There’s no shortage of hype surrounding Summer Game Fest, and its orbit of smaller indie game showcases, as well as the wildly successful Xbox Games Showcase. This year’s events were chock full of exciting game reveals, especially for AAA lovers.

Titles like State of Decay 3, Fable, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 dominated the post-showcase conversation, and it can be difficult for indie game reveals to get enough time in the limelight.

So we here at Windows Central want to take this opportunity to highlight ten indie game reveals for Xbox from this month’s showcases that have stolen our hearts. Maybe you’ll find a few that you want to bump up to the top of your wishlist, too.

Grave Seasons

Life sims are having a moment. The genre has been on the rise for a few years now, though, which means that it is at risk of feeling stale. This has led to a new wave of genre mashups where newly released life sims have unique plot twists that keep players intrigued.

One of the best mashups of this genre is the cozy horror life sim. Grave Seasons, developed by Perfect Garbage and published by Blumhouse Games, is a shining example — we find ourselves playing as an escaped convict who has made themselves at home in an idyllic town called Ashenridge.

As one does in a cozy life sim, we set ourselves up with a darling little farm, rubbing elbows with the locals and maybe even falling in love. Hit the mines, grow your crops, and drown a few worms at the local fishing hotspots. It's all you would expect from a pixel art cozy life sim. Until the murders start, anyway, then you find yourself tossed into the chaos of investigating a murder and protecting the next victim whenever possible.

Grave Seasons is a narrative feast, with each playthrough having a different potential killer in the town — it could even be your current love interest. Different playthroughs of the game result in new details and conversations based on your relationships with the locals, keeping gameplay fresher than your garden harvest.

Start your new creepy life in Grave Seasons when it comes to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud with support for Xbox Play Anywhere on August 14. Grave Seasons will also launch day one on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

Moss: The Forgotten Relic

In 2018, Polyarc released a 3-D action-adventure puzzle game about a little mouse named Quill, called Moss, and it stole our hearts. There was just one problem — Moss was only available in VR.

Those of us on Xbox or who were unable (or unwilling) to play in VR had to just look on at trailers and screenshots of Moss longingly and hope that someday it would eventually find its way to consoles in a non-VR variant. Though at the time, it didn’t seem likely at all for that to ever happen.

Imagine the surprise when the first trailer for Moss: The Forgotten Relic dropped. This stunning adventure that takes place in a living fable has players exploring a fallen kingdom that is slowly being reclaimed by nature.

Quill, the courageous but small mouse protagonist, will need your guidance and protection as you uncover hidden secrets and navigate puzzles in a story that feels plucked from the pages of a classic fairy tale.

Both Moss: Book I and Moss: Book II have been combined for a complete fairy tale epic that is enhanced and reimagined for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, and compatible handhelds.

Moss: The Forgotten Relic is developed and published by Polyarc and is expected to release this Summer.

Bad Magpie

Sometimes in life, you just want to be a magpie — burning meadows, finding shiny objects, and creating generalized chaos using cartoon logic. There’s just one problem. In Bad Magpie, your magpie self only has one wing. Surely that couldn’t have anything to do with the chaos and arson, right?

Anywho, Bad Magpie sets you loose in a small but densely packed world with plenty of chaotic things to do as a grounded magpie who wants nothing more than to win the heart of a fallen star and cure its own loneliness in the process.

It’s a delightfully chaotic romp through a colorful world packed with puzzles that give you the freedom to solve them however you see fit, as long as you’re curious enough to try.

Despite there being no text, no dialogue, and no cutscenes, Bad Magpie does have a rich story with a cast of critters and tactile interactions that encourage mischief and exploration in order to experience an emotional narrative told through environment and interactivity.

Bad Magpie, developed and published by Milktooth, is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC with Xbox Play Anywhere support and Xbox Game Pass in 2027.

Momento

The “put stuff in a room to learn a story” genre is an interesting niche that explores environmental storytelling through beautiful art and puzzles. In the five years since Unpacking popularized the concept, there have been several new entries, but few have captured the same gut reaction we all experienced when we finally started to understand the game’s narrative.

Developers Fat Alien Cat & Nomo Studio and publishers Silver Lining Interactive may have managed to expand that experience with the upcoming release of Momento.

Similar to Unpacking, Momento is a cozy room decorator where players place objects around a beautifully illustrated room, but there is a slight twist. It’s up to you to choose the objects that matter most to decorate with, and the objects you select have a lasting impact on the path the story takes.

Starting with your childhood scene, Memento asks us to choose the toys that represent our dreams and future, which then lead into different scenes in adulthood that explore unique themes.

Wonder, love, heartbreak, and the significance of sentimentality are at the heart of Momento, as you experience a lovingly crafted tactile world that reacts to you.

Unlike similar narrative room decorators, Memento does not have a puzzle element to its gameplay. Instead, small decisions made by the player have lasting impacts that ripple throughout the story. Memento is coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

The Witch’s Bakery

Nothing heals a broken heart better than French pastries, which leads us to The Witch’s Bakery. Playing as Lunne, you can experience a colorful adventure in Paris as you serve the locals tasty treats from your newly opened bakery. Lunne’s not your ordinary chef, however. She’s also a witch with the power to see into people’s hearts.

Developed by Sunny Lab and published by Silver Lining Interactive, The Witch’s Bakery lets players experience Paris in three parts each day. During business hours, Lunne manages her bakery and serves up pastries.

As the sun goes down, Lunne closes up shop, and players can explore Paris and uncover the secrets of the city while building up relationships with her friends and neighbors. Sometimes characters’ emotions are locked away, and it requires a little more than just a chat to help them overcome their troubles.

During the evening hours, Lunne can use her witchy abilities to go inside of her friends’ troubled heart palaces and discover that person’s key ingredient — the secret touch to the recipe for a magic pastry that can heal them.

After guiding emotions through heart palaces and exploring Paris, Lunne can return to her atelier for the night to rest, improve her magic, and decorate her bakery before the next day begins anew.

The Witch’s Bakery is coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in August.

Magicians: The Devil’s Deal

If you prefer a more action-heavy take on magic, developer Uppercut Games and publisher Focus Entertainment’s upcoming narrative-driven first-person shooter, Magician’s The Devil’s Deal, just might scratch the itch for you. Uppercut Games is previously known for the narrative, no-dialogue, no-combat adventure Submerged and its sequel, making Magicians: The Devil’s Deal a new challenge for the experienced studio.

Magicians: The Devil’s Deal follows the story of Jacob Menteuro, an illusionist bound to a deal with the Devil, who unfortunately finds himself cast into Hell. Combat, exploration, and stage magic come together as Jacob and the player experience a narrative where he must overcome the Masters of Theatreland on an infernal stage that turns everyday magical props into lethal weapons.

Compelled by the Devil himself, Jacob must topple the Masters to take their powers for himself in this visually stunning world inspired by Victorian London.

Magicians: The Devil’s Deal takes the stage in 2027 on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC. And for the final trick, you can play it day one on Xbox Game Pass.

Cassette Beasts 2002

In 2023, Cassette Beasts crashed onto consoles and introduced fans to a world where they could collect and transform creative monsters with the power of retro cassette tapes. During the recent rash of showcases, developer Bytten Studio and publisher Raw Fury showed off the upcoming sequel, Cassette Beasts 2002.

Cassette Beasts 2002 starts in a quiet neighborhood of London, but players will find themselves and their custom-created characters pulled down to the land of Nodnol. Players can explore Nodnol alone or with friends via online multiplayer, and can even opt to import their original character from the first game.

In Nodnol, players can form bonds with the colorful cast of twelve different companions who can be bonded with, recruited, and even romanced. Similar to its predecessor, Cassette Beasts 2002 lets players record audio from beasts using cassette tapes that can then be played back to take on their form in battle. Fusions are also making a return, but Cassette Beasts 2002 ups the ante with over 57,000 fully-animated fusion forms.

Cassette Beasts is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC with Xbox Play Anywhere entitlements and support for Xbox cross-platform multiplayer.

Deer and Boy

Upcoming platformer Deer and Boy has long had a spot on our wishlists, and we will finally be able to get our hands on a heartwarming and poetic journey about a young runaway boy who befriends a delicate fawn very soon.

Deer and Boy is an original adventure with a unique twist: a single-player game where you are never alone as your companion grows into a majestic deer during your story, changing the way you interact with the game’s world and puzzles.

Developed by Lifeline Games and published by Dear Villagers that offers a deep narrative adventure with complex story layers that change how you see the game’s tale, with young players experiencing a wholesome story about the friendship between a boy and his deer companion. More mature players may see deeper meaning in the story, even though it has no dialogue or text.

Deer and Boy promises to be an easy, relatively short game that can be completed in a few sessions and is suitable for all members of the family — even the little guys. You can enjoy this interactive cinematic story when it releases on June 23 on Xbox Series X|S.

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit

A beautiful island awash in a watercolor aesthetic, a wholesome character creator, and an ominous bus crash that leaves you stranded at a spooky campsite — welcome to Cozy Grove.

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is the much-anticipated sequel to the 2021 life sim, where players became Spirit Scouts stranded on an island inhabited by the ghosts of adorable bears. To return home, your Spirit Scout had to help those bears become at peace with elements of their past lives.

Some stories were tragic, others heartwarming, but all of them were meaningful and left us just a little sad when the bear’s ghost would move on and become golden.

Netflix snapped up Cozy Grove developer Spry Fox in its earliest days of reaching into the gaming industry, and initially hoarded the ghost-bear-helping life sim on its mobile platform before deciding to sell the studio back to its founders at the end of 2025.

That return to independence is great news for console and PC players who were desperate to return to this incredible world and experience more haunting bear stories, because now Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is coming to Xbox on July 15.

Grab your badge sash, we’re going decorating and helping ghosts remember their pasts and come to peace with their deaths. New bears, new island, new NPCs to meet. Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit comes to Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere. A free demo is available now.

Grim Trials

There’s more to look forward to than just cozy games, so we’re closing out the list with a coming-of-age tale set in the afterlife, complete with heavy metal riffs and action roguelike gameplay. You can still craft, but like, in a hardcore way.

Grim Trials lets you customize your weapons and equipment as Avelin, a young woman who has been recruited to serve as one of Death’s reapers. It’s up to Avelin to track down impure souls, but in doing so, she will be forced to come to terms with her own untimely demise and face her own demons.

Grim Trials features endless hex-grid arenas where Avelin will need to overcome monsters and traps before tackling the 7 sacrilegious bosses. Players are armed with customizable scythes, crossbows, and Blessings from the Gods of Death.

A victory on the battlefield affords Avelin the spoils of war, and she can use the materials collected to craft better weapons, armor, and consumables to aid in the journey through the afterlife.

Developed by Rolling Glory Jam and published by Soft Source Pte Ltd, Grim Tales is sure to pique the interest of those who fell in love with Hades 2 and similar roguelikes with deep customization options, relationship-building side quests, and a full cast of characters to learn more about.

A demo for Grim Tales is available now, and you can look forward to it launching on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and compatible handhelds, though no release date has been confirmed just yet.

The first Echo Generation was announced back at an ID@Xbox showcase back in 2020, and I remember reading how Vanessa Chia, Writer & Producer and Co-founder of Cococumber, wanted the game be a reflection of the childhood many players grew up in, with the nostalgia of the era being a theme with that small town vibe that was prevalent in media of the time, such as Stranger Things, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, or The Goonies. Gameplay-wise, with RPG mechanics feeling familiar with a lack of mechanical bloating, you would be amiss to not feel nostalgic for games like Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG.

It was no surprise that Echo Generation continues this nostalgia-ridden trip with Echo Generation 2, giving the player a feeling of chill familiarity, like they are watching a Saturday morning cartoon with a bowl of cereal. What I did find a surprise, however, was how invested I would get into the characters and world the team at Cococumber would create.

You follow the game through the perspectives of two characters to begin with: Sister M & Jack, two completely different characters, sharing the same story without knowing. From the beginning, you can choose where you want to start, which is a nice addition if you think you will favor one over the other, though I find it hard to decide. As with some games with multiple playable characters that feel like a re-hash of each other, the stories are distinct and somehow, tonally different while keeping the same vibe, if that makes sense.

Sister M begins her story escaping the research facility she and the other children have been raised in and experimented on. Where are all your friends, and who is ‘The Commander?’

Jack’s story begins with him and his family having a weekend away in a cabin when there’s an explosion at Jack’s workplace, a local science facility. Jack then has to get his family home to safety before being called back into work to help save the day.

Is it the same facility? You’ll have to play the game yourself, but I played the first 3 chapters for this preview and also had the option to play two others, each chapter with a brand new character: Annata Z, a zombie who awakens with no memories other than that she’s missing her daughter, and Nolivia, a bounty hunter from the future.

The art style of the game follows on from the first being retro pixel art 3d extravaganza for your eyes, with each screen you enter being just as beautiful as the last. Within Jacks chapter, the game opens with a shot of a sunset across a lake but the one I keep coming back to is the guest bedroom.

With how the light shines through the window on either side of the bed, the cleanliness of the room which allows the greens and reds around the room to be highlighted, adding a greater level of 3d space to the already 3d pixel art. I don’t think I can think of a screen I entered that I thought was a let-down.

The game’s gameplay is a simple nostalgic take on a turn-based RPG battle system, where the good guys and the bad guys politely take turns in trying to beat the other to a pulp, one move at a time.

The difference this time around, though, is the reworked battle system, which works on a card-collecting system, where throughout the world, glowing trading cards will be hidden for the player to find, each giving you a new attack, defense, or support card to add to your arsenal. Each belongs to a certain type of card, either diamond, spade, or heart. Each enemy will have a stance bar above their health; using cards with matching symbols will eradicate their stance bar, making your subsequent attacks do more damage.

A choice that Cococumber made to distinguish the two stories is to put Sister M as a solo character who battles to escape the oppression of her overlords, and Jack as the typical dad who teams up with his babies to fight with knives and axes. It’s a great way to keep the player engaged with your gameplay as you change your tactics from being allowed one or two attacks per turn to 3-6.

​Echo Generations 2 is short and sweet, with a completion time of around 9 hours if you want to see all the game has to offer, giving you a great bite sized game to pick up and play before you tackle your next mammoth of an RPG, or if you do want a trip down memory lane and play a game that feels like it could have been a console from your childhood.

Echo Generations 2 is available right now on Xbox Series X| S, Xbox on PC, Xbox One, Steam, and compatible handhelds. The game is also a part of your Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription and features support for Xbox Cloud Gaming and the Xbox Play Anywhere program, making it the perfect game to play when you get 5 minutes, wherever you are.

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I’ve always been one to support a developer who crowd-funds their masterpiece of an indie game, whether that be A Hat in Time, The Artful Escape, or Massive Chalice. Indie games, when they’re made for the passion of gaming, normally fall into two categories, in my experience: revolutionary experiences, or inspired interpretations.

Limbo was a brand-new experience, such as games like Five Nights at Freddy's or Celeste; or they may be new takes on established genres, but throw a curveball, such as Dokie Dokie Literature Club. On the other hand, you get indie games that wear their influences on their sleeve, games where you can tell what games inspired the developer.

Monster Crown: Sin Eater is the latter, wearing its JRPG and Pokémon influences heavily on its sleeve, giving the player something familiar and comfortable. Following on from 2021’s Monster Crown and original creator, Jason Walsh, passing the baton to Studio Aururm, Sin Eater tries to learn the lessons of the first and give fans something to get their teeth into. The question is, though, do they do enough to stop people from judging the book by its cover?

You begin the game tucked up in your bed, only to be awoken by your brother, Dyeus, who has returned to your family farm after being away for a year. Having spent his time learning to be a Monster Tamer, Dyeus confides in you that he is looking to topple the hierarchy of the realm and destroy Lord Taishukutem and the Four Heavenly Kings.

After the Inquisitor pays you a visit and arrests your brother, it’s up to you to find him, maybe become a Tamer yourself, and to take down Lord Taishukutem and the Four Heavenly Kings.

The preconception I had of this game is important, as looking at it at face value made me dive in with the expectation that I would be playing a love letter of sorts. A love letter it is, but I was immediately put on the back foot, as the conversations between you and your family made me realize that I was in for more than a simple narrative.

It was from there that I relinquished all preconceived notions I had for this game and began to become more and more intrigued as to where I was headed. From the 5 and a half hours I played, one thing I was able to observe was that the influences were not overriding the story, and the characters felt fresher than some other Indie JRPG's I’ve played in the past. The writing is fantastic and intense, leading to some altercations that made me sit up and pay attention, rather than thinking I’m playing through a ‘by the numbers’ story.

The soundtrack, by Joscha Beab, is a highlight, the perfect mix of nostalgia and creativity to stand on its own, with melodies that will stick with you throughout your playthrough, and you’ll catch yourself leaving the dialogue alone as you soak in the atmosphere it creates. Same with other JRPG’s, such as Nobuo Uematsu with the Final Fantasy series, the music plays a pivotal role in your experience, as what may seem like a generic village comes alive and makes exploration a must rather than just another settlement to pass through. This is especially the case when you take in the gorgeous pixel art of the world.

Once you have conquered the opening area, Windy Providence, you are able to venture north towards the central spire. This tower is smack bang in the middle of all the provinces and allows you to travel to whichever one you want to. This is your adventure, and Sin Eater allows you to write your story in whatever order you want.

The battle system for Sin Eater’s is similar but evolved compared to the first game, with typical RPG menuing: attack, defend, items. The main battle feature for Sin Eater this time is the ‘Synergy Bar’: When you unleash attacks that have a great effect, or maybe your monster can withstand the onslaught of your opponent, your synergy bar will fill, giving you the opportunity, when it’s filled enough, to “crown” an attack, basically making it a super version. It’s a great addition that not only can be a lifesaver when your monster is a couple of levels short, but it is also a great way to build tension and excitement.

Monster taming has a special kind of allure for players, wanting to catch them all, while building out the best party you can. There are around 200 monsters you can tame in the game’s world, each with the ability to fall into one of the five types: Will, Brute, Malicious, Unstable, or Relentless. With the ability to fuse or breed each monster, the completionists out there will groan at the knowledge that this makes 1000 different variations to find.

On top of that, you can take your monsters to the Breeding Barn to breed or fuse them. Breeding is the cheapest but slowest of the two options, allowing you to keep your monsters and an egg they produce. Once the egg has hatched after sitting in your party incubating for a while, you’ll create a level 1 monster with a mix of attributes from both parents.

Fusion, on the other hand, is the fastest but most risky of the two, producing a monster at the average level of both parents, but you’ll also lose two of your monsters. I hope you don’t form any sort of bond with your monsters if you want to go down this route, as not only will you lose your favorites, But you’ll also not be certain what the outcome will be.

Monster Crown: Sin Eater is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Steam, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch

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Each week, dozens of indie games make their way to the Xbox storefront. Each new game is an opportunity to explore a new world, experience a new story, and solve new puzzles. But there’s only so much time in a week, and it can be a challenge to sort through every offering for the hidden gems.

To help, we here at Windows Central have been sorting through indies to help you discover interesting new stories and adventures, from cozy bug-collecting extravaganzas to perilous survival horror puzzlers. Here are a few recently released indies that we think should be at the top of your “to-be-played” list.

Hollowbody

If you’re looking for that early 2000s horror nostalgia set in a tech-noir infused world, Hollowbody should be on your radar. Hollowbody is a survival horror puzzler set in the dystopian near-future.

Players become a Shipper named Mica who has traveled into a deadly exclusion zone, but she only has a two-hour window to find her missing partner, Sasha, and get out. It would be pretty boring if things went smoothly, however, and Mica quickly finds herself in a dangerous predicament where her equipment has failed, and she is trapped in a twenty-mile death zone sealed off by towering walls.

Players will have to manage Mica’s limited resources and solve challenging environmental logic puzzles in order to push through the exclusion zone. Hollowbody does favor puzzles and resource management over combat, but there are some difficulty options for those who want to ramp up (or down) the difficulty.

This fully voice-acted, single-player horror adventure, which developer Headware Games originally launched on PC in 2024, sits at a respectable Very Positive rating with over 1400 Steam reviews — and is newly available on Xbox Series X|S as of June 4.

Escape Simulator

Not all puzzle aficionados are fans of horror scenarios or playing alone. For those of us who want the help of a friend and a more casual puzzle-solving experience, there’s Escape Simulator. Developed and published by Pine Studio, Escape Simulator brings the fun and challenge of an escape room to your game room.

The standard edition of Escape Simulator features 28 rooms, each filled to the brim with unique puzzles that require players to search the room for solutions. Need to unlock a cabinet? First, you’re going to have to find a book and decipher the hieroglyphics to secure the code.

Or maybe a glowing message from the other side can help you to spell out the hidden passcode for the puzzle behind the painting? Every puzzle in Escape Simulator can be completed solo, but it’s so much more fun with friends helping you break vases, move furniture, and collect tokens before the timer runs out.

Players can grab friends to escape from a wild collection of themed rooms, from ancient Egypt to outer space. Should the initial 28 rooms not be enough puzzles for you, there are five additional DLC packs to expand your options, including Steampunk, Magic, and Wild West themes.

Escape Simulator is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and compatible handhelds. This one’s on Xbox Game Pass and Play Anywhere, making it even easier to convince your pals to help you out with the gamerscore completion.

Kabuto Park

Summer is fast approaching, and it's bringing with it sun, heat, and bugs. Sunburns and bug bites are no fun, but thanks to developers Doot and Zakku, and publisher Seaven Studio — the team behind cozy city builder Minami Lane — we can all enjoy the perks of summer without the downsides in Kabuto Park.

Playing as a little girl on summer vacation, Kabuto Park allows players to catch beetles, butterflies, bees, and more, then train them for the Summer Beetle Battles Championship.

This short and sweet bug-collecting game lets you build up a team of elite bugs from the ones you collect from around the world. Pet them, feed them candies, and train them up to be victorious in tiny bug sumo battles. Upgrade your bug net and boots at the local shop to unlock new areas with new bugs or make rare bugs appear more often so you can secure even more victories.

Kabuto Park is a wholesome, 2–4-hour single-player experience that even arachnophobes can enjoy. Try it now on Xbox Game Pass or pick it up for under $6 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Cloud Gaming, and compatible handhelds.

CRASHOUT CREW

Aggro Crab — known for Peak and Another Crab’s Treasure — is back again with another challenging friendslop adventure, this time at the De Nile Shipping company. Grab your friends to create a crew of up to 4 forklift drivers and head to the warehouse to ship out orders on waiting trucks. How hard could it possibly be?

Crashout Crew has the potential to unseat Overcooked as the best game for ruining friendships. Every player has their own little Easy-Grab forklift, which can be customized via color and funny little hats and is equipped with the most important equipment (a horn, plus boosting and drift capabilities, of course!)

Warehouses are built for speed, which is important when your crew is facing near impossible deadlines to deliver devious combinations of packages like bulls and fine china, barrels of oil and lanterns, or rambunctious chickens and very fragile eggs.

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on the process of shipping out unruly cargo, the ghosts start acting up, throwing around your package to create dangerous hazards. If it’s not the ghosts, then the AC goes out and turns the floor into actual lava. Rolling blackouts leave your crew scrambling in the dark, and let’s not forget the invasive cacti and sneeze-inducing pollen.

Grab your friends on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Cloud Gaming, or compatible handhelds and race to finish more than 20 challenging contracts in Crashout Crew, available now on Xbox Game Pass with Play Anywhere support.

Luna Abyss

After spending some time with cozy and chaotic coop this month, we round out the list with something a little more hellish. Luna Abyss is a story-rich first-person shooter and bullet hell with fluid platforming, where players step into the shoes of a prisoner by the name of Fawkes. Beneath the surface of the mimic moon, Luna, is a sprawling but derelict structure where prisoners like Fawkes are sentenced to explore in search of lost technology.

Luna Abyss features multiple endings for its deep narrative that plays out with the help of environmental storytelling. However, not everything we’re told about this megastructure is perfectly accurate, and it’s up to the player to discover the secrets hidden among the horrors below the surface while under the watchful guidance of the prison’s AI, Aylyn.

While weaponry and abilities are scarce at first, players can guide Fawkes through Luna Abyss’ visually commanding red, black, and white world to discover upgrades that can help them push through the challenging campaign. Combat, while important in Luna Abyss, isn’t exactly center stage.

Fawkes’ looted arsenal can make quick work of enemy combatants. Finding movement upgrades, however, like double jumps and air dashes, can help you overcome obstacles and provide a new level of challenge that isn’t common for first-person shooters.

Luna Abyss, developed by Kwalee Labs and published by Kwalee, is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and compatible handhelds with support for the Xbox Play Anywhere program. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscribers can play Luna Abyss at no extra charge as part of their subscription plan.

While big-name AAA titles often dominate the spotlight in the gaming industry, some of the best games around are indies — smaller-scale titles from independent studios made with tighter, less grandiose ambitions. These are considered by many to be the lifeblood of the business, as their limited scope and lack of oversight from publishers looking to maximize profit allow developers to explore creative ideas with less risk.

Microsoft and Xbox have long supported the indie game scene with ID@Xbox, a program that helps independent studios get access to Xbox development kits and elevates the visibility of their projects with marketing assistance.

One way it's done so in the past is by hosting a special Indie Selects Demo Fest, and now it's holding another one for the duration of June. Microsoft announced the news on Thursday in a new Xbox Wire blog post, revealing that there's now a huge collection of indie game demos you can try out from now until the end of the month.

There are demos available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox on PC, so you can check them out no matter which Xbox platform you're on. Something important to note is that these demos are work-in-progress looks at upcoming titles, so there's not a complete and polished version of them you can go buy if you have fun with these playtests. Definitely make sure to watch for a release date from the demos of the games you like, though!

