One thing that has gone completely over my head is Amazons rebranding of Twitch Prime to Prime Gaming. I've never really used Twitch Prime for anything except to get some free skins for a few games I've been playing. The only reason I've had Twitch Prime as well is because I've been subscribed to Prime Video which gives me access to Twitch Prime as well.
A Norwegian gaming news site had an article up mentioning you could get Battlefield 4 for free with Prime Gaming. I wasn't really interested in the game but I wanted to check out what the service was all about. I logged in to my Amazon account and was quite surprised to see that I had the Prime Gaming subscription due to having Prime Video. I found that odd seeing as they advertise the service at $12 but I only play $6 for my Prime Video subscription. I'm not gonna complain though.
Apparently it's one of those services that differs depending on your country of residence, like a lot of Amazon services do. When I tried checking out what the subscription would give me if I paid the full $12 for it it only told me that it wasn't available in Norway but that I would still have limited access to the service through my $6 Prime Video subscription.
Apparently limited access means I get several games for free every month. I'm still not complaining. As far as I can see the only extra thing I would have gotten with the $12 subscription was Battlefield 4 and I don't even care about it. I might be mistaken on this last point though. When I logged into the service this was what met me:
10 video games to be claimed for free! Well, technically they cost me $6 but seeing as I didn't even know this was included in the subscription and it's not the main reason I have the subscription I'm considering it to be free.
What surprised me even more was that after claiming all of these games and switching over to the "ready to install" tab of the interface I had even more games there that I didn't even know about. The games For the King, Cultist Simulator, The Escapists and Yooka-Laylee was just sitting there in this unknown library of mine. These games have probably just been added to my account at some point through the subscription. Quite random but a welcome surprise.
Now this isn't really overwhelming stuff. Out of the 10 games I claimed none of them really appeal all that much to me. I've heard of Mana Spark and might give that a try some day. Faraway looks like a decent puzzler but the reviews look pretty bad. Bombslinger looks like a western style Bomberman rogue like clone so I might give that a go as well. The rest just seem really weird.
The four surprise games are another story though. All of those four games are games I've had on my wishlist for a while. I remember Cultist Simulator getting some great reviews when it was released. For the King is a rogue like adventure tabletop game that I've been wanting to play for a while. The Escapists is a relatively well renowned RPG/sim about escaping prison and Yooka-Laylee is supposed to be a decent platformer from the people who made the good old Banjo Kazooie games.
A little hesitantly I went and downloaded the Prime Gaming App that comes with the service to check it out. I already have GOG Galaxy, Steam and Epic Games installed and I wasn't really interested in having another. I was expecting it to be yet another store to buy and download games from but to my surprise it wasn't. A lot of surprises today. The only thing this app does is let you claim any free and available games and install them. That's it.
If you happen to have a Twitch Prime or Prime Video subscription running you should go check this out. Even if none of these games might interest you there will be coming new games to claim in the future. I wouldn't really say that it's worth subscribing to this only to get the free games, at least not this month, but that's up to you. Amazon tends to be pretty generous with trial subscriptions so you might be able to get a free week of Prime to claim these games and never look back. You should definitely check out if that's an option and maybe save it for later when there might be better games available.
All in all I was quite happy to discover this. The games I got now wasn't all that impressive but the games I might get in the future might be.
If you've played any of these games and they're good, or bad, please let me know in the comments. Maybe I'm sitting on some hidden gems here without knowing it.