7 fantastic games you can play on Xbox Game Pass

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Xbox Game Pass is one of the most popular subscription services in gaming, offering 100s of games for a monthly fee. That's an overwhelming number of games, with even more getting added throughout 2025 and beyond, but we have collected a handful of special games to give you a place to start. This list includes a combination of indies and AAA, across several different genres. Game Pass has continued to expand its offerings, adding bonus in-game goodies for free-to-play titles like Call of Duty Warzone and adding a selection of retro games to stream. While more excellent games will come to the service in the future, here are seven excellent games on Xbox Game Pass.

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7 Avowed

Obsidian's latest RPG offers an excellent story and great combat

Avowed is the most recent RPG from Obsidian, the makers of The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas, set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. It's a first-person RPG that you could mistake for an Elder Scrolls game, but it has a stronger focus on exploration and smooth combat. You play the Emperor's Envoy, sent to a remote island to study a disease taking over the land. The story gives you an impressive amount of freedom in how you tackle your problems. There are tons of side quests and areas to explore as well. Not exactly an open-world, Avowed instead uses four large areas, which are densely packed with secrets to find. If you love Elder Scrolls or RPGs of any kind, Avowed is a must-play title, and as an Xbox first-party game, it shouldn't leave the service anytime soon. Plus, you can do cool stuff in combat, like dual-wield pistols or magic wands.

Avowed

Released February 18, 2025

6 Balatro

The best game you can play with a deck of cards

Balatro is a massive indie darling from 2024, where you play a twisted version of poker in a deck-building roguelike. It's simple in its premise; you must play poker hands to score chips, calculated by your chip score and multiplier score for each hand. If you score enough, you move on to the next round. If you don't, the run is over. Things get interesting when you start collecting Joker cards, which have special effects that impact your scoring. You can get increased multipliers for certain hand types, increased scores based on money, or more obtuse stuff, like a glitched card that provides a random amount of multiplier each round.

Balatro is the kind of game that's easier to understand from playing a few rounds than just looking at it, and that's pretty easy to do with the game on Xbox Game Pass. Even if you don't like or understand poker, it's really not important to Balatro, so just give it a try.

Balatro

Released February 20, 2024

5 Hi-Fi Rush

A funky action game

Hi-Fi Rush is a special little game that combines stylish action games like Devil May Cry with rhythm games. This makes for a special kind of action game, where you need to do your combos on beat, which requires an extra layer of concentration. The combat is incredibly rewarding, and the music in Hi-Fi Rush is excellent, making it a truly special experience for anyone who enjoys rhythm games or action games. The music in some sections, particularly boss fights, are licensed songs too, with music from bands like Nine Inch Nails and The Black Keys, creating exciting boss fights. The story follows Chai, a bit of a screw-up, as he helps a ragtag team of people take down evil megacorps.

While Microsoft did shut down Tango Gameworks shortly after the release of Hi-Fi Rush, Krafton, the publisher of PUBG, picked up the studio and confirmed that a Hi-Fi Rush 2 would be made (via IGN). The sequel likely won't be on Game Pass because of that, but Hi-Fi Rush is, so you can prepare for the sequel.

Hi-Fi Rush

Released January 25, 2023

4 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

For those who come after

It would be shocking if you hadn't heard of 2025's breakout indie hit, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but you might not know that it's on Xbox Game Pass. A turn-based RPG inspired by the classics like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features a grand story, a striking art style, and deep combat. The combat, in particular, is what has made it a standout hit, as it features real-time active elements. You have to do QTEs for abilities, but more importantly, you have to dodge or parry incoming attacks to succeed in combat. That parrying system feels heavily inspired by Sekiro, forcing you to parry multiple attacks in a row with various timings, forcing you to learn enemy attack patterns and timing. The story is also a haunting journey, focused on grief and what it means to dedicate your life to a cause that you likely won't live to see succeed.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

3 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The third-best Indiana Jones movie

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is another first-party Xbox game coming from MachineGames, the developers of the modern Wolfenstein games. It's a first-person exploration action game, where you divide your time between collecting research in the form of documents and photographs, solving puzzles, and beating down fascists with any item you can get your hands on. Perhaps its greatest feat is how well it emulates and even improves upon the formula present in the original Indiana Jones films. The combat is slap-stick comedy, with fascists rag-dolling onto the ground after being hit with a flyswatter, frying pan, or the butt of a gun, with whip attacks having similarly comedic impacts. Troy Baker crushes it as Indiana Jones, nailing Harrison Ford's inflections and mannerisms, while still bringing a realism to the performance that goes far beyond an impression. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle also runs circles around the modern Indiana Jones films, making it a must-play for any fans of the original bad boy archeologist.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Released December 9, 2024

Another fantastic turn-based RPG

Game Pass is home to several phenomenal turn-based RPGS, with Metaphor: ReFantazio one of the best among them. The sequel series to Atlus' Persona franchise, Metaphor: ReFantazio takes the formula of those games and drastically improves upon them. It features the calendar system, where you have a limited number of in-game days before the next main story beat arrives, forcing you to pick and choose how you will spend your time. This might sound frustrating, but it quickly turns what would be checklist activities into special events that you get to do, and not things you have to do. The combat features a deep class system, which you can use to mix and match special abilities by constantly swapping classes. The story is a grand tale about mass change and community-driven improvements that hits hard, and it features one of the best casts of characters in all of video games.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Released October 11, 2024

1 Gears Tactics

An underrated tactics game

It feels strange to call an Xbox first-party Gears of War game underrated, but Gears Tactics is underrated. It takes the world, weapons, and enemies of Gears of War and uses them to make a tactics game. It's a perfect fit for a world designed as a cover shooter, asking you to set up your Cogs in the right spots to take down locusts. You still have to throw grenades in the emergence holes, and maximize cover, but now in a turn-based tactics game. The story is quite excellent, but the tactics combat feels like it can compete with the best of them. Most levels are sprawling, just like the mainline games, asking you to move through large levels while keeping your squad in top shape. Tactics games aren't for everybody, which is partially why Gears Tactics is underrated, but if you enjoy tactics games even a bit, this is an excellent one, and it's included as part of Xbox Game Pass.

Too many great games

Limiting this list to seven leaves out tons of great Game Pass games, like Persona 3 Reload, Octopath Traveler 2, Doom Eternal, and many more incredible games. That said, the seven games on this list represent some of the best games released in recent years, offering you top-of-the-line entertainment via a subscription service. While the Xbox-published games will likely stay on the service indefinitely, remember that third-party games eventually leave, although a year seems to be the minimum amount of time a game is on Game Pass.