Microsoft says there are "more than 30 standout game demos ready to play," which is honestly underselling the spread; there's a whopping 41 available while the Indie Selects Demo Fest is live, all of which I've listed below (with links to their store pages):

• Active Matter (Matter Team/Gaijin)
• Akatori (Contrast Games/Games Harbor)
• Alpha Nomos (RibCage Games)
• AWAKEN – Astral Blade (Dark Pigeon Games/ESDigital Games)
• Bao Bao’s Cozy Cleaning Services (Destroyer Doggo)
• Canvas of Thoughts (Bandaloop Games)
• Carry the Glass (Slugshot Games/Naisu)
• Charlatan (Gumgo/HypeTrain Digital)
• Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox/The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild)
• Desolus (Mark Mayers/The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild)
• Die in the Dungeon (Atico)
• Dodo Duckie (BornMonkie)
• Faeland (Talegames)
• Farlands (JansuSoft)
• Fire and Ashes (Axyos Games)
• Grim Trials (Glory Jam/Soft Source)
• Hazard Levels (Wales Interactive)
• Island of Winds (Parity Games/ESDigital Games)
• Kooeh: A Timeless Delight (Twilight Foundry Games)
• K-Pop Idol Stories: Road to Debut(Wisageni Studio/PQube)
• Let’s Build a Dungeon (Springloaded)
• Lou’s Lagoon (Tiny Roar/Megabit Publishing)
• Moonbrella (Jett Williams)
• Mori Carta (Nevergreen Games/Secret Item Games)
• Nightmare Circus (FairPlay Studios/Red Dunes Games)
• Nimrods (Fiveamp)
• Nomori (Enchanted Works)
• Order Automatica (New Beings/Better.Publishing)
• Pieced Together (Glowfrog Games)
• Pit of Goblin (Friendly Foe/Bright Gambit)
• Pollito and Xiang Xiang: Adventure in the Forest (R-Next)
• Reggie, His Cousin, Two Scientists and Most Likely the End of the World (Degoma)
• Salvation: Echoes of War (Infinite Entropy)
• Souls of Bombarika (Street Lamp Games/1312 Interactive)
• Space Tail: Definitive Edition (Enjoy Studio/Bohemia Interactive)
• Starlit World (Rockhead Studios)
• Surfpunk (Double Stallion Games)
• The Crimson Maid (GrimTalin/Wales Interactive)
• The Slormancer (Slormite Studios/Plug In Digital)
• Treetopians (Aparato)
• Wrap House Simulator (Console Labs/Broken Lyre Entertainment/PlayWay)

All in all, there's a ton of stuff here to dip your toes in and try out, so I recommend you do so while it's available. Just don't forget that the demos go offline when June ends — if I were you, I'd start playing them ASAP.

Will you check out the Xbox indie demos available during the Indie Selects Demo Fest? Let me know in the comments, and in our poll.

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As spring slowly ticks into summer, the undeniable lull of camping calls to many of us. Some of us like to rough it under the stars with nothing more than a sleeping bag to get you through the night, while others are fans of the full glamping experience, complete with air conditioning.

No matter how hardcore you go on camping in real life, there are some downsides you’ll inevitably have to deal with. Namely, the insect population, but other elements of Mother Nature are always ready to ruin your camping trip.

If you want to go out on the wide open road with nothing more than a roof over your head, but you’re also opposed to encountering creepy crawlies or bears, there’s a brand-new solution for you.

Developed and published by Square Glade Games, Outbound is an open-world exploratory adventure that lets you experience all the best parts of camping without any of the downsides (unless you count your thumbs being tired because you played Outbound for too long!)

Outbound starts simple, giving players the chance to customize their original character within the world. Players can choose from a variety of hairstyles, a few different outfits, and color variations until they are satisfied with their characters’ in-game appearance. After customizing the playable character, players can then turn their attention to decorating the camper van. A couple of different styles are available to choose from, as are different color options for vehicle paint.

After settling on customization, it’s time to hit the open road of Outbound. The primary focus is to collect resources, craft equipment, and survive, although that last bit is not particularly as stressful as it may sound initially. Small pieces of wood are scattered around Outbound’s starter map, waiting to be plucked up by a player looking to light a campfire and set up at a cozy spot with a view before moving on. Other materials like stone, berries, and fiber can be found fairly quickly, as well, giving the player ample opportunity to craft provided they have the blueprints to do so.

Blueprints are a little trickier to come by, as the player can only download them from dedicated radio towers that are in specific locations throughout the map. Each tower has three blueprints to choose from and requires a download voucher to access. Download vouchers are crafted by feeding litter and trash found at campsites into a recycler in your van.

Blueprint options include cooking, gardening, and decorations that can be built for your camper van. Only one blueprint can be selected from each tower, and a tower becomes deactivated after its initial use. However, previously visited towers may reactivate with a new signal after a few days, though these reactivated locations happen at random. It does provide a chance to pick up blueprints that may have passed over on previous visits.

In order to access all the locations on the map, Outbound occasionally presents players with puzzles and crafting challenges. Bridges may require wood planks, which prompt the player to craft a small portable sawmill and attach it to their van in order to proceed to a new area. Other roadblocks may require electronics to fix a power circuit or locating passwords in a specific area to activate locked terminals.

Outbound features four different map for players to caravan across, each affected by dynamic weather that can impact your camping adventure. The first map will have players feeding berries to bunnies and only occasionally experiencing dramatic weather like thunderstorms that prevent lighting a campfire, while other maps like the canyons can be impacted by dust storms and excessive heat that requires cooling the engine lest you are left stranded in the sunshine.

While Outbound is ultimately a peaceful, combat-free camping experience that players can embark on with up to three friends, it is not always smooth sailing. The van’s batteries can run low, leaving you to take off on foot in search of fuel, food, medicine, and crafting supplies.

For all of the challenges of sustainable camping in a van, there are moments of respite when you relax with a campfire and your coop buddies on the beach, join together to build a ridiculously large house on the roof of your van, or participate in a mountaintop rave festival.

Outbound is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming with support for Xbox Play Anywhere. Grab your pals and hit the road as part of your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription.

Square Glade Games has committed to continued updates for Outbound throughout 2026, with a roadmap that shares plans for new features to come.

Later this summer, Square Glade plans to introduce fishing mechanics, while fall plans include more wildlife, and a proposed winter update is expected to add NPCs with their own tasks, dialog, and lore.

I’ve been neck-deep in Warhammer games these past few years, bouncing between Darktide, Space Marine 2, and Rogue Trader like an Ogre Mawtribe at a buffet. The Warhammer crowd? We’re feasting. It’s gotten so wild, we’re pulling numbers that would make even Star Wars fans do a double-take.

With all these bangers dropping, you’d think I’d be riding high, but the first time I caught wind of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks, my hype train hit the brakes. Every time a franchise tries to shoehorn itself into a kart racer, I get flashbacks to those awkward crossovers nobody asked for.

Turns out, I was dead wrong. Speed Freeks isn’t some cutesy kart racer; it’s like Twisted Metal got hijacked by a mob of Orks on a sugar rush.

Within minutes of booting up the game, I was neck-deep in pure, unfiltered chaos. Orks were lighting up the battlefield with miniguns, rockets, charged electro-shots, and predator-like guided missiles. I was so incredibly wrong about this being a kart racer; it went up in smoke.

Look, I went into the preview for this game as a card-carrying Warhammer addict, but I barely skimmed the surface. So you can picture my jaw hitting the floor when I got dropped straight into an open world. Not a linear race track.

Here’s the deal: you control some sort of Ork vehicles, from normal four-wheeled Mad Max-looking psycho carriages to tanks and even helicopters. Each comes fitted with some sort of primary and secondary weapon, with some sort of boost or other ability that either mends friends, harms enemies, or allows you to stay alive a bit longer.

I started off with the basic vehicle, a nice grimmy Boomdakka Snazzwagon. This little open-top convertible splashes the enemy two-fold. Through primary fire of a Dakka minigun, and secondary fire with actual fire via a “burna bottle”. Can I just say I absolutely love the Ork language in Warhammer?

You’re locked from most other vehicles, but don’t worry, these all unlock rather quickly. Before I could even really figure out what one vehicle was decent at, I had another on my selectable list of vehicles taunting me to be tested. And test I did.

With these vehicles, players can pick from two standard game modes. One focuses on pushing a large Stompa across the world map, where each team attempts to get their Stompa to the end first. Teams can attempt to gather respawning bombs on the map that can be “hand-delivered” to the enemy's team Stompa to slow their progression. Kills also slow progression, but in much smaller increments than a bomb delivery.

Before I get to the second main game mode, I need a moment to pause. In an age where gamers are paying anywhere from $60 to $80 for new games, or even $100 if the people at Take-Two had their way, Caged Element and Wired Productions are out here doing the impossible.

For the same price as a double meal combo at McDonald's (actually, it’s way less), you can get Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks for $19.99. Not only is that an insane price in and of itself, but they didn’t even raise it to $25 like most would. Heck, it seems the standard pricing these days for smaller titles is now $30 to $40, but Wired Productions (the publisher) is out here dropping dimes on us for the price of two large lattes.

Second is the “Deff Rally” game mode, which puts two teams against one another in more of a race setting. Beacons will spawn on the map that each team can race to and claim first. From there, roughly 30 seconds later, a race will begin with a dozen or more checkpoints for players to reach.

The first player across the line scores a good amount of points for their team, with the top five players all obtaining points with values relative to the place they take. Again, killing enemy players also tallies the scoreboard for your team.

Both modes run on 8v8 chaos, which might sound tiny next to the online behemoths like Battlefield 6, but trust me, when it comes to vehicular carnage, 16 is the magic number. Any more and I’d probably just glue myself inside a tank and pray.

Each mode is different enough that I was having quite a lot of fun switching between the two before I noticed a full-blown community map creator that players can call up. I came across giant, physically-bending metal monstrocities, lore-accurate landscapes, and a recreation of the greatest Counter-Strike map ever created, Dust 2.

You can jump into all of these wild creations in public lobbies, most of which are straight-up rally races from start to finish. So yeah, I guess there’s a little kart racing DNA hiding in there after all. But even when you’ve finally played out of the main maps, there are still four free battle passes waiting to be conquered.

Yes, the game also comes with its own variation of free Battle Passes called Waaagh Path! Each has anywhere from 70 to 100 levels to complete, offering various cosmetics for your vehicles. Players earn levels for their selected Waaagh Path by earning scrap from completing both public and private matches.

Needless to say, for $20, I can't believe the amount of game that comes packed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks. I think I just found my Saturday night buddy game for the next month.

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It’s been an interesting month to be an indie game fan. There’s no shortage of new releases to keep us busy, and social media has been abuzz with discussion over what does and doesn’t qualify for the moniker of ‘indie’, especially in the wake of Annapurna Interactive’s successful launch of the coming-of-age narrative game, Mixtape.

Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program has provided development hardware and publishing support to indie teams of all sizes across the globe, and has helped thousands of games launch directly to your Xbox console or the Xbox app on PC.

If there is one undeniable truth for indie games, it's that there is a wide net that covers a platitude of gaming genres — ultimately bringing together a menagerie of unique experiences that can have lasting impacts on those who play them.

We here at Windows Central have been celebrating indies and the ID@Xbox program for a while now, highlighting monthly new releases, large and small, that we think are worth your time. From solo-dev projects like the recently released OOLO to those supported by larger publishers like 11 bit studios (Frostpunk, The Alters) and Annapurna Interactive (Stray, People of Note).

With so many new experiences launching every day, it’s easy for some really awesome games to slip under your radar, so here are five recently released indies that should be next in your game queue.

Motorslice

In 2008, EA published Mirror’s Edge — a hyper-modern, minimalist action platformer that challenged players to first-person parkour their way through a city of glass to take down an oppressive regime. The game was nothing short of successful, and a sequel followed in 2015. Unfortunately, that was the last we saw of the fast-moving Faith, but Mirror’s Edge certainly managed to kick off a new genre of platforming, with a few indie developers taking up the torch to keep that genre moving even today.

Motorslice, developed by Regular Studio and published by Top Hat Studios, is one such indie giving speedrunners and parkour junkies a new playground to explore. Players become “P”, a young woman tasked with parkouring her way through a ruinous megastructure laced with deadly traps and harboring some massive bosses. As a “slicer”, P is armed with a chainsaw and accompanied by a malfunctioning orb drone tasked with eliminating the machines of an abandoned structure at all costs. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems, however, and P will have to climb, run, and slide through the brutalist and liminal landscape of Motorslice.

With an atmospheric soundtrack by Pizza Hotline and fully voice-acted by Kira Buckland, Motorslice is the acrobatic, low-poly parkour game your backlog has been missing, and it’s available now as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription. Motorslice is supported by Xbox Play Anywhere, so you can pick it up on your Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, or compatible handheld for some fast-paced slide and slice action.

Constance

You know what pairs well with platforming? Metroidvanias. The two genres go together like paint and paintbrushes, which is a perfect way to introduce Constance. Developed by Blue Backpack and published in partnership with ByteRockers’ Games and PARCO Games, Constance is a story set in a non-linear connected world where the player wields a powerful paintbrush capable of special techniques that can be used to discover secrets, sketch inspiration found during the journey in the player’s journal, and upgrade those sketches.

Enhance and customize Constance’s abilities by upgrading sketches, but be careful! Brush techniques can increase the corruption in Constance’s paint, which can have negative effects if full corruption is reached. Like similar platformers, Constance leans into its difficulty, but gives its players a chance to continue challenges upon death or try a different path from a safer location.

Constance paints a meaningful narrative about psyche and explores the character’s mental health via different biomes and enemies that represent elements of struggling with creativity, work-life balance, and finding one’s purpose. Constance is available now on Xbox Series X|S.

Urban Jungle (Complete Edition)

Developed by Kylyk Games and published by Assemble Entertainment, Urban Jungle is a charming simulator and puzzle game where players, as Pharita, can manage a collection of plants to create a delightful, plant-filled haven. Each plant has its own value, and players must arrange them throughout the apartment to maximize coziness and aesthetics. Plant placement is a strategic challenge despite the stress-free gameplay loop. Moving around plants to for the most optimal aesthetics helps to unlock new plants, adding to the game’s emotional storytelling by engaging in the environmental puzzles. Other items in the apartment are also interactive, including lamps and humidifiers.

Urban Jungle is available as a standalone game, but a DLC story expansion involving a blossoming love story between Pharita’s brother, Rachata, and his boyfriend Nurgun. Design and decorate Nurgun’s new home and help make sure all the details are perfect for Rachata so that Nurgun can propose. The additional story chapter can be purchased as DLC for Urban Jungle, or the game and DLC can be purchased together as a complete edition.

Urban Jungle is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

Strange Antiquities

In 2022, developer Bad Viking partnered with Iceberg Interactive to publish Strange Horticulture, a cozy and wholesome occult puzzle game dabbling in all things witchy, planty, and — well, strange. It was a well received point and click puzzler that saw players managing their own plant shop and adventuring through strange scenarios to add to their growing collection of plants that could cure what ails you or maim your enemies. It only seems natural for Bad Viking to expand on that universe, this time with Strange Antiquities.

Strange Antiquities leans back into the puzzling shop management genre of its predecessor, but forgoes the herbology of its past for new arcane artifacts. The townsfolk have a plethora of unusual problems, and only the goods found in your quaint, candle-lit shop can help. Observe your customers, listen to their stories, and then make the choice to help them even if it means cursing their foes with a dastardly affliction.

Developed by two brothers from the UK, Strange Antiquities invites players to a world that is both eerily dark and yet inviting in its warmth, full of quirky NPCs to interact with and unique destinations to explore while you unlock and discover more about the town of Undermere and the antiquities that can be found there. Strange Antiquities is available now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

The Coma 3: Bloodlines

Developed by Dvora Studio and published by Headup, The Coma 3: Bloodlines is the latest entry in a 2D run and hide horror adventure series set in Seoul, South Korea. The Sehwa Private High School has become a hotbed for people studying the cursed underworld and nightmare dimension. The Coma 3 expands beyond the private school’s walls to allow players to explore new locations and experience the mysterious occult.

There is no combat in The Coma 3, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to fear. The hideous shows that are running around unchecked will gladly hunt and chase you down, making stealth and strategic movements your only chance for survival for the game’s three playable characters. Players who have experienced the earlier games in the series can look to The Coma 3: Bloodlines for satisfying closure to the story, with solutions to the mysteries from the past finally being revealed.

The Coma 3: Bloodlines is available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One now.

When I first saw REPLACED, I was immediately struck by the colors and overall design aesthetic that the developer, Sad Cat Studios, had put into it. While it’s popular to Reach (that pun will make sense later) for good ole’ 80’s nostalgia, I was caught by the Blade Runner fashion being shoved into my eyes.

Those dashing cyber punk feels mixed with the mind-altering story of replacement have REPLACED at the top of my recommendation list for smaller titles.

You’re Warren Marsh, a long-time scientist working for the Phoenix Corporation. At least, you are during the game’s introduction, but not much longer than that, as everything quickly goes haywire.

In moments, a catastrophic accident involving the AI created by Warren, R.E.A.C.H. (Research Engine for Altering and Composing Humans), ends up leaving Reach trapped inside the body of Warren. Realizing the situation, Reach, having seemingly replaced Warren, takes the reins and heads to find the nearest help.

Caught in a nightmare situation, Reach is forced to run from the facility and outside the walls of Phoenix City, the Phoenix Corporation's long-standing fortress of humanity, located in the middle of the wastes of America. Once out, Reach continues to attempt communication with Warren, telling him he’ll do everything he can to rectify the situation and swap back.

Along the way, you’ll uncover the horrifying secrets of the Phoenix Corporation and glimpse through the memories of Warren as Reach’s connection to his body strengthens. Will Reach find a way to repair the link and return Warren's body to him?

You’ll also come across help in the wasteland, giving a glimpse into the remaining humanity of civilization outside of the meghacity. Tempest, a do-gooder who helps those in need, quickly comes upon you battling the enemies of the area, bringing you back to a town of humans not far away.

There, the art style really starts to unfold, as you venture underground into the subway system to find a mixture of eerily-lit corridors and enemy-riddled sanctuaries.

I’m not someone who generally appreciates pixel art styles in video games. Over time, the trend grew to an absurd number of games that the concept became an instant no-buy from me. Exceptions to this rule are few and far between, but Replaced is now one of them.

Not only has it overruled a long-standing idea of mine, but it has also become one of the best-looking games to have launched in 2026. REPLACED is unparalleled in its appreciation of detail, lighting, and color palette as it explores the ugly realities of humanity.

I found myself taking long pauses in the middle of my trek to admire minute touches of style in the world. The not-so-subtle drenching of light shining across a warehouse corridor, the relish of waste on the roadside, all of which culminate in something jaw-dropping, I haven’t felt from a Pixel-art style game before.

REPLACED is a 2.5D game, where the majority of its systems exist on a two-dimensional plane, with some of the mechanics allowing traversal into the background or foreground of the level. Movement feels weighty and meaningful as you go about the world’s hazardous design.

Be it running from the police or hiding behind the moving, disguised cover from a sniper, REPLACED will keep you on your toes as you go about the daring task of attempting to stay alive. Even the environment will attempt murder as you go through dilapidated structures to find your objective, or get back to safety.

Combat is simplistic, but in the best ways. With a standard attack, dodge, and parry to start, you’ll feel right at home with the mechanics of REPLACED. A hard hit to the noggin or body of an enemy is therapeutic in its delivery, with a sense of satisfaction that’s only interrupted if you let yourself get hit.

Similar in style to the Batman Arkham games, Replaced keeps pace with rhythmic timing from enemy to enemy. Interupting that rhythm doesn’t spell doom, but you’ll definitely feel the atmospheric shift in favor of the enemy the longer you fail to regain that tempo.

During my time so far with REPLACED, I’ve found myself doubling back on fights so I could play through it again without error. I wasn’t satisfied unless I finished without minimal or a near-zero number of blows to myself. The dance of combat called to me for perfection.

One of my favorite things came a few chapters in, when your character finally gains access to your gun’s ability to shoot. Yes, that does sound a little odd, but remember what I said at the beginning of this whole thing about Reach finding a “broken” gun.

This allowed the greatest pixel-art finishers with a flair of Blade Runner that I’d ever seen. My only complaint is that I wish there were more! With only a select number of finishers that Reach deals out, I felt robbed of everything that could have been!

After my initial few hours of playing, I hadn’t even noticed the passage of time. I was too wound up in taking clips or looking for the perfect screenshot to capture.

The world was a lovely thing to witness, and witness I did, as I plodded through the terrain before me to find a potential answer or solution to the problems of Warren and R.E.A.C.H.

Did I find the answers? Well, that’s for you to find out, but for only $20, I can say that without a shadow of a doubt that REPLACED is absolutely worth the asking price and deserves to be picked up by sci-fi fans everywhere.

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2018 feels like a bygone era at this point, but it was the year that British developer Payload Studios initially introduced us all to its game, TerraTech.

Like its predecessors, TerraTech Legion encourages players to snap together a variety of block modules to create a vehicular monstrosity that is essentially born from a techie’s fever dream.

You don’t get to start off with the ultimate modular tank, though. TerraTech Legion blends its Lego-like building mechanic with a gameplay loop from the survivorlike and bullet heaven genres.

In TerraTech Legion, the galaxy has been taken over by a swarm of AI bots that is destroying everything in its path, but players can pick up the mantle as one of four tech jockeys, each with their own unique build specifications and abilities.

Initially, only tech jockey Mikela is available to players, but her Ranger 1 — complete with stun boost and shockwave abilities — is an excellent all-around introductory vehicle for players who are new to TerraTech.

After choosing a tech jockey and mission, players are dropped into a map with a barebones vehicle build to face off against the swarm, though early attack methods are extremely limited. The Ranger 1, for example, starts off with just one little gun, which doesn’t seem to do much against the horde. Thankfully, Mikela’s signature boost allows players to ram into enemies and leave them stunned temporarily, giving the weapon a chance to knock down some of the swarm to earn XP.

Similar to other survivorlikes and bullet heavens, TerraTech enemies drop XP and crates for the player to collect. Modular parts that snap onto the vehicle are stored until enough XP is collected to max out the player’s current level. At that point, a beacon is dropped with a health regenerative field. Driving into the beacon gives the player a new menu where they can then freely build onto their vehicle before going back into battle.

Leveling up also unlocks special crates, which can only be accessed during the build menu, giving players the chance to select upgrades that can be attached to their build. In survivorlike fashion, crates drop three upgrades for players to choose from, though some modifiers that crop up throughout your playthrough can impact the available options.

There are over 200 blocks that can be acquired and added to your vehicle build, giving you the opportunity to build out tech that fights the swarm the way you want. Change out wheels for tracks, add buzzsaws and lasers. Build a stacked behemoth with guns and lasers up and down the sides to create a mobile destruction tower or choose Jean Pierre as your tech jockey and shamble together some battering rams and heavy armor to create an indestructible tank that takes out the swarm on impact.

Don’t be too overambitious, though. Players have to manage vehicle weight, balance, and available modules to make sure that once you’re back on the battlefield, you can actually still steer to your destination, lest you be blown to smithereens by the bots you were supposed to destroy.

TechTerra Legion is a roguelike, so if your vehicle does happen to fall apart during a run, you’ll have to pick up the pieces and start from scratch. However, there are some permanent upgrade tracks for each tech jockey that can help make potential runs go a little smoother. The longer you can stay alive, the more likely you are to encounter each of the four levels’ big bosses, the ultimate challenge to your vehicle-building skills.

Pick your jockey, build your vehicle, and survive the swarm in TerraTech Legion, developed by Payload Studios and published by Mythwright, available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming with support for Xbox Play Anywhere entitlements. The game is under $10 at launch and is available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. A $5 Supporter Pack DLC can be picked up for those who want some exclusive cosmetic skins.

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In video games’ infancy, 3D technology was out of reach for many developers, leading teams to embrace the isometric camera — an angled view of the game world that makes 2D scenes appear 3D to players.

Unlike many classic design elements of early gaming, isometric camera angles managed to stick around for the long haul, showing up in more modern indie games like Hades 2 and The Thaumaturge, even as true 3D exploration tools became more readily available to developers.

It’s that nostalgic-laced camera angle and inspiration from the 1990’s NES game Solstice that led to Riddle Master Productions’ iso-metroidvania puzzle adventure, OOLO.

“I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I didn’t want to do anything strange or experimental or flashy,” says Riddle Master Productions’ solo developer Ben Brooks in developer commentary, “I just wanted to take Solstice, something like Solstice, and kind of blow it up a little bit.”

OOLO sends players on a non-linear quest across a sprawling map with multiple puzzle rooms and collectibles that rely on the camera’s interesting angle and classic Metroidvania mechanics that require extensive exploration to challenge the player.

Before kicking off with the game, OOLO gives players the chance to choose one of three difficulties, including Casual, which lets players explore the world with unlimited lives and save progress.

Classic is out there for those who want to start with three lives and progression saves that refill the life count, but want the risk of an actual game over when all lives are spent, while Retro goes all-in on the difficulty by removing save points and replacing them with extra lives.

After selecting the preferred difficulty, players are given a little bit of lore for OOLO in the form of scrolling text. The titular protagonist — a charming voxel warlock clad in purple robes and a large hat — was sent on a quest to rekindle the World Flame in an effort to return light and warmth to a world gone cold. Failure would leave the world drenched in darkness, as the flame can never be relit once extinguished.

While OOLO does offer various difficulties, the game itself features no combat and relies exclusively on platforming and puzzles to create obstacles, requiring players to explore the world in an effort to find and collect six keys scattered around the Isle of Souls that will give Oolo access to the World Flame.

Unlike similar isometric adventures like Tunic, there are no weapons to find or boss battles to slog through. Collectible upgrades are littered throughout OOLO’s 400 scenic rooms, spanning from lush forests to creepy underground dungeons to strange mechanical environments, catacombs, and even swamps.

Each collectible upgrade changes the way players interact with the world of OOLO, encouraging players to backtrack through previously explored areas to access pathways to new rooms. Each room features unique challenges to overcome, like simple platforming, deadly spikes, and even creepy enemies like ghosts and skeletons. It only takes one touch from a would-be foe or trap to cut down your number of available lives, so it’s imperative to plan the traversal of each room carefully.

