TGI Thursday: It’s a terrible name for a restaurant but it’s good news for videogame fans, because Thursdays are the days that Epic Games fires out new freebies on its store. This week’s giveaways are the third-person survival shooter Remnant: From the Ashes, and The Alto Collection, a package of the lovely endless runners Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey.
Remnant: From the Ashes is set in a world gone really wrong: An ancient evil from another dimension has blasted into our reality and done a number on humanity, and as one of the last remnants (get it?) of the human race it falls to you to set off into the world and kick some ass, alone or with up to two other players. It’s good stuff—not the most original thing ever, as we said in our 77% review last year, but it comes together well as a “refreshing alternative” to games like The Division.
The Alto Collection is more straightforward: They were originally released in 2015 (Alto’s Adventure) and 2018 (Alto’s Odyssey) for mobile devices, and the gameplay is fairly simplistic: Snowboard or sandboard your way across a variety of landscapes, avoiding obstacles, pulling stunts, and discovering secrets as you go. But both games are gorgeous, and critically acclaimed, with 92 and 88 aggregate scores on Metacritic.
Both games are free for the taking until August 20, when Enter the Gungeon and God’s Trigger will take their place. Also free on the Epic Games Store, but for a much shorter span, is Total War: Troy, which launched today and is up for grabs for just 24 hours, until 9 am ET on August 14.