Grab a free copy of splendid sci-fi horror game Duskers from Epic
You have one week to claim Duskers for keepsies
"A better Alien game than any official Alien game" is how our Brendy described 2016's Duskers, the latest game that's going free for keepsies on the Epic Games Store. Duskers is a roguelikelike sci-fi horror survival game about salvaging supplies from derelict spaceships using drones, seeing through their sensor readouts and issuing commands by typing into a console. Oh, by the way, there's a reason why all these spaceships are now empty. Well, mostly empty.
So, you're alone in space. Well, mostly alone. It's (mostly) just you and your small stock of drones, jumping from ship to ship and sending your robopals out to scavenge fuel, scrap, and parts for your drones and ship. All of this is done through a command-line interface, seeing the world through map views and low-tech sensor readings and issuing commands by typing them out. That's a fun little conceit, nice gentle bit of retro computing. Then your little friends encounter something moving in that should-be empty ship, and now you need to scramble to evade and outwit whatever it is to bring home your supplies and drones.
It is very good, and quite horrible, to only see the horrors through a computer interface.
"It's one thing to make a game look like this, hooking into everyone's current lust for 'retro-futurism' or whatever it is we're calling nostalgia now, but it's another thing for the feel, atmosphere and mechanics of your game to perfectly match that style," Brendy said in our Duskers review. "This is something Duskers does unnaturally well. It is a claustrophobic, tense recreation of all the sci-fi horror you love. It's a game of desperately trying to come up with solutions with almost no resources. Imagine someone has handed you a toolbox and told you to build a fridge, then you open said toolbox only to find some sellotape, a pair of nail clippers and a single permanent marker. How the fuck are you going to make a fridge out of that? You have no idea, but damned if you won't come up with something. It's a tense, worrisome survival horror about making do."
You have until 4pm on Thursday the 2nd of March to grab Duskers free from the Epic Games Store. After that, the next Epic freebie will be tycoon game Rise Of Industry.
If you have already played Duskers, do check out The Mechanic's chat with its maker about the important decision to use a command-line interface. We declared it one of our favourite games of 2016 too.