The more you explore OOLO, the more the puzzles evolve. Early platforming can be conquered by keeping an eye on where Oolo’s shadow is hovering, as that is a visual indicator of where the hero is going to land after a jump.

In some rooms, Oolo can interact with memory orbs that help provide useful information, sometimes by building out the world’s lore or by giving players hints about new locations and puzzle solutions.

Not every puzzle can be solved at first glance, however. “One of the key things about a Metroidvania design is you have to show people things that they can’t do, but know they’ll be able to do at some point in the future,” said Brooks.

Eventually, Oolo begins to collect helpful upgrades, like the ability to pick up and push blocks found in the world. If used timely enough, the block collecting bag can afford the player some protection from enemies and even a double jump, while the gauntlets can give Oolo the strength to push blocks around. There are several artifacts that can be collected to improve Oolo’s skills and help him overcome the obstacles on the Isle of Souls.

OOLO is expected to launch on May 20 as an Xbox Play Anywhere title on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox on PC with support for cloud saves.

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MOUSE: P.I. For Hire drops you page first into the wildly drawn world of Mouseburg. A 1930s-style detective flick meets old-school artistry. You play as Jack Peper, a grumbly ex-cop and war veteran turned private investigator.

The whole city is infested with rodent-driven crime, full of shady deals, cheese-smuggling, and corrupt politicians. Straight from the comics, Jack is on a crime-solving spree to clean up his town and bring peace to his neighborhood, which is nestled quietly in the slums.

Pepper’s adventure launches with a fairly standard missing persons case; a magician has gone missing. Chaos ensues, and nothing gouda comes of it. As gang violence, kidnapping, and the fat-rodent herself come singing, Jack faces down an over-the-top cartoon noir story.

If you’re into one-liners, video-game meta jokes, and cheesy puns, then you’d cheddar believe you’re in for a grate time.

Gameplay-wise, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is a slick showcase of fundamental linear shooting mechanics. While you’ll never find yourself aiming down the sights of a weapon, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better rotation of weapons for a game that feels like a steal at $30.

Combat feels brie-lliant, and nothing demonstrates that better than the weapons of Mouseburg. From simple pistols to face-to-cheese-melting-goo guns, you’ll have an entire arsenal of weapons that each come with their own unique secondary firing mechanic and upgrade path. All of which can be upgraded thanks to careful exploration of the rather open-linear levels.

There are so many guns that when it comes down to the holey-mess of combat, you’ll be bleu in the face trying to keep your options straight. On PC and controller, you can call up the “cheese” wheel of weapons to swap between. With a hot-swap button dedicated to switching between your current and last gun.

On PC, you’ll be able to swap using the number keys, or if you’re like me, an MMO mouse with 12 buttons. Once you get the swing of swapping, you’ll be pumping enemies full of swiss-like holes in style.

Even the bosses are fun, all with unique abilities that will push your gamer skills to their limits. Platforming, dodging, and other mechanical nuance-based bosses will keep every encounter fresh. Many of which will look stunningly different, even in black and white.

Every area Jack Pepper visits is unlocked through simply playing the story. Not only are most areas unique, but they can also be visited more than once. Miss an item, and you can always come back to play through the area again, unlocking extra upgrade materials or even clues you might have missed that can help solve cases.

There are tons of things to love when it comes to this game, but the artwork is its gratest asset. Strikingly gorgeous even with the absence of color.

You can choose your own style, so to speak, by tweaking both picture and volume settings to give MOUSE: P.I. For Hire a more modern or old-fashioned look. Regardless of what something looks like or how it sounds, you’ll always find yourself back in the office working a case.

Back home, Jack Pepper has a giant clue board to place all the found clues and attach them to the mystery they’re involved in. If Jack doesn’t know how the clue relates to any given case, he’ll save them for later use by placing them in their own area.

As I eluded to earlier, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire rewards players who take an extra moment to look around rather than pressing forward to the next cheese-shredding area full of enemies. A wall here, a switch there, or an extra-special look over at a somewhat dubious-looking platform could lead you to precious materials that will help increase your damage output against the mold of Mouseburg.

Along with weapons, combat, and story, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire wouldn’t be the terrific noir-driven story without its stellar voice acting. While I can’t say every character is on equal footing with others, for the most part, every voice feels distinct and incredibly well played.

For $30, I would have expected the entire game to have been text-driven, but I couldn’t imagine playing this game without the fully voiced cast. This game wouldn't be the same without it, and I couldn’t be happier that it exists.

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire isn’t trying to be the next big AAA blockbuster. It’s a charming, clever, atmospheric detective game that respects your intelligence and rewards creativity. With a decently long story, I can’t believe how relatively cheap it is. In a world of $70 games, $30 titles with this much content will always get a nod of approval from me.

If you’re tired of basic shooters, open-world sandboxes, or yet another fantasy tale, do yourself a favor and give this one a shot. It might be the biggest surprise title this year!

I went in looking for that all-too-obvious charm, and came out with an even greater admiration for the craft. The depth of MOUSE: P.I. For Hire has so far surpassed my expectations, and I can’t wait to dive into it even more.

Allow me to appeal to your cheddar judgment and say, play it! You won’t be disappointed!

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We are just a few short months into 2026, and we’ve already been hit with some incredible contenders for indie game of the year, including games like Hades 2 and Super Meat Boy 3D — both of which launched on Xbox and hit Xbox Game Pass on day one.

With such big titles taking over the zeitgeist with their Xbox launches, it can be easy to miss some of the hidden gems that were fresh releases or finally made it to a console release this month. Here are some recent indies fresh to Xbox that should be on your radar.

Tiny Bookshop

Roguelikes, action games, and thousand-hour epic adventures have been really dominating recent “must-play” lists. Still, there’s something to be said about taking a break from slaying goblins and appeasing Greek gods to sell some books in a peaceful coastal setting. Developed by neoludic games and published by Skystone Games, the relaxing and cozy management simulator Tiny Bookshop lets you do just that, starting up in the fictional town of Bookstonbury with a delightful tiny bookshop by the sea.

The people of Bookstonbury are quirky and unique, each with their own preferences for reading material. It's up to you to collect items to decorate your bookshop, recommend books that suit the locals’ requests, or take a chance and try to expand your customers’ palette with a new book you think they just might love. Tiny Bookshop is a book lover’s delight, and there are countless easter eggs and references to books and series to keep an eye out for.

You can start managing your own bookshop with Tiny Bookshop now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and compatible handheld devices. Tiny Bookshop is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and it is also available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

Replaced

There is hardly a more topical story to be told at this time than that of sentient AI. Replaced, developed by Sad Cat Studios and published by Thunderful Publishing, is a 2.5D cinematic action platformer set in a cyberpunk world where the sinister Phoenix Corporation has created R.E.A.C.H, a sentient AI that has been trapped in a human body against its will by its corporate overlords.

Set in an alternative version of 1980s America, the Phoenix Corporation has become a haven for corruption and human bodies have become a valuable currency. Players have to run, climb, and fight through the derelict districts of Phoenix-City as R.E.A.C.H., who is forced to reconcile with the weight of humanity as an unfamiliar AI. Retro-futurism comes to life in the cyberpunk-inspired world crafted with hand-illustrated pixel art paired with a moody synth soundtrack that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of exploring what it means to be human and to have an identity.

Replaced features fluid movement and fast, responsive combat as you battle your way through the streets of Phoenix-City, industrial wastelands, and neon alleyways as you attempt to expose the secrets of the Corporation. You can jump into Replaced on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, or Xbox Cloud Gaming right now with an Xbox or PC Game Pass subscription.

Hacked: The Streamer

If you were ever enthralled with choose-you-own-adventure books, do I have a genre for you. FMV games are a classic, offering a unique way to experience stories and games that are interactive while providing an avenue to explore and experience the potential outcomes of those stories. Developed by Button Interactive and published by NAISU, Hacked: The Streamer is a FMV game that lets you shape the story of a streamer pulled into the center of a dangerous scenario.

The streamer, named PinkyPie, and her friends find their world upside down after a mysterious chatter posts a strange message during a live stream. Players have to collect clues about PinkyPie, see her life both online and off, and help to determine who could be putting the streamer in danger. Explore her relationships with her moderators, friends and foes, and piece together everybody’s story to uncover what is really going on behind the scenes.

Hacked: The Streamer is the debut indie from Button Interactive and the first in a planned anthology for the studio. You can play it today on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, or compatible handhelds, and the game does support Xbox Play Anywhere entitlements.

Content Warning

“Get famous or die trying” is certainly an interesting tag line for a game that went unbelievably viral when it launched on PC in 2024. Content Warning, developed by a 5-person team and then published by Landfall, was an early contender in the recent revival of cooperative multiplayer games that make up the “friendslop” genre popularized by social deduction games like Among Us. Grab up to three friends and dive into an underworld filled with horrifying monsters, cursed relics, and other creepy artifacts.

Why would you want to do that? To get famous, obviously. Your group will film everything while on your adventure to the Old World — the scarier the better. Keep your friends alive in the face of the unsettling, physics-animated monsters, don’t run out of camera battery or oxygen, and make it back to the surface to upload your footage to SpöökTube. Then settle in for the watch party and hope that the views start rolling in for that sweet, sweet profit.

Content Warning features 2-4 player online co-op and Xbox cross-platform multiplayer support, which is made even better by the game supporting Xbox Play Anywhere entitlements. You can invest in your future as a SpöökTuber for just $10 on your Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, or compatible handheld.

Before I Go

The start of any good metroidvania involves an ailing planet. Before I Go, developed and published by J’s Labratory starts with that premise and then builds upon it with a compelling allegorical odyssey about accepting inevitable demise. Players become the embodiment of childhood innocence, one of the only remaining souls left untainted by an infestation that has rendered the rest of the inhabitants of the world weakened.

Before I Go is a beautiful and heart-wrenching metroidvania that gives players the chance to reflect on the natural cycle of life and experience peace in acceptance, even when confronted with reality and your biggest fear. Similar to other metroidvanias like Hollow Knight or Ori and the Blind Forest, Before I go features a breathtakingly beautiful world paired with challenging side-scrolling action-platformer mechanics. It’s as beautiful as it is challenging, and its available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

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Name a more iconic duo than video games and music. Video game soundtracks are every bit as important to a good gaming experience as the art style and gameplay loop.

Yet, there’s a notable lack of offerings when it comes to musical games. Sure, you have your classic music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, but those games lack any sort of narrative component and have also been absent from storefronts for quite a while.

Hi-Fi Rush and Metal: Hellsinger are some more recent entries, but in general, it's a genre that just doesn’t see a lot of releases. Which makes Iridium Studios and Annapurna Interactive’s recently released People of Note feel all the more special.

People of Note slips players into the role of Cadence, an ambitious young musician who dreams of taking the stage during Noteworthy — a talent contest that finds the best of the best musicians in Note.

The contest has been dominated by Smolder for far too long, but after Cadence fails to win over the hearts of judges in initial auditions, she sets out to earn one of the councilmembers’ Golden Clefs for a second chance to prove her mettle on the main stage.

What Cadence does not expect, however, is that to prove herself for Noteworthy, she’ll have to gather an ensemble of musicians — each with different musical backgrounds — to create a genre-bending band that can wow the council.

Cadence isn’t just fighting for her own success, but for the entirety of the realm of Note.

The world Cadence inhabits takes music very seriously, and each genre has its own location that makes up the whole of the realm complete with an abundance of puns and in-jokes.

The player must take Cadence on a journey through Note to meet the people who inhabit each genre, from the grunge and punk rockers of Durandis to the EDM city of Lumina back to Chordia’s K-pop district. But chaos has come to the realm of Note, and Cadence finds herself smack in the middle of a battle between the line-dancing, country music blasting Homesteaders and the rockers of Durandis.

This is where People of Note’s creativity and music punnery meet tactical turn-based combat. Cadence and the crew will occasionally enter into combat against a variety of enemies.

Combat scenarios play out on a timer modeled after sheet music. Actions like healing or attacking take beat points, and there is a limited number of stanzas for Cadence and any available party members to make moves before enemies can attack. In some instances, the player will be forced to face off against musical bosses, whose power increases over time as a crescendo meter fills up, making them more difficult to defeat as the song plays out.

People of Note also takes the opportunity to set the player into arenas for a dose of dungeon-crawling, just to mix things up. These small dungeons are filled with a variety of musically inclined puzzles and combat engagements.

However, puzzles and musical combat challenges can be particularly difficult for some people, so if those aren’t your cup of tea, you can easily head into the accessibility settings and disable any barriers that prevent you from experiencing the magic of People of Note.

People of Note is available now on Xbox, Xbox on PC, Steam, PlayStation, and the Epic Games Store. The game is not available on Xbox Game Pass; however, it is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, which allows you to purchase it once on PC or Xbox and enjoy it freely on both platforms, as well as compatible handheld devices.

Sprawling worlds with cinematic realism have become a staple of RPGs, but sometimes you just want to experience a fantasy world that’s — well, a little bit different.

Developed by Lovely Hellplace as a solo venture that evolved into a three-person team after securing publishing through DreadXP, Dread Delusion eschews the shackles of cinematic realism and embraces a more atmospheric and imaginative retro-inspired fantasy adventure vibe.

Dread Delusion’s distinct visual style stands out very early on, with players starting the game by selecting to build the player character’s skill set from four available offerings, then further building upon that with four more skills to hone in on.

You can choose to be a brawler that packs a punch, or maybe stealth and lockpicking is more up your alley. Of course, no fantasy RPG is complete without a magical skill track to choose from, as well.

Regardless of your initial choices, the player character awakens locked away inside a cell with only the hollow eyes of a lifeless skeleton staring back at them from the corner of the cell after being imprisoned for past wrongdoings. That imprisonment is only temporary, however, as the Apostatic Union of the Oneiric Isles offers the player the chance to earn their freedom if only they’ll help the Inquisition hunt down the most wanted criminal in the union: the leader of the Dark Star Mercenaries.

Your newfound freedom gives you the opportunity to explore the Oneiric Isles, a collection of floating islands that were created following an apocalyptic event that left the world’s surface unsafe. While there is a main quest line for players to experience, the choice to engage with that story or the sub-quests that can be found by interacting with NPCs is entirely at the behest of the player.

Completing quests can help players collect Delusions, skulls that serve as stand-ins for upgrade points that the player can use to evolve their character over the course of their playthrough.

The Isles host a collection of different environments, including brightly colored but somewhat unsettling mushroom forests and towering cities floating on rocks set against a uniquely hued sky.

Dread Delusion’s visuals are almost crude, emulating the classic 90s and early 2000s low-poly horror art style, but still manage to add charm to this fantasy RPG. In a 2024 interview with Gamesline.net, Lovely Hellplace creative director James Wragg credited Dread Delusion’s “strange aesthetic” with inspiring the team’s creative writing prompts while also helping to break down Dread Delusion’s world into more cohesive elements.

“So many games these days have this pseudo-realistic aesthetic but there’s a disconnect between the realism that you see and the limited interactions that you can make in the space,” said Wragg, “Whereas what I love about this style is that it’s immediately obvious, with a low-poly game, what you can interact with, where you can go, and what you can do. There’s a kind of simplicity and honesty to the low-poly style that I think works pretty well with the game mechanics.”

Wragg documented the development of the game across several dev diaries, often highlighting how the game started off with the intent of being a much smaller project in its earliest days.

Dread Delusion went through a few different genre iterations — even briefly becoming a walking simulator RPG hybrid at one point — before ultimately becoming the open-world RPG inspired by early Bethesda titles that it has grown into today.

Even as the scope of Dread Delusion continued to grow, Lovely Hellplace managed to hold tight to at least one of the game’s earliest goals: to be a “tiny” RPG. Even with its expansive character roster, where every NPC has something to say, Dread Delusion can be comfortably completed in less than 30 hours — making it an excellent bite-sized break in a genre that likes to lean into hundred-plus-hour epic adventures.

Absolum is the roguelite beat ’em up I didn’t know I needed. It takes the arcade brawler DNA of your favorite beat 'em up, pours in Hades-style run-based progression, and wraps it all in hand-drawn fantasy art so gorgeous it feels like a living storybook. And right now it’s sitting in your Xbox Game Pass library, ready for anyone who wants to punch fate in the face.

The setup is pure Saturday-morning-cartoon rebellion with an early 90’s flash. In the world of Talamh, the Sun King Azra used the mistrust of magic by commoners to outlaw magic and brandish Wizards as heretics. These Wizards find themselves to be enemies of the state as you work your way through burning villages of goblins and men, both fighting amongst themselves, and equally looking to kill you.

Four heroes are yours to command: Galandra, Karl, Cider, or Brome. Each will grant you a unique ability to fight your way through hand-drawn stages. Death is only the beginning, as dying means coming back stronger, and slowly investigating the truth behind the Crimson Order and Azra’s allies.

Combat is pure joy. Dashing behind enemies for perfectly timed back-stabs, parrying deathly blows, or placing a barrage of mana onto enemies with standard abilities and ultimates; whatever you're doing, the violence feels intentional. You won’t be blistering through foes unguarded, but the well-timed, methodical rhythm of your blades will serve up death all the same.

While upgrades along your path can lead to similar play-styles across combatants, every character plays differently. I quickly fell in love with Galandra, her colossal blade cleaves groups while her chilling necromantic powers drain life and raise spectral allies. Switch to Karl, and you’re a non-foul-mouthed dwarf, smashing with an enchanted weapon that dashes between a hammer and a blunderbuss. Cider’s my current main, an agile, high-flailing robotic-armed surgeon of destruction that can fly above combat as easily as running.

The real hook is the roguelite loop. Every death sends your character back to the rebel camp, where you’ll be met with permanent level increases that lead to new abilities. You’ll also be able to spend radiant shards collected on your journey on items such as health increases and higher damage output.

Path choice is as important as character choice, as each has its own unique challenges and mini-questlines that will lead you to terrifyingly strong bosses and new characters. The path for unlocking Cinder led me through a fickle stack of enemies, where we questioned one another as to whether we had met before. All before dying and seeing her again, on another organic run, where I saved her from a group of foes.

Once she joined my adventure, I took other paths that led to the expansion of ways I could take, such as building a bridge for folks to give tribute to the Sun King. Before being built, all I could do was jump into the ravine below, fighting my way to a solution for the above.

Rituals are random modifiers earned after tough encounters that completely change your build. I once had a passive that turned my dashes into entire screens of inferno. Changing my Cinder playstyle into a dash and run type, baiting enemies into my fiery constructed paths.

Co-op makes it even better. A dynamic duo without any coordination can somehow find themselves blasting their way through waves of enemies and bosses, building rapport they never before dreamed of in screen-clearing combos.

In my first coop run, I nearly made it to the end of the game before I ever even unlocked the ability to upgrade my Ritual ability. Which happened to be the same run I unlocked Brome, a specialized AoE wizard.

The world of Absolum is as stunning as its gameplay loop. Supamonk’s hand-drawn art style weaves inspirations of long-gone drawing styles from decades past that invoke feelings of dark Disney-esque fantasy.

Character depictions have weight, impact, and spirit in every drawn frame, bringing emotion to the game screen in ways I haven’t felt since my early childhood. Depictions of Ciders' hookshot follows a glowing chainlink; Galandra raises pure darkness from imbued sword magic. The world of Absolum is depicted in a 90’s art style I’ve been craving without knowing it.

Throughout my time, my friends were constantly pestering me to come take another run at Slay the Spire 2, Gray Zone Warfare, or some other creation bursting on Steam or Xbox. My one answer came to be, “Sorry, Absolum run,” with each and every person who asked. Hours have gone by, and not once have I felt repelled from this chaotic fantasy world.

I’m nowhere near finishing Absolum, and I can’t help but get excited to sucker my wife into this gameplay system, so I have a constant coop buddy to make runs with in the upcoming weeks.

Absolum is available right now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Xbox Game Pass, Switch, and PlayStation 5. Grab a friend and start smashing your way to the Sun King to save the land of Talamh.

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For some stories, jumping media from the big screen to game narrative can be a challenge.

Locking down the original source’s tone, themes, and plot points in a way that still makes for a compelling gameplay loop is often where developers stumble.

But when it comes to Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!, that wasn’t a problem for developers Auroch Digital and the publishing team at Dotemu.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is a retro-inspired first-person shooter based on the beloved Starship Troopers franchise — a military sci-fi movie from the 90s inspired by a book from the 50s that went on to spawn a series of films and animated shows.

Starship Troopers’ satirical take on a militaristic government and a world where hyperpatriotism runs rampant has inspired a plethora of video games over the last 30 years, including popular shooters like Helldivers 2.

Like its source material, Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! shoehorns together intense patriotism and military activities, with the game itself serving as a meta in-joke for its role as propaganda.

This game within a game is set up as being the official game from FedDev, a state-sponsored software developer for the United Citizen Federation — a militaristic government set in a distant future that prioritizes patriotism over all else.

Players will step into the shoes of Major Samantha “Sammy” Dietz as she relives her role in the Federation fighting back an arachnid invasion from the planet of Klendathu. Major Dietz is joined by General Johnny Rico, and the two act out an interview about the invasion as part of the supporting propaganda for the in-universe game.

These sequences play out as FMVs, live action footage cut in alongside retro web elements that call back to the internet of the late 90s, with calls to action for the player to learn more about the Federation and its goals in stopping the spread of the arachnid menace.

These FMV sequences serve as exposition and narrative devices, while the actual gameplay for Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! leans more into a boomer-shooter aesthetic with flat, 2D sprite-based teammates and enemies set against a low-poly environment.

Players select the human storyline to experience the events from Major Dietz’s perspective, from starting out in basic training to experiencing tragedy caused by the arachnid swarm.

Each mission features a three-objective structure on a semi-open map that allows the player to carry out the required tasks at their own pace and in whatever order they prefer. Mission challenges include taking out arachnid nests to minimize the swarms as well as other tasks like destroying unique bug types using specialized equipment ranging from mighty bipedal mechs to full on nukes.

Classic Starship Trooper weapons like the Morita rifle are also available, as well as support equipment like airdrops and grenades.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Offers multiple accessibility and difficulty settings to make the game more approachable for players of all skill levels, including surprising features like God Mode and Infinite Ammo to help take off some of the pressure of the battle.

With each level of the human storyline missions that the player completes, additional missions unlock — both for the human story and the arachnids. That’s right, you can take control of the bugs in a parallel third-person campaign that lets you inflict horror on the Federation for yourself.

If you’re looking for a funny but challenging nostalgia trip that’s oozing satire while staying faithful to its source material, Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Is likely to check all your boxes. Finishing this single player boomer shooter gives you the right to say, “I did my part!”

Bite-sized indie games built on simple, classic game premises have crashed onto the gaming scene and made an impact in recent years.

Titles like Vampire Survivors and Balatro have challenged the idea that a game needs to be complicated to offer deep gameplay mechanics.

These two breakout indies have also been developed by solo developers who saw a way to build upon classic game genres and grow them into something unique.

And yet, the concept has proven that it is not just lightning in a bottle as solo developer countlessnights — with the help of the publisher 2 Left Thumbs — has now taken the mechanics of dice rolling and turned it into a full-fledged roguelike, complete with a compelling story and addictive gameplay loop in Dice a Million.

The idea is undeniably simple: You have a bag of dice from which you can select tokens to roll. When the dice land on the table after a roll, their value is tabulated for your score. Each round has a debt that must be paid, and any additional score after that is yours to keep or trade for goodies from the post-round shop.

Alright — game explained! We’re done here!

Well, not so fast.

There’s actually a lot more under the surface of Dice a Million than just throwing some dice at the table. While the basics are accurate, there are a few key elements that are at play, as well. One is the hand color. Similar to Balatro’s method of introducing gameplay modifiers by letting players select different deck colors, Dice a Million players can also modify the game's basic ruleset by selecting from colorful hands that throw the dice.

Some hands allow the player to sacrifice the number of dice they can throw in exchange for a discount in the shop, while others offer different starting bonuses, like an increased chance of finding rare rings.

Speaking of rings, those also add an extra gameplay layer to Dice a Million. Similar to Balatro’s jokers, Dice a Million’s rings can offer added boosts to your dice’s tally. Some rings may provide a buff to only even-numbered dice, while others prefer odd. Some can increase the potential for enchantments or allow the player to draw a card when a certain event occurs.

Cards also boost gameplay potential, giving players the chance to draw extra dice, add extra rolls, and even create potential synergies that further boost the player’s score.

Dice a Million has over 120 unique dice that players can purchase, unlock, and otherwise collect to fill out their dice bag for each run. Runs are broken down into Faces, with each face having a progressive path of challenges that increase in difficulty by requiring the player to hit higher score goals.

Faces also give players the chance to roll their dice bag to match certain combinations in hopes of acquiring extra rewards when completing a round. Halfway through each face, players are rewarded with a new ring.

When players reach the end of a face, they are challenged with a unique boss battle. Any score previously accrued that was not spent in the shop is lost, and the player starts the boss challenge on 0. They must then roll their dice and accumulate enough score to beat the boss, but there is another twist here.

The boss die have specific challenges attributed to them, and they are randomized with each run. In some instances, odd or even numbered dice rolls may be nullified. In others, rings may be disabled or certain synergies can result in no score at all.

Building up your dice bag to topple the final die for each face can be a struggle, but if you’re lucky enough to actually reach the end of a run and beat the final boss, you just might find yourself unlocking some of Dice a Million’s creative story. It’s a slow, steady drip of lore that changes the rules in unexpected ways and leaves you saying “just one more roll.”

Dice a Million is currently available on PC Game Pass, though the developer has committed to an Xbox release at a later, currently undisclosed, date.

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The icy grip of winter is finally fading, and there are finally chirping birds and fresh grass. But where there was once a blanket of snow, there is now a fresh coat of pollen, and allergies are making sure we still don’t want to go outside.

Thankfully, there’s an incredible lineup of new indies that have recently launched on Xbox to keep us busy. These are the standout indie games from the last month that are nothing to sneeze at.

Absolum

Originally released to Steam last year, this roguelite beat ‘em up from Dotemu has finally made its way to console. Steeped in nostalgia and crafted by a team with a rich history in side-scrolling beat’em ups, Absolum is an epic modern roguelike with fantasy vibes.

