The Humble organisers aren't afraid of side-projects, but now that they've had their fill of stand-up comics and corporate overlords, they're returning back to the very source of their humility. The ninth Humble Indie Bundle has just gone live, and, in a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, it stars Polytron's gorgeous platformer Fez. You'll also find FTL, Mark of the Ninja, Trine 2, Brutal Legend and Eets Munchies.



Here's the basic breakdown:


Trine 2: The Complete Story
Mark of the Ninja
Eets Munchies (beta)
Brütal Legend*


*You're right, pedantic indie fan, Brütal Legend on consoles was published by EA. But Double Fine self-published for the PC version, so let's just go with it.

In addition to that, beating the average gets you Fez and FTL: Faster Than Light. The bundle also straight up admits that more games will be added soon, presumably because they've pulled that trick so often that it's no longer a surprise. If you beat the average at any point, you're guaranteed to get the added games as soon as they're revealed.

Also: pay-what-you-want, charity, contribution sliders, Steam keys, soundtracks. Look, there have been nine of these at this point, so you know what to expect. Details, as always, are available straight from the Humble store.

(And, since you're probably wondering: Eets Munchies is a "reimagining" of Klei Entertainment's first game, Eets. Look upon its trailer, and remember that this is the same studio that went on to make Shank.)

Games get a bad rap for being a solitary, violence-obsessed form of entertainment. But they can also be a collaborative, violence-obsessed form of entertainment. Just ask the close-knit PC Gamer team.

Tom F: Co-op based games teach us the value of teamwork better than any kitten based motivational poster, by showing us how many more of our enemies we can crush if we can just learn to work together.

Graham: They’re not just violent either. We can build giant penis statues together in Minecraft. No, wait, that’s bad. We can control egotistical millionaires in FIFA! Oh God, no. Rich?

Rich: Well, Supreme Commander celebrates the pioneering spirit, by asking us to build a host of clanking deathbots... I got nothing. Chris?

Chris: Uh. Diablo III shows that hell is easier with other people? Hm. Senior? Bail me out?

Tom S: I can’t, I’m too busy shooting these damn zombies. Stop intro-ing and let’s go play together.



Portal 2 - 2 players, Online
 
How does it work? You and a friend play comedy robots in co-op-only test chambers.

Why is it good?

Tom F: The puzzles get magnificently complicated when designed for two. You can jump through each other’s portals, so you’re often setting up a jump that your partner will perform. And because every puzzle requires two players, you’ve got to figure out where to put four different portals, and coordinate your approach. It bent my brain in the same ridiculous ways that Portal 1 did.

Graham: I use my portals to make a corridor slick with gloopy paint. Tom places his at either end of the corridor, creating the world’s first infinite slip ’n’ slide. I run down it and build absurd momentum, and as I reach terminal velocity, Tom moves one of his portals so that when I exit, I’m flung out over a chasm filled with acid. Co-op Portal 2 means entwining not just your portals, but your brains.



Minecraft - 2 to many, online or LAN
 
How does it work? Join a server and collaborate with friends – or strangers – to build the biggest, best, and most phallic structures you can.

Why is it good?

Rich: Within minutes, I was building a spa. I don’t know why I was building a spa. No one had said “let’s build a spa” in the chat channel, but there it was, forming before us. Graham, now-departed Craig Pearson and I, had hollowed out an underground chamber, constructed a raised dais of glass, and diverted water to create a lovely jacuzzi pool. Our subterranean sauna was lit by lava, and we sat in it, content.

Graham: My first time was on a new, private server with a few folks from the PCG community. In three hours we dotted the landscape with giant Darwinians, and built an underground bunker with launch missiles, library and steam rooms to avoid a player who had built an ugly golden bridge around the world. It felt like I’d spent an afternoon building sandcastles with friends.



Fifa 12 - 2-5 players, local
 
How does it work? Two or more players join forces to defeat the nefarious forces of Computron, the dark lord of kicking.

Why is it good?

Rich: Football is incredibly frustrating. FIFA recreates that frustration perfectly: genius moves undone by idiot players. But in co-op, I managed to reduce that frustration through one simple method: blame someone else. I think I’m great at FIFA 12 at the best of times; when I’m playing in co-op, I’m flawless. Graham, on the other hand, is terrible.

