Epic Games Store Gives Away Home and Sker Ritual Free Until October 29, With Sorry We're Closed Up Next

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-22

Epic Games Store kicked off its latest giveaway on October 22 with a pair of horror games, and the price tag is zero. Home and Sker Ritual are both free to claim right now, and you have until October 29 at 12:00 BRT to grab them before they go back to normal pricing. Wario64 flagged the drop on X, and Epic's own free games page confirms the lineup and the dates. Next in the queue is Sorry We're Closed, which takes over from October 29 through November 5. Two horror titles back to back with a third waiting, just as Halloween closes in, looks like a timing choice Epic made on purpose.

Official Sker Ritual screenshot from the Epic Games Store page showing the horror shooter gameplay

What You Are Getting With Sker Ritual

Sker Ritual is the bigger of the two in scope. It is a round-based co-op survival shooter from Wales Interactive, set in 1914 on Sker Island, where you fight waves of supernatural enemies called the Quiet Ones, solo or with up to four players online. It is a spin-off of the studio's British horror game Maid of Sker and picks up the story from that game's evil ending. According to its Epic Games Store page, you collect Celtic god powers called Miracles, upgrade steampunk weapons and hunt for Easter eggs while elite enemies with unique abilities try to ruin your run. The game launched on April 18, 2024, and Skybound Game Studios is listed as the publisher on Epic. Its Steam page sits at Mixed reviews, which tells me this is a game with a real audience and some real complaints.

Home Is the Quiet One

Home is a different animal entirely. BancyCo released it back on June 1, 2012, and it is a pixel art horror adventure built around a murder mystery where your choices decide how things end. You wake in a dark room in a house that is not yours with a storm rolling in, and the game slowly bends itself around what you decide to believe. Epic's page lists multiple paths and endings, a haunting soundtrack and a Postmortem Mode developer diary that shows how the game was made while you play. System requirements are tiny, with a 300 MB storage minimum and integrated graphics, so a dusty laptop can run it. It supports controllers and carries a 12 age rating on the Brazilian storefront, so this one leans unsettling more than gory.

Official Home pixel art horror adventure screenshot from the Epic Games Store page

The Pricing and the Fine Print

On the Brazilian storefront, Sker Ritual normally costs R$66.99 and Home sits at R$13.49, and both show a 100 percent discount until the October 29 cutoff. That gap tells you which game is doing the heavy lifting in this giveaway, and it is the co-op shooter by a wide margin. Prices differ by region and I only checked the Brazilian listings, so look at your own storefront for the local number. Claiming either game requires an Epic ID, and the deal ends at 12:00 BRT on the 29th, so do not leave it for the last minute. Sker Ritual also lists in-game purchases and an add-ons tab, which means the free base game works as a foot in the door for paid extras. That is standard live-service style thinking, and I would rather Epic flag it up front than bury it below the fold.

How Players Are Taking It

Reaction is limited so far. The giveaway only went live this afternoon, and the Wario64 post had no replies when I read it, so I am not going to invent a consensus out of thin air. What the sources do show is that Sker Ritual's Steam reviews are Mixed, while Home, which has been around since 2012, had no recent rating on the pages I checked. Free horror drops tend to get picked up fast, but that is a general habit of the audience and not something I can pin on this week's posts. If the replies fill in over the next day, the tone of them will tell us whether people see this as a real haul or just filler.

Official Sker Ritual screenshot from the Epic Games Store page showing co-op combat on Sker Island

The CriticalPixel Take

Here is where I land. This is a perfectly decent week on Epic, and the real winner is whoever has been meaning to try a short, strange indie like Home. A 2012 pixel horror game is a gift for anyone who likes mystery stories that respect your time, and it costs nothing. Sker Ritual is more of a gamble, since mixed reviews on a round-based shooter usually point to repetition after the first few hours. With friends and a zero price tag, though, the risk is pretty much gone. Epic keeps leaning on the weekly giveaway to get people opening its launcher, and the cadence works because the lineup keeps changing. I just wish the store made it easier to see what you actually own, but that is a rant for another week.

Set a reminder for October 29 at 12:00 BRT, claim both before the clock runs out, and keep an eye on Sorry We're Closed after that. If you only have room for one install, make it Home for the story and Sker Ritual for a Friday night with the squad. Either way you are paying nothing, and that is the best price a horror game can have in October.