Set in the shattered world of Talamh, a world where magic is no longer trusted by commoners and a crazed Sun King has conquered the realms, but a plucky team of outcasts harnesses their individual fighting styles to overthrow the Sun King.

Absolum centers around Galandra, a powerful necromancer armed with a colossal sword, and the last free dwarf Karl, who wields an ancestral blunderbuss and the fury of his own two fists. These two heroes are joined on their quest to abolish the Sun King by a prodigy wizard and nimble skirmisher. Players can tackle Azra’s elite guard using rapid combo chains and spellcasting powers in classic beat em up fashion.

There’s also a secret behind Absolum — you can play it with a friend. Both local and online coop for 2 players is supported, and since the game launched day one on Xbox Game Pass, it’s easier than ever to grab a pal and topple the Sun King Azra’s regime. Absolum is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Cloud with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

Grimoire Groves

Spring is for plants, and there’s no better steward to a fledgling garden than a friendly witch. Grimoire Groves, developed and published by Stardust LLC, is a perfect witchy farming sim to settle down with this spring. When the forest spirits of Grimoire Groves mysteriously disappear, taking plant life with them, it becomes the player’s responsibility to revive the magical forest to its previous grandeur.

Unlock new spells to fill out your grimoire and then mix and match those spells to master the elements. If you’re looking to spend your spring crafting, foraging, and befriending mythical forest creatures while solving the mystery of the fabled Rainbow Socks, Grimoire Groves is for you.

Grimoire Groves is available now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Voidwrought

There’s always room for a good metroidvania in the backlog, especially one that’s perfect for speedrunning. Developed by Powersnake and published by Kwalee, Voidwrought is a hand-drawn 2D metroidvania and action platformer with Hollow Knight and Ori vibes that centers around sharp controls, engaging exploration, and deep lore.

Deep below the surface, players will find a vast world of traversal obstacles and eleven challenging boss battles in a world where the freshly emerged Simulacrum is driven to collect the blood of the gods.

Collect over 50 relics and souls by defeating 70 different enemies, excavate the city, and construct a shrine for your loyal followers so that you can discover even more treasures. Voidwrought offers New Game Plus and Hardcore modes for those who want an even tougher challenge. The game is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

Only Up Rush

In 2023, SCKR Games released Only Up!, a difficult parkour game where the player had to run, climb, and jump their way to the top of a massive obstacle course. Beds served as trampolines, and one misstep would lead to a gutwrenching tumble back down to the bottom. The game went viral when it was released on Steam and garnered a large audience on Twitch, but was removed permanently just a few months after its initial launch.

In the void left behind, Nostra Games LTD has created Only Up Rush, a brand-new parkour experience where players once again are attempting to make a mad dash to the highest point in the world by parkouring their way across an insane obstacle course made out of junk.

Only Up Rush is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and compatible handhelds (just in case trying to parkour over traffic cones wasn’t already difficult enough on a large screen). It also features support for console mouse and keyboard inputs, has achievements, cloud saves, and is Xbox Play Anywhere compatible.

Project Songbird

Remember when we said the birds were chirping? Their song doesn’t have to be a cheerful one just because it's spring. There is still plenty of room for the macabre. Project Songbird is a cinematic psychological horror game with a focus on narrative storytelling, developed by Conner Rush and FYRE Games, and published by Pdpartid@games.

Players experience the world of Project Songbird as Dakota, a musician suffering through writer’s block, who isolates themself in a log cabin nestled away in the creepy forest of West Virginia. It's the perfect setting for trying to survive the horrors of the Appalachian mountains, where a natural environment meets hellish dreamscapes in a short but emotional horror experience.

Dakota must survive using upgradeable weapons, both ranged and melee, if they’re ever going to record the best album of their career. Permadeath certainly puts a damper on one’s creative output.

Project Songbird is a 4-5 hour adventure that features an all-star voice cast, including Valerie Rose Lohman (What Remains of Edith Finch, Wolfenstein: Youngblood), Jonah Scott (Dying Light 2: Stay Human, Beastars), and Aleks Le (Persona 3: Reloaded, Demon Slayer) along with musical talents from members of the band Auric Echoes on a beautiful soundtrack that just adds to the haunting dramatic atmosphere.

Project Songbird is available now on Xbox Series X|S.

Shortly before his death, Italian poet Dante Alighieri would pen what we now call The Divine Comedy — a piece of art so masterful that it would eventually become known as one of the greatest works of Western literature.

The story is a combination of three epic poems into one cohesive story, imagining Dante’s travels through an afterlife that reflects the worldview of the 14th century.

Throughout the course of the poems, Dante’s soul moves through hell in Inferno, before entering purgatory in Purgatorio, and eventually heaven in Paradiso. While all three poems are a collective imagining of the afterlife, it is Dante’s Inferno that has become the most recognizable to modern audiences.

If you’ve played any games where hell is portrayed as having nine circles, for example, that likely was inspired by Dante’s Inferno. And that’s without even mentioning all of the references to the Divine Comedy in games like Capcom’s Devil May Cry series.

Despite already having spawned a plethora of media inspired by Dante’s lengthy epic poem, there’s still plenty of material for new takes on the story. Developed by ONE-O-ONE Games in partnership with Entalto Publishing, The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline manages to breathe fresh new life into this classic poem by creating an unsettling psychological horror by tossing out the idea that The Divine Comedy is merely just an old poem.

Instead, it is a warning.

The Alighieri Circle puts players in the shoes of Gabriele Alighieri, a living descendant of Dante himself. Dante’s heirs have long been cursed with the task of performing a ritual that has defined — and destroyed — the family for generations. Every 33 years, when the barrier between reality and Hell weakens, an Alighieri must complete The Ritual to protect the world from the horrors on the other side.

Gabriele does not see himself as a hero, regardless of what his bloodline decrees, and his relationship with the legacy he has inherited from Dante is a crushing weight in his life that he has spent many years trying to escape. Even as he is burdened by unease about The Ritual, Gabriele still returns to his ancestral home when it is his time.

As Gabriele, you’ll have the opportunity to explore a sprawling Italian manor known as The Villa, an ominous environment rich in history that can be explored by finding hidden collectibles and diary pages that reveal more of the family’s tragic history and memories of Gabriele’s life. There are no ghosts or monsters lurking about the manor, but Gabriele’s dread is still an unbearable and tangible force in the silent hallways. Esoteric puzzles give the player challenges without having to contend with combat.

An early puzzle players can experience in the free demo for The Alighieri Circle right now on Steam has players scouring the grounds to locate missing statuettes that — when combined — open a portal in the home’s crypt that allows Gabriele to cross into the game’s second environment: The Dive.

The Dive is a unique take on the infernal depths Dante Alighieri describes in Inferno, creating a distorted reflection of Gabriele’s memories and fears that he must explore in order to confront the generational trauma that torments him before it destroys his own family. Gabriele’s quest is to gather the lost pages of the Divine Comedy and reunite them, but doing so requires him to unravel the emotional experience and creeping dread of inherited responsibilities, while the player experiences dramatic environmental storytelling through symbolic landscapes and surreal imagery.

The Alighieri Circle forgoes gore and combat for a more deliberate, exploration-focused gameplay experience that is similar in style and substance to other psychological horror titles like Layers of Fear and P.T. It's a harrowing psychological journey through melancholy that weaves in creative references from The Divine Comedy into its puzzles and environmental story telling that you’re going to want to bump up to the top of your wishlist when it launches on Xbox later this year.

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Last summer, I had the opportunity to preview Starsand Island, a cozy farming life sim with a Studio Ghibli-esque aesthetic and an impressive gameplay loop that ultimately left her desperate to play more.

Unfortunately, at the time, only a short demo was available with the promise of a Winter 2025 release window. As the seasons ticked on, the game was nowhere to be seen.

Until February of 2026, that is, when Starsand Island launched in Game Preview on Xbox and Xbox PC with Play Anywhere support and as part of the ever-growing Xbox Game Pass catalog.

Developed and published by Seed Sparkle Lab, Starsand Island boasts all the hallmarks of a classic cozy game. The customizable player character has ditched the hustle and bustle of city life to wistfully return to their childhood hometown on the titular Starsand Island. After the player chooses between a male or female protagonist, they’re greeted with a very robust character creator.

Nearly everything can be customized from the start, including hairstyle and color, eye style and color, beauty marks, freckles, and more. The clothing options are a little light in the beginning, but don’t worry — that’s a problem that’ll be taken care of later on. After sifting through the countless options in the character creator, it’s time to reacquaint with the family home. Your childhood best friend, Solana, is there to greet you and help you get settled back into life on the island.

Though Starsand Island’s starter home isn’t quite as depreciated as starter homes in similar titles, it is certainly a little extra cozy. It’s small, ok? Really small. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Like any good life sim, Starsand Island starts the player character with some of their grandparents’ heirlooms. In this case, it’s a trusty old stump of a workbench where you can craft a hatchet and a pickaxe using sticks and stones you picked up out of the yard. It’s a little rudimentary, but it gets the job done in those early days until you craft something a little harder-hitting.

Before you know it, you’ll be taking down trees and crafting furniture, and while that’s a great way to spend your free time, there’s really so much more to do. Starsand Island is alive with a cast of townspeople from all walks of life — each made to feel real and engaging with their own routines, back stories, and interests. Chatting and giving gifts to the locals unlocks new story beats, quests, and even romantic possibilities.

Some of the townies can also help you choose and advance through the game’s different career paths, all of which lean into helping you become a self-sufficient homesteader and productive member of the community. Pastelle, the local rancher, is gentle and sweet but also eager to share her love of animals with you. Progressing through the rancher career under Pastelle’s mentorship unlocks livestock for your farm.

Cows and sheep can provide milk, but you must ensure all their needs are met, including housing, food, and hygiene. Chickens and ducks can provide eggs, but they’ll also help to keep your garden pest-free. Rabbits may be adorable, but they are also vital for keeping your garden weed-free. Livestock can be purchased or bred, which can lead to the discovery of unique variants that produce different byproducts.

Like the rancher career, the angler career track can provide animal byproducts (like fish meat) that can be used for crafting delicious recipes, or you can work on selectively breeding fish in order to fill the island’s aquarium.

In all, Starsand Island offers players five career paths: ranching, farming, crafting, exploring, and fishing. Each track starts the player as an apprentice and requires the completion of trials in order to become certified. Completing each trial leads to new blueprints and tools for further completing more trials.

Running errands for mentors and helping out the folks of Starsand Island also opens up romantic possibilities, and there are plenty of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes around the island to woo with gifts and small talk — including some memorable favorites from the My Time at Portia series. Players of the My Time series will recognize Nia, Gust, Ginger, and Fang upon their arrival on the island.

Even in its early access state, Starsand Island is lush with content. Players can rent a yacht to go fishing on nearby islands for the day, or go on a mining adventure and face giant rock monsters lurking in the caves of the Moonlit Forest. There is always something to do in this massive open world — and a new roadmap recently released from Seed Sparkle Lab indicates a lot more is on the way in the coming months.

The roadmap includes plans for an enhanced NPC dating system in April, mod support in May, and cooperative multiplayer in June.

Starsand Island is available now in early access on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, compatible gaming handhelds, and Xbox Cloud with Xbox Play Anywhere support. The game is available as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription, or you can take advantage of a sweet launch discount to pick it up for under $30.

It's been a short month full of grand gestures and questionable heart-shaped candy treats, but they say nothing lasts forever. Before February leaves us sobbing alone on the couch with wilted flowers at our feet, we want to take a moment to lovebomb a few of this month's newest indie games.

Each month, we round up five recently released indie titles that have our hearts aflutter. There are plenty of fish in the ID@Xbox sea, so whether you’re looking for commitment or just a quick, messy rebound, we’re sure there’s something here for you.

ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN

What's more appropriate for February than Romeo, Juliet, and some sweet cybernetic hack-and-slash action? Romeo is a Dead Man is the latest from Suda51 (of No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw fame) studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. This third-person, hack-and-slash action game is centered around a young hero by the name of Romeo Stargazer, who finds himself at the brink of death only to be revived by the power of a nascent technology.

Romeo is recruited by the FBI’s Space-Time Police department as a special agent and tasked with wielding giant swords and powerful firearms while hunting down space criminals. All the while, Romeo’s trying to find his own missing girlfriend (Yup, you guessed it. Her name is Juliet.) With a single story campaign that’s fast-paced, chaotic, and filled with lots of quirk and charm, Romeo is a Dead Man is sure to get your blood pumping.

Romeo is a Dead Man is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and compatible handhelds. The game is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, but it is not included on Xbox Game Pass at launch.

AERIAL_KNIGHT’S DROPSHOT

There’s nothing wrong with riding solo, even in February. Aerial_Knight’s DropShot is a single-player fever dream packed with style and substance, created by a black-owned studio and launched during Black History Month.

The sophomore effort developed and published by Aerial_Knight is an action FPS where our protagonist has been bitten by a radioactive dragon and imbued with powers that are going to come in real handy when he’s forced to face off against dragons, tanks, cows, and so much more — all while free-falling from the sky and dual-wielding finger guns.

DropShot’s protagonist, Smoke Wallace, skydives through obstacles with each passing level, blasting away and collecting power-ups for his finger guns.

Aerial_Knight’s Dropshot is a delightfully bite-sized adventure perfect for the short month when you’re struggling for time. The game takes roughly 2 hours to finish for the 100% completion, and you can grab it to go on a compatible Xbox handheld, the Xbox cloud. It features Xbox Play Anywhere support between console, cloud, and PC, and you can play it right now as part of your Xbox Game Pass subscription.

MIO: Memories in Orbit

Despite all of the focus on love in February, there’s still something to be said about self discovery. And nothing says self-discovery like awakening as a little robot all alone on a massive technological ark. That’s the premise of MIO: Memories in Orbit, developed by Douze Dixièmes and published by Focus Entertainment.

MIO: Memories in Orbit puts you in the role of the titular character, a nimble little robot with extraordinary abilities who awakens on the Vessel, an ark that has been unexpectedly abandoned by its AI caretakers. With shutdown looming, the player must help MIO save the memories of the Vessel and discover their own true past — as well as their destiny.

MIO offers players plenty of exploration and platforming opportunities alongside challenging, but rewarding, combat. For fans of metroidvanias like Hollow Knight or Ori and the Blind Forest, MIO: Memories in Orbit is a must-play.

MIO: Memories in Orbit supports Xbox Play Anywhere and is available on the Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Cloud.

Crisol: Theater of Idols

These roundups feel wrong if they don’t include at least one horror game. Thankfully, publishers Blumhouse Games and developers Vermila Studios have us covered for February with Crisol: Theater of Idols.

In Crisol: Theater of Idols, you become Gabriel, a soldier who can use his own blood as a deadly weapon in this first-person horror action adventure set in the ghoulishly troubling world of Hispania. Set on the cursed island known as Tormentosa, Crisol: Theater of Idols reimagines Spain as a hellscape where ruins of once grandiose buildings dot the horizon, with labyrinthine streets drawing you in.

Crisol treats blood as both a weapon and a curse, setting Gabriel up to need it both for health and ammunition. But it is in short supply, and players must be careful with managing their blood as they attempt to survive on Tormentosa, solve puzzles, and experience a combination of events that blend historical horrors with religious undertones — all wrapped up in a little bit of blood sacrifice for good measure.

Crisol: Theater of Idols is available now on Xbox Series X|S consoles, but there is no Xbox Play Anywhere support for this one, nor is it on Game Pass.

Death Match Love Comedy!

February’s round-up all comes down to heartfelt confessions — with a twist. Death Match Love Comedy! Is a visual novel where confessions of love aren’t exactly what they seem. The game’s protagonist, Kei Yagi, has been cursed by a mysterious entity, and confessions of love can cause him to explode and die.

With that information at hand, players can experience this delightfully wild visual novel that blends slapstick comedy and the occult with classic visual novel gags where every female around our poor, cursed hero is madly in love with him.

Death Match Love Comedy! Is available on Xbox PC, the Xbox family of consoles, Xbox Cloud, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

Tower defense is a staple video game genre that entices every age group. You have a building, and it must be protected.

Set up defenses to stop an onslaught of foes from toppling your towers and enjoy the sweet reward of victory. But what if the tables were turned? What if you were the leader of that oncoming horde this time? What if you could raise your own army of undead minions and send them to do your bidding so that you can conquer a kingdom?

That’s the premise of Countless Army, developed and published by the three-person team at Dos Estrellas. The game begins with the premise of a lovely kingdom, long at peace, enjoying its days. But there’s no fun in that! The Lich has awakened, and you must conquer the 6 kingdoms and bring torment to the humans.

Each of the six kingdoms have their own unique biomes and challenges. Countless Army starts off in the simple plains, where green grass is dotted with archers protecting their buildings. The player’s undead army consists of some weakling skeletons, but there are also some skeleton dogs whose bony little bodies can sprint, giving you a leg up over those arrow-weilding humans hiding behind barricades.

Each attack begins with a planning stage, where the player chooses which of their minions will be sent into battle. Once you’re ready to go, Countless Army shifts to the pre-wave. This is the point where the player can choose which minions to send down which path. All roads lead to the exit, which a certain number of your minions must make it to in order to win and continue your quest of kingdom domination.

Some pathways lead to buildings, which the minions will automatically take over should enough of them be able to enter it. Buildings are typically well guarded, and its a strategic risk to send minions after them as there can be archers, traps, and other hazards that prevent takeover. Should you succeed in toppling the kingdom’s buildings for your own gain, you are presented with the option to loot them for additional minions or gems that can be exchanged for skins after the battle.

There is a limit to how many troops can be sent down a path per wave, so planning your attack is vital. Some of your minions will have higher health, while others — like the previously mentioned sprinting dogs — have different abilities that can benefit your takeover efforts.

Countless Army features 12 different minion types that can be unlocked, each offering two different professions and a plethora of unlockable skins so you can customize your minion army to suit your own whims.

One particular skeleton horde, while weak, can be buffed to create bone piles upon death that help protect the hordes that come after. It can be beneficial, then, for you to plan to send them out first to meet an early demise so that their remains can provide protected paths for the stronger units that follow behind them.

Those unique troop abilities can be modified between matches using skill currencies earned from toppling towers and securing victories during battles. The individual stats of troop classes like summoning time, speed, and life can be increased before the next fight — creating an ever stronger legion of the dead for you to terrorize the humans.

New spells that can increase provide temporary boosts for the minions like shields and healing abilities. There are 50 different unlocks on the skill tree, as well as a secondary tree featuring six unlockable spells.

Your minions will need to take down all six kingdoms if you want to see victory for the Lich, and you’ll encounter a unique blend of biomes with changing climates on your adventure. From mist in the plains to the barren desert and a stormy coast, Countless Army challenges you with 46 maps in total. Success in one kingdom does not guarantee that you’ll keep control of that territory, however. You may need to occasionally revisit conquered kingdoms to squash rebel uprisings that threaten your reign.

Countless Army is available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, with Smart Delivery support. Unfortunately, Countless Army is not a Play Anywhere title nor is it on Xbox Game Pass, but you can add this unique take on tower defense to your library for just $10.

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If you ever thought, "Boy, surviving a deadly outbreak in the middle of a Russian town while controlling mystical time-travelling powers sounds like a lot of fun," then Ice-Pick Lodge has the game for you. Meet, Pathologic 3.

The small studio has been terrorizing folks since 2005 with their initial entry, Pathologic. Released in 2005, the original game followed a 12-day timeline in which 3 characters navigated the precarious events known as the Sand Plague.

Seen from three different character perspectives: The Bachelor (Daniil Dankovsky), Haruspex (Artemy Burakh), and The Changeling (Clara), Pathologic became a renowned cult classic. In turn, Pathologic would generate a remaster, or reimagining, of the game for the first time, known as Pathologic 2.

The game would refine the vision into something haunting, something fans would find unforgettable, putting you in the shows of the local healer (Artemy). Now, with Pathologic 3, they've given us the third perspective fans of the series have clamoured for, the Bachelor's route, complete with the mind-bending mechanic of time-travel.

You, the Bachelor, have 12 days to diagnose patients, manage a collapsing town, and confront the mind-breaking workings that bend your science-based mind. While nothing comes easy, Pathologic 2 felt like an exhaustive, never-ending endeavor of tumultuous mistakes. Pathologic 3 gives the Bachelor a unique leg up: the ability to send his consciousness back through time.

The whole time travel isn't a simple rewind button; instead, it's a desperate "do-over" which allows the player to revisit earlier days, rewrite mistaken actions, and witness the ripples of those fatal decisions. Saving life comes at the cost of something else, and the game's world will remind you that every decision comes at the expense of something equal.

The time-traveling mechanic has turned tension into something even more terrifying. Every trip back and forth comes with unknowingly related consequences that will inject new horrors you might find even more regrettable than those you wished to fix.

The Town, a Steppe settlement located somewhere in Russia that seems placed during, or surrounding the events of the Russian Revolution in 1917, becomes the backdrop for one of the most unsettling environments I've gamed in: a hand-crafted maze-like crumbling architecture, bleakly foggy districts, and townspeople who speak in roundabout riddles.

The sound of the environment itself is as unsettling as the sights ahead. Encompassing all 360 degrees of the player, it stands as a constant reminder of danger in all directions. Akira Yamaoka, the legendary composer behind Silent Hill, fills the soundtrack with eerily crimpling ambiance that fills the mind with dread and suffering.

These constant visual and sound horrors will remind you, the player, of one striking truth: Pathologic 3 isn't here to hold your hand. If anything, the time-travel makes every decision somehow more personal, as though you're the one responsible for the terrible, pathological crimes haunting this epidemic town. Ice-Pick Lodge is notorious for treating its players like adults capable of handling regret, pain, and the occasional existential crisis.

Your journey through the world of Pathologic 3 entirely depends on what you witness, what you pay attention to, and who or what you deem worthy of saving. Not everything can be, not everything should, but Pathologic 3 will put you through the wringer to make sure the choice you made has the most emotional impact, regardless of whether you like it or not.

To top it all off, Pathologic 3 has introduced the Apathy and Mania system. Too much Apathy, and your character loses speed, inevitably giving in to it all with a single bullet. Too much mania, and your character begins to lose health under the endless waves of anxiety.

Striking a balance rewards players with an extra boost to speed. Leaning slightly into mania produces a greater walk speed, while Apathy slows the Bachelor to a crawl. A clinical dose of medicinal items, both hurtful and alleviating, will make you question just how scientific this drug-using doctor really is.

That scientific mind is tested through rigorous study of infected patients. By checking their fluid samples, bodies, and belongings for clues, you'll need to piece together how people become infected, how the disease develops, and more.

For all these reasons, I can't wait to spend another 20 to 30 hours running through each and every one of those 12 days. Unraveling the past, present, and future of the Town might come at the cost of my sanity, but nothing in this world worth its weight to play is easy to digest.

Pathologic 3 is yet another entry in a series that will spiral the mind to depths it may not wish to go, but one it deserves none the less. Not for the sake of the pain it might bring to the mind of the individual, but for the strength of narrative you'll seek in all your games afterward. That, or maybe you're just the kind of person that likes punching fate in the face with a time machine that's powered by shards of glass.

The zombie apocalypse is brutal. Resources are scarce, good defense is the best offense, and scrutiny is a survival skill. One could argue that in Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, scrutiny is actually the most important survival skill of them all.

As society collapses under the weight of a horrific zombie virus, it's you who has become the frontman for the last checkpoint before survivors evacuate to what one must assume is a zombie-free utopia. Not every survivor is fit for evacuation, though. Some will hide bites, while others are infected without even knowing it. It's up to you to use the tools at your disposal to determine which survivors are safe to evac and who has to be — well. Liquidated.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, developed by Brigada Games and published by Devolver Digital, has already seen viral success during its early beta. Now the virality has spread as the game enters early access on Steam and Xbox PC.

The concept of the game is relatively simple: Survivors arrive at the checkpoint, and the player must analyze their health and condition using available tools to determine if they are healthy enough for extraction. Infected survivors can and do try to swindle their way to safety, but letting in an infected survivor can lead to your entire camp becoming overrun with zombies. There’s a price to be paid for each healthy survivor, and an even higher price to be paid for liquidating civilians who aren’t infected.

It's of the utmost importance that you use the tools available to sort the civilians, but at the start of the game little is known about the pathogen causing the virus and how to determine if a civilian is safe. Freckles can be an interesting beauty mark, or they can be a telltale sign of illness. Bite marks are indisputable, but they’re also easily hidden with clothing. The symptoms you can see — red eyes, bruising, and necrosis, for example — must be documented for each and every survivor.

Each new day in Quarantine Zone has something new to offer to the player, be it new symptoms and tools or additional challenges that can be found on the bulletin board. The ailments found in survivors change as the virus evolves. A cough might just be a cough, but it could also be a sign of infected breath that can only be detected with a stethoscope. One tool can let you look for bites that were previously hidden, don’t forget to check for — ahem, internal contraband — using the handheld X-Ray machine.

There’s a plethora of symptoms that can help you determine if someone is safe to bring into the camp. But it's not always cut and dry. Some symptoms can just indicate sickness, but do not necessarily mean that a civilian is destined to become a shambling, brain-eating corpse. Thankfully, the checkpoint is equipped with a quarantine zone that lets you separate potentially infected survivors for a day or two to monitor their symptoms without risking the entire camp.

Quarantine has added benefits for the checkpoint and the player. Sick civilians who recover in quarantine can make their way to the survivor camp, but those who turn into a roving zombie are safely secured with minimized losses. Those zombies can then be sent to the checkpoint’s laboratory, earning the player vital research points for handy tool upgrades. Just don’t forget to feed them from the body pile out behind liquidation that we don’t talk about.

