The Epic Games Store free games of the week are Garden Story and World War Z: Aftermath

This week the Epic Games Store is offering two very different games for free: Garden Story, and World War Z: Aftermath.

• Garden Story
  • Release Date: August 11, 2021
  • Game Type: RPG, Adventure
  • POV: Top-down
  • Party: Single player
  • DLC: None (OST DLC available on Steam)

Garden Story is a take on the classic RPG — think Legend of Zelda, only instead of playing as Link, you’re a grape. Your boss at the kindergarden is a plum. After that description, either you’re fully bought in, or nothing will convince you to play this game. There’s not a lot of in between here.

In addition to the adventuring and questing, you can also engage in a lot of the bog standard activities associated with the “cozy” subgenre, like farming and fishing, and chatting up the locals. Your goal is to prevent your town from succumbing to Rot, and you have to solve puzzles and defeat bosses to make sure your town is safe.

• World War Z Aftermath
  • Release Date: September 21, 2021
  • Game Type: Shooter
  • POV: 3rd person, 1st person
  • Party: Single player, Co-op, PVPVE, multiplayer
  • DLC: Episode packs and several skin bundles available

I’m not exactly sure what to call World War Z: Aftermath. It’s not technically either a DLC or expansion or even sequel to the original zombie-centric shooter World War Z. It’s like a Game of the Year edition, but World War Z already had one of those, too. Regardless of what label we’re going for, World War Z Aftermath has a ton of modes to choose from. There are episodic missions, which were the core of the original World War Z, but since then a ton more content has been added, from a very popular PVPVE Horde Mode, where you fight against a zombie horde and your fellow players simultaneously, to even more cities where you can to hack-n-slash zombies to your hearts content.