25 best Game Pass games on Xbox and PC right now (March 2026)

Is Game Pass still worth it? It's an open question; a big price increase and another confusing restructure of the subscription service's various tiers in late 2025 makes the question harder than ever to answer. As ever, it's subjective, and depends on how you play games. But there's no denying that Game Pass still has a huge catalog of great games available, and we're here to help you navigate it with our pick of the service's best PC and Xbox games across all the tiers.

After a huge 2025, which saw the addition of the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Hollow Knight: Silksong, early 2026 has been a bit quieter. But, in the absence of many major day-one drops, there have been some monster back-catalog additions, including CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Our latest update to this list on March 17 added Minishoot' Adventures, a cute, Zelda-inspired twin-stick shooter, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the brilliant, realistic medieval RPG that might have passed you by last year.

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How we pick the best games on Game Pass

With the sheer size and the bounty of choice it offers, Game Pass can be a bit overwhelming to digest. But we’re here to help. The Polygon staff plays a lot of video games, and everything in this list comes personally recommended by at least one of us. We determined what should be on our list of the best games on Game Pass by looking at the quality of each title, but also with an eye for breadth and variety — so you should find something on the list you’ll enjoy, no matter what genres of game you like, how much time you have, or what vibe you are after.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

While you could hardly call it ignored — it was a big hit on its release in 2025, and it got excellent reviews — Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is still somewhat underappreciated, and hopefully it will find a new audience on Game Pass. Warhorse's RPG is nothing short of a masterpiece of medieval realism that stops at nothing to put you in the muddy boots of Henry of Skalitz, a former blacksmith's apprentice who starts the game as a lowly peasant.

From the deep storytelling and rich dialogue system to the way the game pays close attention to social status and its brutally unforgiving and unglamorous combat, Deliverance 2 is a deeply immersive experience that's quite distinct from the wish-fulfilment fantasies of other open-world games — even The Witcher 3, with which it shares a certain central European griminess. The lively characters, spirited dialogue, and captivating side-quests only enrich it further. Starting the game in such a low station is rough, but don't be put off: Deliverance 2 will repay your investment tenfod. —Oli Welsh

Read Marloes Valentina Stella's full review of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, "the best RPG I've ever played."

Minishoot' Adventures

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Sometimes the recipe for a great game really is as simple as sticking two much-loved but seemingly unrelated game concepts together. Minishoot' Adventures asks: What if a Geometry Wars-style twin-stick shoot-'em-up was also an old-school 2D Zelda game? You'd have an absolute gem of an indie, that's what.

Minishoot' Adventures developer SoulGame Studio doesn't elaborate on this concept, particularly, but it doesn't need to. Instead, it concentrates on nailing the feel of the game: the pop and tinkle of combat and collectibles; the well-judged RPG-lite progression as you improve your little craft's fire rate, damage, and so on; the clear-cut challenge of the bullet-hell boss fights. It even has dungeons. A brilliant idea, executed to perfection. —OW

Read Giovanni Colantonio's full recommendation for Minishoot' Adventures,"one of 2024's best indies."

1000xResist

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

As a pure narrative experience, 1000xResist — a 2024 release from indie developer Sunset Visitor — might be the best, most gripping, and most artfully composed game-as-story available on Game Pass. It's a deep, nuanced sci-fi tale about Watcher, one of many clones of Iris, a survivor of an alien pandemic that all but wiped out humanity. Iris' immunity to the disease has brought her close to godhood, but as Watcher and her sisters explore Iris' memories, they realize she might have feet of clay.

Gameplay-wise, 1000xResist is very simple, closer to a visual novel than anything else. But the dialogue, character work, and sensitively handled, complex themes raise the bar for video game storytelling. A one-of-a-kind experience. —OW

Read Yussef Cole's full review of 1000xResist.

The Alters

Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

One of the great strengths of Game Pass is the frequency with which it serves up fascinating games from ambitious, mid-sized studios that you might not have thought to buy, but that can quickly take over your life. 11 Bit Studios’ The Alters is a perfect example. It’s an engrossing, thought-provoking, and gripping sci-fi adventure about cloning yourself to survive an inhospitable planet, and somehow keeping all your clones happy.

