The Best Xbox Game Pass Games To Check Out And Play In 2023

With over 400 games included, Xbox Game Pass continues to be one of the best deals in gaming. Defining the industry, last year Game Pass pushed Sony to finally capitulate and relaunch PlayStation Now as a competitive service, yet one that still feels a few steps behind. For $10 a month, Game Pass gives you access to a Netflix-style library of video games that you can download and play whenever you want. Until, that is, they’re cruelly taken away, reminding you that you’re always borrowing, never buying.

The scale of the service is pretty daunting at this point, and players can easily end up in that Netflix-like fugue state of browsing but never choosing. We don’t want that for you! So below you’ll find our picks for the game you’ll want to download first, across a broad range of genres.

These are, entirely unscientifically, some of the best games currently on Xbox Game Pass. Some ground rules: We’ve avoided the most brazenly obvious—your Forzas, your Halos, and so on—seeing as if you have an Xbox, you’re probably well aware those games exist and are worth playing. Also, this is a console-only list for now. Members of Xbox Game Pass for PC get access to a similar list that includes most of these games but has some that aren’t available on console.

IO Interactive’s Hitman reboot trilogy was nothing but bangers between 2016 to 2021. Four years after Hitman: Absolution, the 2016 game was a quiet dark horse for game of the year, and its sequels followed suit with excellent assassinations to pull off and robust post-launch support. Now you can get all three of them together on Game Pass.

A Good Match For: Players seeking a good, often silly time that marries stealth, murder, and puzzle-solving

Not A Good Match For: The squeamish

Rough Average Playtime: 23 hours

Chicory: A Colorful Tale took its sweet time coming to Xbox, but the lovely adventure game starring a paint brush-toting dog was a surprise hit when it originally launched on Windows, Mac, and PlayStation in 2021. It surprised and delighted with an introspective story and the high degree of artistic expression allowed by its unique painting gameplay. At a brisk 9.5 hours, Chicory packs a punch in a short time. And now that it’s on Game Pass, it’s the perfect time to give it a go.

A Good Match For: Anyone who likes a sweet story and has an artistic soul

Not A Good Match For: Monsters who lack a heart

Rough Average Playtime: 9.5 hours

Wishfully Studios’ puzzle-platformer Planet of Lana is lovely to look at. Its hand-painted style feels evocative of a Studio Ghibli film, and it marries childlike whimsy with a frightening science-fiction invasion story. There’s also a little cat friend who follows you around, and if that doesn’t make even the most dire of circumstances feel a little more cozy, I don’t know what does. If you’ve ever wanted to play Limbo but less dreary, Planet of Lana might be up your alley.

A Good Match For: Cat lovers

Not A Good Match For: Haters of puzzle games akin to Limbo

Rough Average Playtime: 4.5 hours

Arc System Works is one of the best fighting game developers to ever do it, and Guilty Gear Strive shows Arc’s still in its prime in 2023. With new characters on the way, it’s a great time to jump into one of the best-in-class 2D fighters on the market. However, compared to some other contemporaries like Street Fighter 6, its single-player offerings can feel a bit slim. So this is really for folks who are looking for a fighting game to play with other people.

A Good Match For: Bridget stans, folks who are ready to train to be the best or just want visual splendor to go along with casual play

Not A Good Match For: Solo-focused gamers

Rough Average Playtime: 5 hours for single-player content, infinite for multiplayer

Shoutout to publishers that put an entire series of games on services like Game Pass, because every Yakuza / Like a Dragon game available in the west (other than the recently released Ishin!) is on Game Pass. This is especially good because the series is bringing out new games Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth over the next year. So if you want to play through all seven mainline games before the new ones, these Yakuza games will probably keep you busy up until Gaiden launches on November 9.

