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Xbox Game Pass is one of the best deals in gaming today. For $10 a month, you get access to a Netflix-style library of video games that you can download and play whenever you want. Some marquee games hit the service the same day they’re released, as with The Outer Worlds. In other words, it’s no surprise that the subscription claims more than 20 million members.
But as good a deal as Game Pass is, it can also be seriously overwhelming. On console, you’ll find hundreds of titles at your fingertips. Seeing as games are bigger now than ever, you can reasonably only have a handful of Game Pass titles on your console at any given time. So, where should you start?
Below, you’ll find a rundown of the best games currently on Xbox Game Pass. Some ground rules: Don’t expect to see any Microsoft tentpoles here—your Forzas, your Halos, and so on—seeing as, if you have an Xbox you’re probably well aware those games exist and are worth playing. We’re further keeping this list console-only for now. (Members of Xbox Game Pass for PC get access to a similar list that includes most of these games but has some that aren’t available on console.) Of course, games are also periodically added to Game Pass—and periodically leave, too. We will continue to update this list as availability shifts.
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Control
Play a few third-person shooters, and it can quickly feel like you’ve seen all the genre has to offer. Not so with Control, which upends the standard shoot-duck-sit-shoot formula—chiefly by giving you some formidable psychokinesis powers. Yes, in Control, you can throw heavy shit with your mind. Developed by Remedy Entertainment, Control looks and feels a bit like the studio’s previous game, Quantum Break. But the setting (a shape-shifting brutalist Manhattan skyscraper) and premise (bad evil supernatural stuff gone wrong), plus one of gaming’s awesomest protagonists, are altogether compelling enough to elevate Control into a class of its own.
A Good Match For: Fans of brutalism, streamlined architectural design that prioritizes function over form, and third-person shooters.
Not A Good Match For: Control is tense and scary at moments, so those who eschew horror in all its forms should steer clear.
Read our review.
See it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
Desperados III
If the best stealth games are actually puzzlers, then Desperados III fits the bill. Set in the late 19th century, you play as a band of archetypal Wild West characters on a quest for revenge, sticking together murder missions on isometric maps that span from Colorado to Louisiana. The game urges experimentation by design—quicksaves and quickloads happen in a flash—which is essential for a game of this nature. Sure, you could take out a target with a boring old knife or gun. But some of the more artful kills, like the option to drop a baby grand on a dude’s head, require patience and tenacity.
A Good Match For: Anyone who played and loved Hitman, Commandos, Dishonored, Shadow Tactics, and other pantheon-worthy stealth games.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for an XCOM or Gears Tactics; despite some structural similarities, Desperados 3 is not a turn-based game.
Read our impressions.
See it in action.
Dead Cells
Dead Cells does the one thing every roguelike should do—make you feel like a constantly evolving badass—and does it expertly. Your first run might last four minutes, if you’re lucky. Sink a couple hours into the game, and your runs could easily last an hour. After every run, which folds out as a high-velocity side-scrolling jaunt through multiple monster-infested biomes, you’ll unlock new weapons and abilities. Those then cycle into the random drops you’ll receive at the start and in shops, making it so no two runs are alike (well, unless you use the game’s deep customization options). The only constant in Dead Cells is progress. Can’t kill that.
A Good Match For: The folks who hang out at the intersection of Castlevania Street and Rogue Avenue.
Not A Good Match For: Narrative-hungry gamers, as Dead Cells’ occult story is mostly woven in the margins.
Read our review.
See it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
Deep Rock Galactic
If everything is Left For Dead now, then Deep Rock Galactic fully cornered the space angle. A cooperative PvE shooter, you and up to three other friends choose from one of four playable classes and shoot waves upon waves of space bugs. (All of the classes are unique, each coming with different guns that feel terrific to shoot.) It’s largely set in the subterranean chasms of a mining operation, so, while you’re turning said space bugs into pulp, you also have to juggle menial tasks, like mining minerals and such. Hey, we’ve all gotta work, right?
A Good Match For: Everyone who loves that quintessential Left For Dead formula.
Not A Good Match For: Folks playing solo; Deep Rock Galactic is at its best when you’re playing with friends.
See it in action.