As you might expect from the studio that made the bleak city management game Frostpunk, The Alters is heavy on resource management and time management, agonizing moral quandaries, and enjoyably stressful scenarios. The gameplay loses a little steam in the game’s later stretches, but the story will compel you to keep you going until its roundly satisfying end. —OW

Read Austin Manchester’s full review of The Alters.

Avowed

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

You can scarcely get a better demonstration of what Game Pass is all about than Obsidian Entertainment’s role-playing game Avowed. It’s the kind of game that used to fill release schedules: an original story and a competent, characterful take on a beloved genre, made by an experienced team, with a scope that’s just enough to feel satisfying, but not too much to overwhelm. But in 2025, games like this are rare, squeezed out by bloated mega-productions in well-known franchises.

Their savior comes in the form of Microsoft’s publishing model and its Game Pass offering, both of which are crying out for medium-sized hits to keep rolling. Avowed slots in perfectly, showcasing not just Obsidian’s well-known writing talent but also some of the most striking art and well-honed combat the studio has ever produced. It’s also just a fun place to be — until the next one comes along. —OW

Read Jay Castello’s full review of Avowed.

Blue Prince

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

The indie sensation of 2025 so far, Blue Prince is… how to describe it? An architectural roguelike puzzle mystery? It’s certainly a true original. As the inheritor of an eccentric uncle’s sprawling estate, your job is to explore it, room by room — only the layout of the mansion resets every day, and you choose which room to draft next, from a choice of three, each time you open a door.

The goal initially seems to be to try to reach the other side of the mansion without blocking yourself in, but if you think about Blue Prince in such logical terms, you won’t get far. This is a game about luck, following your nose, and solving the deeper riddles of each room, then figuring out how these riddles interact with each other, and then trying to master the layout. None of it will happen in the way you expect. Blue Prince is an abiding, compelling mystery that keeps drawing you deeper in, even after you’ve supposedly solved it. —OW

Read Jay Castello’s full review of Blue Prince.

Cities: Skylines

Where to play: Game Pass Essential, Premium, and Ultimate on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

There’s a reason Cities: Skylines is often held up by literal city planners as the pinnacle of the genre: It doesn’t fall into the trap most city-builders do of treating all its resources and systems as mere data points on a list, gaming by way of a spreadsheet. Cities: Skylines is the real deal, letting you get into the weeds of urban micromanagement and understanding how and why metropolises morph in response to the needs of their citizens. (It’s also proof that planned cities are a crime against humanity.)

Cities: Skylines forces you to grapple with the beautiful, messy truth of what your citizens are: people. In other words, Eric Adams, please play Cities: Skylines! —Ari Notis

Citizen Sleeper

Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Citizen Sleeper is a hyper-stylized tabletop-like RPG set in space. In a capitalist society, you find yourself stuck on a space station. You’ll need to manage your time, energy, and relationships to survive the collapse of the corporatocracy and the anarchy that follows. You’ll roll dice and make decisions to get paid and help those around you.

Aside from its interesting setting, Citizen Sleeper features a vibrant cast of impactful characters, making each interaction memorable. It follows an excellent trend of tabletop-inspired games to encourage you to find your own objectives, and to revel in the story when things fall apart. It’s packed with tense decisions, great writing, and striking visuals. —Ryan Gilliam

Read Alexis Ong’s full review of Citizen Sleeper.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a ridiculous title, but the game is mostly sublime. A deeply French role-playing game that recalls the Final Fantasy games of the 2000s, it’s both very sincere and unafraid of its own silliness. Put that vibe together with a rewarding turn-based combat system, endearing characters, arresting art direction, and a moving, grandiose story, and you’ve got a game from smallish debut developer Sandfall Interactive that punches far above its weight.

In a steampunky world inspired by the Belle Époque, the very Paris-coded city of Lumiere is threatened by the Paintress, an ethereal entity who claims the lives of everyone of a certain age each year, then brings that age down by one. Now it’s the turn of the 33-year-olds, in their last year, to set off on a perilous expedition to stop this remorseless doomsday clock. It’s a morbidly clever setup for a richly satisfying fantasy adventure and a brilliant RPG. —OW

Read Isaiah Colbert’s full review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.