This is your last chance to grab the latest free game from Epic , called The Spectrum Retreat - a challenging, first-person puzzle game set in the near future. The giveaway ends at 4pm UK time/11am EST, when it will be replaced by two other games, which you can see links to below the review and images.

Todays giveaway is free from any malware..

Ultimate Puzzles: Animals:

In Brief:
Ultimate Puzzles Animals is a simple 16 square piece's jigsaw puzzle with five images and no lugs. You can see a video of game play HERE

This is the first of three Ultimate Puzzles: Animals, we have already been given v2 and v3 recently. We were given Ultimate Puzzle: Animals 2 on February 24, 2021! HERE, where it received a positive 58% from 12 votes with just my short review and no community comments and we were also given Ultimate Puzzle: Animals 3 on May 18, 2021 HERE, where it received one of the lowest scores I've ever seen here i.e. a positive 33% from 6 votes with comments (not really a significant result due to the low numbers who voted)

The Game:
Ultimate Puzzles: Animals is another of those jigsaw puzzles from UniDen, made with the Unity engine that has the simplest jigsaw shape, a square; that is, square shaped puzzle pieces that have no lugs. There are four images to solve with a mixture of domestic and wild animals that include a young dog; (does anyone know the breed?) and a dwarf rabbit, plus a red squirrel and a lion. We've had several of these types of puzzle games previously from the developer UniDen, i.e. America, Countries, France, Nature, Nature 2, Animals 2 & 3, Marine Life, Cars, China and Japan as well as a few other non jigsaw games such as Knight's Tetris, Rockcar, Super Checkers, Rubixs Adventure and Legend of the Fallen Castle 1 & 2.

Each of the four puzzles is made up of 16 square pieces. which are placed on a 4 x 4 grid i.e. 16 pieces. You can turn each piece by clicking on it to bring it to the right orientation; this does add to the game somewhat with respect to difficulty as it can take longer to get the right orientation. The pieces only turn clockwise. Once a puzzle piece has been placed in the correct position, it locks in place. If you try to place a piece on an element of the grid that it doesn't belong on, it will jump back to the periphery where other pieces are located. Pieces will be randomly placed when you re do the puzzle. You can restart any of the puzzles at any time by clicking on the back arrow.

All four puzzles are relatively simple. An adult could easily complete the whole game in around 10 to 15 minutes at the very least. I think the developer is asking far too much over on Itch.io for just four jigsaw images at $5 per game; though he did add an extra image to Ultimate Puzzles: Animals 3. If all of the series were to be combined, into one single jigsaw puzzle, it would seem a fairer price, but there are free jigsaw programs available online that in my opinion are much better than this; (okay it's free today). We were given a jigsaw puzzle called Infinite Jigsaw Puzzle

Feb 13th 2008 which allowed your own images to be added to the puzzle, plus had several jig saw shapes and you could adjust the difficulty from around 25 pieces to over a thousand. You could also categorise images as well. I've still got that puzzle and sometimes dip into it, with several hundred images added over the years I've had it. I'd buy it from the original developer if I could find them (Media Research Group).

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 59 antimalware engines. The downloaded executable may include some low level adware that only opens your browser to Falcoware's home page after the game has installed and places four shortcuts onto your desktop (which can be safely deleted once the game has installed). The installation does not inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to Falcoware's home page when the game has been installed, it earns Falcoware games some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the game to be given away free. You can see the results of the scan via the following link:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/8366b26b045d855ad8512d273570af91497ecbf0087595a31dff663f8132ce66/detection

Other Free Games:
The latest free game from Epic is The Spectrum Retreat - a challenging, first-person puzzle game set in the near future. You awake at The Penrose hotel, a peaceful yet unsettling refuge from the outside world. As a valued guest, your existence is embedded into the corridors and guest rooms of The Penrose and will be available to add to your Epic account until later today at 4pm UK time/11am EST. Two more games will then be given away called Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead (looks great) which combines the legendary and challenging puzzle gameplay of Bridge Constructor™ with the post-apocalyptic zombie universe of AMC’s The Walking Dead and Ironcast that was Inspired by Victorian-era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire! Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880's Victorian England. The game is one of my favourite versions of a match three game where creating matches gives you chances to beat your AI opponent. I already have this game on Steam and love it. It has mainly positive reviews. These will be available to add to your EPIC games library from Thursday the 8th July to Thursday 15th July at 4pm UK time/11am EST when a new set of games will be available to add to your account. Since Epic Games started to give away games I've accumulated over 270 games not counting duplicates, most of which are either AAA or high end indie arcade games.

Also from Epic, If you play online with friends there are several free online games for example there 's a decent PvE/PvP FPS game called Scavengers with a coop mode (I checked it out recently and it looks fantastic as well as plays well) and you can still get the clicker RPG Idle Champions. I've posted some details about Idle Champions over in the forums HERE, where you'll also find links to a Reddit page where you can pick up codes to redeem chests for free that give you various buffs and other items to add to your account that boost your heroes abilities and health as well as affect your group of heroes in game, for example potions that boost health or DPS, contracts that can improve armour or weapons already used by the heroes or other contracts that add specific amounts of gold to your bank as well as items of jewellery, armour or weapons that buff your characters stats. I've stopped playing the game simply because it was too addicting.

Please see Delenn's threads for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. Delenn has been updating these regularly for years now. It’s worth adding these links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, it’s yours to keep. Delenn has recently posted details of more Steam games that are temporarily free. One may be until it leaves early access??? - i.e. Tower Ball - Incremental Tower Défense plus a reflex game called Keyboard Killers are still free. Delenn posted details of a free origin came called Battlefield 4 which is available for free if you have an Amazon Prime account (If you like FPS games, it's a brilliant game to own. (not sure if it's still live).


You'll find hundreds of freeware games of all arcade and indie genres on Itch.io and Caimans Games as well as other sources. Please do check out the game discussion forums for older posts HERE (the sticky section is useful). Many of the earlier posts may be out of date with respect to the links I and others have provided to the free games; however, you only need to know the name of the game to find most of them via other sources. Many of those games from 2008 to around 2017 were posted as part of a project to supplement the lack of weekday games when the game giveaway went to weekend only games around Easter 2008 (mainly instigated due to the financial crisis of 2008) until November 2018 when Falcoware stepped into the weekday slot; however, from around 2015 onwards we did start to get the occasional Steam key for various games offered as limited giveaways, with a restriction on the number of keys available (anywhere from 25 to 2000+). These included over 60 decent AAA games and indie arcade games ; for example some of the better AAA games included , lucky Warhammer: Vermintide 1 & 2 plus DLC for version 2; Dreadlands, Mount & Blade: Warband, Immortal Unchained and Conan Exiles.


The Indie Gala developers freebies are available HERE (latest additions) and HERE (81 games in the Showcase, most full versions). Recent additions include In Between Land Sonya: The Great Adventure, The Last Dream: Developer's Edition, Deep Despair Cube Runner, Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders, Whispering Willows Snow White Solitaire. Charmed Kingdom, Adam Wolfe (Complete Edition), Doodle Devil, Deep Space Anomaly and the latest addition Kick Ass Commandos; plus, many more in the showcase section HERE and the Freebies section HERE.

It’s worth adding most of the links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, they are yours to keep. :)