Total War: Shogun 2 will be free for keeps next week

Another game giveaway joins the fray amidst the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, imploring you to stay home and do your warring indoors. You can have as many strategic samurai battles as you like if you grab Total War: Shogun 2 next week while it's free for keepsies. Some other Total War games will join it on the front line, going on sale for a week instead of entirely free.

"We want to continue to encourage you all to stay home and save lives by extending a gift to everyone to help make this difficult situation a little bit easier," say Total War devs Creative Assembly while they're also working from home.

Why the heck would you stay home to play a nine year old war game? Well it's one of the best strategy games on PC by RPS's count, for one. What decade old game were you going to play instead? Skyrim? Nah, not this time, Nords.

"The AI is well-tuned on both the strategic map and on the tactical battlefields (not always the case in Total War)," says the RPS hivemind. "The campaign is paced with shrewd finesse: if you throw your weight around too much, the Shogun himself will paint a target on your head, and everyone will come at you like estate agents after a plate full of money."

"Thanks to this built-in tipping point, progression is a matter of careful calculation and time-biding rather than a wild land grab, and political thinking is just as important as good generalship."

Creative Assembly are also running a sale on other total warring games from next Monday, April 27th to May 4th including "selected historical Total War games and DLC." Three Kingdoms, Rome, and Warhammer are not on the list, they say, in case you had your eye on 'em.

Shogun 2 is free to keep from Monday, April 27th at 18:00 BST to Friday, May 1st at 18:00 BST. After that, it'll be added to the rest of the Total War sale at a 75% discount until May 4th also until 18:00 BST.

You can find Total War: Shogun 2 on Steam, though maybe wait until Monday, right?