Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Kingdom New Lands are now free on the Epic Store

(Image credit: The Chinese Room)

Another Thursday is upon us, and that means it's time for another round of free games on the Epic Games Store. This week's selection includes the first-person creepout Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Kingdom New Lands, the standalone remake/expansion of the 2015 medieval management game.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, developed by The Chinese Room, is a different sort of experience than its predecessor, The Dark Descent. It's mechanically similar, but more creepy and weird than outright horrific, and the removal of the sanity mechanic makes it more of an exploration game. It didn't go over as well as The Dark Descent (although we really liked it), but I suspect that's at least in part because it's not the overt scream-fest that players were expecting. It'll be interesting to see what reactions are like now that it's free, and sufficiently distant from TDD that the weight of expectations isn't so heavy.

(Speaking of Amnesia, don't forget that the next game in the series, Amnesia: Rebirth, is out on October 20.)

In Kingdom New Lands, you play as a shipwrecked monarch who must collect coins from a 2D map, hire peasants, build a fort, and try to survive against nightly attacks by monsters. It starts off easily enough, as we noted in our 2015 review of the original, but it doesn't stay that way for long. You'll die a lot, but hopefully you'll learn from the experience and do better next time.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Kingdom New Lands are both free for keeps until October 22. After that, the Epic Games Store will roll toward Halloween with two more thematically appropriate games: Double Fine's dress-em-up Costume Quest 2, and another first-person horror game, Layers of Fear 2. And if you're looking for the best free PC games or just what's free for a limited time right now, we've got you covered.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.