Two free games land on the Epic Games Store this week, and whoever curated this particular pairing deserves a raise. First up: a deeply unsettling point-and-click horror game rooted in one of PC gaming's darkest corners. Right behind it: a bright, loud, four-player beat-em-up that practically begs you to forget everything you just experienced.
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The game that PC gaming history never quite forgot
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream is not a comfortable experience. Based on Harlan Ellison's post-apocalyptic short story, the 1995 point-and-click adventure puts you in control of five survivors trapped by a malevolent supercomputer called AM, each subjected to psychological torment drawn from their own darkest memories. Ellison himself was involved in adapting the material, which gives the game an authenticity that few licensed adaptations ever manage.
Here's the thing: this is not a game you casually recommend. The subject matter goes to genuinely difficult places, and it earns every content warning attached to it. Nightdive Studios re-released it in 2013, preserving the original experience for modern systems, and it sits in that rare category alongside Sanitarium and Phantasmagoria as point-and-click games that used the genre to explore something far heavier than treasure hunts and talking animals.
For players who have never touched it, free is the right price to find out if it is something you want in your library. Claim it, sit with it when the mood is right, and go in knowing what you are signing up for.
River City Girls 2 is here to fix your brain
WayForward knew exactly what it was doing with River City Girls 2. The follow-up to the 2019 original expands the roster from two characters to six, adds online co-op alongside local play for up to four players, and wraps it all in pixel art that pops off the screen. The combat systems go deeper than the first game, the world is bigger, and the soundtrack keeps the energy high from start to finish.
The River City Girls series is a modern spin-off from the Kunio-kun franchise, best known in the west as River City Ransom. What WayForward did with that legacy is turn it into something genuinely contemporary, landing it in conversations alongside Streets of Rage 4 and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge as proof that the beat-em-up genre still has plenty left to say.
What most players miss about the River City Girls games is how much personality lives outside the combat. The NPC dialogue, the visual gags, the self-aware humor running through the whole thing. It rewards players who slow down between fights, not just the ones chasing combos.
Claim window and what you keep
Both games are available for free on the Epic Games Store from July 2 through July 9 at 8am PT. Once claimed, they are yours permanently. No subscription required, no trial period.
The pairing works on every level. If you claim I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream and work through it, River City Girls 2 is sitting right there as the tonal reset you will probably need. If the horror game is not your thing at all, River City Girls 2 alone is worth the two minutes it takes to add it to your library.
For players new to the Epic Games Store ecosystem, our MetalCore installation guide walks through how to redeem Epic Games codes and get titles downloaded, which covers the same process used for free weekly claims.
Epic's free game rotation has been running consistently for years now, and weeks like this one are a reminder of why it is worth checking in regularly. The store has handed out some genuinely significant titles over the years, and a 1995 psychological horror landmark plus a modern beat-em-up in the same week is a strong showing by any measure.
If you are looking for more to do while you wait for next week's rotation, our gaming guides hub has plenty to keep you busy across whatever else you are currently playing. And if you need something lighter after I Have No Mouth, the Fortnite Star Wars Unleash the Force quests are still running with free cosmetics up for grabs.
