Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms Free* On Epic

By Monday, It Takes Two had sold 1-million copies. Tuesday, a leaked EA document showed they want to sell you loot boxes, and Mike spent the weekend at a virtual convention. Wednesday, the Steam Summer Sale dates leaked and you can play another Mario game online. Thursday, that irrelevant upstart company, Google, and their gaming platform Stadia got a search function… 16 months after launch. Also on Thursday, Alexx spoke about Lost Words: Beyond the Page‘s accolade trailer.

Onto the Epic Games Store and the “free” tripe that is available this week. Thanks, Epic, this is a great birthday gift for Saturday. It is all I’ve ever wanted, absolutely nothing of value whatsoever! Ok, yes I’ve got myself up in a twist over what is available for free today because it is just microtransaction prattle that is artificially given value because money people are horrible little cretins. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is a free-to-play idle D&D game that looks like it belongs on your mobile phone or tablet.

From the little bit of gameplay that I’ve even bothered to look up, because I’m not playing this at all, it is very much the reason I don’t understand idle games. The point of video games is that they are an interactive medium, so telling me I’ve got nothing to really do isn’t advertising your game well to me. Then you make it free-to-play, put it on the Epic Games Store, and pretend that you’ve added $100 of value because for one week only, you are including all the microtransactions for free? The value is imposed, so you might as well just say it is a million dollars of value.

Remember a few weeks ago, back when 3 out of 10‘s second season became available in Epic’s “free game every week” section? Well, two weeks prior to that I was talking about how I was starting to get a little dejected by the dip in interesting games Epic was offering. 3 out of 10 is a great example of this, as not only is the first season a shallow attempt at comedy but the second is as well. So, the question is, why was it the big “free game every week” thing when it is currently free? Why is Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms here at all this week?

It is already a free game, if you can enjoy it without microtransactions. So it shouldn’t be here as the big single that is meant to make you bow in the direction of Carolinas and thank Tim Sweeney. If anything, last week should have just been Hand of Fate 2 alone and bump Alien: Isolation so there is something of actual value to this week’s offering. I mean, it is kind of telling that the hype mongers of places like IGN, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, Polygon, and so on, aren’t talking about this. Even they know it is of no proper value.

Anyway, if you want you can pick up the “$100 of value” to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, available until May the 6th. Next week I’ll be talking about Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild, and Minecraft rolled up into one, as Pine looks to be an indie attempt at doing all three.