Graham: And Rich smells bad. For a while, we were playing two-on-two, but then our fourth man lost interest. We started playing two-on-one. Here’s what we found: the player controlling a team on their own has the advantage. To work together in FIFA is to anticipate the other’s moves, making runs and pulling away defenders. If you do it right, you’re unstoppable. If you’re Rich and I, Rich smells bad.





Diablo 3 - Up to four, drop-in, drop-out co-op across the whole campaign
 
How does it work? Every player you add to a game of Diablo III boosts the health of your enemies, increasing the challenge – but far less than it did on launch, when damage increased as well. Otherwise, it’s just Diablo III with more people.

Why is it good?

Chris: D3’s normal difficulty is very easy, but it gains a lot of life if you’re doing it with friends. Experimenting with new skills adds a slapstick dimension to demonbashing that’s better with other people. It’s basically that bit from Lord of the Rings where Legolas and Gimli are competing to kill the most orcs, strung out over 15 hours.

Tom S: Having a friend or two around gives you more freedom to experiment with new abilities. If you’ve got a Barbarian chum to wave and shout and take punches to the face, you can sacrifice a defensive ability for that demonic ghost bat bombing run skill you’ve been dying to try. Few things amaze and terrify a co-op partner as effectively as an unannounced demonic ghost bat bombing run.

Chris: It used to be that co-op Diablo III didn’t work: it was too diffi cult, and actually reduced the amount of loot you seemed to get. Patches have since redressed the balance, and working together to crack Inferno is a satisfying challenge.



Alien Swarm - Up to 4 players, online

How does it work? It’s a top-down shooter where you control a squad of four marines shooting aliens in a scripted campaign.
 
Why is it good?

Rich: People love swarms. The swarms of aliens in Alien Swarm (clue’s in the name), are best dealt with by coordination: one of your group becomes point-man, clearing rooms with shotguns and flamethrowers. Another takes up the rear, machinegun blaring to dissuade any would-be alien pouncers. This coordination is the result of a kind of natural, happy trance that players fall into, rather than tiresome enforcement.

Tom F: I’m a Medic, which used to mean I was the sensible, cautious, team player. Until I realised I could take a chainsaw. It’s terrible. It’s a terrible weapon, don’t use it. You can’t just charge into alien hordes, blade revving. OK, just one more go.



Trine - Up to 3 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work? Each player can transform themselves into a thief, warrior or wizard at any time. In the mode we play, you can have two Thieves at once if you like.

Why is it good?

Tom F: It’s a physics-based platform puzzler, which in co-op means dropping heavy objects on each other for fun. The wizard can create boxes and levitate them, and your co-op partner can stand on them. Most of our solutions involved carting each other around on telekinetic elevators.

Graham: Trine’s best class is the grapple-hooking, arrow-firing thief, because of the arrow-fi ring but specifically because of the grapple-hooking. In the singleplayer game, you’re forced to switch away from the thief to navigate obstacles and fi ght larger enemies. In co-op, two thieves are better than one, and combined you’re able to spend more time as a swinging idiot. The best kind of idiot.



Left 4 Dead 2 - Up to 4 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work? - There are lots of game modes now, but the one we play most is still the campaign: four players against the AI-controlled zombie hordes.

Why is it good?

Tom S: I ran through Left 4 Dead 1’s campaign on its hardest diffi culty setting with a group of regulars. We played in the 4 6 5 same small room for many hot, panicked hours until our cries of fear overruled the rattling pistol fire coming out of our speakers. The defence events and climactic mission fi nales offered us a chance to take stock and plan, but the best moments happened when those plans disintegrated in the face of an unexpected Tank charge, or a perfectly placed Witch.

The AI director never quite offered the longevity that it promised, and the monsters lost their scare factor after a while, but Left 4 Dead is still a superb, if harrowing, co-op experience. Ever since Valve ported the fi rst game’s superior maps into the sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 has been the better choice of the pair.

