I’m hardly one for donation mania but this project is known to me. It not only spends the money wisely, it does so on the target and is also effective.

Your money is well spent on providing US soldiers seriously injured in the course of their duties with supportive equipment like laptops with voice recognition software in order to improve their functionality and recovery.

Donate to Project Valour-IT here via Team Army.

If you’re on the fence or not quite sure what help is provided this account by a recipient puts things quite clearly.

The other site is Humble Indy Bundle doing the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle for the next 13 days.

Humble Indy Bundle is a very simple concept. Take a bundle of Indy games and let people pay for those games what they want. There have been two previous bundles which are now closed.

The bundle on offer now is Humble Frozenbyte Bundle where all the games are from the Frozenbyte indy developers. The games are:

• Trine -  2009
• Shadowgrounds - 2005
• Shadowgrounds Survivor – 2007
• Splot - Pre-Order

included is a prototype as well as a suggestion for the support for the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Child’s Play charities.

While these games aren’t quite my thing, they are high quality, multiple platform (Windows, Mac Linux), DRM free and you are pricing them yourself. Not much room for complaint is there?  I hope to see many more in the future.

Check it out.

Spending is a lot more fun when you have the money

Release Date: 8^h February 2011

Developer: McKinney

Genre: RPG, Educational, Simulation

Mode: Single Player

Spent is a game where you place yourself in the shoes of the marginally employed for a month. Your goal is to simply survive financially. In a sense it is an educational game because it highlights difficult choices which face people in that situation and shows why it is difficult to move beyond poverty. Pretty relevant given the hard times the US is facing right now.

You begin by getting a job then live from day to day hoping to make it all the way through the month. Some may feel the choices are a bit vicious but really that is the whole point and the reality of the situation. It would however, be fair to say, some of the difficult situations aren’t quite so frequent as all that. That higher frequency is balanced out by the game ignoring the small-time expenses of life, such as more shopping and petrol.

I should warn that this game is a lead in to a charity; ‘Urban Ministries of Durham’. I briefly checked it out and it seemed clean enough though I felt it’s claim to not be church based misleading. If donating, consider other worthwhile charities for people in this situation.

Spent offers positive entertainment because it allows people to experience things which they may never have experienced, and likely never would want to. It is innovative, conveys the situation very well and helps to improve the awareness of a problem many like to ignore.

The flash graphics look good and convey the message and challenge well. Sounds effects and music in Spent are light but aid the sense of immersion adequately.

Spent’s Difficulty is fairly high. I won 2 out of 3 games so it is quite possible to survive. It all depends on what you are willing to sacrifice.

Spent runs in browser and is flash based so most modern browsers will be able to handle this. It is the full game and is free to play.

Game: 3½/5      Positive:

As Kotaku says; “raising money the awesome way”.  A great idea which is fun based.  Play for Japan is about gamers and the games industry helping out Japan from it’s latest problems with the earthquake and tsunami.  There’s autographed games, donation updates and more.  Check it out.

or via:

Twitter: @PlayForJPN / #playforjapan

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/playforjapan

Tumblr: http://playforjapan.tumblr.com

h/t Kotaku