The Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has been a stunning success, raising $8.1m for funds supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

The bundle, which contained more than 1700 games donated by their creators, was bought by over 810,000 people, raising $8,175,430 - well over its $5m target. The average contribution was $10.30. The top contribution was $5000.

The Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality was widely considered to be the best value bundle in video game history, not just because it had so many games included, but because of the quality of some of the games included. Indie darlings Night in The Woods, Overland, Minit, Oxenfree, Celeste, Super Hexagon, A Short Hike and 2064: Read Only Memories were all donated by their developers.

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itch.io's creator has launched what is probably the largest bundle ever in its efforts to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Partnered with 564 creators, the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality comes with a whopping 742 DRM-free titles in total, valued at over $3,400 ( 2,675), but which you can have the whole lot by paying however much you want, with donations starting at a minimum of $5 ( 4).

It's already raised over $2 million ( 1.5 million) since launching over the weekend with a goal to reach $5 million before the offer ends on 15th June. All proceeds go towards the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund split 50/50 in the important fight against racial injustice, inequality, and police brutality against black people.

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Early on in the zombie film 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy wanders out of hospital after waking from a month-long coma and crosses a deserted Westminster Bridge. The roads and pavements are empty and strewn with litter, all the while the gothic Palace of Westminster looms over the bewildered Murphy, now a sightseeing tourist in post-apocalyptic London. Understandably, there has always been a lot of interest in how this iconic scene was filmed. How was such a busy landmark in the capital entirely emptied of people? The answer was fairly simple: they filmed it at 5am on a Sunday in the middle of summer.

Today, there would be no need for such ingenuity. In the heat of a global pandemic, central areas of London are almost entirely abandoned (except on Thursdays when crowds congregate, zombie-like, to clap for carers on the very same bridge). Photographers from around the world have already been documenting cities under lockdown - a deserted Times Square, a lonely Eiffel Tower, a vacant Piccadilly Circus, its Coca-Cola billboard eerily replaced with the deadpan face of a monarch. It could be an image captured from the upcoming Watchdogs: Legion, or the location of a horrifying shoot-out in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

How quickly reality can be made to look like fiction. We're used to seeing images of ruination and abandonment. There's a long artistic tradition fascinated with crumbling visions. From European obsessions with classical antiquity to Romanticism's love for gothic castles and abbeys. In games this enthusiasm plays out within the realms of the medieval fantasy epic - The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls or The Witcher series' many deteriorating structures often echo the work of 18th and 19th century painters like JMW Turner, Caspar David Friedrich or John Constable.

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Mario is a simple guy. He wears overalls and a spiffy cap. He's got a brother and a couple of close friends. He can run fast and jump high. In his various quests to save princess Peach, he makes use of all of these attributes and relationships, yet none of them tell us anything about who Mario really is.

As Super Mario Odyssey has shown us, if you take away the overall, what remains is still Mario, a guy with a fluffy moustache and a pair of delightful nips. What he wears does not define him. Yet most of Mario's essential properties, the things that make him who he is, are actually purely cosmetic - we would feel weird if Mario shaved off his moustache and spoke to us in a baritone, but we don't care about the exact nature of his relationship with his brother or if he ever wonders what his life has come to when he has to rescue Peach for the umpteenth time.

With increasing frequency however, games explore the inner turmoil of their protagonists and how their experiences change them. Video game heroes need a reason for doing what they do, and often this leads to them questioning their values and beliefs as well as their relationships with others.

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Developer Infinite Fall's celebrated narrative adventure Night in the Woods - a game of cute animals and crippling existential dread - is getting a "director's cut" on December 13th.

Known as the Weird Autumn Edition, the new version features (in the words of its creators) "a whole bunch of new content". The announcement trailer is marginally more illuminating, revealing that it will feature "new weird, new crimes, and old tales". Weird Autumn will be made available as a free update for existing PC and PS4 players on release day.

December 13th also marks Night in the Woods' Xbox One debut, where it will arrive in its new Weird Autumn guise. As a bonus, Xbox One and PC players will receive Longest Night and Lost Constellation, the two previously released supplemental games, on launch day. PS4 players, meanwhile, will get them a smidgeon later, in January 2018.

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