Ark: Survival Evolved and Gloomhaven are this week’s free Epic Store games

A new batch of freebies have arrived on the Epic Games Store, with this week’s deals in the form of dinosaur survival adventure Ark: Survival Evolved and the video game adaptation of popular board game Gloomhaven.

This isn’t Ark: Survival Evolved’s first release as an epic freebie – it was given away in June 2020 – but if you’re a survival fan who hasn’t checked it out yet, it’s probably worth checking out.

Released in August 2017 after several years in early access, Ark’s base game offers a largely compelling (if rather wobbly) mix of dinosaur taming and breeding, base building, and life counter management. survival, all in the service of large-scale tribal warfare – unless you choose to join a PvE server, in which case your most terrifying enemy is usually a Pillar. Later expansions, not included with Epic’s freebie, upped the sci-fi and fantasy factor, which if you like the rhythms of the base game, you might find more to your liking.

As for Gloomhaven, it’s an excellent adaptation of designer Isaac Childres’ sprawling turn-based tactical dungeon crawler. The original iteration of the board game features a persistent fantasy world filled with characters, items, and scenarios, all unlocked gradually over the course of a 100+ hour campaign. It’s an exciting, richly crafted and fantastical RPG experience, and it also comes in a really big box.

The fact that developer Flaming Fowl Studios’ digital version doesn’t fall off a shelf and kill you is probably reason enough to give it a look, but it’s also a cheaper and more manageable version of Gloomhaven which – with 4-player online co-op support – ends up being true to the original while making the most of the change in support.

Ark: Survival Evolved and Gloomhaven can be added to your Epic Games Store library for free now and will remain so until next Thursday, September 29, when Drone Racing League Simulator and Runbow will take over.