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Scale has raised $41,000 in three days on Kickstarter, almost half of its $87,000 goal, and its reward tiers keep growing. A new $20 tier called "Friends of Scale" offers a copy of Scale developer Steve Swink's LA Game Space project, Inputting, along with Steam keys for Incredipede, Osmos, Electronic Super Joy and Noitu Love 2. You'll also get Scale, of course. The new $15 tier includes a copy of Scale and Inputting.

The Kickstarter updates for Scale each take place in-game and show off the mechanics, puzzles and strategies players can expect from the final build. The second update provides a look at Scale's resizing gun once it becomes outrageously powerful and can no longer hit individual objects - instead it shrinks and grows entire worlds. Plus this update shows a really embarrassing photo of Swink himself.

Take a peek at more improv Scale gameplay in the first update below.

A new Indie Royale bundle featuring Osmos, B.U.T.T.O.N., The Shivah and Blueberry Garden has debuted. Unlike past bundles, all of the proceeds from this one don't go to the developers - proceeds go to charities chosen by the developers.

In addition to the games, the All-Charity Lightning Pack also tosses in a trio of chiptunes albums should you pony up $7 or more: Level by Disasterpeace, IN1ep by 6955, and FX4 by Jake "virt" Kaufman. Cruise past the break for some video previews of all four games.

Games are pretty great. I realize that this is an incredibly contentious statement, but just work with me on this one. You know what else is really great, though? Saving the entire free world. But we can’t all be firemen, police officers, or the Hulk, and for us, there’s the Indie Royale All-Charity Lightning Pack. Every last cent from the bundle gets split between Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Actionaid, and Unicef, and hey, the game lineup is actually pretty awesome. Man, saving the world really is as easy as no one says it is.

The Lightning Pack – which has just over 80 hours’ worth of sand left in its hourglass – includes soul-soothing subatomic droplet magic toy Osmos, rough and rowdy physical party game B.U.T.T.O.N, hard-boiled Rabbi detective story The Shivah, and delightful exploration experiment Blueberry Garden. Are you tempted by the diabolical succubus that is charity? Then you know what you must do.

#gamingappoftheday That it took so long for PC, MAC, and iOS masterpiece Osmos to reach Android devices is a tiny bit of suck which absorbs smaller sucks until it's the biggest suck of them all. The Ubersuck, if you will, master of all that sucks. More »

Three wise men once said, “Intergalactic, planetary. Planetary, intergalactic.” I think we all take solace from those words at some points in our life. For are we not all made of star stuff? Solar 2 is built on this species of Saganian wisdom. Coupled with some delightful planetary physics and a dash of good humour, it’s probably the best time you can have alone with a heavenly body. Um. That’s not what I mean. Um. Um.

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The Humble Indie Bundle 2 -- which added last year's bundle during its promotion -- has raised over $1.8 million. The name-your-own-price, DRM-free set included indie darlings like Braid, Machinarium and Osmos, along with several others.

Purchasers could decide whether their years of saved pennies went to developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Child's Play Charity. They could also provide a "humble tip" for the bundle's organizers.

Humble Bundle organizers plan on releasing more detailed statistics later but, beyond the final sum, we know that there were 232,849 purchases, with an average payment for the 12-game bundle of $7.83. Windows operating systems made up a majority of the purchases, but Linux users offered up the most support with an average purchase of $13.76. If you're all good little boys and girls, the Humble Bundle might return next year with a new set of indie greats.

The latest indie gaming charity drive allows you to simultaneously be stingy and charitable: six popular iPhone games have been discounted to 99 cents each through December 31, with one third of that lowered price (after Apple's cut) going to Child's Play.

The games in the Indie iPhone Holiday Sale include Canabalt, Solipskier, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Osmos, Drop7, and Eliss, all of which we can safely say are required for your iPhone to work properly. And unlike other charity game bundles, which allow you to pay what you want, these are locked at 99 cents, so you can't feel guilty for not paying more. Well, you can, but you won't be able to do anything about it.

"Humble Bundle" no longer seems like an appropriate name. In less than 24 hours upon release, the pay-what-you-want indie game collection Humble Bundle #2 earned over $500,000 in revenue and appears to be well on its way to beating the first bundle's seven-figure returns.

The Humble Bundle website offers an interesting look into purchasing trends by providing real-time stats. As of writing, over 70,000 people have purchased the pack, including Minecraft creator Markus Persson, who paid an extraordinary $2,000, and Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, who went with a generous $500 payment. The average selling price for the bundle is currently $7 and change.

The Humble Bundle #2 includes five celebrated indie titles: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans. Purchasers can divide their payments between the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity as they see fit.

#money It was impressive when Robert Bowling, creative strategist for Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward paid $500 for a batch of indie games that only cost $500. Then Notch, maker of Minecraft stepped up, with $2000. More »

Looks like the organizers of the second annual Humble Indie Bundle are busting out the big guns for this year's charity drive -- the name-your-own-price, DRM-free package includes Jonathan Blow's time-twisting platformer Braid, the infinitely charming adventure game Machinarium, the side-scrolling shooter Cortex Command, the super soothing (and equally pretty) Osmos and the tower defense-meets-RTS gem Revenge of the Titans. That's a whole lot of bang for your buck, or nickel, or thousand bucks.

This year, purchasers can choose how much of their donation goes to four possible recipients: The games' developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child's Play Charity or the Humble Indie Bundle organizers. Yes, you can not only customize how much altruism you're going to exhibit with your purchase, you can also customize where that altruism goes! Unless, of course, you pirate it, sending out no altruism to nowhere. You monster.

$2.50 doesn't buy a lot these days -- we remember when two bucks and fifty cents could get you a few movie rentals, a nice big bag of candy, or even a sweet comic book. But nowadays, it barely buys you a cup of coffee. One thing you can do with your $2.50 this weekend, though, is take advantage of Games for Windows Live's Deal of the Week -- they're offering up the terrific indie game Osmos for just two dollars and two quarters.

The game's great -- it was an Indiecade finalist last year, and has you playing as a celestial body trading off mass for movement and always trying to eat orbs bigger than you are. $2.50 doesn't go as far as it used to, but this deal, on through Wednesday of next week, is money well spent.

So what if Sophie/Samuel didn't return your request for a weekend getaway to that little bed and breakfast in New Hampshire? Wouldn't you rather spend your weekend falling in love with a handful of indie games -- And Yet it Moves, Auditorium, Aztaka, Eufloria, Machinarium, and Osmos -- from an all-star list of developers? We knew you'd see our point! Besides, it's only $20 -- that's way less than the price of two nights for two people at The Buttonwood Inn, not to mention a steal considering each game individually purchased would add up to 85 buckaroos. And hey, now you can spoil yourself with an extra large box of tissues and a matching ice cream tub.

IndieCade 2009 was held in Culver City, CA this past weekend, and the local art galleries and restaurants were filled with independent games and their developers from all over the world. The festival billed itself as the "video game Sundance" and lived up to this self-made reputation, putting 29 different indie games on display, both throughout the weekend and during a Thursday night opening ceremony MC'd by Uncharted 2's Richard Lemarchand (shown above with festival founder Stephanie Barish).We've rounded up the festival's finalists in the gallery below. You may be familiar with a few of them, including Twisted Pixel's The Maw and a selection of well-known iPhone titles, but all of these titles deserve your attention -- and a playthrough!