A Good Match For: People who have a lot of time to kill

Not A Good Match For: Busy people

Rough Average Playtime: 18 hours | 18.5 hours | 16.5 hours | 21 hours | 36.5 hours | 18.5 hours | 45.5 hours

If you have any nostalgia for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as they existed in their ‘80s heyday, Shredder’s Revenge is a pitch perfect encapsulation of the vibes of the pizza-eating ninja reptiles all wrapped around a really solid beat-em-up. You can play as any one of the turtles, each of whom play very distinctly from each other to reflect their weapons and fighting styles, but some side characters like April and Master Splinter are also on the roster. It’s a rather short game to beat on your first run, but it’s pretty replayable, and has cooperative play, which gives you a reason to go back into it with friends. It’s a perfect game to try on Game Pass if you might be hesitant to buy it outright.

A Good Match For: Those with a lot of love for classic TMNT or just want to see some really slick sprite work in motion.

Not A Good Match For: Those who hate the titular turtles.

Rough Average Playtime: 2.5 Hours

Three of the best JRPGs on the market are now on Game Pass, and as harrowing as their hour count might look, playing all three of the modern Persona games is well worth the time investment. While Persona 5 Royal is probably the most recognizable of the three to mainstream audiences, starting with Persona 3 Portable, moving to Persona 4 Golden, and finishing up with Persona 5 Royal is important because it will both help you appreciate just how far the series has come over the years, and be a much easier transition—rather than going back to Persona 3 after having experienced all of Persona 5’s modern sensibilities.

The series is a great dungeon-crawling RPG, but it also doubles as a social sim with some excellent characters and great themes (even if it fails to live up to them, sometimes). If you’re a person who cares about the amount of hours you’re getting for your purchase, playing these games for the price of your Game Pass subscription is one of the best values the service offers right now.

A Good Match For: Those who love social elements, the power of friendship, and deep combat mechanics.

Not A Good Match For: Those with little stomach for poor handling of social issues, or have trouble sticking with one game for an extended period of time.

Rough Average Playtime: 65.5 Hours / 68.5 Hours / 101 Hours

Over a decade after its conclusion, the Mass Effect trilogy is still a testament to BioWare at its best. The science fiction RPG series is in flux at the moment with a new game on the way, but the original story of Commander Shepard and the Normandy crew stands the test of time, especially after the updates all three games got as part of the Legendary Edition remaster. While yes, they are divided into three games, the Mass Effect trilogy is structured like an episodic series, with each subsequent entry allowing you to transfer your custom character and their decisions over to the next game. Not every decision ends up altering the game on a fundamental level, but the continuous nature of these games feels much more pronounced when you can play them all in one launcher. It’s a flawed, beautiful series and even after all this time, there’s nothing quite like it out there. If you’ve never played Mass Effect before and have a Game Pass subscription, get on it. You’re out of excuses.

A Good Match For: Those who want to hang out with one of the best casts in all of RPGs and like making hard decisions.

Not A Good Match For: No one. Mass Effect is good for everyone.

Rough Average Playtime: 105 Hours

Justin Roiland’s Rick & Morty-like video game looked, for a while, like it might just be obnoxious. It turns out, it’s obnoxious and pretty decent fun. A first-person shooter that mocks the genre at the same time as being guilty of everything it’s mocking, with incessant jibber-jabber from the game’s characters, guns, and probably textures, it’s proving to be enormously popular.

Aliens have invaded Earth, with a plan to smoke human beings like meth, and you are a teen tasked with orchestrating a very stringent drug-prevention strategy: killing them all dead. Things get Metroid-adjacent as new chatty weapons open up new locations in previous areas, in a game that offers solid platforming, if slightly more repetitive combat. Rick & Morty fans will be utterly delighted with its humor, while others might want to tweak the settings to turn down quite how much the game talks at you throughout.

A Good Match For: Fans of Rick & Morty, getting high, and bright colors.

Not A Good Match For: Those of a more delicate sense of humor, or people who just want everyone to shut up.

Rough Average Playtime: 12.5 hours

Update, 2/2: While High on Life was developed by a large number of people at developer Squanch Games, in the time since the game’s launch and its inclusion on this list, news has come out that co-founder and game voice actor Justin Roiland is facing domestic violence charges, and has left the studio.

Unlike so many other movie-related video games, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga isn’t some tiny, rushed cash grab. Instead, it’s one of the best Star Wars games ever made and it’s now available on Game Pass!

