Jen Zee works at Supergiant Games. A small indie team, Jen is art director (and part-time badass cosplayer), meaning she's the main one to thank for the amazing colours and vibrant world of Bastion, one of the best-looking video games in recent memory.

A Seattle native, Jen has also done work for Gaia Interactive and Fantasy Flight Games. Those who love the look of Bastion should check out her other work, on her DeviantArt page, CGHub page and blog.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".

Supergiant Games' award winning action role-playing game Bastion is now available on the iPad, and it's one of the best experiences you can have with the Apple tablet. Just don't ruin it by playing without headphones.

The gorgeous hand-painted graphics and the shooting and smashing gameplay make the trip to the iPad intact, but those aren't the main draws of Bastion. It's the deep, growling voice of the game's narrator and the rich tapestry woven by the game's gorgeous soundtrack that make this game so damn pleasurable, and that's not something you're going to get out of that tiny, tinny grill Apple passes off as a speaker.

I was horrified as I started to play the iPad version, ignoring the suggestion that I should don headphones for the full experience. The poor narrator sounded trapped, caged in a world in which his sonorous pipes were rendered impotent, their magic ripped away cruelly.

And then the music started.

That glorious tapestry unraveled before my ears, sound meant to lovingly caress my hearing places at both ends condensed into a cacophony of raw, stabbing noise.

One 3.5mm plug later and all was right with the world once more, apart from the whole thing falling apart.

Bastion is now available for the iPad 2 and new iPad for only $4.99. Use the extra money you should have paid for this masterpiece to buy yourself a capable set of cans, or buy some portable speakers and share the magic with the world.

There isn't much to Sound Shapes. That's what makes it great.

I'm not talking about the campaign, which is great and I certainly could've used more of. No, I'm talking about the experience that the new Vita game delivers. From the way you play it—pretty much just rolling and jumping—to the environments you play through, Sound Shapes is a shining example of minimalism in video games.

Now, Sound Shapes could have delivered the same core experience with a tacked-on story, a more humanoid-looking avatar and more plush environments. Even it were more Mario-esque, players could still have gotten the main thrust of its structural aesthetics, which is the tight bond between sound and action.

But that fusion of music, visuals and interactivity stands out even more because of the lack of presentational clutter. Jonathan Mak's newest game isn't the only one to soar off the benefits of skeletal structure either.

Part of what made Journey such a great experience is what was left out. No words. No distinguishing characteristics on avatars' faces. No explicitly stated motivation or impetus for your character's voyage. You could make all of that up in your head if you wanted, which makes the experience all the more memorable and personal.

And look at Thomas Was Alone, which gave you only colored blocks to control. You didn't need fancy animations to become attached to the quirky personalities. And detailed textures wouldn't have made the environmental puzzles any better either. Everything wonderful about the game comes across with a limited architecture.

Fez's spare presentation makes its signature mechanics seem even more magical. It helps sell the conceit that being able to rotate the world into a third dimension would rock the perceptions of the creatures that live in the gameworld. And it also makes the tough puzzles in the retro-looking platformer feel that much harder. There are very few distractions in Fez, just you and the brain-teaser that's driving you crazy.

Last year, Bastion exercised a sort of minimalism, too. It scraped away a lot of the trappings that you'd normally find in an action/RPG hybrid. Supergiant's hit from last year clearly riffed on the tropes of Japanese RPGs. But a lot was pared away. There's none of the melodramatic romances or tangled subplots typical to the genre. Bastion's minimalism was one of tone, not presentation. But it still had the same multiplying effect as in the examples above, where the agonizing choices felt more monumental because they stood out more.

Excess and minimalism don't have to be mutually exclusive, either. Moments of quiet economy exist in big-deal AAA games like, say, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Gears of War 3. But the less-is-more approach can feel more brave because there's less room to hide flaws. However, when minimalism succeeds in a game like Sound Shapes, it's because the unique elements are the main thing you interact with. And you'll probably remember those more.

Today, Super Meat Boy, Braid and Lone Survivor were added to the fifth installment of the Humble Indie Bundle. Just when you think things couldn't get more awesome. [HumbleBundle.com]

What better way to pay tribute to it than mixing it together and throwing down some rhymes? Rapper Adam WarRock has done just that—you can hear his first track in the video above.

