Last Chance To Grab These Two Free Games

This week's Epic Games Store freebies are live now, and once again, Epic added a surprise freebie. Originally, Epic revealed Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, a seriously underappreciated adventure game starring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ubiquitous detective, as the lone freebie. But alternate history horror game Close to the Sun is also free this week. Both games are available free of charge until April 16 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET. You simply need a free Epic account to claim the freebies, and they'll be yours to keep forever. Epic also revealed next week's free games, Just Cause 4 and Wheels of Aurelia.

Originally released in 2014, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is one of the many Sherlock games developed by Frogwares. While games that capitalize off of huge properties like Sherlock Holmes don't always inspire a ton of confidence, Crimes and Punishments is a genuinely great adventure game.

Crimes and Punishments features six separate investigations that you must solve alongside your trusted sidekick Dr. Watson. One of the main gameplay mechanics is the deduction board, which lets you piece together clues from each case to come to your own conclusion. This allows for more than a handful of endings for each crime, and moral choices you can make after finding the culprit add even more layers to the story.

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The game received an 8/10 in GameSpot's Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments review. "Perhaps the best comment that I can make on the half-dozen cases featured in Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is that they feel like lost short stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. The whodunits are fascinating, with odd casts of characters and plausible mysteries that blend elements of the police procedural with the quirky and eerie atmosphere unique to Holmes and Watson," critic Brett Todd wrote.

In Close to the Sun, you play as journalist Rose Archer on a quest to save her sister. The game Is set in an alternate history 1897 on a ship operated by inventor Nikola Tesla, who, in this timeline, is more influential than Thomas Edison. The ship houses many unexpected horrors, and Close to the Sun has received comparisons to BioShock when it comes to the atmosphere, story, and setting.

Make sure to claim Close to the Sun and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments before April 16. Also, Epic isn't the only storefront or publisher giving away games; we've rounded up every free game available right now.