I can not knock Epic’s annual custom of freely giving a ton of video games each vacation season. The Epic Games Store free video games checklist all the time accommodates a number of massive title surprises like Death Stranding or Vampire Survivors that I count on lots of PC players already personal, and for individuals who do not it is mighty good to have the ability to decide them up for nothing. In between the large drops are clearly smaller video games, like at this time’s—however I’d encourage everybody to seize Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles whereas the grabbing’s good. If you have exhausted Balatro already, this underplayed deckbuilder may sneak up on you and swallow your complete vacation break.
“Deckbuilder” is definitely a misnomer there, as a result of though Astrea follows within the footsteps of Slay the Spire, it trades out playing cards for cube, a easy however novel sufficient swap to actually change up how the sport performs. It’s additionally actually fairly, and made by a tiny indie staff in São Paulo, Brazil punching means above its weight.
In his 80% evaluation for PC Gamer, Dominic Tarason praised how dramatic a flip in Astrea may be, which is likely to be simply the sort of factor you are craving coming off Balatro runs the place you are scoring billions of factors or no matter:
“Astrea hinges on an ingenious system known as Virtues, talents intrinsic to every character that change into usable as you’re taking Corruption injury. These talents can typically drag you out of hassle (most characters have a ‘reroll’ advantage usable on any cube, together with enemies), however they’re a dependable means of dealing injury, that means that you simply’ll be whalloping your self with a nasty die, firing off your Virtues, and therapeutic again earlier than the opponent has time to behave. If you deliberate proper. If not, you may find yourself being knocked over by a small breeze, or simply plain blowing your self up.
“It’s all the time a tense tightrope stroll, and it creates a thrillingly ‘swingy’ sport the place issues can go fallacious virtually instantaneously should you don’t plan two strikes forward. The saving grace is that almost all characters have three lives (restored when beating a area’s finish boss), stopping a single miscalculation from spoiling a complete run. But these lives may be wagered for everlasting upgrades, one other temptation I discovered turning me right into a gambler. The result’s a deckbuilder the place virtually each single flip is participating and infrequently butt-clenching.”
Astrea got here out on PC in September 2023 (it simply hit consoles a pair months in the past), and since launch it is gotten a wholesome checklist of updates together with some rebalancing, official mod assist, a each day run function, and “customized runs” the place you may decide and select from a bunch of modifiers to vary up how the sport performs. With these additions it has the flexibleness that true roguelike fiends lengthy for.
Considering Astrea is at the moment $18.74 within the Steam sale, this giveaway’s completely value grabbing and truly taking part in, somewhat than left to rot in your cellar of uncared for Epic Store freebies. Give it a shot—it is completely a hidden gem.
