The very first Humble Bundle, put together back before anyone realized that it was going to become this whole big thing, was in fact called the Humble Indie Bundle: A pay-what-you-want package of World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture. That's a sweet deal by any measure, and it's also an interesting bit of triviai right now because today brings us an all-new Humble Indie Bundle—the 20th—with seven games and four soundtracks up for grabs.

For any price you care to pay, you'll get The First Tree, Tangledeep, and Among the Sleep Enhanced Edition, which is a great entry point: I'm not familiar with The First Tree but Tangledeep and Among the Sleep are both excellent and worth a hell of a lot more than a buck all on their own.

Beat the average price, which is still well under $4, and you'll add Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, Tooth and Tail, and Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator. I don't know why anyone would willingly inflict Getting Over It on themselves and the guy with the beard and the gut looks too much like one of my Twitter friends for me to ever be comfortable with Dream Daddy, but lots of people love both and the small animal RTS Tooth and Tail is pretty great too. 

At the top end of the scale, for $10, you'll also get Overgrowth, and that one I'm not so sure about. A "kung fu rabbit game" sounds cool, but a childhood spent with Mother West Wind's Animal Friends means that I just don't think I'm ready for Mortal Woodland Kreatures Kombat. 

The bundle also includes soundtracks for Among the Sleep, Tangledeep, Tooth and Tail, and Overgrowth at their respective tiers. It's available until March 19. 

It's obligatory for every article on Overgrowth to start with a bit on how long it has been in development, so here's mine: When Wolfire Games first started work on the rabbit beat 'em up, George W. Bush and Gordon Brown were still in office, the first Android phone had not yet launched, and there was only one Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. The Humble Bundle was a spin-off project from Overgrowth—that is how much the industry has changed while this game's development trundled on.

So, after nine years of continuous, open development, you probably want to know what Overgrowth is, and the answer is this: Overgrowth is fast. Overgrowth is very, very fast. The protagonist, Turner, is a giant rabbit man, which means he has the proportional strength and speed of a rabbit (probably, don't check the science on this). He runs with astonishing speed, he can leap a hundred feet through the air and his kicks are devastatingly brutal.

And he kicks a lot. The majority of your time in Overgrowth will be taken up with kicking other rabbits to death (plus cats, dogs, rats, and a handful of wolves). The combat system is incredibly simple, requiring only two buttons: attack and defend. Reading that, you might be imagining an Arkham-style system with with carefully timed rhythmic button presses, but it's not like that at all.

Instead, holding down the left mouse button (you can use a pad, but unusually I felt more comfortable with a mouse) leads you to constantly auto-attack, while holding down the right automatically blocks and dodges. Direction keys influence both, with a direction hit just before a dodge leading to a throw, and jumping and crouching while attacking resulting in sweeps and sweet dive kicks.

What this all means is that that fights in Overgrowth are fast, incredibly fast, far faster than it could be if you had to click for every attack (so fast, in fact that there's a setting in the options menu to slow everything down a bit). Fights rarely last longer than a few seconds, and even the toughest enemies can go down in a couple of sword swipes, but when your careful plan goes wrong you’ll instead be locked into a desperate struggle of dodging and kicking.

It's an impressive system that's as fun when it all goes perfectly as it is when everything descends into farce. The battles are so frantic that it wasn’t until the second playthrough on a higher difficulty that I felt I 'got' the system properly, and wasn't just desperately reacting.

There's impressive variety too, with enough enemy and weapon types that they can be easily remixed into new challenges. Rats, for example, are even faster and more fragile than Turner, and are best dealt with head on, sending them flying back with brutal kicks. But the moment one of those rats has a knife they instantly become more dangerous, hiding within the swarm then suddenly stabbing with blinding speed.

This is also different from a boss fight with a single wolf, a hard target with unblockable attacks, requiring hit-and-run tactics. Each fight is different enough that even the second playthrough didn't feel repetitive, and that’s before I began to delve into the flourishing Steam Workshop which is full of new and interesting scenarios.

Unfortunately, combat is only half the Overgrowth experience. The rest of the game is taken up with far weaker platforming sections, where Turner’s prodigious jump and wall running abilities are used to scale linear obstacle courses. When the game started I was convinced I was going to love this aspect. There's a joy to sailing through the air as Turner, and the wall running brought back pleasant memories of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.   

In reality, I spent a good proportion of my time watching Turner grab the wrong thing, ignoring the ledge I was aiming for and instead mounting a jutting out piece of rock and doing chin-ups on the edge of forever. There's an instant restart and generous checkpointing, so you're rarely inconvenienced by a missed leap, but it has a feeling of punishment and repetition that the exhilarating combat largely avoids.

I'm torn on Overgrowth. I love the speed and brutality of the fights, but at the same time they are so fast, and so brief, that it almost feels insubstantial, a problem not helped by a paper-thin antihero plot. It's tempting to say it's a game aimed at hardcore fighting game fans, but I wouldn't usually consider myself one of those and I still enjoyed my time with it. It's such a strange-feeling game, it seems impossible to tell who will like it.