Skywalker Saga effortlessly combines all nine mainline films into a massive open-world action-adventure game that is both a treat for Star Wars fans and perfect for kids and families to play together. It features hundreds (not an exaggeration) of puzzles, characters, planets, spaceships, and loads of funny jokes and gags. And it’s received more characters since launch, too. And all of this looks fantastic, with every Lego character and ship covered in details like scratches, dust, and dirt.

It’s truly a special game and one which Star Wars fans should definitely play. So stop reading this and go download on of 2022’s best video games.

A Good Match For: Star Wars fans, Lego lovers, people who love big, silly video games featuring aliens and lasers.

Not A Good Match For: People who hate Star Wars, fans of challenging games, Trekkies

Rough Average Playtime: 20 hours

Citizen Sleeper is a visual novel that evades many of the pitfalls which normally derail the genre. The writing is very good without being too in love with itself, and the interface for interacting with it is as beautiful and tactile as everything else in the game.

You play as an android who’s escaped their corporate overlords to take up shelter on a backwater space colony. Every choice you make, from what to say, to where to visit, is mediated by dice rolls. Instead of being tedious or gimmicky, the probability mechanic infuses every trade-off with added stakes and meaning, and turns an otherwise intellectually curious and emotionally arresting graphic novel into a revelatory interactive experience.

A Good Match For: Fans of Dungeons & Dragons, Blade Runner, and anyone ready to stake their claim to a brand new life aboard a decaying space station.

Not A Good Match For: People who hate dice rolls and confronting existential dread.

Sci-fi horror Signalis has you playing as an android, stranded on an alien planet, surrounded by gloom, monsters, and death.

With the spirit of the original Resident Evil, combined with the dirty pixels that make such fantastic use of modern lighting, then given the tension of Alien Isolation, this quickly becomes a tense, unsettling science fiction horror, and Luke—who normally avoids horror like the plague—fell deeply in love with it.

This is one of those titles that’s so perfect for Game Pass, the sort of game you might not want to gamble twenty bucks on, but is definitely worth a download to see if it suits your mood.

A Good Match For: Fans of scratchy, carefully paced sci-fi spookiness.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone who doesn’t want to feel the creep, creep, creep of tension.

Rough Average Playtime: 10.5 hours

Whoever thought cleaning dirty buildings and playground equipment would become one of our favorite games of 2022? Yet, somehow this most ridiculous of concepts proved to be astonishingly engrossing, letting you engage in the near-mindless task of jet-washing entire houses to remove every scrap of dirt.

Despite presenting itself as a straight-faced X Simulator game, there’s a sense of humor beneath the surface, yet the game never takes its subject anything less than seriously. It just...knows what a weird idea it is, and then gets on at being absolutely brilliant at it.

A Good Match For: People who just need to create some sense of order in a chaotic universe.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone wanting a storyline, or likes living in filth.

Rough Average Playtime: 42 hours. No, really.

This astonishingly beautiful hand-drawn and painted adventure game belies a darker heart. Its storybook presentation and cutesy animal characters might suggest a children’s game, but it certainly is not: this is a fantastic, peculiar tale of a small town in the clutches of a big corporation, with death, mutation, and rude words all on the table.

What makes Beacon Pines so interesting is the way it ends. And ends. And ends. Repeated false endings provide an opportunity to go back through the storybook, and change a key word in the tale, then play out this new version of reality, as young Luka and his friends become embroiled in ancient conspiracies and modern chemical spills.

It’s funny, touching, and occasionally extremely moving, even as its story becomes absolutely bonkers in some of the later branches. A unique approach to storytelling, accompanied by such breathtaking art, makes this an essential grab for as long as it’s on Game Pass.

A Good Match For: Those who love to experience a story, no matter how many different ways.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone with a bad memory for plot details.

Rough Average Playtime: 6.5 hours

Where once there was Innocence, now stands Requiem. While it’s a shame both games aren’t on Game Pass at the same time, the sequel has swapped places with the original, meaning you have the latest release in this rat-infested tale of misery.

