PSA: One of our favorite games of 2021 is free to keep on the Epic Games Store today
To celebrate the holiday season each year, the Epic Games Store speeds up its weekly game giveaway (opens in new tab) into a daily drop, with a new game becoming free to keep each morning. The offerings so far have been good, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to take anything away from Horizon Chase Turbo or Costume Quest 2.
But buddy, they ain’t Sable (opens in new tab). In our review of the game, Nat Clayton declared, “Sable’s lonely, heartfelt journey of self-discovery will sit with me for a lifetime,” and awarded it an enviable 93% score. Sable is currently free on the Epic Games Store (opens in new tab), today, December 18, and will be until tomorrow at 11 AM ET/ 8 AM PT/ 4 PM GMT .
I remember following the development of this chill open world exploration game for years and being blown away every time developer Shedworks shared a new snippet of gameplay footage. Sable’s cell shaded art style, an homage to the influential French illustrator Jean Giraud Moebius, is a revelation on the order of Wind Waker’s breakout look. Gameplay aside, Sable is just a visual feast that has to be experienced.
Sable doesn’t have a massive open world, but it’s big enough—handcrafted, full of surprises, and it never wears out its welcome. The game apes Breath of the Wild’s great trick of only doling out a little bit of the map to you at a time, and it’s full of the same sort of devilish puzzles and platforming challenges that were the gameplay highlights of BotW for me. Peak Sable is encountering some sort of stony ruin or crashed spaceship out in the waste that you never expected to find, then plumbing its depths for secrets and treasure.
Sable was formerly available on PC Game Pass, but left the service back in October. Even if Epic isn’t your main launcher of choice, it’s absolutely worth it to log in and grab Sable if you don’t have it yet. I played it at launch on Steam, and I envy anybody who’s about to tackle it for the first time.
