Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate is free to keep for a limited time

(Image credit: SSI)

This year's Warhammer Skulls showcase included announcements for several new videogames in Games Workshop's mega-gothic far future Warhammer 40,000 setting: a boomer shooter called Boltgun, a card game called Warpforge, and a cRPG from Pathfinder developers Owlcat called Rogue Trader. We also saw a bit more of the upcoming Space Marine 2. While we wait for all those, here's an older game to tide you over.

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate is a squad tactics game published by SSI in 1998, and you can get it for free right now on GOG as part of the Warhammer Skulls 2022 Digital Goodie Pack. The pack includes a concept art book for 2006 strategy game Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, a bundle of wallpapers, including some promo art from last year's under-rated FPS Necromunda: Hired Gun (well, I liked it), and a few discount codes, as well as Chaos Gate.

Chaos Gate pitted squads of Ultramarines against the forces of Chaos in turn-based combat. While it didn't have a lot of enemy variety and lacked the strategy layers of competitors like Jagged Alliance and X-COM, it still has fans today, and it did have a pretty rad soundtrack if you're into martial beats and eerie chanting. In fact, you can download the soundtrack as an extra once you claim it on GOG.

Though it reused the name, the more recent Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is much closer to modern tactics games. It pushes you forward across the battlefield, encouraging melee options like Gears Tactics, and features a strategy layer stocked with fully voiced NPCs to chat to. You'll find the original Chaos Gate much more old school, of course, with its emphasis on careful deliberation and chipping away at Traitor Marines from a distance.

Chaos Gate and the rest of the digital goodies can be downloaded for free until Wednesday, June 8, at 10am PST/5pm UTC. If you've already got a copy of Chaos Gate on GOG, you'll be sent a redeem code via email to share with someone else.

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.