Epic Games Store has revealed its two free games for March 31, Total War: Warhammer and City of Brass. The former is a massive strategy game filled with epic fantasy battles, while the latter is a first-person dungeon crawler where players seek a hidden treasure in an Arabian Nights-inspired city. It’ll be the last free games of the month, and as it winds down, many will be interesting to see what’s on Epic Games Store, PS Plus, Games with Gold, and Xbox Game Pass in April.
Interestingly, it seems that this selection of Epic Games Store games is pulling from the playbook of PS Plus. It’s not that the games given away on PS Plus are predictable, but there are certain patterns players can recognize if they look closely. For example, there was a huge quality bump in the months leading up to PS5 (PS Plus was used to build hype), every year has a big March in terms of PS Plus releases, and before that, there was another pattern.
Old PS Plus Pattern, New Epic Games Store Free Games
From about mid-2019 to early-2020, give or take, PS Plus released games in an easily identifiable big game/niche game pattern. Each month in this time period only ever saw two releases, and one release was a big, appealing game that many could likely enjoy. The second release was always smaller, appealing to a particular audience in some way. While not an exact 1:1 comparison, this tactic is evident in this week’s Epic Games Store releases.
Total War: Warhammer is the big appealing game, as it has solid reviews and focuses on war—a popular video game concept. A strategy game isn’t the most popular genre—it’s no first-person shooter—but combine the franchise, the reviews, and the genre, many would likely pick it up and play it a couple of times. After all, strategy games are becoming more and more popular with games like Total War and Civilization.
On the other hand, a dungeon crawler like City of Brass does fall on the smaller side, especially as an indie game. Dungeon crawlers/roguelites are becoming more popular too, but City of Brass’ reviews also indicate that it's mostly average. Yet, that’s the beauty of video games—what doesn’t work for some may absolutely click for another. By offering City of Brass, maybe not everyone will enjoy it, but someone is bound to consider it a favorite. The one-two punch of a big game and an indie game comes in strong this week.
Truly, as Epic Games Store traditionally focuses on smaller, more niche games anyway, this would be a good pattern for the game to adopt. There’s certainly value in smaller releases as these and indie games can often lead to players finding hidden gems, but something bigger to help real in the audience is only beneficial for the service.
Epic Games Store users typically get a handful of games every month.