Epic Free Games: System Shock 2 Remaster and Buried Stars to Oct 8

Epic's weekly giveaway does not usually make us sit up, but this week's pair is worth a minute of your time. Until Thursday, October 8, the Epic Games Store is handing out System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster, which normally sells for $29.99, alongside Buried Stars, the mystery adventure from LINE Games that usually costs $39.99. Both are free to claim and stay in your library for good, and the store already lists the next two: Out of Sight and TerraScape, free from October 8 to October 15.

The timing matters. Epic rotates its free games on Thursdays at 11 AM ET, which is 8 AM Pacific and 4 PM in the UK. Claim the current pair before that cutoff on October 8 or they go back to full price.

Video: Nightdive Studios on YouTube

Why System Shock 2 is the one to grab

System Shock 2 came out in 1999 and has been on "games you really should play" lists ever since. You wake from cryo sleep aboard the starship Von Braun in the year 2114 with no memory of who you are, the crew has been turned into hybrid mutants and killer robots, and SHODAN, the rogue AI from the first game, is running the ship. It mixes first person shooting with role playing systems: you pick one of three military branches, the O.S.A., the Marines or the Navy, and build your character from there, so a psionics run plays nothing like a heavy weapons run. Its DNA is all over later games, and it is the one Warren Spector, who retired this summer, produced before he made Deus Ex.

Nightdive's remaster, released in June 2025 and co-published with Atari, is the version to play today. According to its store page it adds cross-play co-op multiplayer, mod support, enhanced character and weapon models and animations, ultra-widescreen support, frame rates up to 144 FPS, optimized controller support and 50 achievements, on top of a long list of quality of life fixes. It is still a slow, tense, resource-starved horror game at heart, and the co-op in particular turns a solo nightmare into a very good three player evening. For zero dollars there is no reason to skip it.

Buried Stars, and what comes next

Buried Stars is the stranger of the two. It is a visual novel style mystery from LINE Games Corporation set in the collapsed venue of a live survival audition show. The trapped contestants can only talk to each other, and to the outside world, through social media while they wait for rescue, and the plot is driven by how trust between them breaks down as things go wrong. It first appeared on Steam in November 2021, and it is a solid pick if you want something to read rather than something to shoot.

The next week's pair, running from October 8 at 11 AM ET until October 15 at the same time, is lighter. Out of Sight, from The Gang Studio and normally $14.99, is a horror puzzle adventure in which you play Sophie, a blind girl who sees through the eyes of her teddy bear while trying to escape a dark mansion. TerraScape, from Bitfall Studios and normally $16.99, is a cozy medieval city building puzzle game where you place buildings on floating islands, hunt for secret combinations and take on weekly challenges in single player and multiplayer modes.

Between this and the October PS Plus games, it is a cheap month to fill a backlog. Our take is simple: claim all four, but if you only make one of them a priority, make it System Shock 2. It is a landmark, the remaster is the best it has ever looked and played, and it is free for five more days.