When your day of managing potential survivors and feeding zombies in cages is done, you get the joy to return to your cot in a shipping container to call it a night. The apocalypse doesn’t end just because you want a little bit of shut-eye, though. Sometimes you’ll find yourself awakened to sirens warning of incoming hordes that want to breach the fences of the checkpoint and nom on all your survivors’ tasty, tasty brains. During these segments, you’ll get to pilot a drone packed with heavy artillery that can decimate the horde — as long as your aim is true, anyway.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check offers players two different endings for the campaign, but if you still haven’t had your fill of sending infected survivors off to liquidation after the story ends, there is the option to play an endless mode, as well. The game even features Twitch Integration for streamers who want to play the game with chat’s input. Neither Brigada Games nor Devolver Digital have confirmed plans to bring Quarantine Zone: The Last Check to consoles at this time, but Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscribers can enjoy the game as part of their subscription on Xbox PC.

With January over and done with, we can all sigh a breath of relief that we were able to get through the hardest two months of the year. As a little pick-me-up, you may want to jump into some indie games to get over the winter blues.

Windows Central wants to help you find your next favorite title, so we’ve put together 5 recently released ID@Xbox titles for you to have a look at. So go get another drink, maybe some snacks, and make sure those controllers are charged.

Egging On

If, like me, you ate a few too many chocolate bars, turkey sandwiches, and other treats over the holidays, you may be feeling a little egg-shaped, so why not complete the transformation and become one! Egging On puts you in the shell of a fragile egg with the goal of getting as high as you can go. Developer EgoBounds has mastered egg physics to make the egg-themed environments as challenging as they are fun.

As you roll and jump your way up and up the structures, coming across new and interesting obstacles, you’ll have to avoid whoever left that chainsaw running, or even an angry rooster. Being an egg doesn’t have to be pale and bland; however, customize your egg with a variety of decorative shells so you can look your best while you try not to crack under the pressure.

Egging On is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, compatible handhelds and Xbox Cloud gaming. You can also fulfil your dream of being an egg as a part of your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. With a game like this being great to relax and chill with, Egging On is a part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, meaning you only have to purchase the game once to play it on all compatible Xbox devices, meaning you can roll around to your hearts content.

KILL IT WITH FIRE! 2

I don’t know about you, but my heating bill is too high, I’m sick of wearing 4 jumpers, and I need to find a new way to keep warm, while warding off the horde of spiders surrounding my couch. Thankfully, KILL ITWITH FIRE! 2 has me covered, and if you’re in the same position as me, it could be for you too!

(Someone please pay my heating bill.)

Casey Donnellan Games LLC is back with the equally hilarious spider-exterminating co-op experience. Play the campaign solo or with up to 8 friends in online multiplayer, as you wage war on the spider world to exterminate as many as you can with an array of 45 rip-roaring and hilarious weapons, from big flipping guns to rolled up newspapers.

Each one of the seven worlds will test to see how many legs you can count and how many critters you can squash. Craft potions in a bubbling cauldron, destroy entire cities in tanks, or even be a spider and annoy your friends. Not for the faint-hearted if you have a fear of spiders, although it might be a bit therapeutic to you, I’ll let you figure that one out.

KILL IT WITH FIRE! 2 is available now On Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and supports handhelds, Xbox Cloud gaming, and a part of Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning that when you’ve burned your living room to the ground, you can then move to your bedroom, snuggled up in your warm bed, and jump back in with your friends on your phone via cloud gaming. Wait- what did I just feel on my toes...

Dustland Delivery

If you’re in the mood to build an empire and become a tycoon from old tires, gears and rusty nails, developer Neutron Star Studio’s new business simulation game, Dustland Delivery, might be up your dirt path.

In a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled wasteland, you and your ragtag group of misfits will travel from town to town, trading, buying, and selling rations, taking on rival gangs, and recruiting more to join your caravan, slowly building your empire, wheel by wheel. Build your truck (your mobile base) to tackle more difficult parts of the world, modifying it to withstand the harsh world outside to take on hordes of zombies or rogue gangs trying to steal your goods.

Your goal is simple: to become the source of all resources and the capital of the wasteland. Dustland Delivery only launched to Xbox on January 22, meaning that if you’ve been wanting to drive through the Dustland for the last year, the game is ready for you to jump into on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox One. There’s no handheld compatibility yet for this title, but the game does support the Xbox Play Anywhere Program, meaning you can build your empire on your PC and then watch the credits roll in on your couch.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check

If you want the post-apocalyptic zombie experience but only the admin side, then look no further than Quarantine Zone: The Last Check. Brigada Games' new simulation game puts you in charge at a vital checkpoint, making sure that no one who could be potentially infected gets through.

The job is simple enough; you’ll see one person through the checkpoint at a time. Using advanced screening tools and your own instinct, your job is to figure out who can stay in the safe zone and who must stay behind. Suspicious of someone, or not sure if they are infected or not? Send them to the quarantine zone for observation, or to the lab for additional screening. If you think they’re healthy, send them to the living block, but are you sure you didn’t miss something?

Each person you save, or each infected you identify, will give you some money, which can be used for a variety of things, including upgrading your equipment, power generators, security upgrades, and more.

Once you’ve got the hang of keeping the zombies out, you’ll be tasked with experimenting with survivors to try and find a cure, improve your lab with new tests and equipment, and one day, you all those harvested brains and organs might be worth it.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is available right now on Xbox PC and compatible handhelds. The game is included in the Xbox PC Game Pass subscription. Currently, there is no word on a console release for the title, meaning the game is aptly quarantined to PC.

Rhythm Doctor

If you cast your mind back to the Xbox Showcase at Tokyo Game Show, you might remember a trailer for a pixel art rhythm game that boasted that everything in the trailer was a piece of unbroken gameplay footage, and showed a blood-pumping rhythm game called ‘Rhythm Doctor’. A new take on the genre, 7th Beat Studio delivers a game that’s designed to teach you rhythm and rhythm theory, without even realizing it.

The game focusses around a new intern at Middle C Hospital. Confined to a chair behind a computer screen, the intern, Ian, has the job of trying out a new experimental treatment for patients, defibrillating their hearts in time with their heartbeat. You have one job: to press the button with your really long arm in sync with their heartbeat when you line their heartbeats up properly, you’ll cure what is making them ill.

The premise is simple enough, but the fun comes in when the Rhythm Doctor (that’s you!) must deal with more complex rhythm patterns, including polyrhythms, hemiolas, irregular time signatures, and probably more that is increasing my heart rate at the thought of it.

With over 20 unique levels, each featuring its own story and rhythm theory concept, you’ll experience the rhythm genre like never before, with a catchy soundtrack and gorgeous pixel art. If you’re up for the challenge to save lives to the beat, Rhythm Doctor is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Xbox One, and compatible handhelds. The game is not a part of Xbox Game Pass, but it is a part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, so you can pick up and play on any Xbox-compatible device when you can’t get those tunes out of your head.

Over 11 years ago, Toby Alden, a designer under the studio name brlka, was working on an indie platformer simply named Love.

The game was a brutalist platformer with simplistic pixel art, an offering to the ‘masocore’ platformer genre that includes similar games like Electronic Super Joy and Super Meat Boy.

Love has since grown into something bigger than its humble beginnings, and brlka is now ready to release a full game — with support from the publisher Ysbryd Games — that features a full narrative in addition to frustratingly difficult platforming. Love Eternal is set to release on Xbox and PC on February 19.

Love Eternal is an atmospheric, narrative-driven horror game that tells the story of Maya, a suburban child who is plucked from her family home by a lonely and selfish deity. The game begins with Maya leaving her room to join her family at the dinner table, but things quickly go awry after a mysterious phone call.

Maya finds herself locked away in an ancient castle, blocking her exit with a plethora of spikes, lasers, and other traps. While Maya is only a few pixels tall, the castle is a massive setting of hulking ruins, highlighting just how small and alone the tiny girl is in this environment. It creates an uncanny vibe that introduces horror to Love Eternal without relying on violence or other grotesque imagery.

Love Eternal allows players to guide Maya through the corridors of the creepy ruins with simple platforming mechanics. Press a button to jump, hold the button to jump longer. But it doesn’t take long for more advanced platforming to work its way into the gameplay loop. Once per jump, Maya can flip to invert gravity and fall upward rather than down.

Once the gravity flip has been used, it can’t be used again until Maya touches the ground. There is an exception to that rule, however. There are red crystals found on some stages that allow Maya to regain the ability to flip a second time. Those crystals are the difference between clearing one of Love Eternal’s spike-laden rooms or constantly being stuck.

The physics for how Maya moves through Love Eternal are the same as they were in the game’s original version over a decade ago. However, new, more fluid animations have created an illusion for the player about how Maya moves through the cavernous spaces in the castle.

The animations in Love Eternal do not just have an effect on Maya’s movements — they also add to that feeling of loneliness and the surreal and unsettling atmosphere. Love Eternal features hand drawn pixel art cutscenes that explore themes surrounding family and loneliness by juxtaposing them with images that are surreal and subversive. It’s a quieter, more subtle take horror that leaves you feeling unsettled, without relying on blood, gore, or jump scares.

Love Eternal’s striking muted color palette and fluid pixel animations are joined by an uncomfortable, reverb-heavy soundtrack. The combination ultimately creates an atmosphere where the player feels compelled to continue exploring, but is also unnerved by what they see and hear.

Love Eternal developer brlka partnered with Ysbryd Games to bring the horror platformer to launch. Ysbryd Games is a smaller indie publisher known for titles like Va11-halla, World of Horror, and Demonschool. The publisher’s catalog of games is distinct and recognizable across multiple genres, but it almost always consists of stylish pixel-art titles with impactful narratives. The publisher doesn’t shy away from experimental games that highlight the human condition, making the partnership with brlka a good fit.

Players can try a free demo of Love Eternal on Steam right now, ahead of the game’s full release to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles (as well as Steam and PlayStation) in February. While Love Eternal is available on past-gen consoles, it is not an Xbox Play Anywhere title.

Just two short years ago, Pocketpair broke the gaming news cycle when its “Pokemon-with-guns” title, Palworld, launched in early access. The game was a breakout success for the studio, but it was not the team’s first shot at virality. It had previously garnered significant attention for its adventure sandbox, Craftopia, and a smaller drawing party game titled AI: Art Imposter.

At a time when funding was scarce for small indies looking to secure publishing deals, Pocketpair borrowed a page from other viral indie devs and extended its development studio to include a publishing arm.

This publishing arm would seek out creative offerings from indie studios and provide the crucial funding and publishing support that these studios needed to see widespread release across consoles and PC platforms. In 2025, Pocketpair Publishing’s first partnership with Surgent Studios (the team behind Tales of Kenzera: Zau) would result in the launch of Dead Take.

Pocketpair Publishing has three titles currently announced for 2026, with the first among them being the recently released Cassette Boy. Developed by a solo developer under the banner of Wonderland Kazakiri inc, Cassette Boy launched on January 15 with Pocketpair Publishing and Forever Entertainment S.A. providing publishing support for the Steam launch and Xbox Series X|S console launch, respectively.

Cassette Boy invites players to explore a retro-inspired 2D pixel world built upon a question once posited by Albert Einstein, himself — Is the moon there when nobody looks? The game begins with what seems to be a dream sequence where the simple, all-white-pixel protagonist with two little pixel black eyes finds themself in a world where the moon has disappeared and become fragmented. There is one important rule in Cassette Boy: if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

This rule can be used to help solve Cassette Boy’s unique puzzle challenges. The player will find helpful tools in the world that can assist with overcoming obstacles. A long sword or a bow and arrow are handy for taking out pesky slimes that may be obstructing your path. But they’ll only go so far to help you to avoid the giant, angry cat you’ve tracked to a meadow.

Thankfully, a pair of headphones can unlock the 2D world of Cassette Boy and make it a rotatable 3D space. Shifting the world to the left or right using the controller bumpers can help change the perspective of the puzzle or combat engagement the player is currently tackling. Instead of running from that giant cat, shifting the world might allow you to block it with a giant wall on the edge of the map — out of sight, out of mind!

At first glance, Cassette Boy strikes at the nostalgia cords without shame. The game’s pixelated art style, combined with its retro-inspired color palette consisting of navy blue, bright green, black, and white, gives Cassette Boy a notable Nintendo Game Boy vibe. Cassette Boy’s setup, with its top-down 2D world littered with quirky NPCs, would feel just as at home in an old-school Zelda or Pokémon title. But its core gameplay loop offers a deeper, mind-bending puzzle experience.

The developer refers to Cassette Boy’s object permanence query as a “Schrödinger System”, where every item in the world can be affected by a simple rotation of the view. Stepping on a switch that is locking a gate may open that gate, but stepping away from it can result in the gate closing back. However, if the player steps on the switch, and then rotates the camera to obstruct the view of the switch, then the gate will remain open even if the player moves as the switch is technically no longer part of the world.

The challenge of rotating the world becomes more elaborate as the player progresses through the world. Some switches will require the world to make several rotations before properly activating, while other puzzles might require the player to be more creative with placing blocks to overcome obstructions. Cassette Boy features a bonfire-style save system before risky encounters, and failure will result in the player respawning at the last bonfire with full health so they can try again. Dungeons and puzzles can provide a myriad of rewards, from new weapons to moon fragments.

Cassette Boy is a single-player adventure puzzle RPG available now on the Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles. It has not been confirmed by the developer nor the publisher that the game is compatible with handheld devices, and it is not an Xbox Play Anywhere title. Thankfully, it does have an affordable price point, making it a great pickup for anybody looking for a few hours of challenging puzzle action. A demo of the game is also available now on Xbox, so you can try before you buy.

The fantasy adventure genre has been a gaming staple since its earliest days, but many of those games require the player to pick up a sword and head out to stand toe-to-toe with the world’s enemies in order to be the hero. Beastro reimagines the fantasy adventure genre as a world where not all heroes wear capes — some of them wear chef hats!

Set in the beautiful fictional village of Palo Pori, Beastro lets players become Panko, a talented young chef running a local eatery while honing his skills under the watchful eye of his teacher. Everything in Palo Pori is vibrant and lovely, but there is a darkness brewing beyond the city’s protective wall. Panko’s tranquility is disrupted after his teacher goes missing, leaving him to take up the challenge of feeding Palo Pori’s townsfolk and Caretakers — the brave adventurers who keep the monsters lurking in the wilds beyond the wall of Palo Pori at bay so that the citizens of the town can enjoy safer days.

Fresh ingredients are king in Palo Pori, so players will need to use Panko to forage for resources like fresh herbs and to find seeds that can be grown into exquisite fruits and vegetables that form the foundation of Panko’s recipes. With ingredients farm-raised by the player through gardening, foraging, and animal caretaking, Panko can offer up a customized menu for his town-to-table restaurant built upon player progression and choices.

Beastro allows players to tailor Panko’s restaurant to meet the needs of the community of Palo Pori. Unlocking new meals by farming and foraging ingredients, progressing through a skill tree, and updating the restaurant’s decor all help to better appeal to the locals. But Beastro isn’t just another cozy farming and cooking simulator; there’s a secret ingredient up the sleeves of the developers — Card battling.

Panko may have opted to pick up the spoon instead of the sword, but that doesn’t mean his dishes aren’t pivotal to protecting the town from the ravenous beasts on the other side of the wall. The dishes built by the player using Panko’s ingredients are gobbled up by the Caretakers who protect the city, with each ingredient becoming a card in the Caretaker’s deck. The Caretaker, too, adds customization and challenge to the battle. Each Caretaker is from a different flavor region, which can impact the meals they’ll order from Panko’s restaurant. Some prefer bitter or salty, while others prefer sweet.

Once their bellies are full, the Caretakers venture out into the wilds to battle the monsters in the wilds, and upon return, they will recount their adventures. These storytelling sequences play out as puppet theater, giving the player the opportunity to shape the battle stories via turn-based card combat.

Players can utilize ingredient cards to fight the monsters by matching their flavor magic or neutralizing it altogether with a balancing card. Enhancing cards also give the player the chance to power up the Caretaker’s moves before attacking. Players can craft card decks that provide the Caretakers with effects that can turn the tide of battle by blowing away enemy cards or lulling them to sleep.

Beastro developer and publisher Timberline Games drew inspiration from classic trick-taking card games for this particular element of their sophomore title. In 2021, the Los Angeles, California-based studio released its first title, The Red Lantern, a narrative dog sledding game that saw players become a Musher trying to survive with her 5 sled dogs in the Alaskan Wilderness.

Beastro is a significant shift in gameplay mechanics for Timberline Games, and the studio's first self-published release. While The Red Lantern is notably absent from Xbox storefronts, Timberline plans to release Beastro to Xbox Series X|S consoles and Xbox PC in 2026. The town-to-table sim meets fantasy adventure card battler is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, meaning players will only have to purchase it once to enjoy the game across the Xbox ecosystem, including on console, Windows PC, and handhelds. Beastro is also expected to launch day one on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

Oftentimes, when we describe new games, we look for older titles that gamers are familiar with to compare that title to. We could tell you that Core Keeper is “Stardew Valley meets Spelunky” or “Terraria meets Satisfactory”, and that would be accurate in some ways. But while this comparison helps to provide a foundational understanding of what the new game is like, it does little to actually convey what’s actually going on in this top-down pixel art sandbox developed by Pugstorm and published by Fireshrine Games.

Core Keeper’s premise is relatively simple on the surface. The player’s custom-created character awakens in an underground cavern. A massive glowing relic — the titular Core — is at the center of a sprawling, procedurally generated world. The Core is a mysterious source of power that you know little to nothing about as you start your adventure. What you do know is that you need to survive in this subterranean world, as little fungal critters and hunger alike are both on a mission to put an end to you.

The central chamber housing the Core is surrounded by walls of dirt, and you must find the resources to craft useful tools like pickaxes and shovels to create pathways and tunnels through the cavern. Likewise, you will need to level up your crafting, mining, and combat skills to unlock new equipment like armor and weapons. It’s not all fungi slashing and dirt removal, though. Core Keeper blends in wholesome survival gameplay like farming, animal care taking, and base building into the mix. The best part? You can invite up to eight of your besties to build and explore along with you.

Each time you launch into a new world in Core Keeper, the massive world is procedurally generated to create a brand-new environment. While some gameplay elements like boss locations and specific equipment can be found within a set number of tiles from the core, the biome and exact region they can be found in changes from play through to play through. Their world will look completely different to yours, though. The lush forest biome, for example, may be in the south on your map but to the northeast on your friends’ map.

Your custom characters can transfer from world to world when playing with friends, however. So if you’re already armored up and packing some of the best of Core Keeper’s available weaponry on your save, you can jump into your friends’ world and help them advance with your better gear. We all have that one friend who accidentally destroys home base with a badly placed explosive, so you may want to consider starting from scratch with a brand-new character and exploring a whole-new world with your friends while your home base stays intact on a different save slot.

Core Keeper’s expansion across multiple genres makes it an excellent multiplayer option, giving large groups of players the opportunity to explore the entirety of the game while focusing on gameplay elements that appeal most to them. The one group member who has a mission to annihilate every enemy they encounter can still get the full experience of Core Keeper and its lore while another member of the team stays back at the base and crafts replacement weapons or stat boosting meals.

The addition of automation mechanics adds an extra layer of depth to the base-building gameplay. Core Keeper’s world is a sight to behold, but it will wear thin on player nerves to constantly run back across thousands of tiles to return to a storage box because you picked up too many mushrooms. To combat resource management fatigue, Core Keeper offers players the chance to build complicated conveyor belt systems that can move resources across the entirety of the game world.

An automated drill running on a battery can easily mine gold while a crane picks up the dropped resource and transfers it to a series of conveyor belts that then take it all the way to the base before another claw machine transfers the gold into a dedicated storage box, for example.

At its heart, Core Keeper is a game that celebrates cooperation with friends and gives players the chance to carve out their own little place in the darkness to grow. The hostile world is slowly tamed and reclaimed to become a thriving base, and while some late-game bosses pose significant challenges, they also provide an opportunity for genuine collaboration between the player group.

Pugstorm and Fireshrine Games initially revealed Core Keeper in 2021 before launching the game into early access on Steam in 2022. During its early development, the development team introduced multiple new features like holiday-themed seasonal events, a Terraria crossover, and two of the game’s major biomes.

In 2024, Core Keeper was released on consoles alongside its 1.0 launch and was even available on Xbox and Xbox PC as part of Xbox Game Pass, though it has since left the subscription service. If you missed out on experiencing Core Keeper during its Game Pass stint, don’t worry — it’s currently on sale for 40% off during the Xbox Countdown Sale.

The developers have continued to introduce new content to Core Keeper even after announcing that a new game, Kyora, is in the works. A major free title update, known as Void & Voltage, is expected to come to Core Keeper on Xbox and other platforms on January 28, 2026.

Void and Voltage will add an all new biome to the map called Breaker's Reach, as well as new weapon types, including a Flamethrower and Minigun. Players who prefer more automation for their resource farms can also look forward to new tools like the critter catcher, seed extractor, and conveyor belt splitter. Core Keeper is already a delightful and dense adventure RPG that can take over a hundred hours to fully explore, and the next update is expected to pack in even more exciting content.

The holidays are sadly firmly behind us, but if you grabbed a nifty Xbox gift card over the Christmas period, we have some suggestions for you.

As part of our monthly feature, we have rounded up 5 of the best recent ID@Xbox titles you may have missed, if you don't fancy dropping $70 on a AAA or spending the big bucks on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. These titles are far more affordable, time-friendly, and, in my cases, downright wackier than the mega publishers have to offer.

A Game About Digging A Hole™

The last couple of years have been a boon for meme games — unique but addictive, and relatively inexpensive titles that are worth way more time than their price tag would insinuate. Games like Peak, Vampire Survivors, and Clover Pit come to mind. During the spring and summer months of 2025, A Game About Digging A Hole™ joined the ranks of viral meme games.

The premise is simple. You’ve bought a house, and you’re digging a hole in the backyard. From there, things become increasingly chaotic. The soil is rich with resources, which you can then sell to pay for upgraded equipment, which will eventually lead to you uncovering a mysterious secret.

Developed by a lone developer in their spare time, A Game About Digging A Hole™ debuted on consoles on December 9. Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscribers can start digging as part of the subscription service, but if you are paying out of pocket A Game About Digging A Hole™ will cost you just $5 — that makes it the perfect gift to give out to your besties on your Xbox friends list or as a gift to yourself to use up the last bit of change on that gift card from grandma.

A Game About Digging a Hole™ supports the Xbox Play Anywhere program, meaning you only have to buy this $5 gem once to enjoy it on your Series X|S, Xbox PC, the cloud, and compatible handhelds.

Fort Solis

The holidays certainly didn't have to be limited to the holly and jolly. Creepmas can be a lot of fun, too, and nothing is creepier than a solid horrific walking simulator. Developed by Fallen Leaf and published by Feardemic, Fort Solis is a former PlayStation title that has finally made its way to the Xbox storefront.

Fort Solis is a sci-fi horror adventure where players become Jack Leary, a senior engineer in the distant future who finds himself responding to an unusual emergency call coming from a remote mining base. A dangerous storm is fast approaching, and Jack must race against the forces of nature to uncover the mystery of Fort Solis’ missing crew — that is, if he can survive the night.

This one’s packed with an all-star voice cast, including Roger Clark (Red Dead Redemption 2, Smite) and Troy Baker (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Marvel Rivals) paired with some intense visuals and immersive storytelling. Fort Solis is available now on Xbox Series X|S.

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Developers Coal Supper and publisher Panic dubs Thank Goodness You’re Here a comedy slapformer, and that’s a pretty fitting title for a game that just wants to embrace everything bizarre. Players can explore the quaint and quirky Northern English town of Barnsworth as a traveling salesman. The locals in Barnsworth are — well, they’re something alright — and they’re more than ready to give you a series of increasingly odd jobs that you simply must finish before your very important big meeting.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a delightful journey full of humor and absurdities set in a vibrant and lively world where everything is carefully crafted via hand-drawn animation. Fully voiced dialogue adds to the humor and brings the inhabitants of Barnsworth to life. The game’s cartoonish art style might seem inviting and nostalgic, but the double entendres are definitely intended for a more mature crowd.

If you’re looking to inject some humor into your end-of-the-year festivities, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is available now on Xbox and supports Xbox Play Anywhere entitlements so you can get your giggles in on your Series X|S, Xbox PC, or compatible handheld.

Routine

We’re doubling up on the sci-fi horror this month, but if you check out Routine, developed by Lunar Software and published by Raw Fury, you’ll understand why. This first-person sci-fi horror title takes us into an 80s era imagining of the future to an abandoned lunar base. What kicks off as casual exploration devolves into a chaotic attempt to survive in a world where you are seen as the primary threat.

While Fort Solis offers a casual “walking simulator” take on sci-fi horror, Routine veers into the hardcore survival side of horror gameplay. There are no way points to help you find your way around the base, and the ability to explore effectively is just as much a part of your survival as breathing.

There’s no rushing through here — Routine requires you to explore your surroundings with care if you plan to survive and escape. The game’s minimal UI is paired with diegetic audio and full body awareness to crank up the atmospheric horror of it all as you attempt to survive by hiding or defending yourself.

Routine is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, the cloud, and compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere. It's also available to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass members as part of the subscription service.

Wylde Flowers

On the opposite end of the genre spectrum, Studio Drydock’s Wylde Flowers offers us a cozier way to get through the cold of winter. And admittedly, we’ll never miss an opportunity to share a witchy life sim. Like any good game in the witch life/farming genre, Wylde Flowers puts players in the shoes of a young woman named Tara who has arrived on a cozy rural island with the goal of helping out her grandma on the family farm.

The island of Fairhaven has plenty of beautiful biomes for players to explore, including sparkling beaches and secretive, mystical forests. The village is bustling and alive with a creative cast of characters who are all fully voiced and offer friendship and even romantic storylines for Tara to explore. Since its original release to Apple Arcade in 2022, Wylde Flowers has grown exponentially with new features, including the ability for players to customize Tara’s looks, add sweet (and magical) baby animals to the farm, and experience exciting new festivals.

Wylde Flowers is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and compatible handhelds with Xbox Play Anywhere support. A spin-off of Wylde Flowers, titled Wylde Society, is currently in development by Studio Drydock.

