I'm saving for now since Indie gala had 2 good/acceptable bundles recently and groupees had uhm... groupees...

Uh...

...

Humble Bundle > Bundle Stars > Indie Royale > Indie Gala > Rock > Groupees

I was first burned by "missing rest of the game" many, many years ago. Haven: Call of the King. That game left a permanent scar on my gaming soul.

Also, Half Life 2.
Not even the largest gaming company in the world can be trusted to finish their games.

Heh, my ordering would be:

Bundlestars > Humble Bundle > Indie Gala > Flying Bundle > Indie Royale > searing my flesh with a propane blowtorch > Groupees

:)

A comic bundle spreadsheet update would be GOLD. :)

I couldn't agree more. There are a few games that have shown up in the last few years that were episodic that looked like they might be decent but the nature of anything being episodic means that its future is relatively uncertain in my eyes personally and that it will be given out piecemeal bit by bit and that's fairly unsavoury for my own personal tastes. So even if I am interested in a game either casually, curiously or even deeply - I wont consider buying it at all until the entire game is completed fully, all episodes are out there and are available for purchase as a single box/bundle/collection for one price. I want to have an entire game and play it all the way through at once not in episodes over time, wondering if the next one will ever even happen or not.

That Cognition game is a good example of one that I thought looked interesting but avoided when it came out. I think the whole game is out there now but one never knows for sure until it actually happens. Imagine buying a pocket novel one chapter at a time as it is written and having to wait 6-18 months or so between chapters for the next chapter? What if one chapter doesn't sell well, or several in a row? Will the author have the financial incentive to continue to finish the book? Games are often like stories whether their story is a deeper one or shallow, they all have a story to them of some sort and hopefully a start, middle and end. I hate the idea of reading a book with the last 10 pages ripped out, or a movie with the last half hour missing... or... a game with the last "episode" never completed.

So while I'm not a fan of episodic distribution and I wont buy them as they're being developed, if and when they do actually complete an episodic game I may consider it if the rest makes the right sense to me, but I'm very leary in general of it. Having said that, I do own a handful of completed episodic games too so I'm not completely averse to the idea if it is eventually completed. :)

right so, Woolfe is also only 2 hours short. The Art direction is great but that's about it for this game, and unreleased episodes... nope.
Yes, most devs doe not seem to understand the episodic concept. They seem to thnk if it works for TellTale (which effectively started that whole thing, or at least made it mainstream) it will work for them. Which is a gross misconception about how TellTale works. As In: they secure the money _first_ for the whole project, they just release it episodic (most probably to reap more money, which is fine if it works for them.)

While those devs think that the money from one released episode will carry them through to the next episode. Well, yeah, see how many times that worked out for everybody.

Cognition reminds me of Reperfection, I played the demo and enjoyed it, but decided against buying till episode 2 was released, it is still not completed and the devs don't know when it will be finished because they "do it in their spare time"...wtf?

So things like this and Shadows : HK really put me off taking episodic games seriously.

Damn you Last Tinker... if you were DRM free it would be a great price :(
how is Block Legend DX? it looks fun besides that not so much...

BTT:
does anybody know if is Stargazer is any good?
It's $1 in indiegamestand with some pretty hefty 2 more games for BTA
Dawn’s Light and Our Love Will Grow + Stargazer Strategy.

I got it in the BBBBoB and I have played it 4 hours and a half.

You have a character and have encounters with enemies to fight with them with a board (select two or more adyacent tiles of the same type to hit an enemy, use magic, recover health, raise your shield, get money, etc). You can also match tiles between fights and the "hit" tiles change to "XP" tiles to increase your level.

Once you die you have to restart from zero. The only thing you keep after dying are stars, which you can get by fulfilling quests or beating certain enemies. Those stars can be used to unlock other characters and areas, or buy weapons and items before playing (although this weapons and items will be lost once you die)

Not bad idea but it got boring for me after a while.

Yeah, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head right there. There's another thing that I think about when I think of "episodic game" though too, and that is that I picture an "episode" as being very short and with little if any replay value. Maybe 1-4 hours of gameplay, or perhaps up to 8 if I'm lucky. That might be plenty for one person's game play style, but when I look at the massive variety of game genres I play and I see a game like Skyrim on sale for $6 or less and I get a copy and so far have put in like 610 hours of massively enjoyable game play into it and still never completed the game once, and I also know that it has massive replay value even without mods or any of the DLC installed, then consider if I do explore the wide mod community for it as well as the official DLC when it goes on sale, the price to entertainment hours obtained value proposition for a game like Skyrim is immense - for me personally.

Then I compare that with some 4 hour long indie game single episode of a game that might have the rest of the episodes never see the light of day and they want say... $10-20 for it? Bwwwwaaaaahahahahahahahahaahahahaaaa... YEAH RIGHT! Pfffft<farting noise>

Everyone values things differently but I'd value such an episodic short game with long term uncertainty somewhere in the $0.20 range, or even in the "maybe win it in a giveaway or code drop" or similar category. When I look through my GOG wishlist and my Steam wishlist at all the games I've observed and had interest in and look at their prices, some new game episodic or not that is asking $N for me to possibly buy it is in competition with my entire Steam+GOG wishlist and their active and sale prices not to mention Bundlestars, Humble etc.

The episodic games just never add up value wise for me with my tastes UNTIL they are 100% complete and then I can measure it as a real game possibly and look it up on howlongtobeat.com to see if it's worth it or not. The whole idea overall stinks of amateurism and low budget developer uncertainty to me though as a general thought.

(RE: Sale on the game Woolfe)

I didn't know about any of that; it looks fantastic! I did, however, decide to wait until it's on sale at Steam, as I have Steam Wallet funds (as opposed to out-of-pocket) and I know it will go on sale at Steam at some point!

So about what I expected glad I added it to my trade wishlist :)

I BTA on this one for the Our Love Will Grow game. I saw it randomly browsing one day and took an immediate interest, so it was a snap decision to pick it up in this PWYW deal. Bascially I'm a huge fan of the original Harvest Moon for SNES, and this looks like basically an updated version of that game.

GamersGate deals:

Legend of Grimrock (Steam) -80%.

Deep Silver Week, up to -80%. The games are either DRM-Free, require a Steam account, or use "Other DRM". Among them, Dead Island Game of the Year (-75%), Dead Island Riptide Complete Edition (-75%), and Dead Island Franchise Pack (-80%), will be discounted for 48 hours.

By the way, does anybody know what kind of DRM is Emergency 2014 using?