This week's Epic Games freebie includes two gorgeous cozy games that will hook you in no time

The Epic Games Store weekly giveaway is at its best when it hands you great free PC games that might have otherwise slipped under your radar. This week you get two of them. Puzzle-driven adventure Arranger and cozy shopkeeping tale Trash Goblin are both experiences I’ll vouch for, but you don’t just have to take my word for it, as they boast 92% and 88% Steam review scores respectively. If you’re on the hunt for something new to play, you’ve got a pair of excellent options right now.

Self-styled ‘role-puzzling’ adventure game Arranger caught me completely by surprise, and I was quickly hooked on its tile-sliding loop. Working from a top-down perspective, it feels a lot like old-school Zelda, but the entire game revolves around your ability to shift entire rows and columns of the map back and forth, in place of traditional movement. It’s both the main way you get protagonist Jemma around, and the central method for moving obstacles out of your path, or solving puzzles you encounter.

What starts as a relatively simple concept quickly spirals in all manner of creative ways. Reaching the ‘end’ of a row loops that tile, and anything on it, back around to the opposite side. This enables all manner of positional trickery, which you’ll need to progress. For example, attacking enemies or destroying objects requires you to push your sword ahead of you and into their square, meaning you’ll need to create enough spare space to slide in alongside it and shove it their way.

The other giveaway is Trash Goblin, a shopkeeping game all about restoring, upcycling, and selling various curios to an eccentric cast of fantasy clientele. Developer Spilt Milk Studios emphasizes that this isn’t a demanding simulator: “There is no pressure, no risk, no right way to play – it’s just good vibes and nice customers to serve.” While there’s a “gentle limit” to what can be done in one day, there’s no fail state – people will simply come back at a later time to claim their finished goods.

Dig out lost treasures by carving away at the dirt they’ve been buried in, employing specific tools to carefully chip out the various materials in your way. Scrub them up to their best condition, and either sell them off as they are, or consider ways you can combine several into new items that will meet your buyers’ needs. Then use the funds you receive to upgrade your shop with new facilities, display cases, and decorations to make it your own. The main story comes in about the 20 hour mark, but there are endless randomized customers to serve if you want to keep working away long after that.

Arranger and Trash Goblin are both free this week via the Epic Games Store, and yours to keep when claimed between Thursday May 7 and Thursday May 14 at 8am PT / 11am ET / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST. Head here to add them to your account while the offer lasts.

If you enjoy puzzle games that bring something fresh to the table, Arranger certainly scratched that itch for me, and its beautiful art direction made every new screen I reached feel like a reward in its own right. Trash Goblin, meanwhile, is an ideal companion to your favorite podcast and maybe a cup of hot chocolate. Sit back and feel your stresses and worries gradually chip away alongside the muck and grime.