Cozy Grove and Isonzo are this week’s Epic Games Store freebies of the week

I feel like I’ve said this every week for a month, but no really, this week’s two free games from the Epic Games Store could not be more different in every way.

• Cozy Grove
  • Release Date: April 8, 2021
  • Game Type: Casual, Gathering, Decorating, Story
  • POV: 3rd person, isometric
  • Party: Single Player
  • DLC: The New Neighbears DLC is available on Epic.

Cozy Grove is a uniquely casual game, with narrative moments that will suddenly rear up and hit you in the chest unexpectedly — but then, you know from the start you’ll be helping the spirits of bears who have met their ends, some untimely, some melancholy, some infuriatingly unfair. You’ll get to know NPCs and quest for them, there things to build and collect, and you can decorate the island as you’d like — though it has a discovery mechanic revolving around sources of light. Gameplay revolves around the real clock and calendar. There are the usual short-term events for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but there are flowers and fish and seashells which only appear at specific times of year, so you’ll need to play for an entire calendar year to collect them all. It’s funny because it respects your time by giving you daily quests, and once you finish up and collect what you can, while you can hang out and vibe, there’s not much point to sticking around. However, I’m the sort of person who wants to binge, and you really can’t binge this game.

Regardless, this is a site favorite, and well worth the pricetag, especially since Spry Fox owns itself again now!

• Isonzo
  • Release Date: September 13, 2022
  • Game Type: Military, Tactics, FPS
  • POV: 1st person
  • Party: Single Player, online PVP
  • DLC: Several different DLC packs and additional game editions are for sale. There are also demi-sequels which offer similar gameplay across different WWI battlefields.

And then it’s tonal whiplash into a World War I military sim shooter. From the reviews, it seems that shooter fans are far less jazzed about this title than WWI enthusiasts, which seems like a good line to walk for a military sim like this. You want it to be a respectful representation, not a gleeful killing spree. And yet, there’s also online PVP, so maybe a gleeful killing spree is in order, too.