The Free Game Offers Thread

So sometimes a company gives away a game for free for a limited time. This is often done to get you to use their service, and we all have various ways of sharing this information. Sometimes I make a thread for it, sometimes I put it in a thread that already exists. I've begun to wonder if it would be better to have them all listed in a single thread as they come up.

I've set up a poll so anyone with an opinion can help me decide. I'm not sure myself. https://www.graffes.com/forums/showt...-Game-Opinions

Time limit on that is 30 days.

As a trial run, the first offer I'm posting in this thread is Age of Wonders 3 at Humble Bundle. By this posting, the offer ends in 19 hours.

I'm fairly certain I've seen some of you talking about this one before. I used to think it was a fantasy spin off of the Age of Empires series, but it's apparently a 4X style game made by a different studio entirely. The big new feature in this one is apparently an rpg system and a leader/hero character you can create.

Humble Bundle has launched what they are calling a Spring Sale, and part of that is Guacamelee for free. Humble Bundle - Guacamelee Super Turbo Championship Edition I caught this one early so the time limit as of this moment is 2 days.

Guacamelee is a luchador themed Metroidvania game. That is, it's a 2D sidescroller where you explore large connected environments and use newly acquired abilities to reach new areas. The combat is a little different from a typical Metroidvania and is more like a brawler or pure action game. Overall it's pretty good.


The Epic Games Store has also launched a seasonal sale. They are offering a free game every two weeks. Stories Untold now - May 30th, and Rime May 23rd - May 30th. I don't know what Stories Untold is, but Rime is one of those artsy 3D adventure games where you explore an environment and solve puzzles to progress, with each environment themed. I personally did not care for it, but I know the central themes in it (which I won't spoil) resonated with a lot of people.

Thanks for the tip - I snatched up Stories Untold. Although I never heard of it before, it might be interesting to try out at some point :-)

I really didn't think I would get this much use out of this thread so soon.

Origin (EA) is giving The Sims 4 away free for the next 6 days. They are of course hoping people then buy all the expansions/DLC, and there is a fair chance a Sims 5 is in the works, but hey free is free.

Note that you need to go to their website. If you use their Steam wannabe app it will try to force you to gift it instead.

Guacamelee (same version as Humble) is available on Steam.

Grid2 is available on Steam until 1pm on 5/22.

Gog is giving away Obduction for free, for the next 36 hours. This is a new puzzle adventure from the creators of Myst.

https://www.gog.com/game/obduction

Is this free game season or something?

Yet another. Epic Games Store is giving away City of Brass, a roguelike fps. It's touted as being made by some of the same people that made Bioshock, but I'm not sure it has that much in common.

Today I got a notification that Epic is giving away Kingdom New Lands for free next.

Kingdom is kind of a tower defense game on a 2D plane. That is to say you only have two directions to defend from. New Lands was an update to the game that added some level of new content.

The original game was free at what point, and I was immediately drawn to it because of it's pixel graphics. I vaguely recall getting very annoyed by it, and I'm not sure if the New Lands content fixed what I didn't like about it.

From now trough the 20th, Epic is giving away Enter the Gungeon. Starting on the 20th, they will be giving away Rebel Galaxy. Both are supposed to be pretty good games.

Enter the Gungeon is a top down bullet hell dungeon crawler thing. Might also be a roguelike? Not certain.

Rebel Galaxy is a space combat game. I played it a couple years ago, as long as you aren't expecting a heavy sim it's really good.

I thought Epic was giving free games away as part of whatever sale promotion it had going on, but now I'm beginning to think I will be bumping this thread every week for the rest of my life.

Overcooked : Now - July 11
Torchlight : July 11 - July 18

The next round of free games on the Epic Games Store has been announced. This time they are giving twice as many away, as some of the titles are M rated and they don't want their younger users to be left out.

Edit: Ah dang, I misread the promotion end date as the promotion start date, so the first batch has expired. Sorry about that.

Moonlighter and This War of Mine : August 2
Alan Wake and For Honor : Now - August 9

Alan Wake is Stephen King themed horror. The gameplay is only okay, but the story, setting, theme, etc are all pretty good. For Honor is a multiplayer melee game with Vikings and Knights and Samurai fighting each other for reasons.