Siblings Hugo and Amicia must sneak and battle their way through a Medieval world of rats, spookiness and death, attempting to reach a legendary island that should offer them safety. But most of all, it’s rats. Billions of them, undulating in wretched hordes, squirming and writhing around you. Video games!

Proving one of Ashley’s favorites of 2022, this brings along everything from the original, but then takes it to far greater extremes, both physically and emotionally.

A Good Match For: Those looking for an emotionally charged and visceral experience.

Not A Good Match For: Sufferers of musophobia.

Rough Average Playtime: 19.5 hours

Tunic initially presents itself as a standard dungeon crawler, but that’s simply a mask for what’s underneath: one of the most reality-bending, reality-questioning puzzle games of the modern era. Most of the text is done up in an indecipherable runic language. As you navigate Tunic’s isometric spaces, you slowly reassemble an in-game instruction manual—stylized wonderfully after the old-school printed manuals of NES games—each page answering one question with three more. You never fully know what’s going on, but you can never shake the persistent sense that, yes, there is more to Tunic than what it lets on, a fount of possibility waiting to be found. Also: tiny fox.

A Good Match For: Fans of Fez, Zelda, and soulslikes. Anyone who wants to question everything they’ve ever known about how video games work.

Not A Good Match For: Those who run to Google at the first instance of a roadblock.

Rough Average Playtime: 15 hours

What Skate did for skateboarding, Shredders does for snowboarding. Bucking the patent ridiculousness of traditional winter action sports games, like Riders Republic or SSX, Shredders is a bit more grounded. A dual-thumbstick control scheme, which is easy to pick up but hard to master, lets you control your board with pitch-perfect precision. Rather than so-called “future spins” (where the total degrees you rotate is a number greater than the current year), you’re more likely to pull off smooth rotations and calculated flips, smaller tricks that focus more on looking stylish than on making the numbers go up. Shredders set out to accomplish one goal—nailing the chill vibes of a bluebird day on the slopes—and stomps it.

A Good Match For: Anyone who played Skate but spent time in the big skate parks, trying desperately to huck a spin bigger than 720º.

Not A Good Match For: Players who love high scores, long combos, and spinning like a top.

Rough Average Playtime: 5.5 hours, not accounting for the time you spend messing around after beating the story.

Death’s Door, an isometric action game about the afterlife, doesn’t have a pixel out of place. You play as a crow, a rank-and-file agent at an agency responsible for shepherding souls to their rightful place after death. Combat is tough, sure, but fine-tuned to the degree that you know every failure is your fault. Boss fights are relentless, demanding you memorize patterns, dust yourself off, and try again (and again). Inventive dungeons unfold slowly, revealing themselves as intricate, complex mazes. Death’s Door is additionally anchored by some sharp writing, with a poignant yet humorous take on life, death, and everything in between.

A Good Match For: Fans of dungeon-crawlers and action games. People who had M.C. Escher posters in their dorm rooms.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for the easy way out—Death’s Door offers up quite the challenge.

Rough Average Playtime: 11.5 hours

Lost in Random, one of the surprise under-the-radar gems of 2021, marries genres with astonishing ease. Real-time action is broken up by moments of turn-based combat, which features elements of deck-building games. As you play, you’ll find cards—a sword, a bow, a spell—which you can use to customize a deck. Then when fighting, you can freeze combat and play a card, temporarily granting you the given card’s implement of destruction, resulting in unpredictable twists in each battle. It’s a delightful concoction of both moment-to-moment tactics and long-term strategy. Lost in Random is done up in an enchanting animation style inspired directly by the gothic, moody oeuvre of film director Tim Burton, in service of a similarly Burton-esque fairy tale narrative.

A Good Match For: Anyone who watched Coraline and thought, “That should be a game.”

Not A Good Match For: Impatient players, as Lost in Random has a bit of a slow start.

