Both Styx games are free on Epic

Monday, Amazon did that monthly thing with its new name that I still hate because the bald man who owns the company has an inferiority complex, so he needs all the money ever. While Humble Bundle just trundles along as is. Tuesday, 80 Days developer Inkle has a new game called TR-49 that is releasing just this month. Wednesday, Star Trek Voyager – Across the Unknown might also let you turn into a sex lizard, but Shadows of Doubt has Workshop support, so you can be a rat detective with better coffee now.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store, Tim Sweeney needs to give his head a wobble.

I need to quickly say this before we talk about the free games this week, but Epic CEO Tim Sweeney came out in defence of that AI thing on Elon’s hive of scum and villainy, Grok, after it had (upon request) produced explicit images of women and, most importantly, explicit images of children. It doesn’t matter that he did it under the guise of blaming “crony capitalism” – any company that has and actively continues to produce child pornography should (metaphorically) be smacked about. Anyone defending it should also pass “Go” without collecting $200 because they are going to prison, where they belong with the rest of the pedophiles.

Onto the games, and I’ll be quick here, mostly because it is a double-bill. This week’s offerings are Styx: Master of Shadows and Styx: Shards of Darkness – Deluxe Edition. Released in 2014 and 2017, respectively, the Styx games are stealth game prequels (at least the first is) of the 2012 action-RPG Of Orcs and Men, all three developed by French studio Cyanide. Though the studio has made some splash with the likes of the Blood Bowl series, Call of Cthulhu, and subsidiary games like Hell is US, Cyanide’s games are those double-A eurojank I sometimes lament and pine after.

The only reason we’re offered these two this week, though, is the release of Styx: Blades of Greed, which releases February 19th. Neither game is terrible, and fans of fantasy and stealth games will get a kick out of them for what they are.

From Tim defending pedos making explicit images of children with AI, a fantasy stealth game series, and now onto the nanny state of all nanny states, Australia. Originally conceived as a public awareness campaign in 2012, with a soon-to-follow song we’ve probably all heard by Tangerine Kitty, culminating in 2013 when Dumb Ways to Die was released on iOS and Android, where you can also pick it up via the Epic Games Store for mobile this week. Basically, WarioWare mini-games where you kill the mascots of the awareness campaign repeatedly.

All this week, you can pick up Styx: Master of Shadows and Styx: Shards of Darkness – Deluxe Edition on the Epic Games Store for PC, as well as Dumb Ways to Die for Android and iOS on the Epic Games Store mobile app. Maybe all this week, Tim Sweeney can give his head a wobble too, as he thinks about advocating for unfettered access to and production of child pornography. Onto next week, and it is quite literally Grand Theft Horse, but not the one you want it to be. Rustler – Grand Theft Horse will be free next week.