This Week’s Epic Games Store Freebie is a Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Metroidvania
The highly-rated, chaotic hand-drawn metroidnavia also has a co-op mode, you freeloaders. | Source: Thunder Lotus Games
- This week’s Epic Games Store freebie is Sundered: Eldritch Edition.
- The stunning hand-drawn Metroidvania from Thunder Lotus Games.
- Next week’s free game is platformer Horace.
Right on cue, Epic Games has unleashed the latest title in its player luring weekly free give away . This week we can get our hands on 2017 Metroidvania Sundered: Eldritch Edition.
As always, we’ve got a week – until 4 pm GMT/8 am PST on Thursday, Jan. 16 – to grab the game by visiting the Sundered listing on Epic Games Store , and then it’s ours to download and play forever.
Epic also revealed the free game for the week of Jan. 16 to Jan. 23 is indie platformer Horace.
Sundered
Developed by Thunder Lotus Games of Jotun fame, Sundered asks players to explore a challenging, yet stunning hand-drawn side-scrolling world. Chaotic melee combat merges with kaleidoscopic visuals and waves of randomly spawning enemies for a heavily H. P. Loftcraft-inspired experience.
You play as the wandering Eshe who’s reluctantly tasked with exploring the underworld of the fallen civilization of Eschaton.
Through a brutal confrontation with an invading force of tech-imbued Valkyries and a series of botched rituals, its inhabitants and landscape have morphed into a hellish nightmare.
Eshe must decide between destroying relics of the failed rituals known as Elder Shards or using these to increase her abilities at the cost of her humanity.
The Metroidvania is strong with this one. You’ll be unlocking new abilities that grant access to previously barred off areas, opening up shortcuts, backtracking, and squaring up to bosses and ancient eldritch powers.
Four-Player Co-op
While the base version of Sundered is rewarding as it is, Epic is throwing in the Eldritch Edition. It features the Magnate of Gong update that introduces four-player local co-op multiplayer, a selection of new areas with special challenges leading to rewards, and a new boss encounter, as well as a new endgame content.
Epic’s selection of freebies waver considerably in quality from week to week, but Sundered is a surefire hit for anyone with even a remote interest in an excellent Metroidvania. It’s also a pleasure to plow through alongside a gaggle of friends.
As a general rule, anything pumped out by Thunder Lotus is worth at least a gander as they consistently produce excellent titles. We were more than a little taken with the demo for their next project, Spiritfarer, demoed for 48 hours as part of ‘The Game Festival’ in December.
