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Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, Kingdom New Lands Free On Epic Games Store
Just in time for All Hallows' Eve, The Epic Games Store is giving away the spooky Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and the frightfully fun Kingdom New Lands for free. It's been expected of the Epic Games Store to offer appropriately spooky games around October, as players received access to Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Layers of Fear, and Costume Quest last year. This year's October offerings were less seasonally appropriate, as there's nothing particularly creepy about Pikuniku, Abzu, or Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. However, for the last few weeks of the Halloween season, the storefront is more than making up for it.
The Epic Games Store launched in December of 2018, so it's just two months shy of its second anniversary. While it may still lack features compared to the competition (including a shopping cart), the announcement of new exclusive games has seemingly stopped spawning fervor among large swaths of the gaming public. The announcements have also become less frequent, which is possibly due to the launch of new consoles in November or the state of the world delaying announcements and game development all at once. In any case, Epic has vowed to continue distributing free games until the end of 2020. After that, the greatest scare of all could be the trickle of free delights shutting down forever.
For now, Epic Games Store players have two new games to claim until this coming Thursday. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is the more seasonal of the two. A side-sequel to the classic Amnesia: The Dark Descent, this horror-themed walking simulator from The Chinese Room first released in September of 2013. Although it hit the same atmospheric notes as the first game, it was enough of a departure from that game to get mixed reviews from critics at the time. Players on the Epic Store can see for themselves this week as they wait for Amnesia: Rebirth's release this coming Monday.
Less creepy but more critically acclaimed is Kingdom: New Lands, the second free game available this week to Epic players. Published by Raw Fury, this two man kingdom building simulation first released in August 2016, itself a remake of an earlier PC release. The game is well known for its distinctive pixel art style, something that shines less in 2020 than it did at the time of launch. Still, the game is a classic, and there's a sequel available if players end up diving into this one headfirst.
The free games program on the Epic Games Store has been incredibly generous over its almost two year run, and one wonders if there will be another extenstion come 2021. Any plans to replace it with something else may have been put on the backburner due to these uncertain times, but Epic also isn't interested in running giveaways for the entire life of its storefront. On the other hand, the money from Fortnite and Rocket League combined will flow for a long while, so they could keep things going if they were so inclined. Considering that players who were on the ball enough to press a few buttons every week have hundreds of games in their backlog now, it will be hard to complain either way.
