Mutant Year Zero and Hyper Light Drifter free on Epic Games Store

Another week, another free game on the Epic Games Store - two, even. Until next Thursday you can grab the tip-top tactical action of Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden and the top-down zip-zoom explore-o-action of Hyper Light Drifter for free. MYZ is a wild freebie, both because it came out less than one year ago and because it's chuffing lovely. Our former Alec (RPS in peace) proffered plenty of praise in his Mutant Year Zero review but I, a fool, did not heed his wisdom until a demo came along this year to show me oh yep, it is great. Now you can see that in full for free. Don't be as daft as me.

Alec was jolly pleased with Mutant Year Zero's whole dealio, and especially with how it handled stealth in real-time. He said:

"What a glorious thing it is to slowly, painstakingly, silently transform an area patrolled by half a dozen rock-hard baddies into one that's just got one or two suddenly highly vulnerable guys left standing. Even more glorious is bungling an assassination, winding up in a thousand-degree frying pan as a result, and somehow surviving it. Your squad have/can unlock special abilities that enable you to regain control of a chaotic situation, but it's always seat of the pants stuff, shamelessly challenging and with tall demands on your patience and precision. It's the closest I've known a turn-based strategy game to feel like Dishonored or Hitman – making Mutant Year Zero a beautiful collision of gaming things I love."

So it's wild that it's free already. Perhaps launching an expansion a fortnight ago has something to do with that.

Get MYZ over here.

Hyper Light Drifter found far less of a fan in our former John (RPS in pieces). He gave up in frustration while reviewing it, then walked that back a bit (but only a bit) with a mea culpa saying the game "is beautiful, slightly poorly laid out, annoying, occasionally glorious, confused, and controlled wonderfully." Given some of the praise I've heard from people who did click with it, yeah gwan!

Yoink HLD this-a-way.

As ever, you'll need an Epic account to claim the games and their Launcher software to download 'em. You have until Thursday the 22nd to grab these, when Fez will replace them as the freebie.

Disclosure: Teddy Diefenbach, who worked on Hyper Light Drifter, is a pal of my former flatmate and I thinkkk once crashed in our spare room for a week or two? Or did I just tag along on excursions while he was in the city? I do not remember. Did we do a ghost walk? For a while I tried to make everyone go on ghost walks. I've walked enough ghost walks to get recognised by one of the guides. I adore ghost walks.