The Humble Indie Bundle is one of the best ideas some video game industry folks have come up with that takes your average publisher (e.g. EA, Ubisoft) and kicks their business model where the sun don’t shine. Basically, you say, “I want to pay ‘x’ dollars and cents for 5 to 7 games, sometimes their source code and game music, multiple platform support, and extra Steam licenses beyond the DRM-free downloads. Plus, I get to help a charity or two!” They’ll even take less than $1 but will display an image of a hungry programmer. And you don’t want to see that.

This Bundle has the following games – in order of awesomeness:

Jamestown
Cave Story+
NightSky HD
Shank
Super Meat Boy
Bit.Trip Runner
Gratuitous Space Battles

Disclaimer: Order is of my own personal opinion (aka what I’ll be buying it for).

Steam is still doing their ‘Wishlist Giveaway’ thing. The prices haven’t been spectacular except for VVVVVV – and I seriously can’t recommend that game. It was insanely difficult for no good reason that made any sense. Twitch gaming doesn’t work well on the PC and the default controls were hideous. Methinks that this is just a warmup to some real end-of-year deals to keep people logging into Steam every day.

I don’t visit Reddit very often mostly because the readers put useless junk on the homepage. But today I did visit that site and some crazy person put together a list of the Steam sales. Steam, that wonderful DRM platform, has some good deals going on today. Plus there are tickets to be had at the prize booth. While Reddit just puts everything on one page and expects you to figure out what is good, here are my recommendations:

Fallout 3 GOTY (FINALLY a decent price)
The Last Remnant
Mass Effect 2 (Franchise sale!)
Splinter Cell Franchise

For strategy fans:

Emipre & Napoleon: Total War GOTY

For the uber-cheap indie game fans:

Osmos
Shatter
Zen Bound 2
The Wonderful End of the World
Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood
Flight Control HD
Penny Arcade Adventures: Precipice of Darkness Pack
VVVVVV

Uber-cheap other games/mods:

The Longest Journey
NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits
Garry’s Mod

And what would this be without free tickets? That’s right – two tickets today are freebies! Build out a wishlist of 10 items…that’s easy to do! And post your own video to Steam by linking a YouTube account to Steam and setting one video to public and embeddable. That one’s harder to do.

Say cheese! Post a screenshot by pressing F12 in a game in your Steam collection. That’s the freebie at the prize booth for today on Steam. And, of course, there are the deals. Here are my recommendations:

Trine
Alpha Protocol
Bionic Commando Franchise (Not the best deal but decent)

If you’ve got nothing better to play, then maybe pick up:

Singularity
R.U.S.E.

There are still five days left, so if that game you are hoping will be on sale hasn’t shown up yet, it still might. Good rewards come to those who are patient. Usually.

Today is also July 4th, aka Independence Day. I generally celebrate by playing video games, hanging out with friends, eating good food, and ritually watching the movie Independence Day. Too bad Aridzona is so dry this year and fireworks are not a good idea. But plenty of fireworks can be seen if you play the right video games. Fireworks are usually used as a mini-victory dance of sorts at the end of something – a sort of mini-reward to the player for their efforts.