Tom F: There’s an achievement for winning a garden gnome on the fairground level, and taking it all the way through the rest of that campaign. For me, that is the game. It takes both hands to carry the gnome, so whoever’s holding it can’t fi re their weapons. You can set it down and grab it later, but among huge crowds of zombies and charging Tanks, it tends to get kicked around with alarming force.

So you take it in turns to sacrifice your firepower and carry the precious cargo, relying completely on your friends to protect you and your porcelain companion when it’s your turn. If a zombie does get to you, all you can really do is bash him with the gnome.

The carnival finale, set in a huge stadium, was just too intense for any of us to survive it gunless. So when the helicopter finally arrived to bail us out, the real challenge was a frantic scavenger hunt for a chipped red hat among the seething infected. Finding him, grabbing him, and making it out alive was the most nail-biting co-op experience I’ve ever had with the game.





Half Life 2 - 2-10 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work? The Synergy mod enables two or more of you to jump straight into Half-Life 2, Episode One or Episode Two’s singleplayer campaign.

Why is it good?

Tom F: Half-Life 2 is a huge and amazing adventure. And while there are a lot of great co-op games, there aren’t many that are huge and amazing adventures. People don’t make long, varied, story-driven journeys through meticulously detailed and gorgeous places when they’re making a co-op campaign. So a mod that makes Half-Life 2 and its two episodic expansions work cooperatively is an amazing discovery. I don’t know how it works, but it does.

Graham: Tom and I played through the entire of Half-Life 2, and into Episode Two, over many happy lunchtimes. The best part is the Highway 17 segment in Half-Life 2. You’re both given your own buggy to drive across the countryside, and the solitary bungalows that dot the coast are perfect for cooperative assault: one person bursting through the front door while the other circles around the back. The Combine only seem to be expecting one of you, for some reason...



Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - " players in campaign mode, 2-4 players in terrorist hunt, online or LAN
 
How does it work? We play Terrorist Hunt: you and the other players have to clear out a big, complex building in which a fixed number of terrorists run around and try to ambush you. It’s brilliant.

Why is it good?

Tom F: Terrorist Hunt is an immediately exciting concept, because it feels more like a simulation of a real armed-response firefight than any campaign level could be. You can’t be sure the level designer isn’t going to have the terrorists suddenly come from behind you, because the level designer doesn’t make that call: the terrorists do.

Graham: It’s doubly cool in co-op, because the challenge is so overwhelming. Even with the foresight of a snake camera under the door, it’s just tough to take out six terrorists in a room before any of them kill you. So you plan: I’ll take the left two... You throw a frag... I’ll come from the other door... You rope down to the window. And then you completely screw it up.



Mass Effect 3 - Up to 4 players online
 
How does it work? Fight to complete a mixture of objectives on small but open levels against randomised enemy forces. Level up characters and promote them into the singleplayer campaign to improve Shepard’s chances.

Why is it good?

Chris: ME3 multiplayer takes what is good about co-op survival modes – last-stand heroics and impromptu acts of daring – and adds incredibly varied races, classes and weapons that prevent it from ever becoming samey. Right now, I’m enjoying a Quarian infi ltrator that disintegrates enemies at close range with the Reegar Carbine, a gun we’ve come to call THE PLASMA HOSE. I’m just as happy charging around as a Krogan vanguard, or racking up headshots as a Turian sentinel carrying a Black Widow.

Tom S: New classes and bizarre new weapons are added regularly through free updates. You’re always holding out against waves of familiar enemies, but the variety of ways in which you can off these enemies expands every month. The N7 classes BioWare added recently push the boundaries of what the Mass Effect universe can sensibly contain. The Shadow can dart across the map and slash foes with a psychically infused katana, the Destroyer’s weighty carapace gives him the grounding to wield a rapid-fire grenade launcher with decent accuracy and the Slayer is a teleporting martial arts expert. With so many powerful abilities to choose from, playing with friends becomes more about showing off than anything else.

Chris: BioWare’s free updates to the game have been excellent and generous, particularly the new maps. They’ve drawn me back to the game and kept it feeling fresh, which is essential for co-op.

SCREENSHOT MISSING

Supreme Commander - 2-7 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work?

