It's a common idea now that your purchase may help a charity. Humble Bundle and some other bundle sites have been donating a portion, often a portion you actually decide, to the charity of your choice. Companies like Sports Interactive have been especially prominent in bringing games and charities close together.
I say this because the aptly titled HELP: The Game has been released today on Steam and for the low price of £9.99/€14.99/$14.99 you can get twelve games designed over six days specifically for War Child by some of the biggest and best names in gaming today.
The line-up is as follows:
- 10 Minute Tower by Team 17. A puzzle game where you take the place of an imaginative child trapped in a tower. You can switch between a number of characters to solve the challenges ahead and escape.
- Anthelion by Rovio. An endless puzzle game that has you rotating around a star, collecting pickups and avoiding pointy red enemies. See how long you can go!
- BlockAid by Hardlight. Place blocks of protection, education or livelihood to lower raised blocks to create a path for your people to get through to the other side of the map.
- Captain Curve's Intergalactic Space Adventure by Curve Digital. An infinite runner featuring a number of minigames. Tasking you with collecting pickups, avoiding obstacles and seeing how far you can go.
- Emily: Displaced by Bossa Studios. A choice based visual novel. Play as Emily, a girl whose life has changed drastically as a result of a civil war in her home country.
- Malkia by Sports Interactive. A business based strategy game where you help Malkia, whose husband was killed in a civil war, grow her business, educate her children and put food on the table.
- Nevermine by Torn Banner Studios. Featuring eight levels where you guide a ball to detonate unexploded mines strewn throughout the land
- Octamari Rescue by Sumo Digital. A match-three puzzle block based game that tasks you to create a machine to save the Octamari from their dying world.
- Rise by Creative Assembly. A rhythm based jumping game that lets you use your own music. Collect letters for your loved one as you jump with the music across the world.
- Savana by Modern Dream. A narrative point and click adventure game that tells different stories of real life experiences living in modern day Mozambique as a young girl.
- Splash Bash by Rovio. Play with up to three other players, locally, and use your water gun to propel yourself and bash into other players.
- Verdant Hue by Spilt Milk Studios. Play as an orphan, a survivor of recent attacks, and bring your family farm back to life. Plant seeds, clear land and donate what you can to the local community.
Needless to say, I've already bought HELP: The Game and I highly recommend that you do too. It's a simple sign of the good that games, and us as gamers, can do for the world. You also get twelve games designed for the sole purpose of helping the world and the people in it. Information on all twelve of the games can be found on their linked Steam pages.
Special mention should go to Miles Jacobson, director of Sports Interactive who has been involved with War Child for a number of years, being highly involved with HELP: The Game, and is involved with a number of other charitable foundations as well as being a co-founder of GamesAid. Other mentions should go to support partners and services like SEGA, Unreal Engine, Unity, Ukie and more that are highlighted on the official page.