Slay The Spire
The Game Pass library shifts constantly, and it’s all too easy to miss when great games land on the lineup. So, news flash: Slay The Spire, the deck-building roguelike that inspired a thousand deck-building roguelikes, is on Game Pass. Battles are turn-based. With every successful victory, you navigate branching paths to the top of, well, a spire, where you face off against a boss. Each run adds more potential cards to the rotation, allowing you to shake up your strategies over time. You can also work toward unlocking different player characters, each of whom has different perks. Fast-paced roguelikes like Hades no doubt have their charms. But sometimes you want something that slows things down a bit without sacrificing any intensity.
A Good Match For: Those who like trying things over and over again.
Not A Good Match For: Those who don’t.
Read our impressions.
See it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
A Plague Tale: Innocence
A Plague Tale: Innocence is not for the faint of heart. Rats, death, war, famine, dead dogs, young children in a ceaseless life-and-death struggle—but if you can stomach it, A Plague Tale’s got all the good stuff. You play as two young children from a royal household on the run from French Inquisition soldiers. A relentlessly challenging stealth game, you’re pretty much done for if you get discovered. No spoilers here, but the story takes some unexpected and viscerally upsetting turns, if you’re into that sort of thing. Earlier this year, it was upgraded for next-gen consoles, and now boasts some eye-popping visuals. A sequel is on the way, planned for a 2022 release.
A Good Match For: Players looking for tense adventure games.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone hungry for a more lenient action game, à la Uncharted.
Read our impressions.
See it in action.
Hollow Knight
You might have heard some jokes about Hollow Knight (that everyone who plays it needs to start over three times before it clicks, that everyone who beats it will breathlessly defend it to the death as the best game of all time). Make no mistake: Quips aside, Hollow Knight is an all-timer 2D Metroidvania. Set in an insectoid kingdom brought to its knees by infection, you play as a silent traveling warrior. It’s a somber, haunting game—and difficult, too. The rank-and-file enemies are tough, the bosses tougher, and exploration is precious, on account of you not initially having a map at the start of each area. (You can find a mapmaker in each zone.)
A Good Match For: Metroidvania purists. Platformer fans. Musicians.
Not A Good Match For: Players who need steady direction, as Hollow Knight’s nonlinear gameplay allows for a whole lot of getting lost.
Read our review.
See it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
Narita Boy
From tip to tail, Narita Boy is a love letter to the 1980s: the neon, the synth pop, the references to arcade games, even the bad hairdos. By and large, it’s a slick if mechanically uninspired action platformer. (Jump, dodge, swing sword, shoot gun.) But you’d be hard-pressed to find one with more visual flare. The screen flickers like an old CRT. Pixelated environments pulse with vivid lights. That’s all wrapped in a fascinating mythos, in which technological beings zealously worship their creator as an omniscient god-king. At the start of the game, you’re sucked into this computer world—which, surprise, is on the brink of disaster at the hand of a malevolent jerk—and tasked with saving it.
A Good Match For: Those who like old-school games but wish they’d play as smoothly as new-school games.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for a game that radically shakes the table.
See it in action.
UnderMine
Most roguelikes impart the message that failure is fine, that you can try again and again (and again). Not so with UnderMine. Yes, your unlocked equipment and such carries between deaths, but every time you die, that character is dead for good. From the title screen, you can even see a long line of new miners, ready for you to send them to their doom. UnderMine is a competent top-down dungeon-crawling roguelike with some serious Zelda vibes. If that’s your jam, you’ll love it. And if you’re one of those who care deeply about their procedurally generated avatars, you’ll find yourself giving it all you’ve got every run.
A Good Match For: Fans of roguelikes, dungeon crawlings, and older Zelda games.
Not A Good Match For: All those miners.
Read our initial thoughts.
See it in action.
The Wild At Heart
The Wild At Heart starts off with a punch to the gut. You play as Wake, a young kid running away from home—and his terminally drunk father. You run into the woods. You get lost. Within seconds, you’re transported to a magical forest realm and yada yada yada evil spirits taking over the real world. On your holy quest of Making Sure That Doesn’t Happen, you’re accompanied by various elemental forest sprites. Much of the gameplay involves tossing the right number and type of sprite at objects. (Ex: To lift a flaming wheel, you’ll need to hurl three fire-based fellas.) Throw these creatures at enemies, and they’ll fight for you. In other words: The Wild At Heart is twee Pikmin.
