Obduction

Obduction is an all-new, real-time, first-person adventure that harkens back to the spirit of Cyan’s earlier games Myst and Riven.

Obduction, powered by the Unreal Engine 4, resurrects that incredible feeling of suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a new world to explore, discover, solve, and become part of. The Obduction project will take what Cyan knows about creating deeply immersive worlds and apply it to an entirely new game with fantastic scenery, incredible architecture, compelling story, and exceptional challenges.

Obduction will be built with the same framework that made Cyan's earlier games such a wonderful experience: stunning landscapes, deep storyline, engaging characters, dramatic soundscapes, and challenging yet intuitive puzzles. Obduction is an entirely new property, delivered using one of the most powerful game development technologies available today. Obduction is an adventure game for the new millennium that stays true to the concepts that made the genre great.

Obduction's experience supplies what every good storyteller does: a very personal window into a much larger world. Obduction begins with... well… an abduction - your abduction. On a crystal clear, moon-lit night, a curious, organic artifact drops from the sky and inexplicably whisks you away across the universes to who-knows-where (or when, or why).

And, as anyone who ever played Myst or Riven knows, exploring everything around you allows you to read between the lines and to begin to answer your questions. Why is there an old, abandoned farmhouse - complete with white picket fence - in the middle of an alien landscape? You'll find out. From this point on the story becomes your story.

Once Obduction and Offworld Trading Company, the current free games on the Epic Games Store, have run their course, it will be up to Defense Grid: the Awakening and Verdun, which will be gratis starting July 22 until July 29, 2021.

Defense Grid: the Awakening

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a unique spin on tower defense gameplay that will appeal to players of all skill levels, featuring beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack.

Defense Grid: The Awakening’s unique spin on tower defense gameplay appeals to gamers of all skill levels, features beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack. The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep - the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed.

Defense Grid: The Awakening features 10 different tower types that can each be upgraded twice. These towers all have unique tradeoffs that affect ideal placement, such as line-of-sight attack or ballistic trajectory fire; a large area of effect or damage over time; and minimum and maximum ranges. Over the course of the game’s 10 hours of story play, players battle 15 different types of enemies, each with unique capabilities and strategies, across 24 unique environments. To ramp up the challenge even more, Defense Grid: The Awakening now includes an additional 100 unlockable challenge modes.

With each level, players encounter different placement of roads, tower build locations, and open areas to plan a strategy around. Each map, whether open plan or fixed route, encourages a different strategy, such as trying to find an optimal path to redirect enemies, making the best use of limited space, and breaking up individual enemy waves to avoid being overwhelmed, all while planning ahead for future waves.

Verdun

Verdun is a squad-based, multiplayer first-person shooter set during World War I and inspired by the infamous battle of Verdun in 1916. Players are able to take part in never-before-seen WWI action.

The merciless trench warfare offers a unique battlefield experience, immersing you and your squad into intense battles of attack and defense.

Verdun takes place on the western front between 1914 and 1918, in one of the bloodiest conflicts in world history. The developers were inspired by the infamous Battle of Verdun in 1916. The game offers 4 distinct game-modes: Frontlines, Attrition, Rifle Deathmatch, and Squad Defense. There are also many historically accurate features such as realistic WW1 weaponry, authentic uniforms, horrendous gore, and maps based on the real battlefields of France and Belgium.

The Frontlines game mode is unique in its tactical complexity. The realistic trenches are challenging to fight in and require tactical cunning to capture and defend. The Entente and Central Powers strive to gain control of frontline sectors. In one battle you’ll find yourself rushing the enemy trenches during an offensive action in order to gain ground, while in another you might be defending your recently conquered ground against a fierce enemy counter-attack.

Players can choose to be part of one of the many squad types in the game, each of which have their own distinct tactical roles. By working together with your friends, you can earn experience that improves the power and versatility of your squad. As you gain more experience fighting and get promoted in rank, you also earn Career Points which you can use to unlock specializations, weapons and equipment.

In the Attrition game mode, the Entente and the Central Powers are pitted against each other in a single battle. Each side has a number of tickets which represents the amount of manpower they have. When a player is killed and respawns, a ticket is deducted from the side they belonged to. When a side has no more tickets, players of that side cannot respawn - the last side standing wins!

The Rifle Deathmatch is a free-for-all game mode, where all players are pitted against each other in a thrilling contest of skill using only bolt-action rifles.

In the Squad Defense mode, the player along with three squad-mates will have to defend a position as long as they can against endless waves of AI controlled attackers.

Offworld Trading Company

Offworld Trading Company is a market-based real-time strategy game where corporations struggle for dominance of the astronomical profits that lie in the Martian market.

In the race to colonize planet Mars, everything is up for grabs.

Offworld Trading Company’s quick and intensely competitive matches pit up to 8 players against each other on randomly generated maps. Players must quickly determine the best path toward building a self-sufficient colony that can extract the abundant Martian resources while maintaining profitability – and surviving the “talents” of shady black-market characters who are all too happy to raid any player’s shipments or smuggle a paralyzing EMP device into any colony for the right price.

Unlike traditional RTS games, there are no military units and what you need to win can change at a moment’s notice because on Mars, there are no rules in the free market. None of the 13 resources is more powerful than any other, and everything is for sale. Players gain cash by selling excess resources like carbon, fuel, and silicon on the open market, and spend it buying the resources they’re short on. Prices fluctuate in real time forcing players to adapt their strategy; dump a bunch of iron on the market and its price will crater, making other players’ stockpiles worth much less in the near term.

The game is won when the ultimate cutthroat capitalist completes buys out the stock of all their rivals, thereby seizing control of the entire planet’s economy.

In Offworld Trading Company, the marketplace is the battlefield.