Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid

I’m kind of a dumbass and you’re probably not expecting a full history lesson. So long story short, Israel is fundamentally an apartheid state that oppresses the Palestinian people. A few weeks ago, Israel did some war crimes that was so open that even big liberal names like John Oliver made calls against them. However, even if Israel isn’t actively launching missiles at Palestinian civilians, it still regularly commits crimes against them. Like hey, just before I got to writing this, I saw a tweet about Israeli authorities not only ordering a neighborhood of 1000+ strong to leave their land, but to also demolish their own homes or pay the people stealing their land to demolish their own homes. If you think that’s justified in any way, just get the fuck out of here.

So, Palestine needs all the help and solidarity it can get, and the Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid is another small way of reaching out. Mirroring the Bundle for Racial Justice that happened last year (oh jesus christ literally nothing has changed since then what the fuck), hundreds of indie developers got together to make a big pay-what-you-want bundle for charity. All profits from this bundle will go to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, an organization that has provided food and medical aid to Palestinians.

The bundle includes more than a thousand items. A highlighted part of the bundle Liyla and the Shadows of War, a game made by Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh that’s based on the 2014 Gaza War, whose events echo on to this day.

The bundle is going on until Friday, June 11th, so if you want to support a good cause and get a lot of games, there’s little time left. The bundle has met its initial goal of $500,000, so let’s see if we can get that up to $1 million!

If you want some recommendations, well, that’s hard. I already have pretty bad choice paralysis – though, thankfully, somebody actually pitched me on making some recommendations herself. I’ve checked out a few games that appear on this bundle before though, so to name a few: Anodyne, Democratic Socialism Simulator, Spooky Ghosts Dot Com, Imperishable Memories, etc.

Queer Games Bundle

Of course, it’s also June, which is Pride Month. There’s going to be a lot of companies bullshitting about LGBTQ acceptance this month for PR reasons. So, how about you support queer indie developers that probably need the money more?

I mentioned this before in my post about Winter, but full disclosure, one of my games is in the bundle. My justification is that this will support 195 other people, so even if you hate me, it’s probably worthwhile to support everyone else here.

There’s the standard version of the bundle that’s worth $60. However, if you can’t pay that but still want to support the developers, there’s a pay-what-you-want version to check out as an alternative!

I previously checked out a few games that are in this bundle, like Tomai and Contract Demon.

Playdate

Playdate isn’t exactly a new thing, but its had an update that brought it back out into the spotlight. So, what is Playdate? Well, it’s a custom handheld console made by a company called Panic Inc that can play its own dedicated games. It also has a crank as a control method? Weird. I saw this video of somebody using it to play music like a music box though, so I guess it’s cool.

In the new update video Panic put out, it was announced that pre-orders for Playdate will start in July and will cost $179. Buying the console also entitles you to the “first season” of games, which will be delivered on a weekly basis. However, other people can also make their own games for the system via an upcoming tool called Pulp, which will be a free browser-based game editor.

I’m… just not sure how I feel about it? Like, it’s conceptually kinda cool to have, and let’s be real, it’d probably be far easier to get this than a Playstation 5 at this point. However, to me, its appeal currently seems really niche. Like hey yeah, it’s cool that there’s going to be a free dedicated game editor that you can make games with… but also, if you want a similar experience with things that aren’t ultimately dedicated to one console, there’s other options? Like, Bitsy and GB Studio already exist. Yeah, they don’t seem to be accessible as Pulp or have the same features (like, Pulp has its own built-in music editor), but also, the stuff you can make with those aren’t going to be locked to a single system.

And honestly, I hate the vibes this thing gives off. There’s this bougie energy to it that makes me sick. Hey remember when Panic went after a small indie game event for sharing the same name as Playdate even though it existed first? That probably doesn’t help how I feel about this.