It isn’t just Xbox Live Gold, PSN+ and Humble Bundle anymore: there’s another subscription service offering free games in town. Last month, Twitch Prime added a monthly suite of free PC games to a lineup that had already included free in-game loot for select games. And it’s first month’s offering was excellent: Superhot, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Mr. Shifty, Oxenfree and Tales From Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation, the last of which I still don’t really know anything about.
Remember, Twitch Prime comes with your Amazon Prime subscription if you already have that. All you have to go is go to Twitch to activate your Prime subscription: go here for complete instructions.
April’s offerings aren’t quite as exceptional as March’s, but it’s a solid start to the nascent service nonetheless. And as with March’s, all of these games are yours to keep forever if you download them:
- Tales From Borderlands
- Steamworld Dig 2
- Kingsway
- Tokyo 42
- Dub Wars
The two major highlights here are Steamworld Dig 2 and Tales From Borderlands. The first of these is a gem that isn’t to be missed: it’s a vertical metroidvania starring a spunky steam-powered robot in a post-apocalyptic Western-tinged wasteland. She must dig her way through vast mines and ancient temples in search of her friend Rusty, and along the way she gets an impressive slew of upgrades, each of which opens the world up in interesting ways that go far beyond any one individual puzzle. The first Steamworld Dig was procedurally-generated, but this one is bespoke all the way and it shows. It still has that sort of freeform exploration that marks a good procedural game, but it’s paired with tailored environments and platforming that make full use of the unique digging and mobility mechanics.
Tales From Borderlands is one of the most critically-acclaimed Telltale games — a series of adaptations that tell linear, narrative stories within extant fictional worlds. The Telltale game is a great format, and the company is responsible for such great titles as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. I’ll be honest — I wasn’t a huge fan of this one, however. I like the Borderlands series for its loot and shoot mechanics but can’t stand its grating style of humor or most of its world-building. So the idea of stripping out the action in favor of the fiction didn’t really appeal to me — plenty of other people like it though, so give it a roll if you’re a fan of Borderlands or narrative games.
Kingsway isn’t something I’ve ever heard of, but it’s wacky looking and has decent reviews. Tokyo 42 is described as a cross between Syndicate and GTA 1, with some gorgeous visuals but reviews that are all over the map. And I remember hearing good things about Dub Wars at the time.
