hmmm That was a solid guess but I was going for a different source :)

Hint 8:
-\3\2\8\5/ = m

Awesome puzzle giveaway indeed, but impossible for me to solve it. So finally I gave it up. Grimwerk, it's up to you :)

I was thinking the same, and yesterday I had a (false) revelation:
+ and - could mean positive and negative reviews; we know that the first number is one of the games, the following two could be a date (the second one is 1 or 2, so it could stand for Jan or Feb 2014) and the last one a letter to find somewhere (with the #th letter in the nickname of the poster, the "t" worked XD), that's why I asked about the date.
At least it kept my brain cells going fully for a couple of hours.

I really love this giveaway, it's also giving me lots of ideas for whenever I'll do one myself XD.
Annnd going back trying to understand "the source".

Hint 6: -\4\2\2\7/ = t
Hint 8: -\3\2\8\5/ = m

Each humblebundle game has a descriptive paragraph.

Line 2 of the paragraph for game 4 (pacific skies) is:
redefine historic World War II battles! Skillfully pilot the most iconic
Count back 7 letters from the right end and get "t".

Line 8 of the paragraph for game 3 (ace patrol) is:
down in flames to an enemy ace?
Count back 5 letters and get "m".

So I'm guessing the code is:

+- \ [gamenumber] \ ? \ [linenumber] \ [lettercount] /

I'm unsure whether the +-, the ? (can be a 1 or a 2), or the slash direction indicates to count from the beginning or the end of the line.

Still, I haven't gotten anything resembling words or a message out of this yet, so it could just be coincidence. -+ or ? could correspond to lower/upper case, and the whole list could create a key, but this would result in a lot of guessing.

tl; dr: I haven't really gotten anywhere.


My first thought was that the source would be Sid Meier.

Sid Meier was my first thought, too, but I couldn't find anything suitable (a site or so). I didn't try the Wiki page for I-don't-know-what reason. I also thought of Firaxis or 2kGames, but they seem dead ends.
And yep, I noticed the paragraphs of the games at humblebundle (at the beginning I thought the source was the source code of those paragraphs...), but I couldn't get anywhere; I didn't probably read backwards correctly.

I am also thinking whether + - OR 1 2 (second number in each row) mean number/letter.

Thanks for sharing! Right now I have to go, good luck with this, I'll get back to it later^ ^.
Good luck!

You are very close. Hint 7 may help with the + or -

Ill answer the first yes/no question about this puzzle made after this post.

Do the 19 lines resolve to something we will recognize (a sentence, word, name, etc.) as opposed to a seemingly random string that we must confirm with a test (like entering it as a key somewhere, or including it in a URL)?

More clearly, will we look at these 19 characters and immediately recognize that we've gotten somewhere?

edit:
Your hints are interesting and fun. I don't see that I could ever have advanced without them, though. A progressive puzzle is still a puzzle! I've no complaints.

Ill answer the first yes/no question about this puzzle made after this post.

Not in! Thanks & +1! :DD

I realize now that my question kind of left something like an anagram as a grey area. Thanks again for answering.

Next question: Is all the information in each line (e.g., -\4\2\2\7/) required to locate the letter? Or is some of that information used to modify or order the letter once found?

(The second question was just for clarity. I only need a yes/no for the first.)

yes though I will say this

Hint 10 the slashes have no meaning besides seperating each number and the +,-,IS

Ill answer the first yes/no question about this puzzle made after this post.

I haven't really had time to apply any of your previous answers, yet, so I'll hold off for now. Hopefully someone else will ask something sensible.