Free PC game and free weekend notification thread

its a good game…tried to be the new burnout back in the day

This week on epic it’s Dakar Desert Rally.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/dakar-desert-rally

Next week they seem to be Fallout based: Fallout 2, Tactics and A post nuclear RPG.

It appears that Epic have now dropped the Fallout games from the list (I am fine with this, they appear to be in my games list already, so probably part of a christmas multi game giveaway), and now has Super Meat boy forever down as it’s next game this thursday. I think that one is new.

The original Star Control 2 is available for free on Steam, under the name “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.” It appears to be the fan-made modded open-source version of the game based on the 3DO port of the game.

I’ve been playing it for the last hour or so. Still every bit as fun as I remember from the 90s.

I loved Star Control. I re-played it a couple years ago and old me had some trouble with the ship combat. I’ve gotten slower in my old age. Still a lot of fun though.

It’s also been free (and legal) for the last 20 years or so as the The Urquan Masters.

Although, on my most recent playthrough back in December, some of the story beats didn’t trigger properly so I ended up not being able to advance the story. Maybe the steam one works better.

Today on Epic:

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/super-meat-boy-forever

Coming Feb 29:

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/aerial-knights-never-yield

Deceive Inc. is having a free weekend on steam

This is actually one of my favorite games now and we play it all the time. The premise is that you’re in a sort of 70s James Bond style spy movie where 10 players are all trying to infiltrate a vault and extract a secret package. You can disguise yourself as the NPCs and blend into the crowd, pretending to be a civilian or part of the staff or security. So you’re trying to blend into the crowd while doing your objectives while also trying to figure out who the other players are while they do the same thing. I love that sort of hidden identity/spot the secret type gameplay.

I haven’t run SDMB gaming group / events in a long time but give the game a try and if you want to play with us (we run private games from time to time) hit me up on steam. Profile name is the same as my name on this board.

Space Crew: Legendary Edition is free on Steam (Claim by March 13th)

Free Today on GOG:

Note that Nomads of Driftland (the base game) is free on GOG (always free from what I can tell).

So if you grab this add-on, grab the base game too if it isn’t in your library already.

Epic’s freebie this week is Astro Duel 2.

Oooh! Next week’s Epic free game is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

I would heartily recommend that to anyone who enjoys games like it. I won’t say it is the best ever but it is good fun and, for free, definitely worth the download IMO.

I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution was better but this is still pretty good.

(No need to play Human Revolution first)

Agreed on all points. I’ve played both.

I wonder if they’re ever going to bring the Human Revolution/Mankind Divided timeline up to the point where the first game started. (Since the newest games are kind of prequels to the original.)

Not free, but really cheap for what you’re getting, especially if you compare the price to what they’re selling on Steam for collectively.

what was the original elder scrolls game? it never gets mentioned really

Elder Scrolls: Arena was the first game (1994) despite being listed after Daggerfall (1996) on the store page

ahh k i always thought it was the 3rd or so

Arena for sure, though I think Daggerfall and Morrowind evolved it into what we know today. When Morrowind came out, it felt like the first game in the series to me.

Fun fact; “Arena” was meant to be a game where you create a gladiator team and move from coliseum to coliseum, climbing the ranks to become champion. Hence why the central part of the game world is based on the Roman Empire. They added side quests and those became so interesting that they abandoned the whole concept of being an arena fighter and changed to an open world RPG.

Unfortunately, they already had the name in promotional materials and such, so they kept it and had a retcon to explain that “arena” was a metaphor for how cutthroat the world was.

That’s because the first two games were procedurally-generated worlds, they each involved a core quest and a bunch of random side quests as fillers (which were extremely repetitive). Morrowind was the first game to have everything fleshed out and planned rather than most of the content being a randomly-generated “go to this cave and kill 10 bats and come back” quest over and over again.

Arena and Daggerfall were massively groundbreaking games for their day, they were real pioneers for the genre. But they are painful to play for anyone spoiled by the decades of game design improvements since then in CRPGs. Morrowind, on the other hand, is a classic that still holds up even today, and every subsequent entry in the Elder Scrolls series has built off the formula they created for that game.