The upcoming release of CubeGame’s next project, Sword and Fairy 4 Remake, has led fans to ask whether an Xbox version is planned. In response, the publisher revealed that despite having two separate projects approved through ID@Xbox, it has yet to receive Xbox development kits.

CubeGame explained that without access to those kits, it cannot port its games to the platform, even if it wants to support Xbox.

For those unfamiliar, ID@Xbox is a program that allows developers to gain access to Xbox development kits and documentation. When projects are approved, developers are meant to receive a development kit as part of the process.

CubeGame says that has not happened in its case, despite the kits being provided free through ID@Xbox, even amid reports of rising costs for Xbox development hardware.

What Sword and Fairy 4 Remake is, and CubeGame’s wider portfolio

Sword and Fairy 4 Remake is a Chinese single-player, turn-based RPG rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, modernising the game for newer audiences. While an Xbox version has not been announced due to Xbox not providing dev kits, the publisher has confirmed a release on PlayStation 5, indicating it has access to development kits on other platforms.

While it remains unclear which specific projects were approved under ID@Xbox, CubeGame has previously published several well-known titles for Chinese audiences on Steam, including Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. That history shows it has experience handling major releases, even if it is not the original developer of those games.

Bringing attention to the dev kit issue matters because it directly affects whether Xbox players can access games like Sword and Fairy 4 Remake at all. The title targets a similar turn-based RPG audience to Expedition 33, making the lack of Xbox support a missed opportunity for the platform. Until the dev kit situation is resolved, Xbox users remain dependent on other platforms to play games that otherwise would perform well on the console.

Do you think Xbox is doing enough to support developers through ID@Xbox, or should it be doing more to ensure approved studios can actually bring games to the platform?

In late November, Xbox hosted a partner preview showcase of upcoming games from its publishing partners. Among those was a brief reveal for Plot Twist — the Polish studio behind 2023’s indie gem, The Last Case of Benedict Fox — and new indie publisher Lyrical Games.

The collaboration between these studios is bringing a new, wild-west-themed roguelike titled Erosion to Xbox and PC in 2026.

The premise of Erosion is fairly simple: the protagonist’s daughter is kidnapped by an evil warlord, who drags her into a living Pillar capable of warping time itself. She needs to be saved, and you’re going to do it. It's a tale as old as time, but there are some unique twists involved in Erosion.

Each death comes at the cost of actual time, pushing the world forward a decade and changing the open world around you. Your daughter, too, ages with the world, effectively putting a limit on the number of times you can die during your time with Erosion if you want to actually save her. Take too long, and you might not have a daughter left to save.

The trailer for Erosion highlights this gameplay element. We first see the hero being greeted by an excited little girl, happy to be saved by her daddy, only for her to morph into an agitated young adult who asks, “What took you so long?” The final transition shows an elderly woman collapsing into her father’s arms before transforming into flower petals and blowing away.

The passage of time is not only reflected in the age of the protagonist’s daughter. Erosion offers players a massive wasteland as a sandbox in which they can explore, but this voxel art world can be impacted by player actions and choices.

Destroy a building during a shootout, and it might not be there when you return a decade later, for example. In fact, the entire village may be nothing more than just a ghost of its former glory.

It's not all death and destruction, though. You can opt to help out the locals you encounter in Erosion, often with humorous unintended consequences. Helping out a store owner early on might lead to that shop becoming an empire later down the road. You could also cause a small farm to become the home of a new cultist compound that worships the Great Ol’ Rooster.

It's all a gamble in Erosion, really, especially when you visit Al Cashino, the local casino, where you can gamble until your little heart’s content.

The overworld of Erosion is vibrant and lively, with plenty of opportunities for trying your luck. The sands of the world are ripe with fishing opportunities, letting you uncover strange buried creatures from beneath the dunes. Steal a fresh new ride and take it to the salt flats for a high-risk, high-reward race.

Become an accomplished bounty hunter, taking down criminals for your own gain. Or challenge your foes to a duel — remember that death pushes time forward a decade, though, so be sure to aim true.

Speaking of aim, Erosion features dozens of weapons to choose from, with the opportunity to build out your protagonist with more than a hundred skills and modifiers that come together for some really crazy synergies.

The voxel art world of Erosion is yours to toy with as you please. Rain down orbital ferrets and watch the wiggly little fellows tear the town down to nothing more than little cubes of rubble. Equip the Ebony Rooster and take on the warlord with its arsenal of bouncy voxel eggs. Or simply settle for flipping a few poker tables.

Erosion challenges players to master the world’s unique timeline, putting the control to rewrite the game’s future to experience every single possibility. Exploring the world and completing quests can help you unlock permanent upgrades so that you can experience and shape the story based on your experiences and choices.

Plot Twist and Lyrical Games are taking the 11 bit studios approach to launching Erosion, opting to release the game into Early Access on PC via Xbox PC and Steam in early 2026. A console port of Erosion is expected for Xbox Series X|S later in the year. A price has not yet been confirmed, but Erosion is heading to PC Game Pass on day one as part of the subscription plan.

What do you think of Erosion? Are you interested in playing? Fill out our poll and tell us more in the comments.

A child who loses their parents is an orphan, but a parent losing a child is so taboo that we don’t even have a word in the English language to describe it. Despite the lack of verbiage for this situation, it is one that many people experience in their lives. A mother’s grief is unlike anything else in this world, and Death Howl — the latest game published by 11 bit studios and developed by The Outer Zone — beautifully crafts that experience into a heart-wrenching journey that will continue to haunt you long after you stop playing.

Death Howl’s story begins with Ro, a huntress and mother trapped in grief after the loss of her son. Desperate to return her son to the land of the living, Ro travels beyond the veil for herself. But the lands between the realms of the living and the dead are dangerous, and Ro does not know where she will find her son within them. Her journey of grief ultimately takes her through four different realms with thirteen distinct regions, each crafted in beautiful pixel detail and teeming with restless spirits that stand in the way of Ro’s reunion with her beloved son.

While games that focus on grief and loss are not uncommon, Death Howl stands out as a unique take, leaning into high difficulty and tactical grid-based combat with deck-building gameplay. Ro can freely explore the Spirit Realm, but her journey through grief itself is frequently blocked by strange, twisted animal spirits.

Combat begins when Ro steps onto the battle grid, and players can then select her starting position from the first row they interact with. Ro fights her battles with grief using a card deck stacked with unique abilities crafted from ingredients found in the spirit realm and forged into the playable deck with the literal death howls collected from fallen foes.

Cards have an action cost, and Ro has limited moves available per turn. Some cards are realm-specific and cost more for Ro to use when outside their home environment, but others are realmless and cost the same regardless of where Ro uses them.

Like any good deck builder, cards come with a variety of movements, but the tactical combat grid adds extra complexity to battles. The “Hurl a Rock” card, for example, is great at inflicting damage on enemies who are 2–3 squares away on the grid, but can not be used if the restless spirit is standing next to Ro. Alternatively, the “Quick Strike” card requires that the spirit being attacked is just one grid away, but it may have the effect of pushing that spirit back.

This is where strategy comes into play. You may want to strike a nearby foe with pushback and then hurl a rock to max out the damage possible with your active points without having to use them to move unnecessarily. Death Howl features over 160 cards to craft, providing opportunities for you to build a deck that synergizes with the way you want to play.

Just because there are plenty of cards to choose from doesn’t mean you can stack Ro’s deck. Death Howl limits the player to holding 20 cards in the deck at any time, which means you need to be thoughtful about your build. Focus on skills like poison to weaken enemies while you brace Ro for what spirits may inflict. Or build up Ro’s strength to make her capable of hard-hitting attacks. Maybe you prefer to sacrifice your least favorite cards to modify your favorites.

While Ro’s journey to reunite with her son is Death Howl’s main quest, she will encounter other events in the spirit realm, as well. These little breaks in the story of Ro’s grief provide opportunities for The Outer Zone to work in meaningful and equally emotionally charged parables that bolster the story.

In one early side quest, Ro encounters a flaming tree that explains how a fox stole the eggs of a friendly bluebird. In retaliation, the tree set itself alight to scare the fox away, but in doing so also scared off the bluebird. It's a masterfully crafted parable that shows how reacting out of anger or spite can cause harm to ourselves and those we hold dear, adding even more weight to Death Howl’s emotional heft.

Death Howl is available now on Xbox PC and compatible gaming handhelds for $19.99. The Outer Zone and 11 bit studios have plans to release the game on Xbox consoles in early 2026. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members can play the game now as part of the subscription service.

Even if you only consider when ROUTINE made its second debut at Summer Game Fest 2022, we've still been waiting for this unique survival-horror game to release for a long time — and ROUTINE was actually first teased over 13 years ago.

The small team at Lunar Software restarted development at some point, making the final product a decade late and very different than the initial teaser trailer you can still go watch at YouTube.com. A lot of people (myself included) understandably assumed ROUTINE would never actually release, but it's actually here and one of my favorite games of the year.

ROUTINE clearly lacks the budget and scope of major horror franchises like RESIDENT EVIL and SILENT HILL, and its seven-hour runtime is on the modest side, but ROUTINE still manages to firmly establish itself as a survival-horror gem thanks to its unyieldingly terrifying atmosphere and fascinating retro-futuristic setting. Here's why ROUTINE is a Windows Central Must Play.

This review was made possible thanks to an Xbox Game Pass subscription paid for by Zachary Boddy. Raw Fury and Lunar Software had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

Some things should simply be left alone

ROUTINE begins with a nightmare and a prophecy, and then you wake up. It's time to complete orientation and end your mandatory isolation, but where are you? Where is... anyone? This is Union Plaza, a cutting-edge facility built into the moon, but you are alone — at least, you're pretty sure you are.

It's clear that something has gone very wrong at Union Plaza, and there are even darker secrets spilling out from where they're buried beneath the lunar surface, dragging you deeper and deeper until you're consumed.

ROUTINE wastes no time establishing its atmosphere, catching you in the psychological crossfire between its stunning art direction, unsettling lighting, and striking audio design. This is a horror game, but ROUTINE doesn't rely on cheap jump scares or gaudy gore to get that point across.

I usually avoid spoilers in my game reviews, but I'm especially tight-lipped about ROUTINE. This game doesn't overstay its welcome, but still manages to feel full. A lot happens in ROUTINE, and none of it is likely to make you feel safe or comfortable.

ROUTINE always looks amazing, though. This is an alternate history drenched in morbid 1980s aesthetics, replete with off-white plastic, cassettes, and CRT displays. I alluded to it before; ROUTINE is consistently unnerving because of its immaculately off-putting atmosphere, and the few jump scares present so completely caught me off guard I nearly closed the game out of instinct.

Ultimately, ROUTINE is terrifying because it feels plausible. Reality is twisted to suit the narrative, sure, but the foundation is built on a human characteristic we've proven time and time again — we simply don't know when to leave well enough alone.

Don't expect to have your hand held

Don't expect ROUTINE to give you quest markers and constant exposition. Don't expect to be told explicitly where to go and what to do. If you want to survive the dangers of Union Plaza, you'll need to move slowly, explore carefully, and think smartly.

ROUTINE is a fairly linear game, so you're never in danger of becoming totally lost, but you're rarely told explicitly how you're supposed to progress. You'll have to rely on environmental clues, common sense, and the little information you'll find from the people who used to inhabit this station (and none of those people were writing notes with the intention of guiding some random stranger through endless catastrophes).

You'll also have to rely heavily on your Cosmonaut Assistance Tool (C.A.T.), which can reveal secrets, interact with terminals and equipment, save your progress and the information you've collected so far, and even help you defend yourself in an emergency.

Ideally, though, you'll never have to use that final function, as Union Plaza's threats aren't ones you can overcome through violence alone. You're not an inhumanly strong, fast, and well-armed bad ass battling your way through grotesque horrors, you're just as frail and even more vulnerable than the hordes of people who used to occupy Union Plaza.

Honestly, I prefer this approach to something like Cronos: The New Dawn, which leans into the challenge of its combat scenarios to elevate its horror. ROUTINE is slower, but the dread you feel is deeper. That being said, gameplay is also where ROUTINE is most likely to alienate new players.

The controls and user interfaces are clunky at best, and ROUTINE's refusal to give you pointers for solving its puzzles or completing its objectives can frustrate just as much as it engages. What kind of player you are will dictate how patient you can be with ROUTINE.

ROUTINE review: My final thoughts

✅You should play this if ...

• You want a new, unique, and genuinely creepy survival-horror game.
• You're looking for a spooky experience that won't take too much time.
• You like games that refuse to hold your hand throughout.

❌You should not play this if ...

• You prefer a more guided experience, or don't love vague puzzles.
• You enjoy survival-horror games where you actually fight back.

ID@Xbox has been on a roll this year, giving us a ton of incredible indie games for the Xbox ecosystem. ROUTINE is the latest in a long line of gaming excellence, and I greatly enjoyed every minute of my time with it.

Around 7 hours of gameplay and a $25 price may not seem like a good return for over 13 years of waiting, but I've played a lot of survival-horror games — and ROUTINE is going to stand out as one of my favorite so far.

I was sometimes annoyed or grew impatient, but I loved ROUTINE's world, atmosphere, and narrative. It also helps that it genuinely scared me at times (and generally creeped out), which frankly isn't a guarantee for a lot of games in the horror genre.

If you want to try it for yourself, ROUTINE is now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox Ally and other handhelds, Windows PC (via the Microsoft Store and Steam), Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Xbox Game Pass. It's also an Xbox Play Anywhere title.

I recently played and finished Winter Burrow, but I apparently hadn't had my fill of creative indie games, so I selected another title from the backlog and dove in. The next on the list? SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato, a quick and quaint narrative-adventure about a boy chasing a frog stealing a bag of potatoes.

That brief synopsis should be enough to tell you that SOPA is possessed of all the creativity I absolutely adore from these tiny gaming adventures. It took me just over three hours to reach the credits, and those hours were filled with whimsical puzzles, stories, and moments.

Like Winter Burrow, the game I played before, SOPA isn't perfect, and the ending does feel abrupt, but I'm still happy I gave it a chance. It helps that SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is one of many games that launched into Xbox Game Pass this year, and it's also a full Xbox Play Anywhere title.

A wild feast of childlike imagination

You are Miho, which — as you may have already guessed — probably isn't your real name. SOPA is marinated in subtleties and seasoned with mysteries, such as why you're being raised by your grandmother, similarly vaguely referred to as Nana.

What is obvious in moments, though, is that you are a child. It's not just the way you see the world, but also how the world reacts to you and your actions. You can interact with everything with the curiosity of youth... but Miho will usually respond with the bored nonchalance of a soul that thrives on excitement and fun.

You can sprint, but your caution not to bump into your surroundings is seemingly ignored solely inside Nana's home, as things apparently react to your very presence as an energetic child — and Nana will scold you accordingly. You may notice all of this before SOPA even begins, as the game is setting the groundwork for the nonsensical adventure you're about to embark on.

What an adventure it'll be, too, all because Nana asks for your assistance to make sancocho, a complex and flavorful soup (or stew, if you want to split hairs) popular in Latin America. Your objective? Obtain a single potato from the sack stashed in the rear of the pantry. Seems simple enough.

Until the pantry stretches into oblivion like you're trapped in a psychological horror movie, and the sack of potatoes at the end is being actively purloined by a purple frog wearing a hat, and fighting said potato thief drags you through the backrooms of the pantry and its ghost-y, chicken-y occupants, and you're cast onto the shore of a raging river after losing the Great Potato Custody Battle.

All of that, and this is where SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato finally begins.

Perfectly bite-sized, but a little abruptly ended

SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is only a handful of hours in length, so I'm not going to dissect its story and gameplay until every enigmatic element has been eliminated. Instead, I'll tell you upfront that SOPA will likely surprise you.

It's a simple narrative-adventure game in that its controls are easy to understand (and often awkward). It's also not confounding or convoluting enough to fall into the "puzzle" or "mystery" sub-genres, but does retain just enough of both to bring them to mind.

To be frank, I don't want to spoil any more than that. Simply interact with everything and talk to everyone, and the solutions will likely come to mind — especially if you commit to thinking like a child does. SOPA isn't revolutionary for a video game, but the amalgamation of its ideas is absurd enough to make you think so... at first.

SOPA encourages you to think outside the box in the most straightforward ways, in that the box we all live in tends to be influenced by such ridiculous concepts as "reality" and "adulthood." Ultimately, you'll progress in SOPA because you do something that a child would do without bias, and realize that it works because not everything has to have some profound, mature meaning hidden out of sight.

Except SOPA does have a deeper message underneath its chaotic world of childlike imagination — at least ostensibly. Even the game's official description on the Xbox store will inform you that you're following in the steps of a "mysterious great traveler."

The issue here is that SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is simply too vague in delivering this message, to the point that it absolutely feels like an afterthought. You feel that most when the game simply ends with little fanfare and a cryptic cinematic. It's clear that SOPA is trying to tell a story greater than itself, but it's ultimately lost. That doesn't mean I didn't greatly enjoy my time with this game, though.

SOPA: The Tale of the Stolen Potato is now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, handhelds like Xbox Ally, and Xbox Game Pass if you'd like to experience this potato recovery mission for yourself.

For some of us, the love of horror games can not be contained to just one season. Even as the snow begins to fall and the holiday decorations go up, there’s still something that calls for us to explore the creepy side of life. If that sounds like you, you might want to consider cozying up with Trigger Happy Interactive’s recently released Total Chaos on Xbox.

Admittedly, I wasn’t aware of Total Chaos’ cult following when I first loaded it up. To me, it was simply a deeply unsettling survival horror that had recently launched on Xbox. I played it with trepidation, unnerved by every unnatural sound swirling around in my headphones. The cryptic transmission on the radio beckoned me as I navigated by boat through an increasingly treacherous storm that ultimately left me as little more than wreckage washed up on the shore of a mysterious island.

The oppressive horrors waiting to bear down on me as my character stood on the shoreline were palpable. Every splash of the ocean, creak of the gate, whistle of the wind. It all added to the disturbing feeling that Total Chaos excels at. The deeply unsettling ambiance of the island of Fort Oasis hangs in your ears as you explore the island.

Total Chaos’ analog horror visual aesthetic pairs with the haunting audio to enhance the game’s creep factor. As you traverse the island, each step feels risky. From standing by the shoreline as waves crash against the beach, to dark caves haunted by a variety of anomalies, everything in Total Chaos is dedicated to adding to your unease. You aren’t casually taking a tour of the island of Fort Oasis. You’ll come face-to-face with untold horrors and monstrous creatures waiting to take a swipe at you.

Combat and resource management are at the center of Total Chaos’ gameplay. A retro inventory system challenges you to pick and choose the items that you take with you on your journey. Syringes may be a small health boost, but they cause bleeding which may require you to pack along some bandages, as well — increasing the space that might be better suited for other healing items.

Other survival elements, like hunger, add to the challenge of staying alive. Do you dare to cook and consume the monster meat that you found alone on a table in a dimly-lit room? Is the boost you get from rotten bread worth the damage to your overall health? It might be, if it gets you out of the clutches of the shocking monster’s grasp.

From Doom II mod to horror masterpiece

Total Chaos may now be psychological analog survival horror in its darkest form, but its humble beginnings actually saw this nightmarish indie game start its life as a mod for Doom II. Way back in days gone by, a young would-be modder named Sam Prebble garnered quite a bit of attention with Total Chaos due to the game using Doom’s engine unconventionally. Unlike Doom II, which relied on sprites for characters, Prebble used the Doom engine to create an atmospheric horror game in 3D with free look capabilities.

Total Chaos’ unconventional dev journey continued for several years, with the game undergoing changes and seeing significant improvements with each new iteration over two decades. Prebble went on to build a name for himself in visual effects, working on titles like Avatar and Rise of the Planet of the Apes and serving in a leadership role at Trigger Happy Interactive.

Eventually, Trigger Happy partnered with publishers Apogee Entertainment, Atari, and Infogrames to breathe new life into the island of Fort Oasis. The team rebuilt Total Chaos as a full standalone release and partnered with Akira Yamaoka — the creator behind the music of Silent Hill — to create a proper soundtrack perfect for an agonizing descent into madness.

Total Chaos is available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC after shadow dropping on November 20. The game is playable on Xbox Cloud Gaming and is optimized for Xbox-compatible handhelds with full support for Xbox Play Anywhere. Total Chaos is also available as part of an Xbox Game Pass subscription on console and PC.

I'm practically drowning in all the amazing games I've yet to play, and I'm not alone. My backlog is voracious, consuming all my time, only to keep growing larger and larger. Alas, I cannot stop feeding it.

2026 is coming, and the roster is already stacked with a veritable feast of upcoming, highly anticipated releases from teams and publishers all over the world, and I still can't contain my excitement that REPLACED finally has a definitive release date.

I've been following this retro-futuristic, 2.5D action-platformer since it was announced back in 2021 at an Xbox event, and Sad Cat Studios has dropped quite the Thursday bombshell by revealing its ambitious debut title is officially coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass on Mar. 12, 2026.

Remind me to put in a time-off request for that day.

REPLACED looks brutal, devastating, and gorgeous — and I can't wait to play

In REPLACED, you are R.E.A.C.H., a highly advanced artificial intelligence that has been mistakenly trapped inside a flesh-and-bone human body. It's the 1980s in America, but it's a very different world than the one we know.

Rapid technological advancement and a devastating nuclear catastrophe have given rise to a lawless and bloody dystopia. Now, in a world where true humans struggle to practice compassion and empathy, you have to somehow find your humanity.

It's a fascinating premise for a narrative-driven cyberpunk game, but what will likely strike you first about REPLACED is its incredible pixelated art style, with a gorgeous and dynamic lighting system, dozens of hand-drawn animations full of weight and intention, and action-packed gameplay that combines exploration, platforming, and brutal combat.

I actually went hands-on with REPLACED last year, well before it was announced that the game was once again delayed — this time to Spring 2026. I was devastated when REPLACED was pushed back once more, but I'm grateful to at least have a definitive date to look forward to now.

I wasn't exaggerating when I called REPLACED my most anticipated game of 2026. I'll have been waiting five years for Sad Cat Studios' debut, which is now being published by Thunderful Games in partnership with ID@Xbox.

REPLACED is coming on Mar. 12, 2026, it's still coming to Xbox Game Pass day one, and it will be an Xbox console exclusive at launch. Be sure to check out the new release date trailer linked above for a fresh look at the game.

Tomas Sala, developer of aerial shooter The Falconeer (as well as Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, a city-builder set in the same universe) recently spoke with Windows Central executive editor Jez Corden on the Xbox Two Podcast.

Sala has worked with the ID@Xbox program in the past, releasing The Falconeer as an a launch title for the Xbox Series X|S consoles back in November 2020. During the podcast, the duo touched on numerous topics, including what Sala would like to see improve across the Xbox PC store.

"I'd like the store to be more user-friendly and look cooler. It doesn't look very cool to me," Sala explains, adding that having a store page easily allow players to follow a developer on Bluesky would be extremely helpful.

Sala described how the Xbox store doesn't show large screenshots of games or trailers, and defaults out to the logo which doesn't really accurately depict games. Sala suggested that Microsoft could do more to showcase what games actually look like right away, before expecting users to click in.

Sala also described how Xbox could boost its community-building tools, and noted that even Valve could do more here with Steam. "I'll post my development updates and people love following how something gets created, and in the beginning it all looks like shit, and then a year later it looks pretty cool... that's a wonderful journey to enjoy," he says. "I would love to see that, that people can follow me as a creator and realize that they're not buying into a single game... they're buying into a person, or a world, or a universe."

Continuing the discussion with things he'd like to see improve on the Xbox Store, Sala touches on the challenges of game discovery, and how it would be nice to have the Xbox PC app give recommendations and updates on what someone should play.

Touching on the challenge of getting attention in a time of TikTok videos and Instagram Shorts sucking up screen time, Sala points how Microsoft can and should be leveraging the advantages of a subscription service with Xbox Game Pass.

"The great thing about Game Pass is people are very experimental with the games they try, and they try a lot more variety... they're a bit harsher, they'll find stuff 'Oh, I don't like that' and they'll let you know, but they'll have tried it," Sala says.

The Falconeer and Bulwark are both available on Xbox Play Anywhere for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC, as well as Steam.

There’s more than just turkey on the table this holiday season. Fans of indie games on Xbox have also been eating good this month with an absolutely packed roster of new releases to check out. With nearly 80 new titles this month vying for your free time, your new favorite game could be waiting for you. But until you find it, take a moment to look through some of our favorites from November 2025.

Demonschool

Demonschool doesn’t just dip its toes into the nostalgia pool; it full-on embraces the era that influences it and parades them out for everybody to see. This RPG with tactical battles draws on vintage horror with influences from 70s-era Italian films and classic horror manga to introduce gamers to Faye and her collective of misfit companions.

Set within a fictional game console, developers Necrosoft Games conceptualized a set of rules and hardware limitations that shaped the game’s story and action. Demonschool challenges players to engage in battles with tactical positioning against some pretty gruesome monsters who can be found in the realm between human and demon worlds.

When Faye and the crew aren’t battling monsters, they’re heading to class to level up their demon-fighting skills, and there are more than 14 characters for players to meet and build relationships. Demonschool is a chunky RPG, and the decisions made by the player influence the game’s endings, so there’s plenty to keep you busy through a cold, dark winter.

Demonschool is available now on Xbox Series X|S.

Voidtrain

There’s just something about the cooler weather that brings us all together, but it also makes getting together a little more of a hassle. A cooperative multiplayer game is always a great way to spend time with loved ones, even when distance (or weather) makes being together physically a challenge. HypeTrain Digital’s newest release, Voidtrain, thrusts you and three other cooperative partners into the boots of the crew on an interdimensional express train.

After stumbling into an all-new world with nothing more than a little trolley and seemingly endless tracks stretching through the void, players have to learn how to explore and survive. As your crew explores floating islands, you’ll be tasked with solving puzzles and combating dangerous creatures. Doing so nets valuable resources that your team can use to build up your trolley into a venerable voidtrain with multiple wagons and advanced engines.

to collect goods. When exploring the void, the player characters are tied to the train via a rope so that they can float through space picking up wood, metal, and other scraps. The void isn’t always safe, though, so keep an eye out for those pesky space sharks. If the danger gets a little too overbearing, or you just want more space shark danger to keep you on edge, Voidtrain’s game settings can be freely adjusted so that enemies do more (or less — we don’t judge) damage to you and your growing train.