Start a multiplayer game, put all humans on team 1, and some nice tough AIs on team 2. Crush.

Why is it good?

Tom F: It’s not the first co-op game you think of, but playing it cooperatively is how we’ve had the most fun with it. It can be dauntingly complex, so it’s great to have friends in there to help out if you forget to build anti-air or crash your power economy. In theory. In practice what usually happens is we beaver away on our own bases in silence for seven minutes then one of us says “Shit, fuck, they’re dropping in my base and I forgot to build point defence again, have you got anything that can help?” and the other says...

Graham: No, soz :(

Tom F: It’s about hatching your own masterplans, surviving long enough to see them complete, then raining the giant robotic fruits of your labours down on the enemy at the same time. My giant laser spiders are ready! Your flying fortresses are ready? Let’s go! My towering Galactic Colossus is ready! Your swarm of invincible death bricks is ready? Let’s go!





Dawn of War: Last Stand - Up to 3 players online
 
How does it work? - Unlike the main game, Last Stand gives you only one hero each. You’ve got to fi ght off increasingly tough waves of enemies until you die (likely) or beat wave 20 (unlikely). After the match, you usually unlock new equipment for your character.

Why is it good?

Tom F: I didn’t really get Last Stand until I levelled up a few times. The fun is in discovering new builds, and the role they can play in your group. As the Ork, I thought I was the longrange damage dealer: my autocannon certainly works for that, and when enemies get close I use my teleporting armour to get away. The notion of using the much tougher set, the one that can’t teleport, seemed pretty ridiculous. Until I unlocked the knife. The knife doesn’t do much damage, but it regenerates your health. Add some armour bonus trinkets, a self-healing trait, and an item that stops me being knocked down, and I can turn myself into an unstoppable tank. Suddenly I’m the guy charging into a nest of Tyranids to keep them off my friends, and coming out at full health.

Tom S: In the grim darkness of the future, three dudes battle ridiculous odds in a small stone circle. The setup may seem contrived, but DoW2’s overlooked co-op mode does a much better job of realising the Warhammer 40K fantasy than the campaign. Absurdly powerful heroes dominate the fiction, so I got a kick out of levelling up my venerable Space Marine captain and testing him against the hordes.

Last Stand understands 40K’s scale as well. The final waves throw more foes into the arena than you’ll see in any of the singleplayer missions, so victory may seem impossible. After a few levels you can start combining your heroes’ most powerful abilities to create a maelstrom of death. The glorious slaughterfest that results is worthy of a Space Marine’s final heroic moments.



Killing Floor - Up to 6 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work? Fight together to fend off waves of mutants, then stock up on guns and ammo at a shop that’s never in the same place twice.

Why is it good?

Chris: Without its guns, Killing Floor would be the bleakest, muddiest depiction of Britain at the end of the world since a bunch of Romans said “let’s go home, it’s cold and everyone here is mental.” With its guns, it’s one of the most satisfying co-op shooters around. My favourite is the bolt-action rifl e, which takes mutant head-popping and turns it into an avant garde musical genre. Bang! Chunk. Click. Bang! Blargh! Splatter.

Rich: I like the dual desert eagles. They go ‘whump’, like a pie dropped down a hole. But a really big pie, one that kills anyone unlucky enough to be standing under it in a spray of arterial blood. And when it kills them, this pie, it makes everything slow motion for a while, so your team can marvel at your incredible pie-dropping-stroke-gun-shooting skills.

Chris: Definitely play it with voice chat, though. Partly so that you can coordinate properly and warn your friends when they’re about to be sawn in half, but mostly so that you can talk over the truly, deeply dreadful voice acting. I started playing it during the Portal 2 promo campaign, when all the shopkeepers were replaced by GlaDOS. It was a huge improvement.



Borderlands 2 - Up to 4 players, online or LAN
 
How does it work? The whole campaign is playable in drop-in, drop-out co-op.

Why is it good?

Tom F: Two reasons – for one, the different abilities of each class mix well in a team fight. It’s great to see your Siren pluck a boss up into the air, and into range of your Commando’s turret and your Gunzerker’s... gunzerk. Secondly, cooperative play is good for diffi culty spikes, and Borderlands 2 sure has those. Dealing with an inordinately tough boss is less frustrating when there’s a whole a bunch of you coming up with new ideas and tactics, and a wider variety of weapons to try.

