I just can’t decide, I have the option of both (links contains explicit language) “guess who’s back, back again,” and “I’m back! and better than ever.” Yes, after a three-week hiatus where we had to move to Twitter to keep up with Epic’s neverending barrage of free games on the Epic Games Store, we’re back.

This week’s free game is Thunder Lotus’ Metroidvania Sundered Eldritch Edition. You might remember a few weeks ago when we covered their first game and child-friendly Souls-like, Jotun. So, of course, you can expect a very gorgeous and detailed art style for a 2D platforming world that is as brutal as it is locked off. Getting to the first point of interest was hard enough when half of hell’s battalion of sodomy experts burst out of every corner.

I’ll admit, the Metroidvania thing passed me over. I was too entertained with whatever an anthropomorphized bandicoot was doing wearing pants than what Alucard was up to. Then Metroid Prime didn’t release until 2003 in Japan, Europe, and Australia. My knowledge of those are more deep-seated in playing something the rhymes with “Lark Bowls,” Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, SteamWorld Dig 2, and Guacamelee! I remember two of them doing this one thing that really annoys me about these types of games. Why do the flying ones get to go out of my range?

You might as well throw up a sign saying, I hate the player and I’m going to keep these flying gits out of their range for as long as possible. I’ve said before that I like to run in middling difficulties if I can, for the most part, that’s where the game is designed to be played in most cases. Yet when those doors open to hell and the battalion bound out like a pack of Great Danes hearing “walkies!” I might as well become French and wave a white flag. It is not impossible, it is just dull with a one-button combat system and waves of what seems like infinity respawning enemies of two or three kinds taking you from behind.

Exploration, on the other hand, is a bit of a handful. It is more fleshed out than the few minutes of combat I’ve been able to play for this article, but varies in the worst possible way so far. I have to highlight “so far,” as I only have about two or three hours to play before I need to write these articles. With that, the keys through the areas are defined by the screen filter portrayed by the lighting. For example, the first proper key is in the purple area. However, it was the same as the area before it. The map didn’t help differentiate much either.

As a whole, Sundered: Eldritch Edition is another example of taking something established like those Jotun were following and making them simple. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but sometimes these entry-level examples of a genre help get someone to go deeper. Hollow Knight was this for me when I wanted to get into Dark Souls and its ilk. Sundered Eldritch Edition is free on the Epic Games store until the morning of the 16th of January.

On the 16th Sundered will be replaced with Horace, a charming game. You will notice that I’m not using my usual phrase from something that’s indie and a platformer, and that is “little.” It isn’t a little game by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, and as a 14th-century poet once said, “People can die of mere imagination” before he died for imagining that thought. According to the word of those I know that have played it, it goes on and on. Laboriously stretching on for quite some time for being a 2D retro platformer.

However, if you’re looking for something that is also free but not on Epic, you can pick up Headsnatchers which is free on HumbleBundle.com right now. It is a small party game focused around sports that is about as Japanese as a game show focused round means of egress to a residence owned by Takeshi Kitano. Yes, that is a joke about Takeshi’s Castle. You can pick up Headsnatchers either until humble runs out of codes or until the limited time of January 12th at 10 AM PST. You will have to sign up for the Humble Bundle newsletter.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.