The Epic thing is weekly now, and I often forget to check. Still have a couple days for this week's offer though. (Missed last week's offer of GNOG though, apologies)

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden : August 15 - August 22
Hyperlight Drifter : August 15 - August 22
Fez : August 22 - August 29


Hyperlight Drifter is a neat game with some really cool pixel art/animation, but Mutant Year Zero is particularly exciting (for me). It's a turn based strategy game (XCOM) that came out just last year (December).

I'm a little late (as usual) and I really hope some of you notice this, because it's a really good offer this week. The Arkham games are very good. Don't skip.



Batman Arkham Trilogy (Asylum, City, Knight) - Now - September 26th
Lego Batman Trilogy (also 3 games apparently) - Now - September 26th
Everything - September 26th - October 3rd
Metro 2033 Redux - September 26th - October 3rd


Metro is also pretty good. Everything is quirky and weird and maybe worth 30 minutes of your life.



In non Epic news, Rockstar now has their own launcher too. For a limited time you can get GTA San Andreas for free. You can get this game for super cheap so not the biggest deal if you don't want yet another launcher.

Thanks for the heads up. I got the 6 Batman games now. It's adding to an already big pile of games that I haven't had time to play, but hey, if it's free why not grab it for later :-)

Agreed, thanks! I've heard lots of good things about the Batman Arkham trilogy but never got around to giving them a shot. Will have to do now.

:)

Freespace 2 is free on gog.com for the next 30 hours

Dang I missed that. I used to love Freespace 2, a digital copy would have been cool. I also missed last week's Epic freebie, Minit, which I had heard good things about.

Here is the next batch:

Surviving Mars : October 10 - 17
Observer : October 17-24
Alan Wake's American Nightmare : 17 - 24

Does PS4 ever get these free offers, or is this just a PC thing, these days?

Im tempted to build a PC again just to start grabbing free offers for an inadvertent future of once again going back to PC.

The vast majority of these free offers are from companies pushing their online storefronts. PSN is the only store you can access on a PS4, so there is no competition and no need to try and entice new users.

I won't say it will never happen, but outside free to play games like Fortnite it's very rare.

Do you not have a PC or laptop at all? You don't need to be able to play any of these games to create an account and redeem offers.

I have a Linux based PC. I have steam for it, but haven't looked into any additional launch platforms.

More Halloween games from Epic Games Store.

Q.U.B.E.2 : October 24th - October 31st, 2019
Layers of Fear : October 24th - October 31st, 2019
SOMA : October 31st - November 7th, 2019
Costume Quest : October 31st - November 7th, 2019

Rather ironically, I fired up my 360 just for shits and giggles, and having sold every single one of my disk games, I didn't have a single thing to play, so I logged onto the microsoft store and THE 360 GAMES ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN PS4 GAMES!

This disparity is wild. I am very glad I chose to buy a ps4 when I did, as there is always a sale going on, and games can be picked uup no matter what, for sometimes a penny. There is almost always a AAA game for around 5 bucks, and even new releases usually have some sort of a package deal.

Every single game on the xbox store started at 19.99.

Im sure part of it has to do with the reverse compatability of the one with the 360, but even so, that is just mind blowing to me that they could have gotten 20 bucks from me in that moment just so I could buy two, maybe 3 games. I would not have minded an indie game or two, but their price points even there are just sillt.

Epic Games Store

Nuclear Throne : November 7th - 14th, 2019
Ruiner : November 7th - 14th, 2019

Both top down shooters. Nuclear Throne is a goofy/stylistic roguelike, Ruiner is some kind of cyperbunk thing. Interestingly enough, Nuclear Throne is one of those few games that never goes on sale on Steam for some reason.

The Messenger : November 14th - 21st, 2019

A modern take on Ninja Gaiden that received a fair amount of acclaim but not enough to set the world on fire.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

This disparity is wild. I am very glad I chose to buy a ps4 when I did, as there is always a sale going on, and games can be picked uup no matter what, for sometimes a penny. There is almost always a AAA game for around 5 bucks, and even new releases usually have some sort of a package deal.

