Super Meat Boy free on Epic Games Store
Splendidly deadly platformer Super Meat Boy is free to keep on the Epic Games Store if you grab it now. This is the second of the freebies luring people onto Epic’s new store since its launch in December 2018, following Subnautica (and if the carrot doesn’t work, there’s always the stick of exclusive games). For now, hey, if you install Epic’s client and register an account, you can get Team Meat’s ace platformer free.
Many of youse will likely have nabbed Super Meat Boy in one of the many, many sales and bundles it’s starred in, but if not, hey: it’s good. Teensy little levels filled with deathtraps and a wonderful replay view which shows your dozens of failed attempts when you finally complete a level.
Radiocarbon dating on several Alienware laptops recently unearthed in the Mojave Desert suggest that it may be the first independent video game, though some mythologists believe that the fabled ‘Lost Lenovo of Lochearnhead’ contained proof that Braid was first.
If you want it, hit the Epic Games Store and grab it by 11:59pm EST next Thursday, January 10th (that’s 4:59am on the Friday for us here in the UK). You’ll need an Epic account and the client to install it, obvs.
Epic plan to give away one free game every fortnight until the end of 2019. They have said they’re funding these giveaways, not the devs. Epic must be putting a huge amount of money into the Store’s launch, between the giveaways and the hot scloosies. I am curious to see what effect that may have across 2019, whether it’ll shake things up or sink like other stores that have tried to take on Steam. Fortnite has put Epic’s client on squillions of PCs but the store is still barebones, with a slim catalogue and little extra context or content beyond basic marketing materials. But with the Fortnite reach and Epic only taking a 12% cut of sales (compared to Steam’s starting rate of 30%) certainly has some big developers interested.
Super Meat Boy’s follow-up, Super Meat Boy Forever, is one of the games that’ll launch as an Epic Store exclusive. It’s due there this year, then will hit Steam in 2020.
