ToeJam & Earl: Back In The Groove Is Free On Epic

Monday, Pirates returned Alabasta which is what I thought the bust of Lucious Septimius Severus in Rome was made of, and the last of the 13th Doctor’s run got the predictable airdate (David wished really hard for his birthday). Tuesday, nothing happened because again gaming news is about as dead as my hopes of being a male model. Wednesday, apparently Cuphead is getting a collector’s edition, you’ll finally have the chance to ranch some Kaiju soon, and Back 4 Blood nil Left 4 Dead three is to get an update this month. Thursday, it was announced that Cyberpunk 2077 was to get a book expanding the world, and Triangle Strategy was finally released on PC.

Moving onto this week’s free games on the Epic Games Store, and yes, despite my hopes being lifted of keeping it light this week, it is a double-bill once again. We’ll start with the surprise open-ended top-down horror game, Darkwood. Released back in 2017, the survival horror gained quite a bit of praise for being on the edges of that Rogue-like/lite thing while also being horror. A fantastic bit of atmospheric horror, but I feel after long enough you’ll notice patterns and be able to preempt a few of those scares.

Now for the nostalgia circus. Released in 2019, the fourth release in the series of 90s adventure games, ToeJam & Earl: Back In The Groove much like the recently released Return to Monkey Island has trouble moving on and improving on the 90s games that rose-tinted specs tell you were perfection itself. As colorful and strange as ever, though with modern models and lighting work, fans of the series will enjoy it more than this coffin-dodging grumpy old man bemoaning the inability to move on and provide something new or interesting.

All this week you can pick up Darkwood and ToeJam & Earl: Back In The Groove on the Epic Games Store until the 20th of October. Moving on to next week and it is a strange one, so we’ll start with Evoland Legendary Edition, the enhanced edition of both Evoland and Evoland 2, which is Diablo, Zelda, and Final Fantasy rolled into one. I think I can hear Alexx standing erect to attention. So the second part of that double-bill is another enhanced edition and one I made reference to when talking about Prime Gaming this month, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition. I wonder which game I’ll have more praise for.