Rough Average Playtime: 16 hours

This Southern Gothic point-and-click adventure might be PC-only, but its presence on the non-console Game Pass is significant enough to break all our rules. Following your mother’s death, you return to your hometown of Norco, trying to find your missing brother amidst a magical realist rendition of 21st-century South Louisiana. Norco is a real town on the outskirts of New Orleans, built around the oil refineries on the banks of the Mississippi. In the game, this industrial swamp is given a bleak sci-fi coat of paint, a world where robots exist but are barely used, where everything is run down, where the possibilities of technology are abandoned, ruined. Extraordinarily good writing elevates Norco above the crowd, while its spectacular pixel art evocatively renders the ambiguous view of hope in its overarching tale.

A Good Match For: People looking for a gut punch of a narrative.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone who hates point-and-click games.

Rough Average Playtime: 7 hours

Unpacking is a peerlessly moving story packaged in the guise of a puzzle game. You play as an unnamed protagonist moving house at various points in her life—dorm room, starter apartment, first live-in partner, and so on—each rendered as an isometric diorama. Your goal, simply, is to remove objects from boxes and put those objects where they’d typically go (toothbrush in the bathroom, silverware in the kitchen). But those items, taken in totality, tell you what’s going on in her life: the new people, and new problems, that fly into and out of her sphere with every passing stage of life.

A Good Match For: Décor-minded players. Anyone looking for a short, soothing game.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone who can’t deal with an ambiguous story. Folks seeking brain-meltingly difficult puzzles; Unpacking isn’t really about that.

Rough Average Playtime: 4 hours

Dead Cells does the one thing every roguelike should do—make you feel like a constantly evolving badass—and does it expertly. Your first run might last four minutes, if you’re lucky. Sink a couple hours into the game, and your runs could easily last an hour. After every run, which folds out as a high-velocity side-scrolling jaunt through multiple monster-infested biomes, you’ll unlock new weapons and abilities. Those then cycle into the random drops you’ll receive at the start and in shops, making it so no two runs are alike (well, unless you use the game’s deep customization options). The only constant in Dead Cells is progress. Can’t kill that.

A Good Match For: The folks who hang out at the intersection of Castlevania Street and Rogue Avenue.

Not A Good Match For: Narrative-hungry gamers, as Dead Cells’ occult story is mostly woven in the margins.

Rough Average Playtime: 27.5 hours

If everything is Left For Dead now, then Deep Rock Galactic fully cornered the space angle. A cooperative PvE shooter, you and up to three other friends choose from one of four playable classes and shoot waves upon waves of space bugs. (All of the classes are unique, each coming with different guns that feel terrific to shoot.) It’s largely set in the subterranean chasms of a mining operation, so, while you’re turning said space bugs into pulp, you also have to juggle menial tasks, like mining minerals and such. Hey, we’ve all gotta work, right?

A Good Match For: Everyone who loves that quintessential Left For Dead formula.

Not A Good Match For: Folks playing solo; Deep Rock Galactic is at its best when you’re playing with friends.

Rough Average Playtime: 103 hours

The Game Pass library shifts constantly, and it’s all too easy to miss when great games land on the lineup. So, news flash: Slay The Spire, the deck-building roguelike that inspired a thousand deck-building roguelikes, is on Game Pass. Battles are turn-based. With every successful victory, you navigate branching paths to the top of, well, a spire, where you face off against a boss. Each run adds more potential cards to the rotation, allowing you to shake up your strategies over time. You can also work toward unlocking different player characters, each of whom has different perks. Fast-paced roguelikes like Hades no doubt have their charms. But sometimes you want something that slows things down a bit without sacrificing any intensity.

A Good Match For: Those who like trying things over and over again.

Not A Good Match For: Those who don’t.

Rough Average Playtime: 44.5 hours

You might have heard some jokes about Hollow Knight (that everyone who plays it needs to start over three times before it clicks, that everyone who beats it will breathlessly defend it to the death as the best game of all time). Make no mistake: Quips aside, Hollow Knight is an all-timer 2D Metroidvania. Set in an insectoid kingdom brought to its knees by infection, you play as a silent traveling warrior. It’s a somber, haunting game—and difficult, too. The rank-and-file enemies are tough, the bosses tougher, and exploration is precious, on account of you not initially having a map at the start of each area. (You can find a mapmaker in each zone.)

