Syberia 1 and 2 are free to keep on GOG

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(Image credit: Microids)

The Syberia series are point-and-click adventure games from the early 2000s that send you across warped versions of Europe and Russia, twisted and changed from the familiar with clockwork automatons, failed utopias, and a whole lot of mammoths. They were directed by Belgian comics artist Benoît Sokal, who died earlier this year, and whose art helped lend them an otherworldly atmosphere.

The first two Syberia games are currently free at GOG, and you can add both to your account to play now or later. (If you have trouble getting Syberia to run in a modern OS, try using DxWnd, which has various compatibility options for emulating older versions of DirectX.) They're free to promote the fact GOG is currently having a French Touch sale to celebrate French games, which means you can get A Plague Tale: Innocence for 70% off, Absolver for 75% off, Heroes of Might & Magic 3: Complete for 75% off, Prey for 50% off, and GreedFall for 50% off.

A third game in the Syberia series was released in 2017, but its move to 3D wasn't well-received thanks to clunky controls and an uglier look. As Fraser wrote in his review, "Gone are the gorgeous pre-rendered scenes of the previous games, replaced with plain, often downright ugly, three-dimensional environments." A fourth game, Syberia: The World Before, is currently in development.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.