Every single game on the xbox store started at 19.99.

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I can't speak for their store prices as I've never used it, but you can play brand new games for $10 with Game Pass so I wouldn't knock them too hard.

I missed another week, sorry.

Rayman Legends : November 29th - December 6th, 2019
Jotun : December 6th - December 12th, 2019


Rayman is a pretty solid 2D platformer.

Epic Games Store

The Escapists : Now - December 19th
The Wolf Among Us : Now - December 19th


At the Game Awards, Epic announced that starting the 19th they will be giving away 12 games for free over 12 days. So look forward to that.

The Wolf Among Us is really good, if you like those types of Telltale interactive comicbook type games.

Epic's 12 days of free games have started. Unfortunately they did not release a list of what they are giving away each day, in order to encourage people to keep coming back. I don't think I want to bump this thread every day, but might change my mind on days they give something particularly notable away.


Today's game is Into the Breach. It's a simplified strategy game from the people who made FTL. I highly recommend it.

https://youtu.be/oaiFvuWsfy8

Today is the last day of Epic's holiday giveaways, and they are giving away Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair. This is probably the most notable of what they gave away, though there were a few other gems as well.

Spoiler for complete list:

Into the Breach
Towerfall Ascension
Superhot
Little Inferno
Ape Out
Celeste
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
FTL: Faster Than Light
Hyper Light Drifter
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Talos Principle
Hello Neighbor
Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair

I sort of thought that this would close off their free games thing they've got going. I heard a rumor they were starting a subscription service, and they can't just keep giving stuff away for free. But sure enough, they are already teasing the next two games for next week. One is definitely Darksiders 2, not sure what the other is.

Epic

Sundered Eldritch Edition - January 9th - 16th, 2020
Horace - January 16th - 23rd, 2020

Epic

Farming Simulator 19 - January 30th - February 6th, 2020
Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, & Pandemic - February 6th - 13th, 2020


The latter are all adaptations of popular board games, if you hadn't heard of them.

So, how did it take me until now to find Path of Exile and to realize it was free to play? I feel like I have been very neglected by this.

I'm fairly sure it was always free to play too. Maybe one of the freest to play.

Epic

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - February 13th - 20th, 2020
Aztez - February 13th - 20th, 2020
Faeria - February 20th - 27th, 2020


I've said before that when I made this thread I didn't foresee having to bump it constantly like this, but Kingdom Come is probably worth bumping it for. I don't know if they ever fixed it, but that was a pretty big release a couple of years ago.

Epic

Bumping this a little early due to a last second addition to this week's free games.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate - February 20th - 27th, 2020
Faeria - February 20th - 27th, 2020
Inner Space - February 27th - March 5th, 2020

I missed last week's, and am a day away from missing this one. I'm close to giving up and only bumping this thread when I know the game being offered is a big deal but I'm not there yet.

Epic

Offworld Trading Company - March 5th - March 12th, 2020
GoNNER - March 5th - March 12th, 2020
Anodyne 2: Return to Dust - March 12th - 19th, 2020
A Short Hike - March 12th - 19th, 2020
Mutazione - March 12th - 19th, 2020


There should be another update in a day or two, but if I waited to post it then anyone reading this would miss the chance to get Offworld Trading Company today, which I think is supposed to be good.

They're all a big deal to somebody! Even if it's just the developer.

Something other than Epic for once! Steam is giving Drawful 2 away for free for a couple of weeks. Drawful 2 is a local party game where you draw things on your phone and then everyone votes for what they think the right answer is. Basically anyway. I'm mostly familiar with watching this game streamed.

Kind of silly timing on this, but whatever. Free is free.


Epic stuff too though

Watchdogs - March 19th - 26th, 2020
The Stanley Parable - March 19th - 26th, 2020
Figment - March 26th - April 2nd, 2020
Tormentor x Punisher - March 26th - April 2nd, 2020

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PPatty

They're all a big deal to somebody! Even if it's just the developer.

