SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2026
This weekend’s free games are worth grabbing — and there’s something for everyone. Epic’s weekly giveaway pairs a horror puzzler with a cozy city builder, Steam has a cult-classic puzzler free until Monday, and Prime members can claim DOOM (2016) through Luna. All free, all claimable right now. Here’s every deadline that matters, because deadlines are the whole game.
Epic Games Store: a horror game and a cozy builder
Epic's current pair runs October 8 through October 15 at 8 AM PT, and it's a strong one. Out of Sight ($14.99 normally) is the headliner: a horror puzzle game where you play Sophie, a young blind girl trapped in a dark mansion. The twist is that Sophie can't see — you navigate entirely through the eyes of her teddy bear, controlling the bear's view and her movement at the same time. It's been called a rare second-person game, and it's exactly the kind of inventive indie that the weekly giveaway was made for.
The palette cleanser is TerraScape ($16.99), a cozy deckbuilding city builder from Bitfall Studios where you construct medieval towns on floating islands. Instead of micromanaging workers and supply chains, you place buildings from card decks, and structures score more when their neighbors synergize — it's the rare city builder that plays like a puzzle. Steam reviewers have it at Very Positive with an 86% positive rate, and the Epic version comes with the same 50+ buildings, co-op and versus multiplayer.
Missed last week's pair? System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster and Buried Stars are gone — the remaster especially stings. But the pipeline is already set: on October 15, the giveaway rotates to Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise, the stylish 1960s spy escape-room puzzler, and Bad Cheese, a psychological horror game in the rubber-hose style of 1920s cartoons that uses a cute mouse to explore genuinely dark domestic themes. Both run through October 22. And on Epic's mobile store, the road-trip comedy The Big Con is free until October 15, region and device permitting.
Steam: Pony Island is free until Monday
Steam's headline freebie has the shortest fuse: Pony Island ($4.99), Daniel Mullins' devious 2016 puzzler that starts as a broken arcade game and becomes something much stranger, is free until Monday, October 12 at 10 AM PT. If you've never played the game that put the Inscryption developer on the map, this is the weekend.
There's also free DLC through October 15 at 10 AM PT: the Rotwood: Drakin Armoury Pack ($4.99) for Klei's co-op dungeon crawler, and the MXGP 26: Scrubdesignz Liveries pack ($1.99) for the motocross crowd. Free DLC is the easiest yes in gaming — claim it even if you don't own the base game yet.
Prime Gaming via Luna: DOOM (2016), FNAF and more
Amazon's Prime Gaming offerings run on longer timelines, which makes them easy to forget and painful to miss. Right now Prime members can claim DOOM (2016) as a GOG code — the full, DRM-free reboot that reminded everyone id Software still runs the genre — and Five Nights at Freddy's: Into the Pit on the Epic Games Store, both available until November 4. Also on the board: Conarium (GOG code, until November 11), the Lovecraftian horror adventure, and WarBreeds (GOG code, until January 8, 2027), a sci-fi strategy title with one of the longest claim windows in recent memory.
Why this week’s Epic pair is better than it looks
Out of Sight comes from The Gang Studio, and its second-person mechanic — seeing through the teddy bear while steering Sophie — is one of those ideas that sounds like a gimmick until you play it, at which point it becomes the only way the game could work. Horror through a child’s proxy is an old trick; horror where the child can’t see at all is new. At $14.99 it was already a reasonable ask. At free, it’s the easiest recommendation of the weekend.
TerraScape, meanwhile, is the rare giveaway that respects your time. Sessions are short, the deckbuilding hook means every run feels different, and the 86% positive Steam rating reflects a game that knows exactly what it is: a cozy puzzle box, not a second job. The co-op and versus multiplayer are a bonus most city builders don’t bother with. Between the two, Epic is covering both ends of the weekend — Friday night horror, Sunday morning calm.
The claim-now-play-later playbook
Veterans of the free-games economy know the drill: claim everything, play what you want, because the library is permanent and the windows are not. The highest-value move this weekend is the Prime Gaming codes — DOOM (2016) as a DRM-free GOG copy is the kind of thing that never goes on sale for less than free, and GOG codes don’t expire the way storefront claims do. Second priority: Pony Island before Monday at 10 AM PT, because Daniel Mullins’ games only get more interesting and this is the cheapest on-ramp. Third: the Epic pair before Thursday’s 8 AM PT reset, because Out of Sight is exactly the kind of game you’ll want in your library when spooky season hits full swing.
The usual rules apply across all of these: claim windows are hard deadlines, claimed games are yours to keep permanently, and the Epic weekly reset hits Thursday at 8 AM PT like clockwork. Set a reminder for October 15 if you want the spy-and-horror pair, grab Pony Island before Monday morning, and don't sleep on the Prime codes — November 4 is closer than it looks.
Out of Sight + TerraScape, until Oct 15 8AM PT. Pony Island free until Oct 12 10AM PT.