Voidtrain is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Xbox Cloud, and supports Play Anywhere, making it suitable for handheld play with the ROG Ally X, as well. Xbox Game Pass subscribers can check out Voidtrain as part of the subscription service at no extra cost, making it even easier to convince your friends to go on an interdimensional space train adventure with you.

Dusk

Who doesn’t love a good boomer shooter? Developed by David Szymanski, the retro-style first-person shooter Dusk developed a cult following when it was originally released in 2018. Set in the backwoods of rural northeastern America, Dusk forces you to fight your way through hordes of mystical cultists and supernatural forces using sickles, swords, crossbows, rifles, and more through three distinct campaign episodes.

Despite being more than seven years old, the grandfather of boomer shooters has only just made its way to Xbox. In an interview with Jez Corden, Dave Oshrey — CEO of Dusk publisher, New Blood Interactive — accredits Xbox Play Anywhere and the support of handheld consoles as a reason for pushing the classic shooter onto the Xbox ecosystem.

To celebrate the Xbox launch, a brand-new endless survival mode was introduced to the game, and it features a map that just may be recognizable to classic Halo fans, as well. Dusk is currently available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC in riveting 4K with 120fps gameplay. It’s also optimized for handhelds and features Xbox Play Anywhere support.

Winter Burrow

Ah, to be a little field mouse frolicking through the snow, collecting wood and smacking at insects with sticks to turn them into little meat pies over the fire in your childhood home. Winter Burrow was not just at the top of my wishlist for this month; it was one of my most anticipated indie games for all of 2025. This cozy woodland survival game is all about a little mouse who returns from the city to his childhood burrow only to find it in disrepair.

With the brutality of winter hanging over his squeaky little head, the mouse must restore the broken down home, all while knitting warm and cozy sweaters and going on big adventures to find the mouse’s beloved Aunt who has gone missing.

Winter Burrow is a survival game that cranks up the cozy, juxtaposing two genres that are often at odds with one another, to give you, the player, the freedom to tell your mouse’s story at your own pace.

Developed by Pine Creek Games and published by Noodlecake, Winter Burrow is available now on Xbox One, Series X|S, Xbox PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Xbox-compatible handhelds with support for Xbox Play Anywhere. It’s also available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscriptions.

Dark Light

If you’re looking to get cozy with something a little more challenging this month, Dark Light from Mirari&Co just might be the cyberpunk-meets-pixel-art metroidvania soulslike that you’re craving. Packed with fast-paced combat, Dark Light puts players in the cybernetic shoes of an elite human warrior known as a Dark Hunter tasked with the challenge of sealing off the Dark Void in order to save humanity from the horrible creatures within.

With more than a hundred cyberwares that let you augment your Dark Hunter’s abilities, you’ll have plenty of tools to help you explore the six distinct and perilous biomes, 14 major bosses, and challenging horde of elites and mini bosses. Dark Light is as brutal as it is beautiful, and it is available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

One of my favorite publishers is at it again, this time with the sequel to one of this past decade’s best roguelikes. Developers Digital Sun and publishers 11 bit studios released Moonlighter in 2018 — an action role-playing game where players become a down-on-his-luck merchant trying to save his parents’ store. By night, the merchant named Will would deep dive into mysterious dungeons in search of rare relics. The following day, Will would put those relics on display in his shop for the locals to purchase.

The game balanced roguelike exploration, action, and adventure with the mechanics of a wholesome shopkeeping RPG. To cap it off, Moonlighter leaned into an old-school Zelda-like aesthetic with its gorgeous pixel art and top-down camera.

7 years later, Digital Sun and 11 bit studios have partnered together once again to send Will on a brand-new adventure into the dungeons.

A whole new world to explore

Following the events of the Moonlighter: Between Dimensions DLC, Will is no longer in his beloved hometown of Rynoka. His shopkeeper by day, dungeon crawler by night adventures have left our plucky hero stranded in an entirely different world. The location isn’t the only thing to change between Moonlighter 1 and its newly released sequel — the game also sheds its retro-inspired pixel art style for a new Breath of the Wild-era Zelda-like art style with an isometric camera.

Like its predecessor, Moonlighter 2 will have players exploring different dungeons in search of relics that can be stocked in your shop to turn a profit. The money earned is then divvied up to the other vendors in the town as the player upgrades Will’s armor, weapons, and potion stock. Moonlighter 2 does add some new mechanics to the fold, as well. Players will need to be more mindful of which relics they loot on their adventures, and placing them in Will’s backpack is a fresh new puzzle.

Relics looted in the deserts of Kalina, for example, can inflict burn or armor on one another. Moonlighter 2 challenges the player to not just pick which relics they want to take, but also how to store them in Will’s backpack so that they are the most valuable once you return to the village of Tresna. Value levels can increase or decrease as burn or armor is applied to some relics, and some relics can even be completely destroyed if affected by one of these modifiers.

Different dungeon biomes offer different modifiers that can impact relics. Relic shock — leading to destruction with overshock — makes an appearance in the second dungeon Will can explore, for example, and a new mechanic for eliminating the potential effect of overshock is introduced with batteries. It’s a lot to juggle at first, and finding the right balance for leveling up your loot without losing it takes some trial and error in the early stages of the game. Once you get the hang of it, though, you’ll be rolling in gold.

Modifiers aren’t just limited to affecting relics. A multitude of events can alter the entirety of each dungeon run. From the appearance of NPCs who offer unique challenges — like increased attack damage if you can refrain from using certain weapons — to a run-in with the blacksmith who can sharpen your tools for the journey. In classic roguelike fashion, each dungeon run gives the player the freedom to choose their path. Stops are marked with icons that indicate what the player can expect to find, like elite enemies, helpful NPCs, or other special upgrades.

Bring prosperity to a whole new town

In Moonlighter 1, the efforts of Will to bring his parents’ struggling shop back to life had a ripple effect across the village of Rynoka. Will’s prosperity was contagious as he spread his fortune out across the other vendors. That idea holds true for Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, as well. Exploring new dungeons gives Will access to new relics to sell, which further expands the roster of potential customers. What will generates in profit is then put back into the community by visiting other vendors.

Extra potions, stronger armor, and new weapons are all nice upgrades to have, but Moonlighter 2 doesn’t stop there. Players can customize Will’s shop for the first time by purchasing upgraded display stands that can enhance relic value and adding new decor that improves the atmosphere to better separate would-be customers from their coin.

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault enters early access

It’s been a long wait for Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, but Xbox PC users can get their first taste of vault adventuring and shop managing with Will now. The game just launched into early access for PC players for $29.99. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscribers can start their adventure at no extra cost as part of the subscription plan. 11 bit studios and Digital Sun have confirmed that Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault will launch on Xbox Series X|S when it is ready for its full launch, though no exact date has been set as of yet.

It has been an incredibly busy year for Xbox Game Pass, and it can be awfully difficult to choose which included game you should play next. So, I'm back with another spotlight for one of the smaller gems on Game Pass that I wholeheartedly recommend.

This is Winter Burrow, a short, cozy survival game following the adventures of a young mouse as they return to their old familial home and learn to survive the harsh, endless winter of the forest.

If you're looking for a relaxing journey to usher in the winter months, this adorable indie game is a great place to start. It's less than ten hours in length, supports Xbox Play Anywhere across the entire Xbox ecosystem, and shows once again why ID@Xbox is so important for giving us more awesome games.

Finding friends hidden in the snow

You're a mouse, and you were raised in the forest by your parents and aunt. You loved the wilderness and were slowly learning to fend for yourself when the winters began to grow longer and harsher. Desperate to keep you safe, your parents fled with you to the city, leaving their burrow behind.

Poor living conditions and dangerous jobs whittled your parents down to nothing in the following years, however, and in the end, you were alone, left with nothing but a burning desire to return to the winter-enclosed forest of your childhood and the aunt who never departed it.

That's the basic premise behind Winter Burrow, an ambling survival adventure that tasks you with restoring your familial home while reconnecting with your aunt, learning to survive, and making some new friends along the way.

Gameplay-wise, Winter Burrow is straightforward. There are multiple semi-open areas to explore, each with unique resources, secrets, and creatures to scavenge, discover, and battle. You can use everything you collect or find to repair structures, build furniture, craft tools and items, and cook recipes.

You need to keep a close eye on your health, hunger, stamina, and especially your warmth — just being outside becomes dangerous over time, and the time of day, weather effects, and areas can affect how quickly you succumb to the cold. That constant threat puts a persistent timer on every adventure, but Winter Burrow is hardly an unforgivingly challenging survival game.

The greatest challenge comes not from the cold or various creatures you may have to battle, but from simply learning how to progress. There are no maps or objective markers; you need to become familiar with each area, especially as you discover other animals living in the forest that need your help. Simply paying attention to the footprints you left behind during previous adventures can be a massive help.

It's easy to become uncertain at times about how you're supposed to find something specific, be it resources, secrets, or even missing friends and family. I actually enjoyed this approach to game design, though, especially when Winter Burrow's scavenging, crafting, and combat mechanics are incredibly simple to understand.

A little too short, but still a Game Pass gem

As temperatures decline and reasons to go outside dwindle, Winter Burrow has offered me a handful of hours of peace and relaxation while wrapped in a cocoon of fuzzy blankets. It really embodies the "cozy survival" description, but the journey is rather short-lived.

Rebuilding your burrow, reuniting with your family, making new friends, and assisting everyone you've met while upgrading your gear and decorating your home doesn't take quite as long as I would've liked. I 100% the game and all its achievements in less than 10 hours, highlighting Winter Burrow's general lack of depth.

You're given lots of recipes for furniture, but little reason to actually go out of your way to craft any of it. You can technically customize your mouse, but really just by going up to one of the next three tiers of clothing. Most of your "reason" to play Winter Burrow is simply to explore and progress through each supporting character's unique questline (giving you five stories in total).

Winter Burrow ends quite abruptly, too, launching into the credits immediately following an anticlimactic conversation with your aunt. Honestly, I just wanted a little more from Winter Burrow — mostly, more depth to the gameplay that would make me want to keep revisiting even after the story is over.

Still, I really enjoyed my time with Winter Burrow. Developer Pine Creek Games truly nailed this aesthetic, and the narrative is sweet and often sorrowful — but ultimately heartwarming. If you're interested, Winter Burrow is now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, and gaming handhelds, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and (of course) Xbox Game Pass.

There used to be a time when fans of strategy and simulation games were stuck playing exclusively on PC, but in recent years, the genre has really started to grow with fresh support for consoles. In some instances, it has hardware support, like the ability to use mouse and keyboard input on Xbox. In other instances, the ability for a strategy sim to leap to console required a little more effort on the devs' part to create a UI that was controller and big-screen-friendly.

One of the more recent strategy sims to cross over from PC exclusivity to launch on consoles is Satisfactory. This first-person strategy simulator with an open world was incredibly popular on PC during its extremely lengthy Early Access period — racking up over 123,000 reviews that are Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam in the time since its 2019 debut.

Satisfactory left Early Access with its 1.0 launch in September 2024, but console fans still found themselves longing for the opportunity to experience the mysterious planet of Massage-2(AB)b on behalf of the FICSIT corporation. That is, until November 4, 2025, when Coffee Stain Studios brought Satisfactory to Xbox consoles in all of its resource-collecting glory.

Wholesome resource hoarding for the corporation

Satisfactory offers players the opportunity to experience the planet Massage-2-(AB)b, either alone or with friends, to discover vital resources that can be refined and returned home to the FICSIT corporation. To do this, players will need to explore the planet and locate useful resources like power slugs and various ores. Factories are a massive part of your gameplay loop here, and players will need to refine the resources they harvest with their factories to upgrade and continue to fulfill FICSIT’s request for material goods.

The game begins with players choosing where to start their expedition on the planet. There are four biomes to choose from: the lush grass fields are relatively flat land with ample resources, a rocky desert with balanced resources that is close to water, a northern forest that presents a greater challenge due to varied terrain with a lot of verticality, and a more risky dune desert that can make getting started extra challenging.

You don’t need to fret too hard about missing out on resources by picking easier starter locations. There’s only one map in Satisfactory, so you’ll ultimately end up exploring all of the great biomes over time as you build and improve your factories.

Once you decide where you (and your friends, if you’re playing cooperatively) are going to start your adventure, you are free to take exploration at your own pace. Despite the storybeat about exploiting an alien planet for precious metals, Satisfactory is a surprisingly wholesome gaming experience. There’s no true failstates here. Instead, player death results in a crate being dropped that can be retrieved later. Or, players have the option to go into the settings and opt to keep their loot upon death, eliminating the risk and freeing you to explore Massage-2(AB)b at your own leisure using a variety of traversal options like vehicles, jetpacks, and jump pads.

After you’ve successfully explored and uncovered viable resources, you’re going to need to find ways to refine those resources into useful items to send back to FICSIT. That’s where the automation comes in. In the start, players are limited in the tools unhand, but with refining and crafting, players can build massive sprawlign factories that are fully automated in no time.

Factory building is done from the first-person perspective, and allows the player to automate and optimize their resource collecting operation — whether that is building high into the skybox or over mountain peaks or across the great plains of lush grass. Satisfactory encourages the player to experience the game in a way that suits them best.

Creating a simulation game for the console

Satisfactory’s developers, Coffee Stain Studios, are no strangers to creating a simulation game experience for consoles. The team has previously developed the wildly successful Goat Simulator, while the studio’s publishing arm was partly responsible for the successful launches of Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim.

In a developer vlog for Satisfactory, Coffee Stain Studios’ community manager Jason Edwards answered some important questions about the game’s console launch. In the video, Edwards describes some of the decisions made regarding cut content or features in the console version.

Players loading Satisfactory up on the Xbox Series X|S can expect to choose one of three gameplay modes. Quality will lock Satisfactory into a 30fps frame rate, while performance offers some extra wiggle room to lead up to 60fps gameplay. A hybrid “balanced” mode will see Satisfactory running at 40fps.

In addition to dedicated performance modes, Satisfactory on console does not feature crossplay with PC players — though Xbox and PlayStation 5 players can coexist to cooperate with one another. Edwards describes the decision to forgo crossplay and mod support on consoles to the limitations of console development.

If the console version of Satisfactory can only support a few thousand items being displayed at any one time, it could cause instability to the game to allow those limited players to join PC servers that may be running mods or otherwise increase the amount of live objects in the game.

Even without support for mods or crossplay, Satisfactory offers players the chance to engage in a wholesome and relaxing gameplay experience while adding in the tension of upkeep a corporate overlord’s opinion of you that can be fun and just a little silly.

The game’s console edition is expected to continue to receive updates simultaneously along with Steam updates for the foreseeable future, and the game’s 1.2 update has already been teased.

The open road. The breeze in your hair. A leisurely drive through a reimagining of the Pacific Northwest of the '90s, complete with a stunning landscape, from the front seat of an old school station wagon. That’s what Ironwood Studios’ debut indie, Pacific Drive, has to offer. Well, that and an ever-twisting visage marred by radiation and instability that creates haunting anomalies that want to absolutely ruin your trip.

But who hasn’t had a literal nightmare take over their road trip?

Surviving the Olympic Exclusion Zone with your trusty station wagon

Pacific Drive is a first-person survival horror experience where you, the player, have breached the Olympic Exclusion Zone — a fictional reimagining of the Pacific Northwest that has become altered by strange anomalies. It’s the year 1998, and you’re seemingly all alone except for your vehicle, which you promptly crash in cinematic fashion. Stranded in the redwood forests of the OEZ, you stumble through the woods until you come upon a broken-down station wagon abandoned in a shed.

The Olympic Exclusion Zone is unstable after being the site of experimentation at the hands of a secretive organization known as ARDA. Though ARDA is no longer present in the Exclusion Zone, the remains of its secretive activities are everywhere. Surreal anomalies litter the roadsides, lurking overhead as some seemingly sentient, floating scrap piles or unsettling mannequins that you could just swear moved a little when you weren’t looking. The effects of ARDA testing have led to an unstable world that shifts and changes before your very eyes, and many things left behind no longer work like they used to.

At first glance, the station wagon is giving you Forza Horizon’s barn-finds energy. It's dusty, rusted, and missing a tire. But it does start, and after replacing the bum tire and siphoning some gas from nearby rust buckets, you’re able to roll it back out onto the highway to resume your aimless wandering in these creepy woods. There’s no flashy paint job here, though. This is about survival.

The car’s radio picks up some voices over the air waves, and it’s the first time you realize that you’re not entirely alone in the OEZ. The voice, a man named Tobias, is shocked at your ability to locate a functional car — or “remnant” as he calls it.

With Tobias’ help, you can make your way past the early horrors you encounter to reach a mechanic’s garage that will serve as your home base. Oppy, the owner of the garage, does not seem amused at the idea of you touching her stuff, but she reluctantly signs on to help you on your journey after some coaxing from Tobias.

Oppy’s garage provides access to useful tools, junk vehicles that you can harvest parts from, and even a friendly dumpster outback that occasionally regurgitates vital resources like chemicals and tires.

Oppy and Tobias guide you through your first round of upgrades on the station wagon, the installation of some unique and powerful tech that Oppy has developed for surviving trips out into the OEZ, and important maintenance. Your wagon is your lifeline, shield, and best friend when you head out on procedurally generated adventures into the Zone, and your survival depends entirely on that station wagon and your maintenance of it.

Each trek out into the Zone is different from the one before it, and the anomalies lurking in the treelines pose different threats. As you explore the Zone, you can uncover the secrets of ARDA and the experiments they performed that led to the instability.

Once you’ve completed your current to-do list for your run, you have the option to utilize dangerous technology to open a portal back to the safety of your garage. This way, you can upgrade and repair before you head back out to continue your journey.

A former PlayStation exclusive, available now on Xbox Game Pass

Pacific Drive is the first title released by Seattle-based Ironwood Studios, which began development on the survival horror road trip shortly after the studio’s founding by industry veterans in 2019. Ironwood Studios partnered with Kepler Interactive to publish Pacific Drive on PC and PlayStation in 2024, signing a timed exclusivity agreement with the latter that initially kept the game from releasing on Xbox consoles.

Now that the exclusivity agreement with Sony has lapsed, Ironwood Studios and Kepler Interactive have brought Pacific Drive to Xbox — and it comes with a few extras to make up for the wait. The game is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, supporting cross-platform entitlements. Purchase Pacific Drive on Xbox and you own it not just on console but also on your Windows 11 devices via the Xbox PC app or Microsoft Store. The same is also true in reverse, and support for Xbox Cloud Gaming also means that you can stream the game on your mobile devices.

Pacific Drive also launched day one on Xbox Game Pass, meaning you take your trusty station wagon out for a tour of the OEZ as part of your subscription plan on console and PC alike. The Xbox release lined up with the launch of a brand-new expansion for Pacific Drive, titled Whispers in the Woods, that also added a brand-new storyline featuring a strange cult within the OEZ with 8-12 more hours of gameplay.

The sprawling, barren deserts of the Wild West make for a uniquely terrifying horror game setting, with its coal-black skies and seemingly endless sea of dry sand. There’s little to protect you from the line of sight of the horrors that are cursed to sulk across the dusty lands like tumbleweeds in the breeze.

That’s precisely the setting that Blood West — a nostalgic and immersive stealth FPS developed by Hyperstrange and published by New Blood Interactive — and boy, do those teams really know how to make the hopeless landscape of the old west feel a bit incompatible with life.

Blood West puts the player in the shoes of the Undead Gunslinger. When a local Shaman happens to stumble upon the Gunslinger’s fresh corpse, he makes a noble effort to ensure a proper burial. Despite his efforts, a curse has taken hold, and the Gunslinger rises again. To free his soul, the Undead Gunslinger must purge the curse from the desert he is cursed to roam.

A nostalgic low-res art style and unsightly horrors

Hyperstrange leaned into the creepy factor of a classic horror-inspired low-resolution art style for Blood West, which lends an extra bit of dread to the atmosphere. While exploring the game’s canyons, swamps, and mountains, it is easy to get lost in just how wide open and empty a lot of the map is during exploration. The loneliness of it all makes spotting a fort or small town on the horizon feel a little more rewarding.

Each location you visit as the Undead Gunslinger has its own quirky inhabitants — both living and otherworldly. Just as the outline of a village on the horizon can evoke relief at the sight of new life, the outline of a potential human-ish form can stop you in your tracks. For all the individuals who just want to task the Undead Gunslinger with hunting down wendigoes while drunk, there are plenty more cursed beasts that are just as quick to cause the Gunslinger harm as look at him.

Winged birdmen armed with pistols. A masked lady in an old-timey gown could potentially have a side quest for you. Or she could be a brutal monster who aggressively attacks you if her mask breaks so that the horrible visage of her face is exposed. Coffin Zombies shambling around with their makeshift resting places serving as armor. Even creatures from the spirit realm stalk the Gunslinger as he attempts to break the curse.

Guns blazing or quick and quiet

While Blood West is a first-person shooter, at its core, it is a more stealthy RPG experience. Each foul creature has its own weaknesses, but many of them are easily dispatched with a well-placed knife to the back or a quick arrow to the head. Taking out enemies from a distance provides you, the player, the opportunity to avoid drawing attention from nearby foes, but it requires patience and the use of distraction aides to pull off.

When nearing enemies or stalking them, a meter displays if the creature can see or hear the player. Should that meter fill up, the chase is on. If you’re fortunate enough to pull off a stealthy approach, however, you’ll more than likely pull off a successful execution that is quick and quiet. Dispatching enemies and completing quest lines earns skill points, which can be doled out to various perks like better accuracy when shooting or less stamina use while using melee weapons.

The weapon selection is a smorgasbord of options, giving you the freedom to tackle the eldritch horrors you encounter however you see fit. Go in guns blazing with rifles, shotguns, revolvers, and carbines. Or take a more melee-centric approach with knives, axes, or bows. Of course, when all else fails, just throw some explosives at the problem. Blood West is all about exploring the game your way, from the difficulty you set to the unapologetically brutal experience at to the perks and upgrades you choose to get you through.

FAQ

ID@Xbox partnered with IGN today to reveal a slate of new indie games coming to the Xbox ecosystem for the remainder of 2025 and into early 2026. The games crossed a variety of genres and art styles, from a rubber-hose-animated detective noir shooter to terrifying 80s-futurism survival horror experiences. There's a little something for everyone to be had with this showcase, so let's take a look at everything that was announced:

Agni: Village of Calamity

ID@Xbox kicks off its fall showcase event with a terrifying new horror game from Indonesian developers Separuh Interactive. This cinematic psychological horror centers around Agni, an investigator who has defied orders to venture into a remote village shrouded in dark mysteries and a cold atmosphere.

While searching for her missing partner, Agni will encounter disturbing anomalies while she collects clues, solves puzzles, and faces her own inner demons surrounding guilt, fear of abandonment, and unresolved trauma. Agni: Village of Calamity is scheduled for a 2026 release on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC.

Darkwood 2

2017's best selling survival horror game, Darkwood, is getting a fresh new grotesque sequel. Originally developed by Acid Wizard, the Darkwood IP has now been handed off to Ice-Pick Lodge. Ice-Pick Lodge is a capable horror darling in its own right, having previously released the Pathologic series, though Acid Wizard has remained involved in the Darkwood sequel in a consulting role, as well as the owners of the IP.

Years after the events of its predecessor, this survival horror game takes players to all new lands and waters, each couched in terrifying new creatures that will have you begging for morning to come save you from what lurks in the dark. Darkwood 2 will have a standalone story experience that can be enjoyed without playing the first title, set in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. Explore villages, rusting ships, oil rigs, power stations, and factories all on the brink of collapse as the corruption of the forest spreads.

Darkwood 2 is coming soon and will launch day on one Xbox Game Pass.

Don't Fret

Dark, first-person psychological horror meets music puns in Don't Fret, coming soon to Xbox Series X|S. Play as a guitar named Fret and solve puzzles while invading terrifying enemies to explore the dark mystery of Harmonic Heights.

Music and fear combine in this cinematic narrative experience from Scary Kid Studios and Digital Pajamas that's certain to become a cult classic.

Puppergeist

Can I pet that ghost dog? Yes, you can actually. Puppergeist, developed and published by Serenity Forge, goes to show that spooky can still be wholesome. This heartwarming rhythm visual novel will have you playing as Claire, a colorful little witch who journeys to the doggie underworld to find her own lost pup.

While in the underworld, she'll encounter a variety of doggie ghosts that she can play with, sharing heartfelt moments and learning their tales with the power of rhythm challenges.

No release date has been announced for Puppergeist just yet, but it is coming to Xbox in time.

33 Immortals Pride and Temperance Update

I'm not going to lie to you, when I saw Thunder Lotus listed as a participant in the ID@Xbox Fall 2025 showcase, I expected we would see some more details on the upcoming A Fate's End. What we actually got is a surprise shadow drop for 33 Immortals' Pride and Temperance Update.

The update comes stocked with new weapons, including the The Glaive of Temperance and the Crossbows of Pride. You can try them out in the new difficulty update, dubbed ordeals, that allow you to choose your burdens, bolster your foes, and earn greater rewards for taking the risk.

There's some new chamber objectives, too, for good measure. Purge seals of domination to liberate the chamber and destroy foul effigies. Or, check out Charon's wardrobe to change up your style.

The 33 Immortals Pride and Temperance update is out now on Xbox, and you can play it for free with your Xbox Game Pass subscription.

Awaysis

Awaysis felt confident enough to dub itself "The World's Best Dungeon Brawler" but it stopped short of giving us too much more information. The physics brawler, developed by 17-BIT and published by CULT Games, features a 1-4 player coop campaign on "a ridiculous journey" in a cartoonish world as a red-caped fox-like character.

