It’s Thursday again, meaning its time for Epic’s ongoing cycle of free games to tick over once again. This week’s offerings are grimy cyberpunk horror Observer and bizarre spin-off Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. That’ll be that sorted for some low-lit thrills, then. As per, you’ve only got seven days to grab these freebies before they slink back into the shadows from whence they came.

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Working with publishers led the the novelist Alan Wake to flip his lid and get chased by ghosts or summat, so Big Al must be thrilled to escape his previous publisher contract. Alan Wake developers Remedy Entertainment have announced they’ve gained the publishing rights to the third-person spooker-shooters, which were previously held by Microsoft. This self-publishing seems more a happy consequence of old contract conditions rather than a sign that they’re planning to make a new one, but it should give them more power to do whatever they dang well please with Al.

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While a twist happy ending might undermine a horror story (I’m looking at you, Stephen King), it’s a greatly appreciated thing in games right now, and today’s pleasant twist: Alan Wake is back. Soundtrack fully intact and only a couple quid right now, too. Remedy’s spook’o-shooter was pulled from stores after its music licenses expired – killed by Roy Orbison. Fortunately developers Remedy have manged to wrangle things back together. The game is back on major stores and 80% discounted until Halloween, along with standalone expansion American Nightmare.

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Remedy followed up their spooky-ooky shooter Alan Wake with the shorter, shootier semi-sequel Alan Wake’s American Nightmare in 2012. Might a proper sequel, we wondered, follow next?

Well, no. However, Remedy had started prototyping an Alan Wake 2 soon after finishing the first game, and whipped up a fancy gameplay video to pitch to publishers. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet (and a Polygon interview), you can now watch thirteen minutes of the Wake that never was. Some of its ideas, you may notice, were later reused in American Nightmare. But is Alan Wake dead and gone? Oh, you never know, Remedy say.

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Do you have between one and infinity dollars? Are you waiting for Alan Wake to be ‘bundled’ up with the expansion and extra materials, where the costs are distributed between the developers and charity? Those are some very specific conditions you have there. Gaming welcomes you, but if that’s your criteria for every game then you might want to relax it a bit. Just buy games in sales and give money to charity, okay? This week’s Humble Bundle sale presents Alan Wake, Remedy’s love letter to Stephen King novels and lovely naps. But it’s more of a nap that a baby has, where it wakes up screaming and smelling of poo, because the bundle also marks the end of Remedy’s work on an Alan Wake sequel. (more…)