One of the best things about the Epic Games Store is that each week they give away at least 1 free game. In the past, these have ranged from smaller indie titles such as Celeste, to AAA blockbusters including GTA V, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Watch Dogs 2. Ahead of their release next week, Epic Games has revealed what will be given away next.
2 games will be given away next week
This week players can download Rebel Galaxy, a small indie RPG space game, which has garnered an 85% positive rating on Steam. Rebel Galaxy will be available for players to download until August 19th before the next free games cycle in. Between August 19th and 26th, gamers will be able to claim and download Yooka-Laylee and Void Bastards. Fans of the N64 or classic Rare titles will likely have heard of Yooka-Laylee, the game is the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, an N64 Rare title released in 1998. In 2015, a group of former Rare employees opened a new studio called Playtonic Games, smashing their Kickstarter goal of £175,000 by raising over £2 million to help develop a Banjo-Kazooie successor titled Yooka-Laylee.
The Banjo-Kazooie series saw 2 games released on the N64 before Microsoft acquired the studio to make them an Xbox exclusive developer. A third entry was due to be developed but was ultimately cancelled. We did get a new Banjo-Kazooie game exclusively on the Xbox 360 in 2008, but it wasn’t very well received by fans and the series has seemingly been abandoned ever since. The Banjo-Kazooie duo did make an appearance as playable characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which gives us some hope that we could see the pair reunite for a new game in the future.
Yooka-Laylee was released in 2017, giving players a Banjo-Kazooie style gameplay experience with modern updates and graphics. The studio also released a 2.5D spinoff in 2019, which did have some resemblance to Donkey Kong Country, another series developed by Rare in the 90s. Here is some more information on the games.
Void Bastards
“Forget everything you know about first-person shooters: Void Bastards asks you to take charge, not just point your gun and fire. Your task is to lead the rag-tag Void Bastards out of the Sargasso Nebula. You make the decisions: where to go, what to do and who to fight. And then you must carry out that strategy in the face of strange and terrible enemies.”
Yooka-Laylee
“Explore huge, beautiful worlds, meet (and beat) an unforgettable cast of characters and horde a vault-load of shiny collectibles as buddy-duo Yooka (the green one) and Laylee (the wisecracking bat with the big nose) embark on an epic adventure to thwart corporate creep Capital B and his devious scheme to absorb all the world’s books… and convert them into pure profit!
Using their arsenal of special moves, our heroes will tackle a huge variety of puzzles and platforming challenges in their search for Pagies, the golden bounty used to unlock — and expand — stunning new worlds, each jammed to the gills with oddball characters, hulking bosses, minecart challenges, arcade games, quiz shows, multiplayer games… and much more!”
Both games will become available to download for free on Epic Games Store on Thursday, August 19th at 11 am EST/4 pm BST and will be available until the same time the following week.
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