We’ve been so busy doing our end-of-year and best of 2013 stuff, as well as taking some much-needed time off to hang with the family over the holidays, that a very noteworthy Freebie Alert nearly slipped right by us. Nearly. Currently, 17-Bit Studio’s Skulls of the Shogun (Free) is free. Why is it free? Christmas? New Year? Just because 17-Bit are nice people? Who cares why, you need to download this bad boy right now. We awarded Skulls of the Shogun five stars in our review, and it was our pick as Game of the Week when it released. It’s a fantastic strategy game with the approachable-yet-super-deep flavor of a game like Advance Wars, and the production values are just through the roof.

Now, Skulls of the Shogun went free a couple of days ago, and normally I’d be leery of posting about a sale when it’s that old. However, since iTunes is still frozen up at least through today, then the game should be free for at least as long. Just be careful, as iTunes is scheduled to “unfreeze" at some point on Friday, so maybe double check the price before clicking the old buy button. And, if you do happen to miss out on this freebie, I have good news: Skulls of the Shogun is totally worth paying for anyway, and at its normal price of five bucks, it’s still a total steal.