Battle the computer or engage in online or local PvP, and enjoy a soundtrack from Hip Tanaka (Metroid, Earthbound) when Awaysis comes to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Game Pass in 2026.

Ungodly

Developed by Azra Games, is a dark fantasy RPG where players can choose one of more than twenty "primals", each with its own skillset and abilities, challenging players to tackle a variety of enemies in a sprawling and broken world. Ungodly comes to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC in 2026.

Planet of Lana 2

Wishfully shares extended gameplay footage for the next chapter of Planet of Lana. Players can expect a slew of new and exciting features, and yes — you can pet Mui. Planet of Lana 2 will feature a multitude of new biomes, ranging from snowy mountains to dark mines and even urban environments.

The gameplay deep dive featured developer commentary and highlighted the biome Demua, an oceanic location. Lana can swim and dive freely; however, Mui's not water-compatible. The team showcased how a plant can be used to help transport Mui through the game's more waterlogged puzzles.

New creatures and robots pose new challenges for Lana and Mui, even as Lana proves to be more capable and agile. Lana can use verbal commands to control Mui. She can move all across the screen, and the creature's new hypnotic ability lets you take control of other creatures in the area that may have unique abilities that can help solve puzzles.

Planet of Lana 2's story revolves around how the planet has changed with new technology. Hostile humans have captured Lana and Mui, who must work together to escape.

The sequel is an ambitious project — double the length and scope of Planet of Lana — with more challenging puzzles and an expanded narrative. Planet of Lana 2 is coming to Xbox Game Pass and will support Xbox Play Anywhere.

Aphelion

DON'T NOD is back with an all-new sci-fi adventure with players tasked to survive an uncharted planet with astronauts Ariane and Thomas. The two have been separated and must find each other by traversing a frozen planet under threat from dangerous anomalies. An inky black beast stalks the player characters as reality itself shifts.

Aphelion is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC with Play Anywhere support and is launching on Xbox Game Pass.

Indie selects

From game makers and game changers: The Indie Selects trailer highlights a smorgasbord of sweet indie titles, like The Plucky Squire from Devolver Digital and Sorry We're Closed from Akupara Games.

Vampire Survivors Ante Chamber update

More Vampire Survivors in a sweet new free update? AND it's out today! ... except on Xbox. Despite showing up in the ID@Xbox showcase, Poncle shared on social media that the Xbox update for Vampire Survivors had not completed its certification before the announcement and that the Xbox update would be launched as soon as it was ready.

When it does drop, you'll get to enjoy a much-anticipated crossover between two indie powerhouses: Vampire Survivors and Balatro. Check out our breakdown of the Vampire Survivors Ante Chamber update for all the garlicky details.

Dayz Badlands

DayZ is getting some exciting new content, including a desert-themed map set in the Nasdara province. This expansion will have you struggling to survive in a ravaged wasteland that was the site of seemingly endless warfare even before the infected rose up to make life more difficult.

The Middle Eastern-inspired map is the largest to come to DayZ to date and features abandoned historical sites, Soviet-era military bases, and oil drilling/refining infrastructure. You'll have to keep an eye on your thirst and your health, as both bullets and water are scarce in this dangerous new territory.

DayZ Badlands is coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2026.

Superball

Rocket League-like soccer game but with a cyberpunk aesthetic and superpowered characters instead of cars? Sure, sign me up. This free-to-play, ball-kickin' good time shadow dropped today on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC. If you've got Xbox Game Pass, you can try out all sixteen supercharged heroes instantly, no unlocking necessary.

Invincible Vs: Robot and Monster Girl

Invincible Vs, the superhero 3v3 tag fighting game set in the Invincible universe from Quarter Up and Skybound Games, showed off gameplay for Robot and Monster Girl during the showcase.

Sledding Game

The most simply named title from today's showcase somehow won me over as a personal favorite. Sledding Game is, simply put, a game about hanging out and sledding with your friends. In the developer commentary, the solo developer described Sledding Game as a place where you can race, do cool flips, and see some fun rag dolls.

This multiplayer snowy sandbox lets you talk to people using proximity chat to have fun and virtually hang out with up to 20 of your snow-loving besties. Take a break from sledding and just chill, build snowmen, roast marshmallows, have snowball fights, or find other fun, random things to do. There's so much more than just sledding, like playing darts, going curling, drinking hot cocoa, or fishing. There's even a karaoke mic in the lodge.

"Its crazy how far it's come," says the developer in a voiceover, "I'm really excited to share that Sledding Game is coming to Xbox and Game Pass."

Sledding Game doesn't yet have a confirmed release date, but it will be a day one launch on Xbox Game Pass with support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

Raw Fury x Game Pass

Raw Fury comes at us fast with three Xbox Game Pass announcements in the ID@Xbox Fall 2025 showcase.

The first announcement in the two-minute-long sizzle reel is Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road: build and fortify your rolling fortress, then fight off hordes of enemies to keep on moving. Monsters are Coming! is releasing on November 20th on Xbox PC and Xbox Cloud, with a console release coming in 2026. The game is also handheld verified!

The second title, Dome Keeper, is a roguelike action miner where you dig, explore, and defend your base from alien threats. Developed by Bippinbits and published by Raw Fury, Dome Keeper makes its Xbox debut on December 9 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Cloud.

The final announcement from Raw Fury is Routine, a first-person sci-fi horror set in a 1980s-inspired vision of a futuristic lunar base. Developed by Lunar Software, this unsettling and immersive atmospheric experience is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Cloud on December 4.

Egging on

Platforming your way through a variety of egg-themed environments is no yolk in Egging On — a challenging platformer developed by Egobounds and published by Alibi Games and IndieArk. Egging On comes to Xbox Game Pass on November 6.

Over the Hill

From the developers behind Art of Rally, Over the Hill is a stunningly beautiful game where you can hit the trail alone or with a few friends in a stylish adventure featuring 1960s through 1980s era off-roading vehicles. Traverse real-world locations from valleys to mountains and everything in between when Over the Hill comes to Xbox Series X|S in 2026.

TCG Card Shop Simulator

I've been having a good time playing the recent Xbox Game Pass addition, Supermarket Simulator, so my interest was quickly piqued by TCG Card Shop Simulator. Run your monster card-collecting shop, design your store, set your prices, hire staff, and even spray stinky gamers during hosted events. Expand your card trading empire in Quarter 1 of 2026. TCG Card Shop Simulator is coming to Xbox Game Pass and supports Xbox Play Anywhere.

Task Time

Looking for a new chaotic multiplayer game to dive into with your friends, loved ones, or random strangers you met a decade ago in Gears of War? Task Time might just be what you're looking for. Players are tasked with six rounds of randomly generated tasks and must secure their spot at the top of the leaderboard.

Potential challenges include hitting your grandma with a selfie-stick (in-game!) or trying to keep physical letters far apart from each other. Task Time will challenge you, your friends, and your frenemies equally when it comes to Xbox PC.

Mouse P.I. Detective for hire

The ID@Xbox showcase closed out with a deep dive into MOUSE P.I. for Hire, coming to Xbox Series X|S on March 19, 2026.

According to the developer commentary from members of Fumi Games, the team wanted to make a game that looked like the cartoons your grandparents probably watched as kids. This old-school boomer shooter has the unusual setting of a cartoon, but in a uniquely challenging 3D environment.

MOUSE P.I. for Hire is entirely hand-drawn, frame by frame, with a classic art style known as Rubber Hose animation. Despite tackling serious topics, the game's art style gave the developers the freedom to inject some comedic beats into its deep, engaging story.

The bouncing animation and rubber-hose art style of the game meant that everything had to bend and stretch, but it also meant that the team was not limited by realism. MOUSE P.I. for Hire's black and white aesthetic created an additional layer of challenge. Unable to rely on traditional visual cues like yellow paint, the team had to get creative with gameplay indicators. Outlining on interactive elements versus no outlines on background elements and creative lighting helps to guide players through the game.

The city of Mouseburg has its own cheesy flavor, too. A cast of Mice, shrews, and rats live in the city, creating a lively and diverse mix of storytelling opportunities. MOUSE P.I. for Hire's protagonist is Jack Pepper, a grizzled war veteran turned private investigator who has some unsavory tactics for extracting the information he needs to solve the game's three cases.

The main hub of Mouseburg features Jack's office — where players can find a corkboard and string together clues to unlock story progression — as well as a pub and workshop. Pub NPCs handle mini-games, like the vintage-inspired baseball card game. Players can win hints, clues, and free upgrades by playing these mini-games and talking to NPCs.

FAQ

Love indie games? Need more of them? ID@Xbox, in partnership with IGN, has announced a new showcase later this month to highlight new content and games coming to the Xbox platform from independent developers and publishers.

The showcase is expected to run approximately 50 minutes and will consist of a combination of first looks, gameplay, and exclusive trailers for a smorgasbord of indie games covering a wide variety of genres. Some DLC content announcements could be peppered in with the swath of new game announcements.

When to watch the next ID@Xbox showcase

Grab some candy corn and a comfy sweater, the next ID@Xbox showcase takes place just before Halloween on October 28. The show starts at 10 am PT/1 pm ET.

Where to watch the next ID@Xbox showcase

The ID@Xbox program has once again partnered with IGN for this showcase, so you will be able to find the broadcast live on various IGN websites, as well as on social media like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch.

What to expect from the next ID@Xbox showcase

IGN and ID@Xbox shared a partial list of participating studios expected to showcase games during the October 28 event. Among the list was Thunder Lotus, the studio behind indie darling Spiritfarer and 33 Immortals.

Thunder Lotus previously revealed its next upcoming title, At Fate's End, with a tentative 2026 release date. We could potentially see more detail on gameplay and story for this upcoming action-adventure about two sisters in a beautifully crafted fantasy world.

Serenity Forge, known for publishing indie hits Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! and Slay the Princess, is also expected to present a new game or content during the showcase. The publisher's most recent game reveal was the upcoming horror farming sim mash-up, Fractured Blooms, which is currently expected to launch only on Steam. The Colorado-based publisher may reveal plans to port Fractured Blooms to Xbox, or reveal something else entirely.

DON'T NOD is also listed as a participant by IGN. The indie studio is known for developing and publishing a plethora of incredibly popular titles, including the original Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, and Jusant.

Another recognizable name on the list is poncle, the team behind the surprise breakout hit Vampire Survivors. What originally started as a one-man show, poncle grew exponentially after Vampire Survivor's success to become a 25-person team. Vampire Survivors remains their primary focus, but the studio has broken out into publishing other small indie games, including the most recently released Kill the Brickman.

Poncle has previously announced that online co-op is slated for an Autumn 2025 release, and more announcements are reportedly on the horizon. The team has a history of shadow dropping major expansions, so you may want to reinstall Vampire Survivors and start thinking about which of your besties you want to spend 30 minutes with.

My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock developer Pathea Games is likely to take the ID@Xbox showcase as an opportunity to reveal a release date for its third entry, My Time at Evershine. The cozy life sim recently wrapped up an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, with more than 33,000 backers pledging just under $3 million.

Pathea has released its previous My Time At games to Xbox Game Pass, so we could possibly see an announcement for My Time at Evershine to be a day-one on Game Pass launch.

Other developers and publishers confirmed to participate in the ID@Xbox Showcase on October 28 include:

• PlaySide (Game of Thrones: War for Westeros)
• Hooded Horse (Terra Invicta, Against the Storm)
• Thunderful (Godbreakers, Replaced)
• Skybound (The Walking Dead, Homestead Arcana)
• Raw Fury (Blue Prince, Cassette Beasts)
• Cult Games (Hotel Barcelona)

For more indie spotlights, check out the Windows Central ID@Xbox hub.

What do you get when Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro — known for the Deadly Premonition series — and Goichi “Suda51” Suda — known for No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw — work together? Hotel Barcelona, an unapologetically challenging, but intriguing, take on a roguelike horror 2.5D hack and slash action game.

Hotel Barcelona finds itself cherry-picking interesting combinations of mechanics from various popular genres to complement its cinematically inspired narrative. The story centers around the timid and meek rookie U.S. Marshal, Justine, who finds herself possessed by the soul of an evil serial killer — Dr. Carnival.

After an accident, Justine awakens in the beautifully extravagant Hotel Barcelona, but she’s not alone here. The Hotel is stuffed to the brim with unusual characters, some who prove to be helpful and others who are a little less so. Outside of the hotel, the stories the player experiences may feel eerily familiar to horror fans.

“Instead of one specific movie, we wanted to create a love letter to the horror genre as a whole: ‘80s slashers,’90s cult classics, modern horror, and everything in between,” Swery says in a quote to Xbox Wire. “Hotel Barcelona is a homage to horror itself.”

Justine doesn’t have the luxury of sulking in the hotel and coping with her dual-souled situation. Dr. Carnival’s soul takes over when Justine leaves the hotel to tackle the local dungeons, and his presence is obvious in the changes to Justine’s appearance. Her professional and mild demeanor is gone — her hair becomes a fiery orange, she dons an eye patch, sheds her suit jacket, and her blouse becomes partially unbuttoned.

Before heading out to each arena, players have the option to choose which weaponry Justine will use to hack and slash her way to the level’s boss. There’s a curious menagerie of options: twin saw blades, axes, pistols, and more. Each level is a 2.5D set piece that looks as though it could have been ripped straight from classic horror movies, and the player must move between areas by visiting strange doors. In classic roguelike dungeon fashion, players can freely explore as much or as little of an area as they’d like before moving on and ultimately reaching the final boss.

Blood is your ultimate power-up, and Justine will need to create as much of a bloody mess — while avoiding cleansing waters! — to fill the meter and unleash a carnival awakening that will deal massive amounts of damage to whatever foes are in the player’s way.

But exploring doesn’t come easy, even if that is the difficulty level you opt to play on. Death is a certainty, and it comes at a high price. The dangerous enemies stalking each level will do their best to keep you from reaching the final boss. Taking them out grants Justine ears, bones, and other grimy trinkets that can be used to upgrade and become stronger. But should she perish, those trinkets are lost unless reclaimed from the corpse in a future run, a feature commonly seen in soulslikes.

While Death may come at a cost, it also brings about a reward of sorts. When you embark on an area again, you’ll be joined by Hotel Barcelona’s Slasher Phantoms. These ghosts of past attempts rerun the dungeon with you, repeating your previous run step for step and dealing all the same damage that you did before your knockout. That makes taking out those final bosses a little easier, provided you have the tickets to keep retrying.

Such a bizarrely sinister horror experience shouldn’t be kept to oneself. Hotel Barcelona features two multiplayer components — one for cooperative gameplay and one for invasive PvP battles. If you’re lucky enough to have some help getting through the seven killers lurking around the hotel grounds, this chaotic bloodbath of a 2.5D hack-and-slash action experience can be less challenging to grind through.

If you’re looking to get that nostalgic horror flick meets hack and slash fix, Hotel Barcelona is available now on Xbox Series X|S consoles, as well as on PC via the Xbox on PC app. It is part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, meaning you benefit from Xbox cloud saves so you can pick up and slay on any Xbox or Windows PC device (including handhelds).

Did you know that Microsoft doesn't have a minimum order requirement for disc-based games to be manufactured? I didn't know either until I came across a recent discussion on social media posted by the developers of an upcoming indie JRPG.

For its Seed of Nostalgia Kickstarter drive, the developers listed physical editions for both PlayStation and Switch versions of the game. When asked why there wasn't a physical version for Xbox, the developers responded:

Seeing this, I felt for the developer. How awful must it have been to approach Microsoft and find out you need to go above and beyond to bring your physical media to gamers?

After some research, I discovered that Xbox had lowered this amount in 2023. What that amount was before, or what they lowered it to, is entirely unknown, as the article only stated "low minimum order quantity".

That doesn't seem to quite fit with what the developers of Seed of Nostalgia had said.

Danno Jackson of Gamer Social Club took it upon himself to investigate. In doing so, he discovered that there wasn't a minimum requirement for physical Xbox games.

Jackson was able to get a hold of Xbox directly, where they issued the following statement:

"Xbox has no minimum order quantity for physical media. Retailers, studios, and partners make their own decisions based on what they feel is best for their business and players."

"If a developer wants to make physical copies of their Xbox games, they should get in touch with us to learn how to get started."

Given the statement, it seems the developers were working on older information. Since then, I've followed up with the developer of Seeds of Nostalgia, asking if they had heard of the no minimum rule. So far, we've yet to hear back, but I'll update as soon as possible.

To throw another wrench in the mix, the developer of point-and-click indie adventure BROK the Investigator added this post on the COWCATGames X account in response to Microsoft not requiring a minimum order:

• "True, I studied the possibility of doing a limited run of BROK on Xbox. But still too complex to handle by myself."
• "Xbox doesn't [have a requirement], but factories still have minimum requirements."
• "Most publishers don't do Xbox physicals because demand is low compared to other platforms."

So, while Xbox doesn't require a minimum number, it still comes down to a finite number of resources when ordering physical copies from manufacturers and their production chains.

Hopefully, this isn't the case for developers who simply misunderstood the lack of requirement from Xbox. Either way, you should check out the Seeds of Nostalgia Kickstarter project if you're a fan of old-school JRPGs — it looks incredible!

I flew out to Brazil last week as Gamescom Latam 2025 kicked off its second annual event, bringing in an estimated 220 studios boasting over 400 games and providing hands-on opportunities for eager attendees.

At this multiday event, I was able to check out several indie games that will be coming to Xbox, PC, or both. Out of everything I experienced, seven of these upcoming indie games caught my attention.

Most of the indie developers I spoke with are aiming for a 2026 launch. However, as always, unexpected delays could shift those timelines. But trust me, you'll want to keep these games on your radar.

Best of all, most of them have free demos for you to check out!

7. Calum

My eyes were initially drawn to Calum on the show floor because of its black and white, top-down, comic book art style, which stood out in stark contrast to many of the more vibrant art styles around it. However, Calum's unique take on souls-like and beat-em-up gameplay is what continued to hold my attention.

I spent roughly 10 minutes playing as an indigenous South American person who discovers that invaders have shown up and turned into violent "Corpo Seco" or "Dry Bodies" that he must fight while running through the forest — these are creatures from Brazilian folklore that, I was told, are similar to zombies.

Players can dash, strike, and block; however, it takes stamina to use these abilities, and as stamina is depleted, the circular viewing area diminishes, making it harder to see.

As such, gameplay becomes a strategic dance of knowing when to use your strength and when to save it. It isn't hard to see this game becoming a favorite for those who like a challenge, and I love how unique it looks and plays.

Developer Estudio Escabroso is currently still working on the game and looking for a publisher, so it might be a while before Calum officially releases.

However, there is a free Windows preview available at itch.io for those interested in checking it out.

6. The Last Grape

I didn't actually get to play The Last Grape, but I did watch some gameplay and talked with one of the folks at Burning Goat Studio about this precision platformer.

As implied by the title, you play as a rather angry ninja grape who is on a quest for revenge.

The game was described to me as Celeste meets Fruit Ninja; the first half of that comparison is certainly evident with the similar pixel art style.

The gameplay I saw showed the purple character dashing around the screen and slicing through fruit in order to boost and launch themselves faster through the level. A successful string of slices can propel the character rather quickly when implemented correctly, and create what looks like a very satisfying run through each level.

Honestly, this looks like a fantastic game for Celeste junkies who need another fix.

The Last Grape is set to come to PC, but does not have a release date yet. However, it already has a Steam page where you can download a free demo.

5. Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo

The next two games were actually highlighted during the Future Games Show, broadcast live from Gamescom Latam while I explored the show floor.

First off is Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo, a lighthearted adventure (developed by Galla and published by Fellow Traveller) that has you playing as Kulebra, a skeletal snake with fiery blue eyes who awakens to find themselves in Limbo.

He soon turns into a goodhearted detective bent on gathering clues to help others move on in the afterlife.

I spent roughly 10 minutes playing a demo for this game at the ID@Xbox booth at Gamescom Latam and found it to be quite charming, thanks to its playful dialogue and visuals.

Of course, it's very clear that this game's art style was inspired by Paper Mario since it has cartoony 2D characters moving around within playful 3D environments.

Unlike Paper Mario, time constantly passes. Sometimes I could only do something during the day or at night, which adds a bit more complexity and depth. At one point, I needed to retrieve an item from a store, but it was nighttime, so I had to wait until the next morning when it opened again.

I'll definitely be jumping back into Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo when it releases on May 16, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

There is also a free demo available on the game's Steam page if you want to check that out (and you do).

4. The Shadow Syndicate

I'm a sucker for a good black and white detective flick and The Shadow Syndicate definitely puts out similar vibes, but with anthropomorphic animal characters instead of your typical Bogey wannabe.

While at the ID@Xbox booth at Gamescom Latam, I got to briefly play as Sam Marlowe, a dog-tired retired soldier and private detective working to unravel some occult mysteries in 1930s Brooklyn, New York.

As is usually the case when playing a detective in a mature game, I ended up sneaking around dangerous locations, shooting at enemies, gathering clues, interrogating NPCs, and even discovering some chilling scenes. I won't go into detail so as not to spoil anything.

However, I will say that The Shadow Syndicate has mafia members and cultists woven into its gritty LA Noir story.

Using something called the Sacrifice Ring, Sam can stun enemies, teleport, or even instantly kill foes as long as he's willing to deal with the curses that get unleashed as a result.

This mixture of stealth, shooting, and the paranormal gives players the ability to choose how they want to approach different situations, and has me intrigued to see where Sam's story goes.

I'll definitely "play it again, Sam."

The Shadow Syndicate is expected to release sometime in 2026, and it is coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC.

3. Kriophobia

I'm frequently drawn to horror games, so it isn't too surprising that Fira Soft's exploration horror game, Kriophobia, caught my attention at Gamescom Latam.

I spent several minutes playing as Anna, a young geophysicist who was part of a group of scientists sent to analyze strange anomalies in a very cold region.

After getting separated from the group, she finds herself drawn to an underground military complex that may or may not lead her to learning more about her past. Wink.

The easiest way to describe it is Resident Evil meets Siberia.

Something is lurking around in the shadows of this decrepit facility, so I soon found that it was important to find as many helpful items as possible, whether they be weapons, healing medicine, hand warmers (to stave off the cold), keys, flashlights, or better clothing to improve Anna's stats.

Weapons break after a few uses, so I had to use them sparingly and keep an eye out for replacements, which added a level of strategy.

Similar to the classic Resident Evil games that inspired it, the game's camera angles are fixed, which gave me the feeling like someone was watching me or was ready to jump out from an angle I can't quite see.

There were definitely a few jump scares in the 10 minutes I had with Kriophobia, so I'm sure something sinister is waiting further down. I can't wait to learn more.

A demo of the game is currently available via Steam for PC. The developers hope to bring the game to consoles down the line.

2. Onikura

Onikura from Too Dark Studios is one of the games that I most frequently think back on from Gamescom Latam. It's a fast-paced boss rush adventure with gorgeous pixel art and smooth animations.

I got to play as a sword-wielding warrior who could strike, parry, heal himself, and use a throwing dagger to teleport.

Hitting objects with my sword slowly filled a bar in the top left corner of the screen. When full, I could unleash a special attack, which proved especially effective on bosses. The mechanics felt good in a tough-but-fair kind of challenge that makes me want to come back for more.

Over the course of the game, players unlock Blessings, which can permanently improve HP, give the player another dagger, and more.

Additionally, players can obtain Talismans after defeating bosses, which basically allows the player to use boss powers. Up to three of these Talismans can be equipped at a time, and some even offer better perks when equipped alongside others.

I can easily see myself playing this challenging game over and over while experimenting with the customized abilities the Talismans provide me.

There is no set release date for Onikura yet, but the devs are hoping for it to release in 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Switch 2.

In the meantime, you can check out a free Onikura demo on Steam.

1. BlackThorne Keep Chronicles

Of all of the unreleased games showcased at Gamescom Latam 2025, BlackThorne Keep Chronicles from Limiar Studios was the one that caught my attention the most.

The easiest way to describe this action RPG is to say that it's a Medieval game, but set in Brazil. As such, the game's landscape is filled with castles, but also with the gorgeous plant and animal life found in that part of the world.

I didn't get to experience a lot of the main story, but I was told that gameplay revolves around a lord named Athos BlackThorne, who finds himself accused of something by the Church.

After a significant event, he's forced out of his castle and must fight his way through the enemies on his land while also learning more about the indigenous peoples of the Black Forest who inhabit it. What follows is apparently a story of deceit, treason, conspiracy, and learning.

A glowing blue item at Athos' hip allows him to manipulate time in some way, so it's possible to return to areas and find things have changed after he's altered something.

BlackThorne Keep's graphics and visuals look stunning, and I found the gameplay felt smooth and rewarding, too.

From what I experienced, the game's combat mechanics rely on players making calculated and purposeful strikes rather than button-mashing. This resulted in a satisfying experience that made me feel fully in control and strategic with my actions.

After playing several minutes at the booth, I was able to speak with a few members of Limiar Studios, which is comprised of 12 people, including the amazing artists Lucas Oliveira and Raphael Madureira.

Someone referred to BlackThorne Keep as being a III (triple-I) game rather than a AA (double-A) game, and that feels very accurate. I was impressed by this team's passion and talent. It's not easy making a game like this as a side project rather than a main job.

A BlackThorne Keep demo is expected to release this Fall on Steam, possibly in August. For now, you can ask to be part of the BlackThorne Keep Chronicles beta at the Limiar Studios linktree page.

Keep an eye out for these upcoming Indie games

Indie games can offer some of the most unique and creative digital experiences that AAA game studios don't always have the freedom to explore. That's why I'm always interested in checking out these passion projects put together by small teams of people.

Each of the games I discussed caught my attention in one way or another, whether that was visuals, mechanics, or a combination of elements that I hadn't seen brought together before.

I highly recommend wishlisting any of the games that you found appealing, so you can keep an eye on them. All but one of the titles I talked about have a Steam page, so that should be easy to do.

If you like horror, Kriophobia will likely be of interest. Meanwhile, if you're more into customizable boss rush challenges, Onikura should be on your radar. I'll personally be keeping an eye on all of these, but will especially be looking forward to learning more about BlackThorne Keep.