In the end Overgrowth remains what it appeared to be through all those years of development: a curio. It's is a weird, unique creation, a window into a world with an alternate approach to beat 'em ups. A strange and beautiful place to visit, it just doesn't feel substantial enough to make a home in. It's a game to blast through in a weekend, enjoy, and then never really think about again.

Overgrowth, a game about murderous kung-fu bunnies, has been in development for eight years. At the tail end of 2008, it appeared on Steam and people could start pre-ordering it. Today, finally, developer David Rosen announced its release date on Twitter. 

It will leave Early Access next Monday, October 16. 

The final beta update went live last week, introducing a story mode, more animal diversity and the ability to be impaled on spikes. Lovely!

Here’s what it looked like during alpha, back in 2012. 

And here’s the latest video from beta 6.

It’s certainly been a long time coming. Overgrowth is currently £22.99/$29.99 on Steam and the Humble Store.

More than nine years after it was announced, Overgrowth's surreal mix of wild animals, fast-paced martial arts, stealth, and gore is nearly upon us. The last beta version before a proper release arrived this week, bringing with it the game's full story mode.

Those who have purchased the game early will be able to play through the full campaign now, which sees our rabbit hero Turner fight to protect the island of Lugaru from slavers. Expect hand-to-hand combat that relies upon timing and counters, segments where you sneak through shrubbery, and lots of blood.

The amount of gore in the game is emphasised by another tweak in this beta: you can now be impaled by spikes. That means some pretty gory clips of Turner's limp body sliding down a wooden spear, blood spurting.

Other changes will make the game's different animals more distinct. Cat enemies, for example, can now throw smaller weapons such as daggers, while rats can attach bits of the environment to their head as camouflage.

Developer Wolfire Games has fixed lots of bugs, too, and added new settings options including a brightness slider. The full change log is here.

Overgrowth is currently £22.99/$29.99 on Steam and the Humble Store. There's no word on a final release date, but it shouldn't be too long. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

If you're interested, click here to read James's interview with the game's creator earlier this year.

David Rosen has poured more time and energy into developing a game about kung fu rabbits than most novelists put into writing sweeping statements of our time. This isn’t to say Rosen isn’t also trying to say something new with Overgrowth, the successor and final iteration of freeware hit Lugaru. Like any artist, he’s trying to push the medium forward. His grand statement comes by way of complex bullet points, like “skeletal animation blends” and “damage simulationerse kinematics”—all to make a fighting system that feels different each time you play.But Rosen didn’t just live in a development vaccum for eight years—during that time, he put out several complete games within a week during focused game jams (see Receiver) and started the Humble Indie Bundle, which quickly ballooned into a popular digital storefront.Despite everything, Overgrowth is finally on the path to release, beginning with a beta and week long sale at 27% off—starting today. The entire Lugaru campaign has been ported over to Overgrowth’s engine, entirely rewritten, and includes a multiplayer arena mode and extensive mod support. Now, all that’s left for Rosen is to finish the Overgrowth campaign, which he plans to release within a few months.

It’s been a long road to the finish, but Rosen isn’t too surprised. He says he’s always had a tendency to “dive into rabbit holes.” I didn't ask if the pun was intended. He'd no doubt heard them all by now.

Bunny beta

The work hasn’t been the most difficult part. Rosen is an extremely talented programmer, taking on challenges entire teams are dedicated to in big game studios. But working alone isn’t easy, especially with no one to tell you how to spend your time. “It's been a psychological journey of sorts. Because I never had a background in project management and would always just get by with brute force of programming, so it's been an experience how to actually balance everything,” said Rosen, “That's why it took so long, everything was in a weird balance.”Before making a campaign, Rosen first had to make the fighting systems, which were far more ambitious than he anticipated. He wanted to avoid making a scripted, tightly animated combat game in favor of something more improvisational and surprising.

“Often if you have [combat] look really good, you'll just press a button and you'll play this motion captured combo finisher move that takes five seconds, and I wanted to break it down into much smaller pieces,” said Rosen, “That took a lot of work, to make sure that the characters were attacking the right area and that it looked like they were hitting, and if they got hit, then they got knocked into ragdoll as if they were hit at the correct point, and then while they're in ragdoll they're not just like limp noodles. They're trying to protect themselves and flail around if they're falling too far, and so on.”As it turns out, as one man, figuring out how to accurately simulate a rabbit skeleton to procedurally and naturally animate after getting round-housed by a wolf took a bit of research and development. About eight years, to be precise.

Soon, cats, dogs, and rats will also join the fray, each with their own fighting styles and traits. Cats are more aristocratic. They fight with poise and agility, tending towards weapons like rapiers. Dogs are brutes—though not as big as wolves—and prefer larger weapons and heavy armor. Rats are the more improvisational group of the bunch that attack in packs to overcome their tiny stature. I can’t wait to drop kick one. 