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I'm more concerned with people that might click this thread. If you deluge people with junk information, the things they might care about become harder to parse and they might start ignoring it altogether. But for now it's easier to just keep doing this than to make that judgement call.

GoG is doing 25 for Quarantine sanity.

https://www.gog.com/partner/stay_at_home

Epic


Sherlock Holmes Crimes & Punishments - April 9th - 16th, 2020
Close to the Sun - April 9th - 16th, 2020

Just Cause 4 - April 16th - 23rd, 2020
Wheels of Aurelia - April 16th - 23rd, 2020


I played the Sherlock Holmes game on PS+ a few years ago. Performance wasn't great but I found it to be otherwise entertaining. Just Cause 4 is a big budget title, but it was received somewhat poorly. Probably worth seeing the weather effects.

As part of a stay at home campaign from Sony, they are offering a couple games for free from April 15 to May 5. Those two games are:


Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection - This is a collection of the first three Uncharted games remastered for the PS4. If you have not played one, these are what Naughty Dog cut their teeth on before The Last of Us. Highly cinematic treasure hunt adventure movies with third person shooting gameplay and mild exploration and puzzle solving elements.

Journey - A very well regarded indie adventure game that is sort of about shared experiences. Or maybe it's more accurate to say it's about connections you make with people you never even communicate with. This was one of those games that left an impact on the people who played it when it came out.

Both are highly recommended.

I noticed last night over steam that Shogun 2: Total War was out for free via Steam. It is a fantastic game, and I love their Total War franchise. I chose to download and install it, and despite its system recommendations stating it would not run on my system, it manged to work with flying colors -- Remarkably well. I am looking forward to trying some additional games soon as well.

Shogun 2 is pretty good.

Here's one from Humble Bundle: Ashes of the Singularity. I haven't played it myself, but I know it's an RTS that was notorious for being very cpu intensive. It used to get used in a lot of benchmark tests for new hardware.

Humble Bundle - 2 Days Left

Also note: Epic Games store is requiring users to enable two factor authentication to redeem free games, but only through May 21st. I've got no idea what it's only temporary, but none of the things they have offered the past few weeks have been interesting anyway.

Epic Games has GTAV for free until the 22nd.

However their website and service has crashed under the strain.

Man they got hit hard, I'm surprised there are that many people who don't have GTA 5 yet. The dang game has been in every month's top 10 sellers list since it came out.

Next week is also another mystery game, which implies it is another game as big as GTA 5, or they want us to think it is. I thought it was going to be The Witcher 3, but that's discounted in their current sale so maybe that's out.

Incidentally their sale is what this is promoting. And like their last sale you get $10 off coupons with every purchase. Getting GTA 5 for free counts as a "purchase" and you get your first coupon, hook line and sinker! Or that's the hope anyway.

This week's free Epic game is Civilization 6. Next week is another mystery title.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wool

This week's free Epic game is Civilization 6. Next week is another mystery title.

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I do not have direct access to a machine that will play it, myself, but I made sure to grab it.

I might choose to upgrade to a faster/more powerful PC in the future, and it would be nice to have that game in my catalog. Free is Free, and I ain't complaining.

As time goes on, and the number of machines I become aware of that are running linux primarily, or even exclusively, I am surprised by the number of individual companies that just choose not to support it at all. Given how simple it is to support such a system, and how often many games are already designed to port right over to Linux, not to mention the number of existing developer systems that are running a *nix in order to create, I just find it shocking how retailers like Epic, GOG, and HUmble Bundle do not do as much open Linux support as they could.

Steam uses the very impressive Proton system in order to support just about any machine setup, but in order to run Epic Game Store, Lutris and Wine both have to run underneath it. It isn't even worht trying on my machine (i'e tried it, and it is a chore, just to delete and reinstall the damn machineid registry key for 20 minutes just to get a game to start).

GOG and HUmble BUndle have a number of offerings available for linux, but even theirs pale in comparison to that of steam.

Origin is another one that has zero support for Linux.

This week's free Epic game is Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (contains Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel). Next week is another mystery title, but chances are very good it will be Ark: Survival Evolved, which is one of those multiplayer crafting survival things but with dinosaurs. After GTA5, there was a leak that the other free games would be Civ 6, Borderlands, and Ark. Two out of three is enough to convince me the leak was real and not a fake rumor.


