Best bundle websites for a gaming deal

Looking for a great gaming bargain? There's more for you out there than Humble Bundle.

Everyone loves Humble Bundle, but it's not the only site offering up sweet, sweet pay-what-you-like bargains on bundles of video games. And many of them offer experiences with indie developers that you may not have encountered before, for as little as zero dollars.

Click through the gallery below for some of our favourites.

Humble Bundle may be the most popular of the bundle sites, but it's for very good reason. It has a fantastic mix of games, both well-known and lesser-known titles, so gamers who will buy a bundle for a game they've been wanting to try will also get exposure to a range of developers' titles. It also has a large number of sales; there's the weekly bundle, which offers a selection of titles on a weekly basis; and there's the featured bundles, which can be from a single developer or a range of indies. Every now and again, the website does ebook bundles, too.

For Humble Bundles, you pay what you want, with a minimum of 1 cent. However, in order to get Steam keys, you do need to pay at least US$1, and the website encourages you to pay more by offering extra games — really good ones — for anyone who pays above the average donation. You can then also split where the money goes: to the developer, to Humble Bundle (which needs funds to operate, after all) and to two charities, Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Bundle Stars doesn't offer the same flexibility with choosing how much you pay as Humble Bundle, but it offers a lot of bang for your buck. Its latest bundle, for example, offers 10 PC games for US$5, redeemable on Steam and Desura, with "mystery games" added for early purchasers. Partnered with indie developers around the globe, it allows them to get their games out there (and a little bit of cash, too), with a percentage of every sale donated to UK charity Special Effect.

Bundle In A Box also requires a minimum payment — US$1.99 (that's less than a cup of coffee) — but beyond that, you set your own price. Proceeds go to developers, the website and charity; the current bundle is supporting the Australian Red Cross and The Indie Dev Grant, which was founded by Kyttaro Games, the force behind Bundle In A Box.

The minimum number of games seems to be about seven. The current bundle has seven games as a base set, with an additional four games if you pay over the average, which is US$3.88 at the time of writing.

Indie Royale is all indie, all the time. If you had a view to go utter cheapskate, though, it won't be the bundle site for you; at time of writing, the minimum on its current bundle of six PC games on Steam or Desura was US$5.91, with a price of US$8.46 to beat in order to get the bonus — a copy of the album It's Not Great by My OK BBS. So it's a little pricier, but that's still less than AU$1 per game, so what are you complaining about?

Groupees isn't just for games, but its bundles are excellent, offering a massive mix of albums, games and films for a minimum of US$1 — with a bunch of extras for those who pay over US$5. With each bundle, you can choose to donate 20 per cent of the proceeds to charity — a different one for every bundle.

Indiebundle, like Indie Royale, is about getting indie developers a bit of exposure while delivering some great titles to gamers. It's not exactly "pay what you like", either; each bundle has two payment options; US$5 for the base set of three Steam or Desura PC games, or US$7 for the base set and some extras, such as OSTs, extra games and DLC.

The Indie Gala doesn't offer quite as much for what you pay. For a minimum of US$0.99, you get one or two indie PC games; for a minimum of US$4.99, you get an additional two titles. The website also claims that you will get to "support causes", but we couldn't find any information on what these causes actually are.

The Free Bundle isn't about charity or money — it's about introducing you to fantastic free indie developers who have "worked really hard to make the games you see here, and on top of that, they released them absolutely free". So you could scour the net looking for new free games to play — or you could hit up the hand-curated collections to make some awesome new discoveries. Or you could do both. No one's stopping you.

Rather than bundles (yes, we know we said this was a list of bundles, bear with us here), IndieGameStand offers a new individual indie game every 96 hours for as little as US$1. Of course, if you pay more, you get more. If you beat the average, you get additional content, such as concept art, OSTs and additional games; and if you pay more than US$10, you get a bundle of three games, which includes the previous title, so there's a way to catch up if you missed out, as well as a mystery title.

Ten per cent of the proceeds from each sale go towards a different charity, chosen by the developer.

Like the Free Bundle, the Freebie Bundle is about showcasing the amazing games out there that have been released for free. "Our goal is to try and draw more attention to some of the free games that get lost among all the huge releases from developers, or just long forgotten among the thousands of games that float to the internet every year," the website said. "It is our belief that a game doesn't need a giant big-name publisher behind it or a multimillion-dollar budget to be an amazing game. Some games are developed just for the sake of creating a game that they just want the world to see what they have created." Amen to that.

Did we miss a great gaming bundle site that the world needs to know about? Let us know in the comments below.