A Good Match For: Metroidvania purists. Platformer fans. Musicians.

Not A Good Match For: Players who need steady direction, as Hollow Knight’s nonlinear gameplay allows for a whole lot of getting lost.

Rough Average Playtime: 40 hours

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a solid third-person action game, but that’s not the main draw. The player character, Senua, a fictional Pict warrior who lived in the 900s, suffers from psychosis. Developer Ninja Theory tapped a cadre of mental health experts to properly portray the realities of the condition. You’ll definitely want to play this one with headphones, as Senua experiences auditory hallucinations (“Furies,” per her). The sound design there is unrivaled. That alone is worth giving this one a spin.

A Good Match For: Fans of hack-and-slash, psychological horror, and standard action fare.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone who hoped the ballyhooed permadeath feature was actually a permadeath. People who don’t want puzzles in their action games.

Rough Average Playtime: 8 hours

Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:

The Best PC Games • The Best PS4 Games • The Best Games On PS Now • The Best Xbox One Games • The Best Nintendo Switch Games • The Best Wii U Games • The Best 3DS Games • The Best PS Vita Games • The Best Xbox 360 Games • The Best PS3 Games • The Best Wii Games • The Best iPhone Games • The Best iPad Games • The Best Android Games

Update 7/3/2023: Far: Changing Tides, The Riftbreaker, and Octopath Traveler left Game Pass, and thus our list. As for additions we’ve added Game Pass newcomers Hitman World of Assassination, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Planet of Lana, Guilty Gear Strive, and the Yakuza series.

Update 2/2/2023: Nobody Saves the World, Outer Wilds, The Pedestrian, and Scarlet Nexus have all left Game Pass, so they’ve also left our list. Added on are Hi-Fi Rush, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the Persona games, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. 

Update 12/20/2022: Hades, Boyfriend Dungeon, Unsighted, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Narita Boy have all left Game Pass, so they’ve also left our list. Added on are High On Life, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Citizen Sleeper, PowerWash Simulator, Signalis, and Beacon Pines.

Update 4/13/2022: Nier: Automata and Control are no longer available, so we’ve removed them. The Wild at Heart and UnderMine, both fantastic and still currently available, clear way for Shredders, Tunic, Death’s Door, Lost in Random, Far: Changing Tides, and Norco (the first PC-only game to merit inclusion).

Update 1/7/2022: We’ve removed Celeste, Desperados III, and Yakuza 0, all of which were leaving or imminently leaving Xbox Game Pass as of this update. The Outer Worlds and Haven were also given the boot. New to list are Hades, The Pedestrian, Unpacking, Unsighted, Boyfriend Dungeon, The Riftbreaker, Scarlet Nexus, and Octopath Traveler, plus the return of Outer Wilds.

Update 7/15/2021: Kotaku regulars will notice a total overhaul. We’ve decided to retool this list to largely focus on smaller games you might gloss over that are nonetheless worth your time. Gone, too, is the longstanding limitation of calling out just 12 games. We’ve also pushed off most of the first-party games you’ve probably already played if you have an Xbox (Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Doom Eternal, Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisps) and given the boot to Batman: Arkham Knight. Also, Outer Wilds and CrossCode are no longer part of Xbox Game Pass, so they’re no longer part of this piece.

Update 3/10/2021: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Red Dead Redemption 2 clear out for Doom Eternal and Celeste, two games that will kill you more times than you can count.

Update 9/16/2020: Spiritfarer sails onto the list, taking Dishonored 2’s spot—still a great game, just leaving Game Pass at the end of the month.

Update 8/6/2020: Though Life Is Strange 2 is sadly no longer on Game Pass, its departure from our list cleared room for the excellent CrossCode.

Update 5/14/2020: We’ve given Monster Hunter: World and Forza Horizon 4 (both still excellent, both still on Game Pass) the boot to make room for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Nier: Automata. 

Update 3/24/2020: We’ve added Yakuza 0 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They knocked out Quantum Break and Sea of Thieves, both of which are still on Xbox Game Pass (and still fantastic).