The Epic Games Store is continuing full speed ahead with its plan to release a free game every week until 2020, and has announced that FEZ will be the next game that players will be able to snag for free.
The game features Gomez, a 2D character who discovers the existence of a mystical third dimension, who is forced to continually shift his perspective as he travels across strange unknown realms to retrieve pieces of a shattered cube.
Developed over a grueling five-year period by Phil Fish, FEZ was featured as part of the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which showed at Sundance shortly before the game went on sale. After its release, FEZ was widely praised and sold in the millions of copies.
A sequel to FEZ was reportedly in the works, but was canceled after a spat between Fish and GameTrailers’ Marcus Beer. A cancellation announcement was made via Twitter, and Fish has since deleted his Twitter page and practically disappeared from the public eye. Since then, he was involved in the creation of VR puzzle game SuperHyperCube.
FEZ will be offered for free from August 22 through August 29, immediately after the current free offerings – Hyper Light Drifter and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Previous games that have been offered for free include Limbo, Enter The Gungeon, and Alan Wake.
Those who pick up the games while they’re free will can keep them in their Epic Game Store library forever.
The weekly free games promotion is one of several strategies that Epic is using to lure players away from established game stores such as Steam, UPlay, and Origin. The most controversial of these strategies is the company paying millions of dollars to game developers to gain the exclusive rights to release games on their platform.
While few have complained about the free games, many have criticized the exclusivity contracts, which has rankled those who pre-ordered games on Steam before the deals were signed, and has forced players to use a game store that is often considered undeveloped.
It remains to be seen what other free games Epic will offer before the end of the year, but if the past is indication, there will be many more classics to come.