Tom S: Almost anything can pop out of Borderlands 2’s unfolding robot boxes. It could be a revolver that shoots lightning grenades, it could be a glowing, five-foot-long sniper rifl e with an enormous bayonet on the end. Whatever you get, it’s always better to have friends there to go “WOAH” or “whaaaat” or “give me that immediately.” Borderlands 2’s batty enemies are more fun to fi ght in a team, a constant stream of new gadgets to crow over makes it feel like the best sort of trick or treat trip, the sort where you get bazookas instead of sweets.



Arma 2 - 2 to many, online or LAN
 
How does it work? Players can join and play custom missions with each other, or mess around in the weapon playground add-on pack, Private Military Academy.

Why is it good?

Rich: The first time I played an Arma 2 custom mission with Marsh and Owen, it ended with me rolling sideways up a hill and giggling like a maniac. The second time, we were shot before we realised what the ‘open backpack’ key was mapped to. The third time, we found ourselves on a hillside, standing next to a crumpled chopper. It was dark, but the sky was brightening slowly as the sun rose somewhere off in the east. It would’ve been idyllic, were it not for the crowd of ornery locals taking potshots at us.

Together, we made it into a nearby settlement, where our rendezvous chopper was settling down into the dust. We sprinted towards it, tracer fire whistling over our heads, as we howled fears for our safety down our microphones. We were silly men, but Arma 2 quickly made us feel like (mildly inept) soldiers.

Marsh: Most of the time, my Arma 2 experience seems to consist of dying instantly or getting stuck in rocks. But occasionally, you roll the incredibly-complex-emergent-behaviour dice and get a scene as gripping and fluidly dramatic as anything from Full Metal Jacket. I don’t mean the toilet-suicide sequence. Running for that chopper with a busted leg and three shots left in my pistol as the enemy tightened the noose was one of the most extensive workouts my heart has undergone in many years. And it wouldn’t have been half the experience without Owen and Rich bellowing, “COME ON! YOU CAN DO IT!” as I lurched the final few yards.

The year is 20XX. Over-reliance on mysterious "cloud storage" and catastrophic "Y2X" software failures have devastated the world's supply of PC games. You can only choose five games to preserve. What's at stake? Oh, just the fate of PC gaming and ten dollars. Yep, that's (mostly) right: drop by GOG this week and you can liberate five DRM-free games from their servers for only $10 (around £6).

There are 20 games to choose from, including the likes of Resonance, Gemini Rue, Torchlight, and Trine, and a combination of the most expensive nets $60 in savings. It's the perfect opportunity to be a hero and save great games for future generations, who will laugh at our local hard drives until the digital apocalypse brings their networks crashing down.

And this is just the beginning: every year in the US we spend a certain Thursday eating large birds, then the subsequent Friday spending billions of dollars to adjust retail outlets' yearly earnings reports. It's weird, I know, but we do benefit with big discounts. Rumor has it that Steam's Autumn Sale starts tomorrow, so prepare to trample their servers as well.

This week's best deals  ►  Mass Effect 3, Trine 2, and 25% off at GMG
The tastiest specials on this week's menu include Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe for $20 during Amazon's big Labor Day sale, 75% off the Trine Complete Collection on Steam, and a new Green Man Gaming voucher code for deals on whatever you want deals on.


60% off Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition on Amazon - $19.99
67% off Max Payne 3 and LA Noire bundle on Amazon - $29.99
75% off Trine Complete Collection on Steam - $8.74
50% off Resonance on GOG - $4.99
25% off any PC download at Green Man Gaming with code: GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G
30% off Sleeping Dogs at Green Man Gaming with code: SDOGS-E1V8A-9R1HX



Steam  ►  Trine and Crysis
Everything Trine is on sale at Steam, including the new Trine 2: Goblin Menace DLC. There's also Crysis, but when isn't it on sale?

