The Latest Humble Bundle Is All About Survival

If you’re the type who enjoys survival games of the difficult, even punishing variety, then the latest Humble Bundle is genuinely worth a look.

It’s not from a multinational publisher and there are a few Early Access games that have been on Steam for quite a while. But the Survive This Bundle is one of the cheaper Humble offerings of late, and a lot of the titles have solid, robust player bases. Plenty of value today.

Tier 1: Pay what you want!

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• Tharsis
• Savage Lands
• Kholat

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The two titles that immediately stick out to me here are Kholat and Tharsis. Kholat is the first-person survival game with Sean Bean as the narrator. I didn’t play it myself, but it does come with a “eh, it’s alright” recommendation from Kotaku’s social guru and cosplay genius Hayley.

Mind you, for the price of bugger all you can’t go too wrong. I’ve also had my eye on the painstakingly difficult Tharsis for a while. The game’s basically a mix of FTL with Blood Bowl-levels of infuriating dice rolls, which sounds like the sort of misery that I adore. You’ll get Savage Lands in this tier as well, which is currently going for $US15.

Tier 2: Pay more than the average

Note that the average is currently $6.36 ($US4.87) at the time of writing.
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• Space Engineers (Early Access)
• Rust (Early Access)
• Shelter 2

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I haven’t forgiven Keen Software House for effectively abandoning Miner Wars 2081 to work on Space Engineers. I wanted my modern Descent, dammit. But that minor gripe aside, Space Engineers is a solid piece of work. It’s been in Early Access for a few years now — it’s like Prison Architect or Starbound in that respect — but it’s an excellent sandbox, provided you can put the physics and netcode quirks aside.

Rust has been kicking around for years too, with a suite of interesting changes along the way. The introduction of the XP system hasn’t been particularly popular. Still, Rust remains one of the most popular games on Steam — and for indie survival titles, that player base is essential.

As for Shelter 2, all you need to know is that you can have lynx babies. So, obviously, it’s immediately worth buying. Until your cute lynx babies die, at which point you cry and uninstall the game from your hard drive and your cold, dead heart.

Tier 3: Pay $US14 or more to unlock

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• Planetbase

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Just the one offering at this tier. It’s Planetbase, a strategy game about settlers trying to survival on a remote planet. The Steam description is intriguing as well, pitching the game as a simulator that’s not quite supposed to be a simulator:

You will get them to collect energy, extract water, mine metal, grow food, manufacture bots, and build a fully self-sufficient base in a harsh environment, where you are always one step away from total failure.

Even if the game is not intended to be a simulator, all the mechanics are plausible, and based on what the expected challenges of establishing a colony in an new planet would be.

It’s selling for $US20 right now, so the bundle alone doesn’t represent a gargantuan saving on Planetbase. But given that you’re getting the still popular RUST and the well liked Space Engineers along with it, as well as Tharsis and Kholat, you can’t argue too much.

So that’s the latest Humble Bundle that’s worth looking at. Interesting mix of indie titles and Early Access games. I imagine quite a few would have picked up Space Engineers or Rust already, and it’ll be interesting to see how the bundle affects sales of Planetbase. And the lynx babies, of course.