If you're looking for a couple more video game freebies to shove unceremoniously into your almost certainly already overstuffed 'to do' pile, Epic has you covered, with Yooka-Laylee and Void Bastards currently free on its PC store.

Yooka-Laylee, if you're unfamiliar, is a spiritual successor to Rare's beloved platformer Banjo-Kazooie - and was developed by Playtonic, a studio founded by a number of ex-Rare veterans. Lizard and bat replace bear and bird in Yooka-Laylee, but the formula will be immediately familiar to Banjo-Kazooie fans, setting players loose across a number of sprawling, predominantly platforming-focussed worlds as they embark on an perky, old-school collectathon in search of missing Quills.

All in all, it's a decently entertaining adventure (although its superb side-scrolling sequel, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, is far superior), and one that Eurogamer contributor Edwin Evans-Thirlwell called a "sumptuous, diverting homage to a bygone era in game design that should keep fans of the old school hooked, even if it doesn't set the world on fire."

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Void Bastards looks like a mash-up of all the best things: it's got the cel-shaded, sci-fi art style of a Borderlands title, gameplay mechanics inspired by BioShock, and dark humour to make even GLaDOS blush. If all that sounds good to you, thankfully you won't have to wait much longer, as Void Bastards is releasing on PC and Xbox One at the end of the month. Mark 29th May on your calendars.

The game is the latest project by Blue Manchu, the studio led by the former design director for BioShock and System Shock 2, Jonathan Chey. Unsurprisingly, he cites both titles as inspiration for Void Bastards, explaining much of the game design choices stem from those titles.

"I love the deep simulational gameplay of BioShock and System Shock 2 - they aren't just run and gun shooters," Chey says in the press release. "I wanted to find a way to experience more of that gameplay without having to replay the same story over and over. Wrapping the shooter inside a strategy game turned out to be a great way to do that!"

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