75% off Trine Complete Collection - $8.74
75% off Crysis Collection - $17.49
33% off Vessel - $9.99
50% off Age of Empires Online DLC: Steam Starter Pack - $9.99 (Friday only)
More Steam deals



Amazon  ►  Labor Day sale
Amazon's big Labor Day sale ends Sunday, so you don't have much longer to get, say, Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition for $20.

60% off Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe Edition - $19.99
50% off Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition - $14.99
50% off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $29.99
75% off Crysis 2 - Maximum Edition - $9.99
54% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $13.81
60% off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - $15.99
68% off Mount & Blade - $4.77
60% off Psychonauts - $3.99
50% off Stacking - $7.49
75% off Assassin's Creed bundle - $19.99
67% off Grand Theft Auto IV and Max Payne 3 bundle - $29.99
78% off Spec Ops: The Line and BioShock 1 & 2 bundle - $19.99
67% off Max Payne 3 and LA Noire bundle - $29.99
90% off Square Enix Ultimate Collection - $9.50
More Amazon PC game downloads


Green Man Gaming   ► 25% off everything

There are a couple of new voucher codes at GMG. Ending Monday, use GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G to get 25% off any PC game download or SDOGS-E1V8A-9R1HX for 30% off Sleeping Dogs specifically.

You can't stack them for 55% off Sleeping Dogs, but you could buy Stacking for 25% off. Actually, you can't. It isn't in GMG's catalog. It is 50% off at Amazon, but that doesn't stop my joke from being ruined.

GOG  ►  Point-and-Click Mix
Point your browser to GOG's adventure-themed weekend deals and click on games like Machinarium, Resonance, and Botanicula. Wow. Did I go too far that time?

50% off Machinarium: Collector's Edition - $4.99
50% off Resonance - $4.99
50% off Gemini Rue - $4.99
50% off Blackwell Bundle - $7.49
50% off The Whispered World - $7.49
50% off Botanicula - $4.99


Get Games  ►  Total War
Nothing huge to report from Get Games. Sleeping Dogs is back up to 25% off, and the perennially on sale Total War series is on sale.


25% off Sleeping Dogs - $37.49
50% off Borderlands - $9.99
75% off Empire: Total War - $4.99
75% off Napoleon: Total War - $4.99
75% off Total War Shogun 2 - $9.99
70% off Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai - $8.99
More deals from Get Games


GameStop   ► Saints Row and Might & Magic
GameStop's silly long list of deals is largely populated by Saints Row The Third's expansive DLC library and Might & Magic.

GamersGate  ► A bin of bargains

Why can't I hold all these deals? At least GamersGate has gone from 10 pages of scattershot discounts to just two, but there's still a lot to cover. Here's the short version: it has same Trine bundle deal as Steam, 75% off Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY, and tons of kings, crusades, and iron hearts.

GameFly   ► Bulletstorm and Stronghold 3
GameFly is pretty light on sales this weekend, so I'll just use this space to think about the idea of a real bullet storm. It would be terrible. All those bullets plummeting from angry thunder-shots above. Clearly, we can never allow the gods to acquire firearms.

75% off Bulletstorm - $5.00
50% off Stronghold 3 Gold - $19.99


Let us know in the comments if you find any more great deals, and if you feel like sharing: what are you playing this weekend? I'll continue thieving in Guild Wars 2 on the Tarnished Coast server, though I am disappointed that the Thief class steals abilities instead of what I really want: money. I want to be the richest low-level scoundrel on the server, dammit.

Rather than trickle them out, we've mashed three of today's DLC announcements into one hefty round-up post. Here are the details on extra content for Dishonored, Trine 2, and DC Universe Online.

Arkane Studio's Executive Producer Julien Roby says Dishonored's planned DLC includes new characters and continents. Roby tells PC PowerPlay that Corvo's stealthy missions among the streets of Dunwall represent just the beginning of branching storylines featuring new, playable characters slitting throats and possessing fish in different areas of Dishonored's sprawling world.

"We wanted to build the world around the missions so that it was believable, but it has a lot of elements that we don’t actually use in the game," he said. "So we definitely want to explore more of these things." Dunwall's Victorian flair already imparts heaps of personality into Dishonored's atmosphere, so additional city styles (possibly with Dunwall and Half-Life 2 designer Victor Antonov behind the brush) raises my assassin mask's steampowered eyebrows in interest.