A Good Match For: You, yeah, you—the person holding your breath for Pikmin 4.
Not A Good Match For: Fans of action-focused, combat-heavy games.
See it in action.
Haven
Plenty of games about hate. Haven is about love. You play as two star-crossed (literally, they cross the stars) lovers, Yu and Kay. The duo escapes their dystopian society for an uncharted exoplanet. Ostensibly, the Haven is a survival game with some combat and role-playing elements. You also get to zip around brightly colored alien fields, which is cool. But the hallmark of Haven is the magnetic romance between Yu and Kay. Video games don’t always handle such things with maturity. Haven does. The bond between Yu and Kay ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes, just like any relationship you and everyone you know has been in.
A Good Match For: Saps.
Not A Good Match For: Cynics.
Read our impressions.
See it in action.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a solid third-person action game, but that’s not the main draw. The player character, Senua, a fictional Pict warrior who lived in the 900s, suffers from psychosis. Developer Ninja Theory tapped a cadre of mental health experts to properly portray the realities of the condition. You’ll definitely want to play this one with headphones, as Senua experiences auditory hallucinations (“Furies,” per her). The sound design there is unrivaled. That alone is worth giving this one a spin.
A Good Match For: Fans of hack-and-slash, psychological horror, and standard action fare.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone who hoped the ballyhooed permadeath feature was actually a permadeath. People who don’t want puzzles in their action games.
Read our impressions.
See it in action.
Celeste
Don’t be fooled by its charm. Celeste will kill you—a lot. The 2D platformer demands near-perfect precision for every series of jumps. When, not if, you mess up, you’ll respawn in a millisecond. And you’re always so close to making it. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to shake the game’s inherent “Okay, just one more try” feeling. (The game has a robust assist mode, allowing you to tone down the difficulty vis-a-vis various parameters like game speed.)That alone would be worth checking out, but the game also pulls double-duty as a profound meditation on anxiety. Celeste tells the story of Madeline, and of her goal to literally climb a mountain (hooray for metaphors!). Over the course of seven chapters, you’ll get a crash course in how anxiety manifests, how it refuses to go away, how it can make you feel like you’re your own worst enemy. Celeste doesn’t feature any spoken dialogue, but it doesn’t need human voices to hammer its point. Killer soundtrack, too.
A Good Match For: Anyone looking to test their platforming skills, or to simply feel feelings.
Not A Good Match For: Those who want a massive game; you can finish Celeste in under 10 hours.
Read our review.
Spiritfarer
Nothing describes Spiritfarer as succinctly as its tagline does: “a cozy management game about dying.” Spiritfarer puts you in the shoes of Stella, a young woman who’s taken over Charon’s famous duties to ferry departed souls into the afterlife. That sounds dark, but all of those lost souls take the form of distinctly personable, irresistibly charming anthropomorphic animals. During their time aboard your ship, yes, as with any other management game, you have to tend to their needs—usually, food—but you can do so on your own schedule. There’s no price for failure. Even Spiritfarer’s resource-hounding mini-games, of which there are many, generally beget some sort of prize. Best of all, you can hug any of your spirit pals if they’re feeling down. It’s impossible to overstate just how nice this is. Throw in some placid watercolor art, some charming animations, and a magical cat and the result is more or less a cashmere throw in video game form. Just heed this one warning: Keep the tissues nearby. Spiritfarer can be heartbreaking.
A Good Match For: Hygge. The over-stressed. Those seeking some peace and quiet.
Not A Good Match For: Those who need their games to be fast-paced and competitive. Anyone expecting an Animal Crossing clone; despite the similarities, Spiritfarer isn’t the type of game you play forever.
Read our impressions, and learn why the local co-op is surprisingly pretty good.
