"Homeworld 3" was originally scheduled for release in 2022, but was pushed back to 2023 and then to 2024. All together, that's quite a delay, but at least there is plenty of time to catch up with the earlier work. That's because the "Homeworld Remastered Collection" has just appeared on the Epic Games Store, and for a limited time it's free.

The "Homeworld Remastered Collection" includes polished versions of the first two "Homeworld" games, as well as the original unaltered versions. It also includes access to the Homeworld Remastered multiplayer beta and cross-play with the Steam version, which can be obtained for free and made permanent if added to Epic Games' library by August 2.

Upon its 2015 release, our reviewer described "Homeworld Remastered" as "a worthy upgrade to one of the best strategy games of all time. In addition to being a great strategy game, this is also an emotional space opera with a real sense of intergalactic existential dread. The aforementioned review noted that "the campaign stands today as the most effective use of RTS as a storytelling tool."

Homeworld 3 has been in development for a long time, and studio Blackbird Interactive seems to be making fairly good progress. Tyler, for example, recently mentioned the game's highly detailed approach to unit barking, which will work like sports commentary rather than the perfunctory grunts that have become tiresome in Warcraft, for example.

And anyway, all these delays are not a sign of tumultuous development, says Blackbird Interactive (though they would say so). The studio wrote in May that "this work will take time."