Trine 2's Goblin Menace expansion releases on Steam at 15% off. Frozenbyte's puzzle-platformer gets six new skills and six goblin-infested levels, ready to drown Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight, and Zoya the Thief in explosions of color. Steam also chopped the prices of previous Trine games by 75% to herald Goblin Menace's release, so if you haven't jumped into the excellent co-op shenanigans, now's the time.

Sony Online discusses new sorcerous Legends PVP characters Doctor Fate and Felix Faust in DC Universe Online's upcoming Hand of Fate DLC. In a series of sample mock-up matches in the video below, Creative Director Jens Andersen and Systems Designer David Stricker contrast Fate's defensive skillset with Faust's aggressiveness. Both characters will accompany Hand of Fate's six new operations and more...er, utilitarian utility belts when the DLC releases "soon."

Trine 2's luscious backdrops might be the best thing about it. Each one feels carefully posed, as though its creators have spent hours snipping away at it delicately like a Bonsai tree. Snowy mountain tops, burning castles and glowing deserts will feature in the upcoming, unnamed, unpriced expansion pack. It'll contain six new levels, new enemies to fight and a new "hardcore" difficulty level.

Frozenbyte are calling it an "AAAA" expansion, saying "we prefer to steer away from the “DLC” concept. So many negative associations with that these days." Except now I associate their expansion with a tiny battery, which probably isn't what they were going for. Keep an eye on the Trine 2 site for more details.

http://youtu.be/XxPg1YeXE2E

Ridiculously pretty co-op platformer, Trine 2 will be hitting Steam tomorrow. The standard edition will cost £11.99 / $14.99 , and there's also a digital special edition. It comes with a digital art book and the soundtrack and will set you back £17.99 / $24.99 USD. If you pre-order them now, you'll get two bonus Team Fortress 2 items, a wizard hat and a spiky "War Head" helmet to "protect your thought-horde from dragons, sorcery, and other make-believe dangers."

Trine 2 can be played solo, but if it's anything like the original, it'll be much, much more fun in co-op. The three playable archetypes, wizard, warrior and thief have different specialities, and must muddle through the fights and physics puzzles with hastily improvised solutions, many of which would involve the warrior throwing the wizard around while the thief casually grapples past all danger. A new online co-op more will make it easier to play with friends as well. It looks stunning, too. Just check out these Trine 2 screenshots. You'll find a picture of the bonus TF2 items just below.

Trine was beautiful. Trine 2 looks even better. All of the new images on the Trine 2 site are detailed and vibrant enough to endure hours of fascinated staring. If you're looking for a new desktop background, here are nine candidates, showing a giant octopus, an Ork king, an extremely purple moon and a dragon. It's like an artist's dream down there. Just look at the colours. The co-op platformer is set to arrive in December.

As reported on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, The third Humble Indie Bundle set - featuring only titles developed by Frozenbyte - has been a huge success, selling over 100,000 units in 48 hours.

The sale has generated $500,000, with purchasers paying as little/much as they'd like for the bundle, which consists of Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor, Jack Claw, and Splot. Frozenbyte say: "This is all thanks to the very supportive communities around the world and also all the media outlets. So on behalf of Frozenbyte, Humble Bundle, Child’s Play and EFF I would like to express our sincerest gratitude"

You can still grab the Frozenbyte Bundle and name your own price here.

The latest humble bundle lets you pay what you want for a fantastic bundle of Frozenbyte games, including gorgeous co-op platformer, Trine, top down shooters Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivors and two brand new games, Splot and Jack Claw. Jack Claw is an unfinished prototype, but it looks great, and you'll get access to the full source code as well. You play as a man called Jack who has a giant claw that can throw cars. Splot isn't out yet, but if you buy it in the bundle you'll get a copy as soon as it's released.

All of the proceeds from your payment are split between the developers, Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As with all of the humble bundles so far, you can customise what proportions of your payments go to each organisation. You'll get the games DRM free, too. The bundle is set to run from now until April 26.