Nier: Automata
Partway through Nier: Automata, a side character offers you a fish. If you eat the fish, you die—game over. For good. Seriously. The credits roll and everything. Yes, Nier: Automata is a genuinely strange game. There are 26 possible endings, one for each letter of the alphabet. Though you can power through the main story in 10 hours or so, it’s designed to be played multiple times. (Pro tip: Juggle multiple save files. And save often!) Make the wrong move, however, and you might end up wiping all of your save data. That may all sound daunting, but this gem really is worth playing again and again and again. To call this game a third-person action-RPG wouldn’t do it justice. Sure, one-minute, you may be engaged in a traditional third-person beat-’em-up. The next, you might find yourself in a side-scroller. And then, 45 seconds after that, you could be in a top-down Galaga-style shooter. It’s an endlessly creative, always-surprising ride.
A Good Match For: Players craving something both familiar and different.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone who needs a game to make sense.
Read our review.
Check out our interview with the director.
The Outer Worlds
You’d be forgiven for thinking, at first glance, that The Outer Worlds is Fallout: Space. Yes, there are similarities. Obsidian, the game’s development studio, was also the developer behind Fallout: New Vegas. But there’s enough here to set this first-person role-playing game in a class of its own. For starters, the writing is sharp as a tack, a mix of hilarious one-liners and biting commentary on corporate greed. The core gameplay loop is a blast, too. Missions never feel bloated, and tend to hit the sweet spot between exploration and actual action. Also, did we mention it’s in space? Because it’s in space. (To be specific: The Outer Worlds takes place in Halcyon, a fictional colony wholly owned and operated by parasitic corporations.) Best of all, you can pretty much clear the whole game, most worthwhile side quests included, in under 40 hours. Let’s hear it for games that actually respect our time!
A Good Match For: Fans of space-based sci-fi. Folks who can’t get enough Fallout. The proletariat.
Not A Good Match For: People who don’t like or have the patience for inventory management. People who’d rather just replay Fallout 4, which is also currently on Game Pass. Corporatists.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for playing the game.
Yakuza 0
Yakuza games are a juggling act. One ball is a daytime soap opera. Another ball is a third-person beat-em-up action game. And the third ball can only be described as truly bonkers minutiae. Maybe that means helping a street musician relieve himself. Maybe that means bowling with the goal of winning a turkey. Or maybe that just means singing karaoke. As you wander around Kamurocho—the Yakuza series’ version of Kabukichō, the entertainment district of Shinjuku, Tokyo—you’ll come across all manner of seemingly random mini-games of this ilk. They’re welcome pit stops that break up what the game is ostensibly about: beating up 15,391 dudes at once.
A Good Match For: Anyone who’s wanted to visit Japan. Tattoo aficionados.
Not A Good Match For: Grand Theft Auto fans; Yakuza games are a different beast.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for playing the game.
Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:
The Best PC Games • The Best PS4 Games • The Best Games On PS Now • The Best Xbox One Games • The Best Nintendo Switch Games • The Best Wii U Games • The Best 3DS Games • The Best PS Vita Games • The Best Xbox 360 Games • The Best PS3 Games • The Best Wii Games • The Best iPhone Games • The Best iPad Games • The Best Android Games
Update 7/15/2021: Kotaku regulars will notice a total overhaul. We’ve decided to retool this list to largely focus on smaller games you might gloss over that are nonetheless worth your time. Gone, too, is the longstanding limitation of calling out just 12 games. We’ve also pushed off most of the first-party games you’ve probably already played if you have an Xbox (Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Doom Eternal, Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisps) and given the boot to Batman: Arkham Knight. Also, Outer Wilds and CrossCode are no longer part of Xbox Game Pass, so they’re no longer part of this piece.
Update 3/10/2021: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Red Dead Redemption 2 clear out for Doom Eternal and Celeste, two games that will kill you more times than you can count.
Update 9/16/2020: Spiritfarer sails onto the list, taking Dishonored 2’s spot—still a great game, just leaving Game Pass at the end of the month.
Update 8/6/2020: Though Life Is Strange 2 is sadly no longer on Game Pass, its departure from our list cleared room for the excellent CrossCode.
Update 5/14/2020: We’ve given Monster Hunter: World and Forza Horizon 4 (both still excellent, both still on Game Pass) the boot to make room for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Nier: Automata.
Update 3/24/2020: We’ve added Yakuza 0 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They knocked out Quantum Break and Sea of Thieves, both of which are still on Xbox Game Pass (and still fantastic).
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