The Victorian Gothic naval adventure Sunless Sea is free on the Epic Store

Sunless Sea is a really weird game. It casts you as the captain of a ship on the Unterzee, a vast underground sea in the "Victorian Gothic" universe of Fallen London. You sail, you explore, you expand your capabilities and your crew, you meet strange people and creatures, you suffer nightmarish horrors that ravage your sanity, and sooner or later, you die.

(That's a selling feature, by the way: The game's tagline is "Lose your mind. Eat your crew. Die.")

It's not the freshest game ever—it's been drifting around ominously since 2015—but it's good: We said it was "almost a classic" in our 80% review, with "wonderful" writing brought up slightly short by relatively shallow gameplay. I never had much luck with it myself, my naval adventures on the inky black water always ended up pretty much exactly as developer Failbetter Games predicted (madness, cannibalism, death), but I was drawn to try again and again by the haunting, oddly beautiful world.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Sunless Sea is now free on the Epic Games Store. For the next week, you can simply click here, click "Get," and finally click "Place Order," then like magic it will be added to your Epic account at zero cost. If you really dig it, you can also pick up the Zubmariner expansion pack for $11 which, as the title suggests, will let you explore beneath the surface of the Unterzee. Otherwise, though, it's a very similar experience: "Lose your mind. Eat your crew. Dive."

Sunless Sea is free on the Epic Store until March 4. After that, Eugen Systems' East-vs-West RTS Wargame: Red Dragon will take its place. For more free games, don't miss our lists of best free PC games, best free games on Steam, best browser games, and all the free games you can grab right now.