Three Free Games On Epic This Week

Monday, Ubisoft set out a roadmap for a boring game, I spoke about something Wholesome, and one of my favorite indie games came to Xbox and PlayStation this week. Tuesday, Halo Infinite did that thing that was rumored for long enough, and David spoke about the upcoming 17th anniversary of WoW. Wednesday, it was announced a mobile game is getting a PC-centric sequel, Dragon Ball is spreading its legs to get into a trend from a few years ago, and Koei Tecmo revealed exactly what you think Koei Tecmo would reveal, more details on a JRPG.

Well, I won’t mince words here, I hope that Epic has something big going on during the Christmas-New Year period because it is beginning to look at a lot like Droughtmas. All the big releases for the year have come out already. Because of that, Epic is relying on Indie games that might not be as exciting to people as some bigger AAA offerings, and I just want to take a two-week-long sleep. This week’s free games, if you can call some of them that, is what someone being nice would call eclectic. No, my library of books is eclectic, this is like Doctor Who: Flux, a bloody mess.

Let’s start with the Radiohead-connected horror walking-sim art thing, and if you think that was clunky, just wait for the title: Kid A Mnesia Exhibition. You know how small indie devs create what is often styled as subversive, but is actually a creative and nice way of saying head-ache inducing? That is was the design doc for this single-player first-person escapade through the nonsense that is typical for this type of thing. If you are a fan of Radiohead, particularly their two albums from 2000 and 2001, you’ll enjoy something as complex as a blank piece of paper.

Moving alone, Never Alone is a keep moving right, child in a harsh world, adventure thing that is often an analog for something traumatic. See Gris and everything since the release of Playdead’s Limbo and Inside. FAR: Lone Sails is a better example of those types of games because it actually had some gameplay but was similar in theme. Look, I get it, the art teams over at Upper One Games and E-Line Media knew how to make a small child in a fluffy coat look cute and innocent, though I hate to say it, I don’t care.

Finally, the winner for the most obvious turn of events, Guild of Dungeoneering is actually a game and thus it wins my praise this week. A bit like Loop Hero from earlier this year, though on a smaller scale, you are building out the world as you explore it and fight battles. Unlike the indie highlight of earlier this year, you are selecting the attacks and defense you take within the turn-based combat. Yeah, it is an actual game and I do like that, but the Bastion-like music talking about the actions within the game is both lower quality in terms of what it is doing and definable quality. I can hear just how compressed the bard’s voice is in-game and it pulls me out of what it is trying to do.

All this week until the morning of November 25th, you can pick up Guild of Dungeoneering, Kid A Mnesia, and Never Alone for free on the Epic Games Store. Next week is another strange one, if the thing about droughtmas wasn’t enough of a hint on that one, you’ll be able to pick up the Epic Welcome Pack (1090 in-game coins) for the live-service arcade system, Antstream. Alongside Duck Hunt – 2017, otherwise known as theHunter: Call of the Wild [sic].