The ‘Bundle for Ukraine’ offers almost 1,000 games, books and more for a minimum of $10
Listen, I know you don’t want yet another person trying to convince you to donate to Ukraine. I know everyone is pushing right now and while it is absolutely a terrible situation over there you can get fatigue from constantly being reminded of the events. It sounds callous but it’s a legit psychological thing and I understand.
But hear me out, please.
If you haven’t donated and been on the fence, let me just carefully lift up these almost 1,000 items and place it on the donation side. Well, not me but the folks at Necrosoft Games who came up with the idea of a donation bundle that TOOK OFF.
I’ll skip over explaining a lot of the books and music since this is a game site. But there are definitely some bangers in there and as far as the books go. It’s a WIDE assortment. Everything from YA adventure, to drama, to funny trades, to tabletop gaming compendiums. If you’re a DM looking for something new to attack your party with, this will give you an endless stream of things to do.
But let’s look into some of the games. Obviously, I’m not going to list all of them because you can get the list from the actual page. But I wanted to take a second to point out a few.
SkateBIRD
It’s a simplistic Tony Hawk-style skateboarding game with the twist being you’re just a little bird on a finger board. There’s nothing over the top complex but it’s a fun little thing that my kids get an absolute blast out of seeing in action. Finally, a skate game that focuses less on the Birdman and more on just bird.
Cloud Gardens
I’m going to post the trailer here because you need to see it. I love this game. It’s just a slow relaxed pace game where you get to encourage plants to grow in abandoned industrial landscapes. It sounds simple and, depending on the mode, it is. But the challenge mode where you need to strike a balance is a weirdly satisfying puzzle.
Wandersong
A platforming adventure game in which you solve puzzles by being a singing bard. You use your often unwelcomed singing to trigger events around you and by choosing the right song progress your way through the world. The art is cute and the gameplay absolutely unique.
INMOST
Did you like games like Brave and Celeste but thought to yourself, “could it be more depressing”? It can! INMOST tasks you with using one of three different characters, each with a different control scheme (think Shovel Knight DLC characters) to get through a dark and bleak platforming landscape.
SUPERHOT
You’ve probably seen plenty on this one already but if you’ve never seen it, it’s a first-person shooter that doubles as a puzzle game. The game only moves when you move. So if someone’s firing at you you see the bullets in midair with a line showing their direction allowing you to pick and choose carefully where to go and where to fire. Just note ANY MOVEMENT so you don’t just get to freeze time and look around, looking counts.
2064: Read Only Memories
I personally love this game. I own probably three different copies of it on different things and don’t mind having a fourth on my Mac now. 2064: ROM is a cyberpunk, old-school point-and-click adventure. The writing is wonderful. The voice acting is really good. And I love the look and aesthetic.
Celeste
If you saw my comment earlier about Celeste and you’re one of the few people that didn’t know what I was talking about, now is your chance to fix it. Celeste is an excellent platform puzzler that follows your character’s journey of self-discovery while also constantly incorporating tricky new platforming elements. It’s worth the climb.
Minit
Imagine a Legend of Zelda like game with the catch being after one minute, you die. You have a minute to find items and unlock secrets before starting back at home respawned with your items and a new path ahead of you. Slowly you unlock the ability to wake up elsewhere and progress your way across the world a minute at a time. It sounds obnoxious but the game makes it really enjoyable.
Arcade Spirits
Hey! I reviewed this one! Arcade Spirits is an awesome interactive novel in which you play a down on their luck character that is trying to change their life with a new job and ends up getting put in charge of one of the coolest arcades ever. Meet the interesting and heavily diverse staff members you’ll be working with, decide how the arcade evolves over time, and maybe romance? This one was awesome.
Long Gone Days
This game hit me hard. Long Gone Days features a real-world setting where your young character has spent their life training for a war they believed in only to finally see combat and realize they might not be on the side they thought they were. Deserting the army your character enters a world in which the most try and stop the conflict while dealing with language barriers. One of my favorite things is that every single moment of combat is plot-related. If you’re fighting someone it’s for a reason and from a narrative standpoint, I thought that was amazing.
Hidden Folks
I spent a long time playing this game with my kids. Think “Where’s Waldo” but a massive animated landscape where sometimes you have to interact with it to find the hidden objects. Cute animation. No stressful time limits. Funny sound effects. It’s a great chill game to play with the kids or honestly, just as an adult looking to pass time.
Cosmic Express
Cosmic Express is a really cute puzzle game in which you’re tasked with laying out train tracks for a weird space colony. Every stage is a different pod in which you need to figure out a way to layout tracks where, in one motion, your train can pick up and drop off each thing or person.
And these are just some. Not only that but if you’re getting into MAKING video games, some of the things in this bundle are massive collections of assets if you want to make a game but aren’t necessarily artistic. Character sprites, world-building tools, hundreds of pixel fonts.
With all this, honestly, I could not think of a better carrot to get you to donate. This is a wealth of entertainment in several realms all for a minimum of $10. Get to it, fam.