Amazon's Prime Gaming service free games for January, available to download now, is one for the dads.
First on Amazon Prime Gaming's list of fatherly delights is Lawn Mowing Simulator. A game that, like a nice tin of Ronseal, does exactly what it says on the tin. It sees you become the owner of a lawn mowing business in a small rural British town, probably somewhere idyllic – like the Isle of Wight, or incredibly posh Pembrokeshire – so you can live out your fatherly fantasy of owning a whole fleet of ride-on lawnmowers. Or if you live in central London, the dream of having a garden at all.
Like every dad I've ever met, you can spend hours scratching your chin and grumbling to yourself as you adjust settings on a complex piece of machinery you have only a rudimentary understanding of. Then discussing the benefits of setting the cutting level at three millimetres instead of five for far longer than any reasonable person should.
If that's not enough, you can complete your dad fantasy by going on a joy ride on a selection of 12 officially licensed lawnmowers around castles, country houses, and other exciting locales you would usually need an English Heritage card to get into. Overpriced cream tea and the compulsion to force 'culture' onto your children: not included.
Breaking dad
If your visions of fatherhood align more with a single man about town, Prime Gaming has you covered with Bethesda/ Tango Softworks The Evil Within 2.
A twisting psychological thriller starring a drunk dad searching for his daughter through a town filled with twisted horrors after finding out she hadn't died in a house fire years earlier. The Evil Within 2 is the kind of game for every dad who has ever been four pints deep and remembered he was supposed to be looking after the kids.
You play former detective Sebastian Castellano. A shell of a man, self-medicating his severe PTSD with copious amounts of booze after narrowly surviving a trip through every survival horror trope from the past 20 years. Castellano is heroically trying to save his kid from a shady corporation with technology capable of warping the very fabric of reality.
Other dad fantasies included in January's Prime Gaming line-up include Beat Cop, for dads that have ever twisted their ankle sliding over the hood of a car; Chicken Police – Paint it RED!, for fathers who are also fans of poultry and read a lot of John Grisham; Faraway 2: Jungle Escape – for fathers that need five minutes peace to do The Times Crossword, and Breathedge – a reverse dad fantasy about a man taking his grandpa's ashes to a galactic funeral.
All of January's games are available to redeem now from the Prime Gaming site until Wednesday, February 1.
What's more, if you have secret stabby father fantasies and want to play a brilliant stealth-action game complete with a whole campaign of daddy-daughter adventures, Prime Gaming is also giving away the GOG version of Dishonored 2 until Tuesday, February 14.
