Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon Are Free on Epic Games Store Right Now

A new week means a new free giveaway on the Epic Games Store. Starting today, Nova Lands — a colourful automation and exploration sandbox — and Tattoo Tycoon — a management sim about running your own tattoo parlor — are both available to claim for free until July 16, 2026. Combined, the pair is worth $49.98 at regular price.

This marks the fifth and sixth free titles Epic has given away in July 2026 alone, continuing the storefront’s now years-long tradition of dropping new freebies every Thursday. Neither game has previously been offered for free on Epic, and both remain permanently in your library once claimed, even if you never install them.

⏱ How to Claim

1. Head to the Epic Games Store free games page or open the Epic Games Launcher on PC.
2. Find Nova Lands or Tattoo Tycoon on the storefront.
3. Click “Get” and complete the zero-cost checkout.
4. Repeat for the second game.

The deadline is July 16, 2026 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET. After that, both titles return to their regular prices.

Nova Lands — Factorio Meets Forager, With a Personality of Its Own

Developer: BEHEMUTT  |  Publisher: HypeTrain Digital  |  Released: 2022  |  Regular price: $19.99

Nova Lands drops players on a hex-shaped island somewhere in space, armed with little more than a basic tool for harvesting resources. From there, the game unfolds into a full automation sandbox: gather wood and stone, refine them into steel, iron, and copper, and gradually construct furnaces, refineries, and solar panels that keep your production chains running without constant manual input.

The heart of the game is its bot system. Players can craft Collector, Logistics, and Fighter bots to handle gathering, transporting, and defending automatically, freeing up time to explore neighbouring islands, each with its own biome, creatures, and resources. A skill tree spanning Automation, Personal, Production, and Exploration lets players customise their playstyle, and combat is entirely optional. Players who prefer a pacifist approach can capture creatures instead of fighting them and still make meaningful progress.

Developed by the two-person Brazilian studio BEHEMUTT, Nova Lands has drawn frequent comparisons to Factorio, Forager, and Satisfactory, blending automation-heavy production chains with lighter, more whimsical exploration and RPG-style progression. It holds an average score of 80 on OpenCritic and a 4.8-star user rating on the Epic Games Store itself, with reviewers consistently praising its addictive gameplay loop while noting it doesn’t try to out-complicate its genre inspirations. Most reviews put total playtime for full completion somewhere between 20 and 70 hours depending on how deep players go into optimising their production lines.

Tattoo Tycoon — Ink, Manage, Expand

Developer: Crazy Bunch  |  Publisher: HandyGames  |  Released: October 2025 (Nintendo Switch, PC)  |  Regular price: $29.99

Tattoo Tycoon, developed by German studio Crazy Bunch, casts players as the owner of a small tattoo parlor with ambitions of growing it into a full luxury boutique empire. The core gameplay loop involves listening to what each client wants, picking (or designing) an appropriate tattoo, and then completing the actual tattooing process through a skill-based mini-game.

As profits roll in, players reinvest in new equipment, furniture, staff, and marketing, eventually expanding into an entire chain of parlors serving increasingly demanding and wealthy clientele. It’s not among the deepest management sims on the market, and it doesn’t try to be, but it has found a receptive audience among fans of the genre, reflected in its 4.1-star average rating on the Epic Games Store.

Quick Comparison

Last Week’s Games Are Gone — Did You Grab Them?

Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon replace last week’s giveaway of River City Girls 2 and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, which ended earlier today. If you missed that window, both titles are now back to their regular prices.

Epic has not yet announced what comes after Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon. Check back closer to July 16 for the next reveal.

Quick Summary

• Nova Lands — free until July 16
• Tattoo Tycoon — free until July 16
• Deadline: July 16, 2026 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET
• Combined value: $49.98
• Claim at: epicgames.com/store/free-games

Sources: Epic Games Store · Game Rant · GamingHQ · GameSpot · GameWatcher · OpenCritic (Nova Lands) · GameGrin