It's good times, as these things tend to be—more than a little dorky but also fun, in an earnest sort of way.

You can download the whole thing from Warrock's website for free.

Even by Humble Bundle standards, the Humble Bundle V contains some fantastic-ass games. Lookit that! Wow. They're all so great, in fact, that I'd be surprised if you haven't played pretty much all of them.

But still: Pay whatever you want for the terrifying and amazing Amnesia: Dark Descent, the hilarious and wildly creative Psychonauts, the dark and clever Limbo, and the lovely and incredibly soundtracked Sworcery, with freakin' Bastion thrown in as a bonus if you beat the average bid.

If you don't own even two of those games, this is a bargain… this is like, a great games all-star jam or something. The trailer above does a pretty good job of summing it up.

Perhaps best of all, all of the games come with their soundtracks, each of which is fantastic and two of which made last year's Best Game Music of 2011.

So: You probably have these games. Heck, you may play them regularly. But on the off chance that you don't, here's your chance go catch 'em all.

The Humble Indie Bundle V [Official Page]

You can see many of the ideas behind what would become indie gem Bastion in its original 2009 prototype, which developer Supergiant Games is showing off at its booth during this weekend's PAX East. But it sure looks different.

Before there were Gasfellas and Windbags, there were random bits of placeholder art from Dungeons & Dragons. And before there was The Kid, there was a robotic stiff man whose legs couldn't move. Man, how things change.

You know why everyone's up in arms about Mass Effect 3's ending? Because it doesn't mean what they want it to. But, whether you liked the ending, hated it or lobbied to have it changed, BioWare's sci-fi franchise does means something because it aims to be a metaphor. And I wish more games would do that.

Games do a bang-up job with power fantasies and they try to take you to imaginary places. But there's not enough urgency when it comes to saying something about human nature. You save people, planets and universes all the time in games but ideas about humans confront each other or cope with life's ups-and-downs remain frustratingly infrequent.

Let's talk about zombies for a minute. Colson Whitehead's Zone One came out last year and focuses on a New York City just beginning to rebuild after an apocalyptic outbreak of zombie plague devastates the world. Whitehead's novel lives in the small details, showing how soldiers find new ways to break up the boredom of killing zombies day after day and how the way people talk to each other changes. As the book goes on, you get a sense of just how hollowed-out people's lives are, even if they're deluding themselves otherwise.

When I finished Zone One, one of my first thoughts was that I hoped someone at working on The Last of Us was reading it. Post-apocalyptic similarities aside, Zone One stretches the space inside of its conceit to make the reader reflect back on the real world. While we still don't know much of what The Last of Us will offer, I'm still hoping the developers inject some kind of symbolism into the game's action.

Now The Last of Us isn't out yet but other recent games show how embedding larger themes doesn't necessarily have to mean you get a dull experience. Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake games may be big, ham-fisted metaphors about light and darkness—executed through gameplay—but they still provide a point-of-view on creativity and the dual nature of humankind. Bastion talks about how we deal with loss. What you do at the end of Supergiant's first release can tell you something about yourself and how you move on from tragedy. Journey's quiet triumph comes directly as a meditation on loneliness and companionship. All very different, all very enjoyable and all pretty good metaphors.

Going back to Mass Effect, the action/RPG series achieves meaning in multiple ways, from the way that its fictional universe was constructed and how it lets players steer a saga with decisions. The Mass Effect games can be read as a metaphor for cultures clashing and how individuals change inside the big moving socio-political systems we exist in. The fact that it's a big AAA corporate franchise doesn't preclude it from having metaphorical depth.

Games can be a product—and, yes, that's an ugly reality—AND have meaning. If you're spending 10, 20 or 100 hours inside a piece of fiction, whatever you take away from it and back into the real world can be incredibly powerful. Or the opposite can happen, where you find slices of well-observed behavior That's the kind of ending I want from video games.

Awesome. These tunes are simple enough that just about anyone could learn them, yet iconic and fun to play. Especially if you match composer Darren Korb's dropped guitar tunings.

Bastion Sheet Music [SuperGiant Games]

Awesome. These tunes are simple enough that just about anyone could learn them, yet iconic and fun to play. Especially if you match composer Darren Korb's dropped guitar tunings. Each one is a free .PDF download.

Bastion Sheet Music [SuperGiant Games]