They’ll appear in the new campaign, which continues directly where Lugaru’s leaves off. In classic kung fu fashion (and without spoiling the plot) protagonist Turner continues his quest for revenge. Rosen hopes to include more variety this time around, leaning less on combat in favor of playing around with level design and mobility. “I want to experiment with more climbing, jumping, wall-running kinds of puzzles. And stealth elements, like sneaking through bushes. You can also have allies—the AI system supports any number of factions.”

We won’t know what the final version of Overgrowth looks like for a few months yet, but now players can finally rest assured that it will eventually be complete. Until then, players can check out the growing library of mods already available, including one that increases running speeds for Sonic-like races, another that turns players into an acrobatic bat, and any number of character models replacements—including some for the Overwatch heroes.Rosen is exhausted with the project, but feels like he’s finally completing what he set out to do. “I think it does now look pretty much like choreographed fight scenes. The fights still look totally different than in any other game.” He’s right. Overgrowth is an improvisational, energetic, ragdoll kung fu playground that feels like a mix between the quick, tightly controlled encounters of Quake with the rock-paper-scissors move set of a 2D fighting game. It feels great.Now, to build something around it.

David Rosen—founder of Wolfire Games which, in turn, created the Humble Bundle—clearly knows what he likes. He works from three different locations; one in the Double Fine offices, one in the Humble Bundle offices, and one at home, but they all have matching mice, keyboards, mouse pads, and chairs. He's also an incredibly smart guy, as evidenced by a talk he gave at GDC earlier this year about the procedural animation in his latest game, Overgrowth. David was kind enough to take some time and show us not one, but all three of his rigs. 

What's in your PC?

I actually have three different setups! All of them include:

• Razer Goliathus 2014 Extended CONTROL Soft Gaming Mouse Mat
• Logitech G500 mouse
• Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
• Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arm, Tall Pole
• Steelcase Leap chair
• F.lux

My setup at Double Fine has:

• Free GB-BXi7-4770R Brix Pro from Steam Dev Days
• ViewSonic Monitor VX2252MH 22-Inch LED-Lit LCD Monitor 

At Humble Bundle I use:

• Dell U2713HM-IPS-LED CVN85 27-Inch Screen LED-lit Monitor
• A mechanized sit/stand desk, not sure what model

A "CyberPower" PC from 2011:

• Intel Core i7 X980 @ 3.33 GHz
• 12 GB RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
• 128 GB SSD C300-CTF DDAC MAG SCSI
• 2 TB HD WDC WD20 02FAEX-007BA0 SCSI

A 15" Macbook Pro from 2011:

• Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
• 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
• 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

At home I have:

• 15" Macbook Pro from 2006
• GeekDesk Max sit/stand desk
• Sennheiser PC 360 Headset for Pro Gaming
• Heated pad for feet when it's cold

A CyberPower PC from 2013:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card
• 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Quad Channel Memory
• 250 SSD GB SAMSUNG 840 Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s - 540MB/s Read & 250MB/s
• 2TB HD (2TBx1) Western Digital Caviar Black SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM
• Intel(R) Core™ i7-3930K Six-Core 3.20 GHz 12MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011
• Dell U2713HM-IPS-LED CVN85 27-Inch Screen LED-lit Monitor

Travel:

• Microsoft surface pro 2

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

Probably that I have three of them! I have a home office, and guest desks at Humble Bundle and Double Fine. I work from home on off hours or when I need quiet (like for recording video narration), work from Humble Bundle when I want to hang out with old friends, and work from Double Fine when I want to be near other game developers.

I also budget an equal amount for ergonomics as I do for computer hardware itself, with adjustable chairs, flexible monitor stands, and sit/stand desks. Usually the bottleneck in development is myself more than my computer hardware, so I have to make sure it's comfortable to use for many hours at a time, especially when doing seven-day game jams.

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

I always have a water bottle, a notebook, and a pen. Sometimes problems are easier to solve on pen and paper than any other way! At Humble I usually go out to get bubble tea with my brother or other friends, so that is usually on my desk in the afternoon. I also always have headphones handy so I can listen to music in the background: often game soundtracks, predictably, but sometimes the different 'mood' playlists on Spotify.

What are you playing right now?

Right now I am playing a whole bunch of different games to help contribute to the first stage of IGF judging, and I also try to play most major releases to stay up to date on what other developers are doing. Most recently, I've been playing Far Cry 4, Walking Dead Season 2, This War of Mine, and Nuclear Throne. The games I keep coming back to are usually the ones I use as excuses to hang out with friends, in person or online. I'm looking forward to my Wii U delivery so I can practice for the Humble Smash Bros tournament!

What's your favorite game and why?

I could go a lot of different ways with this question, from which games were formative to my understanding of the medium, to which ones were most effective at achieving their goals. I keep coming back to Marathon though, Bungie's second FPS game (after Pathways). It still holds up today as a fun game with a solid story, and holds up historically as an underappreciated leap forward in the genre. It was the first FPS with a significant storyline with interacting characters, the first that allowed the player to look up and down, the first with guns with secondary fire, the first with reloading magazines, the first with rocket jumping, and so many other innovations. It had deep modding potential, especially after they released official tools for the sequels, and that was a big part of my introduction to 3D level design.