In this week's firm yet caring thrust into the world of indie gaming we thought we'd take a look at some of the easiest ways to get hold of the games themselves. Aside from piracy. You wouldn't download a packet of Haribo, would you?

You're probably not that happy to hand your credit card details out to people that you've never heard of who are obviously very good with computers, we understand that. So how about charity? Come on, charity's all right isn't it? It's like you're healing the children with your own hands. Your own hands.

Firstly we've got the Humble Indie Bundle. The HIB is a collection of independently made games that have been packaged together, are cross-platform compatible and (some might say) most importantly, you can choose how much you pay for it. The bundles come out every few months, currently it has Voxatron, Blocks That Matter and the truly excellent The Binding of Isaac. The money is split between the semi-starving developers and whatever charity the bundle is currently associated with. Check it out here. Honestly, you can't go wrong.

Next up is the Indie Royale, a very similar idea, except the price has a set minimum and the money goes straight to the developers rather than charity. The gap beween these bundles is also lot shorter with than with HIB in case you're the impatient type. Still pretty wonderful though.

So now that's been covered, we can have a look at the rest of the indie gaming market. Well, bits of it anyway.

As you may remember, we've mentioned Bastion before and it's safe to say it's one of the real success stories of the indie gaming scene. Now, luckily for you, if you wanted to try it out but couldn't afford £12, it's currently half price on Steam for the next seven hours. On the other hand,  if you've already played it and are desperate to know more then over on Reddit there's a Q and A with the game's developers.

A game that's been out for a while but has only recently brought to our attention is Cortex Command. Looks pretty interesting, but be warned, the game is still in alpha stage and the developers are apparently very slow at updating it. Still, there's a free demo… 

Another game we've looked at before is the superb tactical shooter Frozen Synapse. The good news? It's coming to iPad. The bad news? But not until next year. Boo.

Finally, Dungeons of Dredmor. It may not look like much, but it's a deeply involving top-down dungeon exploration RPG type of game with a sense of humour and a stunningly steep difficulty curve. It's (again) been out for a while, but it's worth giving a go if you need something to fill the gap while you wait for Diablo 3, but don't want anything like Diablo 3. In any way at all. Here's a video…