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Humble Choice - April 2025
April 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.
| Steam Page | Opencritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomb Raider I-III Remastered | 76 | 90 / 85 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
| DREDGE | 82 | 96 / 95 | Win, Mac | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Aliens: Dark Descent | 89 | 86 / 88 | Win | ❌ Unsupported | 🎖️ Platinum |
| 1000xRESIST | 89 | 97 / 96 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Nova Lands | 80 | 84 / 91 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Diplomacy is Not an Option | -- | 85 / 85 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Distant Worlds 2 | 81 | -- / 88 | Win | ❌ Unsupported | ⬜ Silver |
| Nomad Survival | -- | 88 / 95 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🟨 Gold |
Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?
No EA keys! My plan worked!
This bundle is a banger. Tomb Raider, Dredge, and 1000xRESIST are all on my interest list.
Also, I'll give a shoutout to Nomad Survival. I honestly, genuinely liked it better than Vampire Survivors (to which it is extremely similar). I don't want to spoil VS for anyone (if you can even call it a spoiler), but VS tends to lock you into certain builds/combinations. Nomad, on the other hand, gives you free reign to choose whichever actives and passives you like (and more of them!). I appreciated that freedom in building my character each run. I got a solid 50 hours out of this. It's a perfect audiobook/podcast game.
Finally, I feel like each Humble Choice is a tacit comment on Proton's progression and how good it's getting. This bundle has ZERO native Linux games, but it still has SIX platinums and a gold for running on Linux. Plus, the silver looks like it'll go up if it just gets some more reviews. Proton really is magic!
Dredge is absolutely great for exactly what it is. I lapped it up and already have the first DLC too. It gets a high recommendation from me.
That said, it's not an intense game or too mechanically deep of a game and can be completed relatively quick.
I saw 1000xResist on Humble Choice and I regret buying it earlier that I could've gotten it in this bundle. But then again if it's in a bundle I probably never get around to play it.
Many people praised 1000xResist, some even voted for Game of the Year 2024. I'd say gameplay-wise it is worse than a walking simulator. The city's layout is confusing even with in-game map - imagine using a children's drawing to navigate Shinjuku station, although it's nowhere near that complex. Many walking simulators like Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, A Bird Story are quite linear and you probably don't get lost. And the walking doesn't add much to the game that visual novels doesn't already do. There's also a section that is similar to the 3rd act of Until Then (you should play!), but in 3D which I also dislike.
Story-wise I think it is one of those confusing, pretentious arthouse style with nonlinear timeline. Some people like them I suppose; I recently watch Pulp Fiction and I didn't like it either. But once I piece back the backstory I found that I really like the story - I just didn't like the presentation at all (both narrative, and gameplay).
I can't go in more without spoilers. So here's a spoiler box that provide high-level overview that hopefully doesn't spoil too much. Don't open it if you like to go in blind like I did.
Not-so-spoiler on why I like the story
1000xResist involves 3 time periods - distant past (the parent's story), past (the story of our protagonist since she took the Watcher position up until now), present (from the start of the game until the end of the story). The story is told through flashbacks, potentially nested too. The "nested" flashbacks are unreliable narrator - the fact which is told to you both narratively that the flashback may not seems to be how it was in reality, and with how storytelling is done it is unclear if your viewpoint did move in time, or you stay with the main character the whole time and she is indeed experiencing nested flashbacks. The story doesn't do anything to support or contradict the flashback either, so it's not one of those false memory trope.
Personally I found that the distant past was done really well. The game uses several topics from real world events around 2019-2021 (when the game start development) that I don't often see in games. The delivery is done right in your face, and it felt like the story was written backwards to put those messages in but at the same time removing them now would means rewriting the whole contrived story.
I read a blog over a decade ago by Strange Loop games (who made Vessel & Eco). I couldn't find the blog now. They said that video games are unique that instead of telling you what happened in history, they're probably the only medium to allow you to feel like how to live as someone else. Papers, Please tell a story of living in communist regime through passport drama. Cart Life tells a story of being poor. Oregon Trails is an early educational games that tell the story of american pioneers. Detention (also available as Netflix series) was set during Taiwan's White Terror period and got me interested in that side of Taiwan. (I think if you make a game about the dark side of war on communism in my country, the military or the police will come knocking). 1000xRESIST is the first game that I could think of that tells that kind of story that sets in the near-present time. I think it is the first time that the game wins game of the year, not because it is the best game released in that year. Instead, it is the game "of the year 2019-2021" - the definite one that you play to remember how life was like in that time period.
As for the present part of the game, it was delivered with sci-fi theme. I don't like it. There are many better scifi stories, and it felt contrived like Japanese stories - there will be rules that must be followed even if it doesn't make sense to enact such rules (eg. "there's a notebook that cause the people named in the book to die", "there are people with AI cellphone that can arrange anything with billions yen budget each"). Then how people act and work around those rules are explored. Even without scifi, I think the Japanese did it a lot better without the artsy stuff. Once I got past the chapters with the backstory I couldn't care for the game's ending as for the most parts they are only vaguely related to the distant past's topics.
I'm so glad that I procrastinated buying 1000xResist last month, this is a rare win for me!
Aliens: Dark Descent nails the ambience of an Alien game while also providing a proper topdown isometric strategy. Presented as real time with slowdown (or pause, if you prefer) it gives the player a chance to stealth past, deploy skills, or set up funnels for alien ambushes so they can process the level.
It tries to put you on the back foot by making healing and ammo scarce. While levels aren't timed, that does force you to move forward a bit to prevent getting overwhelmed. I've never found it too punishing and there's even levels I could set up in a way I wasn't pressured in the slightest.
Still, it can be a bit difficult and punishing, but generally in a fair way.
Good game, try it out.
I really enjoyed Nova Lands when I played it a while ago! Sunk a couple hundred hours in it
Yea! Nova lands is pretty great actually. I should go back to it some day.
I felt like I got to the end of the tech for the nuclear update (I think?) but I don’t remember anymore. It’s been a while so there have probably been updates.
Bummer, just bought Dredge last month (which was also a bit of a disappointment itself). Only other game that is outright interesting to me is 1000xResist, but that may be a bit too janky for me. May have to cancel this month as well..