I posted a big list of free games on Twitch once, but the trend very quickly became to give pages and pages of free microtransactions in popular online free to play games rather than actual full games themselves so I stopped paying attention. Right now they are giving away a bunch of old SNK fighting games though.

Gog is giving away Total Annihilation and it's two expansions away for the next 48 hours.

To anyone unfamiliar, this was a pretty big RTS back in 97-98. At least, before Starcraft stole it's thunder. Some people prefer TA though. Whereas Starcraft advanced the genre in a direction it was already taking (unique specialized units), Total Annihilation was doing new things for RTS games. It had a unique economy model and sacrificed faction diversity by instead having a staggering number of units capable of countering different kinds of threats. It's main drawback was a bland story mode.


Epic's free mystery game this week is Overcooked, a co-operative kitchen game. They've given this away previously, which is something they have been known to do at the last minute when another deal fell through. Incidentally, the previously rumored game (Ark) had an event this week that was delayed due to the protests. Fair chance that's why the deal fell through. No idea if it will return.

Supposedly next week's mystery game is already decided. Apparently some kind of Samurai Shodown NeoGeo collection has been announced for it. This may or may not be the same thing that Twitch was giving away, I don't really know.

Gog is now giving away Hitman: Absolution for a limited time. This was the last game before the most recent reboot/overhaul that returned the series to its roots. Absolution was heavily criticized for straying and becoming too much of an action game, but it's still pretty good.

This week Epic is giving away the aforementioned ARK: Survival Evolved and The Samurai Shodown thing. As their sale is now over, they are not doing mystery games anymore and are back to announcing what next week will have. Next week's games are The Escapists 2 and Pathway.

Gog is having a Dungeons and Dragons sale and the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy is free for a few days.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wool

Gog is having a Dungeons and Dragons sale and the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy is free for a few days.

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I saw this on another forum. Made me all nostalgic about playing Eye of the Beholder again. It's probably not as good as I remember, but I really loved Dungeon Master and all the games that spun off that design back then. I'm picking Eye of the Beholder up no matter what :-)

Speaking of Dungeon Master....Apart from various incomplete mods for Legend of Grimrock , does any of you happen to know of an actual remake (or close to) Dungeon Master?

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Originally Posted by Milton Finkelstein

Speaking of Dungeon Master....Apart from various incomplete mods for Legend of Grimrock , does any of you happen to know of an actual remake (or close to) Dungeon Master?

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I'm not familiar with Dungeon Master. I can name several Wizardry style dungeon crawlers if you just want something similar, but if you are looking for an update of that game specifically I can't help you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wool

I'm not familiar with Dungeon Master. I can name several Wizardry style dungeon crawlers if you just want something similar, but if you are looking for an update of that game specifically I can't help you.

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Dungeon Master has a very special place in my gaming heart, and I am mainly looking for a nostalgia trip, so I'd love to simply replay the game, but updated to run on a modern computer and preferably with improved graphics :-)

This is the best I could come up with. Fan made ports made to run on "modern" computers. I haven't checked to see if any still work, but you seem to have four options to choose from.

Dungeon Master Fan Forums - Community Creations

Rock Paper Shotgun article talking about and linking to one of the above.

Nice - Thanks for the tips!
I'll dive into those and see what I can find.

Criterion is offering a half dozen of their smaller games for free (donation to charity not required). https://criteriongames.com/game-jams/

On July 12th Ubisoft will be having an event showcasing some of their upcoming games. If you log into Uplay during the event, you will be able to redeem Watchdogs 2 for free.

Ubisoft Forward - Details

The Ubisoft servers were not able to handle the load and buckled during their stream. To make it up to anyone who was not able to log in during the promotion, they have created this page to redeem a free copy of Watchdogs 2 (if you have a Uplay account).

Ubisoft Forward Rewards

I've already mentioned this in the monthly thread, but next week on August 13th and only on August 13th, Epic is giving away the new Total War: Troy game away for free. One day only.

