talking while you&#8217;re driving, so your attention is split and the conversation is affected by what turns you make and how fast you go. Set in 1970s Italy, with a story very concerned with the politics of that time and place.<\/li>\n<li><em>Dominique Pamplemousse in &#8220;It&#8217;s All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings&#8221;<\/em>: Claymation adventure game detective musical with interactive sung dialogue that actually manages to fit the beat of the background music.<\/li>\n<li><em>Extreme Meatpunks Forever<\/em>: A lo-fi Visual Novel about gay fugitives in a messed-up world, peppered with mech-fighting action sequences where you try to shove fascists off cliffs. I don&#8217;t usually have a lot of patience for VNs, but <em>Meatpunks<\/em> has a unique energy.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Quiet Sleep<\/em>: Hard to describe. It&#8217;s an abstract system for telling stories by means of resource acquisition on a hex grid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>2D Platformers<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Celeste<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/5529\">Previously<\/a>. Extremely polished, the pinnacle of <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/1290\">Matt Thorson&#8217;s<\/a> 2D platformer career. Tough as nails, but paradoxically kind-hearted.<\/li>\n<li><em>And Yet It Moves<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/1494\">Previously<\/a>. Puzzle-platformer in a rotatable environment with a torn-paper aesthetic.<\/li>\n<li><em>Pikuniku<\/em>: I&#8217;m only a little ways into this, but it&#8217;s a metroidvania with a very strong aesthetic. Characters are simplified in a way that complements their comically blunt demeanors.<\/li>\n<li><em>BasketBelle<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/3962\">Previously<\/a>. Intriguingly combines shooting hoops with platformer mechanics.<\/li>\n<li><em>Four-Sided Fantasy<\/em>: Another high-concept puzzle-platformer, based on giving the player control of whether the screen has wraparound or not at any given moment. It&#8217;s a device that turns out out to have more legs than it sounds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Other Explorey Environments<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Oxenfree<\/em>: I&#8217;m not wild about horror movie tropes, but the interaction and dialogue system is definitely worth a look.<\/li>\n<li><em>A Short Hike<\/em>: A charming and relaxing mountain climb in a recreational area with anthropomorphic animals. Kind of like a one-sitting single-player <em>Animal Crossing<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Minit<\/em>: A high-concept action-adventure, exploring what uses a game can make of short time constraints. Very well-done formal experiment.<\/li>\n<li><em>Anodyne<\/em>: A light, fanciful action-adventure, similar to an early Zelda game in both mechanics and graphical style, but more wry and deliberately surreal.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/4958\">Previously<\/a>. Melancholy 2D underwater metroidvania. Just you and a submarine against immense monsters amidst the ruins of human civilization.<\/li>\n<li><em>Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, And The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist<\/em>: Fourth-wall-demolishing first-person nonsense from one of the <em>Stanley Parable<\/em> people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Other Puzzle Games<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Mu Cartographer<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/5726\">Previously<\/a>. Recommended for anyone who likes fiddling with unlabeled controls to figure out what they do.<\/li>\n<li><em>GNOG<\/em>: A collection of pure jiggery-pokery puzzles themed around grotesque headboxes.<\/li>\n<li><em>Adjacency<\/em>: One of those abstract puzzle games with soothing ambient music. Simple mechanics, but gets very tricky (in ways other than increasing the number of parts).<\/li>\n<li><em>Puzzle Puppers<\/em>: Basically, numberlink with elongated corgis. Has some complications beyond that, like teleporting tunnels, but that&#8217;s the essence of it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Not cleanly categorizable as any of the above<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Art Sqool<\/em>: More satisfying as an aesthetic than a game, but worth a look just for that.<\/li>\n<li><em>Nuclear Throne<\/em>: One of the best action-roguelikes out there.<\/li>\n<li><em>Glittermitten Grove<\/em>: A delightful fairy management sim. I hear it has some secrets. Maybe you&#8217;ll have better luck finding them than me.<\/li>\n<li><em>Windosill<\/em>: <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/552\">Previously.<\/a> Short, dark, surreal twitch-and-wiggle game from Vectorpark.<\/li>\n<li><em>Metamorphabet<\/em>: Another Vectorpark game. I don&#8217;t like it as much as <em>Windosill<\/em> &#8212; it&#8217;s pitched more at the kiddies, so it stops short of giving them nightmares. Still worthy, though.<\/li>\n<li><em>Quadrilateral Cowboy<\/em>: A satisfying hackery game, and one of the few cyberpunk games to take the &#8220;punk&#8221; part to heart.<\/li>\n<li><em>Old Man&#8217;s Journey<\/em>: A peaceful and aesthetically pleasing travel story where the main mechanic is raising and lowering the level of the ground.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Hex<\/em>: Six videogame characters from different genres meet at an inn to witness a murder. I didn&#8217;t think much of this at first &#8212; it seemed indulgent, and the mini-games built around each character not well-developed. But it won me over with its increasing complexity, deepening story, and pervasively sinister atmosphere.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_6135_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_6135_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_6135_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_6135_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_6135_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_6135_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_6135_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">The final count is 1704.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_6135_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_6135_1').show(); 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jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably anyone reading this blog knows, but: Itch.io has a truly monumental bundle going right now, called the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, consisting of &#8220;1,659 items&#8221; (as of this writing; the number keeps going up 1The final count is 1704. ), mostly games, many of them good, for a minimum price of $5, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[652,657,456,654,659,244,597,646,655,647,650,662,661,656,441,663,653,621,660,664,651,649,658,578,510,512,665,648,643,644,645,282],"class_list":["post-6135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-short-hike","tag-adjacency","tag-and-yet-it-moves","tag-anodyne","tag-art-sqool","tag-basketbelle","tag-celeste","tag-dominique-pamplemousse","tag-dr-langeskov","tag-extreme-meatpunks-forever","tag-four-sided-fantasy","tag-frog-fractions-2","tag-glittermitten-grove","tag-gnog","tag-matt-thorson","tag-metamorphabet","tag-minit","tag-mu-cartographer","tag-nuclear-throne","tag-old-mans-journey","tag-oxenfree","tag-pikuniku","tag-puzzle-puppers","tag-quadrilateral-cowboy","tag-squinky","tag-the-aquatic-adventure-of-the-last-human","tag-the-hex","tag-the-quiet-sleep","tag-voyageur","tag-what-isnt-saved-will-be-lost","tag-wheels-of-aurelia","tag-windosill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6142,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions\/6142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}