Costume Quest 2 and Layers of Fear 2 are free for the week on the Epic Store

This is Thursday, and that means it's time to bang on Tim Sweeney's door and demand some free candy—figuratively, of course, please don't bother the man, he's busy and has more important things to do than be answering his doorbell all night. The candy is also figurative, because the freebies here are actually games.

They are thematically appropriate though, given this late October date and the looming arrival of Halloween. First up is Costume Quest 2, Double Fine's game of dressing up, transforming into "Hallo-warriors," and wielding collectible treat cards against "a megalomaniacal dentist with an anti-candy agenda [who] is leapfrogging through the space-time continuum, leading to a grim future where Halloween has been outlawed." Yeah, that sounds like a Double Fine game, alright.

The second game offers a more traditional horror experience: Layers of Fear 2 is a first-person psychological horror game about a Hollywood actor who takes the lead role on a project he probably should've skipped. It has its moments, but can't quite stick the landing: We said in our 2019 review that "its early chilling atmosphere [is] replaced by an attempt at psychoanalytical storytelling it doesn't quite know how to handle."

TOPICS

PRODUCTS

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.