They are also giving Remnant: From the Ashes away from August 13th - 20th. This game is kind of a cross between Destiny and Dark Souls. Third person shooter that you can play with two other friends, collect loot, shoot monsters.

F1 2018 is currently free on humblebundle (for the next 11 hours from time of posting)

Final warning that today and today only you can get Total War Troy for free from Epic.

Another good week from Epic.

Hitman (2016) - August 27th - September 3rd, 2020
Shadowrun Collection - August 27th - September 3rd, 2020


Hitman is a sort of stealth game in which you must assassinate targets. It's unique among stealth games in it is largely about finding disguises and wearing the right one for the job. You might pose as a guard to get through a back door, then find a waiter and use that to access the kitchen so you can poison a drink. The levels are large and varied.

Shadowrun Collection contains all three of the Shadowrun strategy rpg games developed through Kickstarter. The first one is rough but they get progressively better.

I thought Shadowrun was quite new, but I suppose not as new as Total War Troy was. I'm just not used to free games being newer than...I dunno a decade or so :-D

Shadowrun is actually pretty old for Epic's standards. It's all that Fortnite money. They can afford to throw it around a little.

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Originally Posted by Wool

Shadowrun is actually pretty old for Epic's standards. It's all that Fortnite money. They can afford to throw it around a little.

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I thought they were going to need that Fortnite money now that they're wrestling with Google and Apple? :-)

I have to admit I thought it was pretty funny when Epic decides to pick a fight with Apple and Apple responds by banning Unreal Engine as a whole and not just Fortnite.

I can only imagine Epic was emboldened by the recent antitrust hearings. They don't have that much money.

Ubisoft is giving The Division away for free until September 8th.

https://register.ubisoft.com/the-division/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wool

Ubisoft is giving The Division away for free until September 8th.

https://register.ubisoft.com/the-division/

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The best thing about the Division was actually just running around in the city and looking at things. It's really well made, and is probably worth it just for that. I doubt there is much of a community left to sustain it with it being old and Division II being out and all.

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete on Epic now through October 1st.


And I agree with how amazing the city in The Division looked. Its one of the only things I actually liked about it.

I've been neglecting to check the Epic Game Store, but this month they are giving away spooky themed games for Halloween, which is something I find fun to do as well, so here you go.

We already missed a few (sorry), but the next batch are:


October 22nd - 29th, 2020

Costume Quest 2
Layers of Fear 2


October 29th - November 5th, 2020

Blair Witch
Ghost Busters: The Video Game Remastered

Epic Games Store again

Dungeons 3: November 5 - 12

It's apparently a Dungeon Keeper style game. I was set to ignore it, but the reviews on Steam seem good.

Looks like Elite Dangerous is free on the Epic Games Store November 19 - 26 for those who don't have it yet. Also The World Next Door

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Woodja

Looks like Elite Dangerous is free on the Epic Games Store November 19 - 26 for those who don't have it yet. Also The World Next Door

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I grabbed Elite Dangerous.

I have it for PS4, and bought a Hotas for it. It is defintely the best Space Sim I've played since Wing COmmander: Privateer (The reason I went looking for and got it in the first place).

ONe truly amazing game.

MY PC Now will not play it, but I am planning on a new build, and plan on doing an even greater Hotas setup when I do. Fantastic game. SO much fun.

I picked it up too. I don't know when I will make time for it (I've got sooo many games on here now), but I've seen enough praise from you guys for it to deserve my attention.

Next set of games on Epic look good (if you haven't already picked them up) - 10 - 17 Dec 20 Pillars of Eternity (Definitive Edition) and Tyranny (Gold Edition)

I agree. Anyone who likes crpgs and hasn't tried these yet should. I was personally disappointed with Tyranny but really liked Pillars of Eternity.

