Epic Games Store unveiled its two free games for March 31 Total War: Warhammer and city of brass. The former is a massive strategy game filled with epic fantasy battles, while the latter is a first-person dungeon crawler where players search for hidden treasure in a city inspired by Arabian Nights. These will be the last free games of the month, and in the end it will be interesting for many to see what’s on the Epic Games Store, PS Plus, Games with Gold and Xbox Game Pass in April.
Interestingly, it looks like this selection of Epic Games Store games are pulled from the PS Plus playbook. It’s not that the games offered on PS Plus are predictable, but there are certain patterns players can recognize if they look closely. For example, there was a huge increase in quality in the months leading up to PS5 (PS Plus was used to build hype), every year has a big March in terms of PS Plus releases, and before that there was another scheme.
Old PS Plus model, new free games Epic Games Store
From around mid-2019 to early 2020, more or less, PS Plus released games in an easily identifiable big game/niche game model. Each month in this period only saw two releases, and one release was a great engaging game that many could probably enjoy. The second version was always smaller, somehow attracting a special audience. While not an exact 1:1 comparison, this tactic is evident in this week’s Epic Games Store releases.
Total War: Warhammer is the great appealing game, as it has strong reviews and focuses on warfare, a popular video game concept. A strategy game isn’t the most popular genre – it’s not a first-person shooter – but combine the franchise, the reviews and the genre, many would probably pick it up and play it multiple times. After all, strategy games are becoming increasingly popular with games like total war and Civilization.
On the other hand, a dungeon crawler like city of brass falls on the small side, especially as an indie game. Dungeon/roguelite crawlers are also becoming more popular, but city of brassReviews also indicate that it’s pretty average. Still, that’s the beauty of video games – what doesn’t work for some may absolutely click for another. By offering city of brass, maybe not everyone will like it, but someone is bound to consider it a favorite. The one-two punch of a big game and indie game is coming in full force this week.
Really, as the Epic Games Store has traditionally focused on smaller, more niche games, that would be a good model for gaming to adopt. There’s definitely value in smaller releases because these games and indie games can often lead players to find hidden gems, but something bigger to help the real audience is only good for the service.
Epic Games Store users typically receive a handful of games each month.
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