Square Enix will be giving it away as a tribute to the late singer until Jan 22.

David Bowie was a complete artist; everyone knows about his music (if you didn’t you probably do now) and he shifted through multiple styles and genres since Space Oddity; he had some roles in movies and theaters… and he even tried his hand in the videogame world.

The Nomad Soul (Omikron in the US), features an original soundtrack composed by David and Reeve Gabrels, with songs that would be later reworked for Bowie’s album “Hours…”, making The Nomad Soul the first appearance of many tunes featured there (i.e. “New Angels of Promise”, the game’s intro song, received little changes before it’s official release in “Hours…“).

Not only did Bowie compose the original soundtrack of the 1999’s title, but he also gave his face to 2 characters (Boz, and outlaw revolutionary, and an unnamed lead singer of in-game musical group “The Dreamers”), while having some hand in the plot and general design of the game.

Back to the game, The Nomad Soul is a futuristic adventure game that boasts mechanics of genres like First Person Shooters, Fighting and Puzzle games. Story-wise, you’ll find your good deal of cyber-punk tropes, like a world in the verge of extinction, blurred lines between technology and spiritualism, a society divided by sectors, a government ran by a super computer… the game also makes a big deal out of “Reincarnations” – inhabitants of Omikron are capable of reincarnating as people from another worlds, and is up to you (the players) to use this power and other abilities to uncover the serial killings going on the city.

Quantic Dreams, the French studio behind the game, is now well-known for titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, so you can see they were eager to experiment from the start. The Nomad Soul, however, had nowhere as much acceptance as the more recent examples and got mixed reviews, with just enough commercial success for the surfacing of talks about a sequel (that never came to fruition).

If you are interested in Bowie’s jump to the videogame realm, or just want to check Quantic Dreams roots, you can get this (short, btw) game for free until January 22 by clicking here.

You can also check the game’s original webpage from back at the end of the millennium via the Wayback Machine. It’s not like you can’t read the info somewhere else, but…