Epic Games 15 days of Holiday Free Games:

Cities: Skylines base game (until 12/18)

A few fake leaks of the games for each day have been going around, but one of the supposed leaks has been right several days in a row now so I'll go ahead and share it. If a game ends up being wrong I'll edit this post. Via reddit:

• December 17 - Cities Skylines
• December 18 - Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• December 19 - The Long Dark
• December 20 - Defense Grid: The Awakening
• December 21 - Alien Isolation
• December 22 - Metro 2033
• December 23 - Tropico 5
• December 24 - Inside
• December 25 - Darkest Dungeon
• December 26 - My Time in Portia
• December 27 - Night in The Woods
• December 28 - Stranded Deep
• December 29 - Solitairica
• December 30 - Torchlight 2
• December 31 - Jurassic World Evolution

There is also always the chance one game drops out and gets replaced with something else, but these are all small and/or old enough games that I don't think it's likely.

Most of these I already have, but I missed Inside last time they gave it away and have been eyeing Jurassic World Evolution for awhile. Of the ones I played Darkest Dungeon was the best.

Free Epic Game Store game this week is Crying Suns, a sci-fi rogue-lite* strategy game that is supposedly inspired by Dune and Foundation.

*rogue games are games in which you are expected to fail and then try again from the beginning, like FTL. Rogue-likes tend to be more hardcore and make you start over from scratch, rogue-lites tend to be more forgiving and have a progression system that does not reset.


Next week they are giving away Star Wars Battlefront II. Personal opinion: the single player campaign was kind of trash and incredibly disappointing. The multiplayer eventually became very popular once EA got shamed out of the constant loot boxes and microtransactions, I believe.


Crying Suns : Jan. 7 - Jan. 14
Star Wars Battlefront II : Jan. 14 - Jan. 21

Epic is on a sci-fi kick this month. Star Wars is live; next week's free game is Galactic Civilizations III, a grand strategy 4X space game. Exploring, colonizing worlds, etc.

Galactic Civilizations III: Jan. 21 to Jan. 28

For some reason Epic added Metro Last Light Redux to their free game lineup this week. The offer ends on February 11.

Epic

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition - Feb 11-18
For the King - Feb 11-18

Rage 2 - Feb 18-25
Absolute Drift: Zen Edition - Feb 18-25



Halcyon 6 is an indie space strategy/rpg game with sprite based graphics. Rage 2 is an open world shooter that is apparently only fun for a couple of hours, then overstays its welcome.

Black Desert Online is "free" on Steam until March 10th. The game is usually only $10 and heavily monetized with a various assortment of microtransactions, which you still have to pay for. You could always just mess with the character creator and leave the rest alone, if you have that itch.

The Epic game this week is Sunless Sea, a roguelike about exploring oceans and trying to make it back to port in a kind of lovecraftian horror world.

Ratchet & Clank is currently free on the PS4 (via the Playstation website) as part of their Play at Home campaign - free to download/keep until 1 Apr21. May be more titles available with this campaign over the next few months

Ratchet and Clank promotion is ending soon. I didn't like it as much as the PS3 ones but it's still worth playing.

I'm not sure why they have this big initiative now, but they are continuing the free games thing for a few more months. The next big one is going to be Horizon: Zero Dawn but there are several others being offered as well.

Starting March 25th:

Abzu
Enter the Gungeon
Rez Infinite
Subnautica
The Witness
Astro Bot Rescue Mission
Moss
Thumper
Paper Beasts

April 19th:

Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition

Epic Game Store is doing another one of their coupon sales. To coincide with the sale the next few free games are mystery games that will not be revealed until their offer is live. Last year they gave away GTA5 during a similar promotion.

The first free mystery game is NBA2K21.

The free Epic mystery game this week is Among Us. A popular game that usually goes for $5 on PC and is free on mobile. Sure why not.

Among Us has been really popular with streamers, and it was the game that AOC played when she did the charity stream a short time back.

This week's free "mystery game" on Epic is Frostpunk. A kind of strategy game about managing one of the last human settlements after the world freezes over. I didn't like it as much as I thoguht it would but its still a neat game if you like the setting or genre.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

Among Us has been really popular with streamers, and it was the game that AOC played when she did the charity stream a short time back.

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I think it's star has fallen a bit, but yeah this game blew up pretty big for awhile.

I bought Frostpunk when it came out, and for a free game, I would definitely grab it.
It's not the best game I ever played, but I liked it enough to play through the base campaign, and I felt I got my moneys worth, even if I haven't been back playing some of the other added content.

