Epic Gives Away Mechabellum and Astrea Now, With System Shock 2 Remaster and Buried Stars Free Next Week

By CriticalPixel · 2026-09-24

Epic Games Store just refreshed its Thursday giveaway, and the headline is what is waiting in the wings. Astrea: Six Sided Oracles and Mechabellum are free to claim right now, but the pair landing next week is the real reason to bookmark the page: System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster and Buried Stars. Deal tracker Wario64 flagged the whole four game lineup within minutes of the swap, and the Epic Games Store free games page confirms the schedule. The current pair stays free until October 1 at 12:00 PM, and the next two run from October 1 to October 8. If you have ever wanted to see what all the fuss about SHODAN is, that second window is your excuse.

Key art from the Epic Games Store page for System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster

What is free right now

Mechabellum is the bigger name of the current pair. It is a mech auto-battler from developer Game River and publisher Dreamhaven where you draft troops, customize units, set your formation and then watch your army crush the other side in 3D. The Mechabellum listing pitches it as all strategy and no clickfest, with 1v1, 2v2, free for all and a Survival Mode. Worth knowing before you hit claim: the store page also lists add-ons and in-game purchases, so the base game is free but the storefront will still try to sell you things. That is the modern free game deal, and at least the core loop does not sit behind a paywall.

Astrea: Six Sided Oracles is the quieter pick, and honestly the more original one. Little Leo built a roguelike deckbuilder that swaps cards for dice, with more than 350 dice across three types: reliably safe, perfectly balanced and powerfully risky. The hook is a dual damage system where Purification hurts enemies or heals you, while Corruption hurts you or heals them, and you can take on Corruption on purpose to power up skills tied to your health bar. Akupara Games publishes it, and Epic shows it sitting at a 4.7 rating. If Slay the Spire style runs are already eating your evenings, this is a cheap way to see a genuinely different take on the formula.

The main event: System Shock 2 from Nightdive

Now the good stuff. System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is Nightdive Studios' rebuild of the 1999 FPS/RPG classic, and the System Shock 2 listing on Epic shows a 4.8 rating with a Windows release date of June 26, 2025. The remaster brings cross-play co-op multiplayer, mod support, up to 144 FPS with ultra-widescreen support, 50 achievements, enhanced characters, weapon models and animations, plus optimized controller support and quality of life fixes. You wake from cryo sleep in the year 2114 aboard the FTL ship Von Braun, 42 years after the hacker stopped SHODAN on Citadel Station, with no memory and a crew that has been turned into hybrid mutants and murderous robots. You pick a military branch, either O.S.A, Marines or Navy, and build from there.

For context on why this matters, the game normally is not cheap on Epic. On the Brazilian storefront I checked, the base game was listed at R$ 80,99, and that is a full price tag for a game that first shipped in 1999. Handing it out for a week is a big deal for anyone who bounced off the original because of its clunky controls and dated look. The remaster exists precisely to file those edges down while keeping the survival horror tension, the inventory management pain and the audio logs that made the original a cult favorite. You still have to earn your dread here, and that is a compliment.

Second promotional image for System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster from the Epic Games Store listing

Buried Stars rounds out the week

The other October 1 title is a much smaller and stranger swing. Buried Stars is a mystery adventure from Studio LARGO, the team behind the Korean titles Panic Room and City of Mist, made in collaboration with LINE Games. The setup is a live survival audition show whose studio building collapses, leaving contestants and crew trapped under the rubble with a murder among them. The Buried Stars listing describes an in-game social media feed and timeline where you track public reactions for clues, blending 2D character art with 3D environments, with branching scenarios and multiple endings. It is single player, has controller support and looks like a solid pick for a rainy weekend.

How the community is reacting

Reaction is limited so far, and I am not going to invent a consensus out of it. Most of what showed up on X in the first minutes came from deal accounts and free game aggregators reposting the lineup, which tells you the news spread fast but not how people feel about it. Nobody I could find was complaining about the choices, and the System Shock 2 announcement in particular was being amplified as the next free game to grab. Expect the real reactions to arrive once the remaster hits libraries on October 1 and people start dying on the Von Braun.

The CriticalPixel take

This is the kind of week Epic should be doing every time. A tactics game with real multiplayer, a novel dice roguelike, a lauded remaster of one of the most influential immersive sims ever made and a narrative mystery all share the same seven day window. Compare that to the weeks where the free slot goes to a forgettable asset flip, and it is clear why people still open the store every Thursday. The catch is the usual one: giveaways are how Epic keeps you inside its launcher, so claim the games, but do not treat the freebies as a reason to ignore the wishlist you already have elsewhere.

Put the dates in your calendar. Claim Astrea and Mechabellum before October 1 at 12:00 PM, then come back on the same day to grab System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster and Buried Stars before October 8. A classic remaster this good does not usually cost nothing, and if you have a friend who has never touched an immersive sim, the cross-play co-op makes it an easy way to drag them into SHODAN's nightmare. Do not wait until the last hour, because store pages get flaky when a lot of people hit claim at once.