Epic's big Christmas giveaway is running
If you’re into PC games, you’ll know that Epic Games Store, a sort of smaller competitor to Steam, gives away a free game every week. But it goes overdrive around Christmas, as these games are cycled daily during the holidays. And it’s the same this year, with Epic now giving away 16 different games until January, which you can get completely free of charge. The event has started, and each opportunity is only open for 24 hours.
Note: We are updating this article daily with newly added games. The latest update is at the end.
This isn’t a totally new hting, but if you weren’t familiar with this event, it’s worth pointing out. While there are some people disliking Epic strongly (Steam ultras?), these events are probably the best way to save money on games there is. There are barely any requirements put on you, besides having to create an account on the Epic Games Store, then all you have to do is click a button in the store during the event. You don’t even have to ever actually buy a game in the store, or sign up for any trial subscriptions, nothing.
You don’t even need to install the platform’s own launcher, you’ll have to do that only when you want to install something from your library (true, sometimes the game requires registration on another platform, like EA, but this is more of an exception). If you, say, want to eventually get your kids a computer to game on, you can start collecting games for them in this way in advance.
Much of these Epic offers are, as you might expect, indie games that you might not otherwise be interested in (though those can be surprise finds sometimes, perhaps). But Epic also quite often gives away well-known and attractive games for free, including so-called “AAA” big hitters and games that are generally worth trying (this year, for example, Dragon Age Inquisition with all the expansions was up for grabs). During the Christmas event, there might be more of just such games to be had than usual.
The event started yesterday at 17:00 and each game will only be offered for free for 24 hours, until 17:00 (Central European Time, 4:00 PM UTC) the next day when it will be replaced by something else. As for what the next game will be, Epic isn’t saying in advance during Christmas. If you really want to be an epic freeloader (welcome to the club with the author of these lines) and scoop up everything, you need to open the store’s website and get your free service every day during the event. The Christmas sale, of which this is a part, should end on January 9 (but the last part of it will probably be a week-long giveaway instead of a day-long one, just like it was the first week of the sale from 12/12). After that the games will start being given away normally on a weekly basis again.
December 19: Vampire Survivors
The first title you can get is one of those indie games – the roguelike game Vampire Survivors (page in the store), where you control a vampire in a barrage of different projectiles and enemies filling the screen in the manner of so-called danmaku (aka “bullet hell” shooter) games.
So we are still waiting for the first big haul of a major game (and one more expensive should you be paying for it the normal way). All in all, this daily series should deliver 16 different games, so hopefully something nice will come along. Actually, the first title may have been Return to Moria from the Lord of the Rings world, which was in the giveaway from 12th until 19th, so without that offer it’ll be 15 pieces.
December 20: Astrea
The second game to be given away seems to be a smaller indie thing as well. In the venture, called Astrea: Six Sided Oracles, you control a white mage in battles based on a mix of card mechanics and dice rolls, which come in all sorts of different types and can be mixed and matched in customized ways (like with a deck of cards).
December 21: TerraTech
The third game is again an indie title. It looks a bit like a mix of Micro Machines and Minecraft, an open-world sandbox game where you build all sorts of vehicles out of various components and blocks to explore the game world and battle it out.
December 22: Wizard of Legend
For the fourth giveaway, you’ll get get Wizard of Legend, an indie top-down rogue-like beatemup game (also an indie).
December 23: Dark and Darker – Legendary Status
This giveaway is a bit more complicated. It basically gives you premium membership for the Dark and Darker game, which is a free-to-play survival dungeon crawler game. You can’t pick up this item on its own since you have to activate the base Dark and Darker game first. It’s free though so that is not a huge problem (after that the giveaway works as usual). The Legendary Status basically makes you a paying player for free.
December 24: Dredge
For Christmas Eve (which is not the Holiday’s main day in the USA, UK and other parts of the world, as opposed to our continental Europe tradition), Epic is giving away Dredge, which is a mix of fishing and mystery adventure game.
December 25: Control
For the 25th (the Christmas Day in USA and other places that are not celebrating and gift-giving on Christmas Eve), we have the first giveaway of a big AAA title, the well-known Control. This game has been given away by Epic before though, so the giveaway regulars will have it in their library already.
December 26: Ghostrunner 2
Today Epic is giving away Ghostrunner 2, another bigger title that has not been in a giveaway before this. The authors call the game a FPS slasher (not a shooter since the game pits you in close-quarters combat).
December 27: Hot Wheels Unleashed
On friday, Epic is giving away Hot Wheels Unleashed, action racing game featuring the titular toy cars.
December 28: Hot Wheels Unleashed
Today you’ll get another more indie-ish game, the top-down action game Kill Knight, which draws inspiration from arcade games like Gauntlet (or if anybody remembers Get Medieval, the later humorous take on the genre).
December 29 – Orcs Must Die! 3
Today Epic gives away the third instalment of the series of tower defense games Orcs Must Die.
Update – December 30 – [REDACTED]
The game given away today is another isometric action rogue-like game, called [REDACTED].
December 31 – Sifu
On the New Year’s Eve, Epic is giving away the martial arts action game Sifu.
January 1 – Kingdom Come: Deliverance
What is likely to be the penultimate giveaway is here, and as part of it, Epic offers you free Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the action RPG set in medieval Bohemia setting (including all the period weapon combat stuff) and arguably another big game. It’s not the first time it’s in Epic’s giveaways though, so you may have it in your library already.
The developer is now preparing the release of the sequel Kingdom Come II, so this may be an intentional promo get new players to know the first game before the second hits the market.
Update – January 2 to 9 – Kingdom Come: Deliverance
We have reached the end of the Holiday giveaways with the 15th game, which is the WW2 era shooting game Hell Let Loose from Team17, game supporting massive 50vs50 fights. Here is the store page.
This giveaway will actually be available during the whole week that is left from Epic Store’s winter sale. After it, the regular giveaways should continue with the usual weekly periodicity.
Source: Epic Games Store
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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