Epic's last free mystery game is Control from Remedy. The game takes place inside the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, an agency tasked with cataloguing and securing oddities and mysteries. It plays like a third person shooter with special powers and is generally pretty good.

Next week's free games include Overcooked 2, a fun and high tension cooking game. It's designed with co-op in mind, but I had fun with it in single player as well.

Reminder that Overcooked 2 is free this week on Epic.

Next week they are giving Sonic Mania away. This is a classic 2D callback made by a team of fans that ended up being more faithful and better received than the games Sega itself has been making.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is free on the Epic Game Store from August 5 - August 12.

I've mentioned it a few times in other threads. It's about a girl trying to protect her brother and escape Inquisition soldiers during the bubonic plague in France. It's real good.

Epic Game Store

Rebel Galaxy - Now - August 19
Void Bastards - August 19 - August 26
Yooka-Laylee - August 19 - August 26


I've talked about Rebel Galaxy before. It's a space sim with a more casual pace/scale. It's also unique in that combat plays out like a naval sim instead of having complete 3D movement in space. Line up for broadsides and all that.

Void Bastards is a roguelike first person shooter. Roguelikes being the genre in which after you die you restart a new run and the better you do the more stuff you unlock for your next attempt. It's also got elements of FTL, as you are stranded in space and have to play a risk vs reward game of acquiring new resources to advance. Don't sleep on it, it's good.

Yooka-Laylee is one of the more infamous kickstarters. This was meant to be kind of a spiritual successor to the Banjo Kazooie 3D action platformer games but was not received very well.

Epic Game Store

Nioh: The Complete Collection - Now - September 16
Sheltered - Now - September 16
Speed Brawl - September 16 - September 23
Tharsis - September 16 - September 23


This bump is courtesy of Nioh. I talk this game up a lot whenever a new version comes out. It's a little hard to sum up concisely as it borrows systems from several other games. The oversimplification is to call it Japanese Dark Souls, but I don't think this is really that accurate.

Japanese historical setting. You drop your experience if you die without spending it like in Dark Souls. Unlike Dark Souls there is no open world, but instead a series of missions that you eventually replay on harder difficulties. It has a similarly methodical pace to combat, but feels like its own thing (to me). There are a set number of weapon types with their own movesets, and on top of that you can switch between high, medium, and low stances. Loot system like in the various Destiny type games.

Look, I don't know how to sell it, but it's very good. If you like difficult action/rpgs then you should get this game.


Tharsis is kind of neat too. I don't remember if I liked it or not but I was glad to play it. It's kind of a astronaut space station game where things constantly go wrong and you have to roll dice to see if you succeed in fixing things. Been awhile since I played it.

What's this? An update that isn't for something on the Epic Game Store?

Amazon Prime Gaming (Twitch) gives away free junk for popular online games and sometimes gives away free games themselves. They've got three standouts next month.

Control
Dragon Age Inquisition
Rise of the Tomb Raider

And another non Epic freebie - Ubisoft have Assassin's Creed Chronicles Trilogy for free as part of their 35th anniversary sale at https://register.ubisoft.com/ac-chronicles/en-GB

Steam and GOG have Steamworld Dig 2 for free as well until Nov 11. On top of that the entire franchise seems to be on sale for 60-80% off. Steamworld Dig is a platformer where you control a robot miner/adventurer. You upgrade your abilities and such by mining gems and such. Other games in the franchise include a turn based tactics/strategy game and a card based rpg.


Meanwhile back at Epic: The Tiny Tina Borderlands DLC that was the progenitor of the upcoming fantasy Borderlands game has been spun off as a stand alone title being sold for $10, but it's free on Epic until November 16. I don't know how well it holds up, but this was one of the more fun and creative DLCs for Borderlands 2.

Both GoG and Epic Game Store will be giving away free daily games this year. GoG has already started and today's game is Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. I believe it's a turn based strategy but I haven't played it.

I think Epic's starts next week. It is currently giving Prison Architect and Godfall away as part of their weekly free games.