The 25 Best Games on Xbox Game Pass in 2026
Overview & Key Takeaways
The best games on Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential across Xbox console and PC
Is Game Pass still worth it? It's an open question. After a big price increase and another confusing restructure of the subscription service's various tiers in late 2025, the price was reduced, but the service also started losing features — so the question is 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, 2026 has been a bit quieter for the service. But there have been some monster back-catalog additions, including CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 and a huge tranche of Ubisoft games, plus a few notable day-one drops, including Forza Horizon 6 and Halo: Campaign Evolved.
Our latest update to this list on Sep. 9 added Forza Horizon 6, Luna Abyss, Denshattack!, Blood Dungeon, and Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered.
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.
1 Forza Horizon 6
Image: Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios
Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X
Playground Games' world-conquering driving games ought to be running out of steam by now, and it's true that the open-world framework and festival vibes of Forza Horizon 6 are deeply familiar and fairly light on innovation. But the thing is, it still works — it really, really works. The new map, based on Japan, is the series' most beautiful and soul-stirring yet (which is really saying something). And the racing action is endlessly rewarding and engrossing, while being tuned to be a little less overwhelming and scattershot than Forza Horizon 5, with more purposeful progression. Forza Horizon will be dethroned one day, but that day is yet to come. —Oli Welsh
Read Oli Welsh's full review of Forza Horizon 6.
2 Luna Abyss
Image: Kwalee Labs/Kwalee
Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X
Luna Abyss is a short and sweet sci-fi shooter from indie developer Kwalee Labs, which sadly had to close after the game was widely ignored at launch. That's a shame, because it's well worth your time. This short-and-sweet sci-fi shooter melds intense, punchy firefights in the style of Doom with Metroid Prime's lock-on combat and fluid first-person platforming, adding the bullet-hell boss fights of Returnal and Saros for good measure. It's stylish, confident, gonzo action: a perfect Game Pass game. —OW
Read Giovanni Colantonio's impressions of Luna Abyss.
3 Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered
Image: Level-5/Bandai Namco Entertainment
Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X
This gorgeous turn-based RPG from 2011 centers on a young boy who dons a magical cloak and enters a fantasy world where he engages in high adventure and tactical battles featuring a range of adorable critters. It's a collaboration between genre specialist Level-5 (Professor Layton, Dragon Quest 8 and 9) and the revered animators at Studio Ghibli, who contributed some cutscenes. There's also a beautiful musical score Ghibli's regular composer Joe Hisaishi. Perfect comfort gaming. —OW
4 Denshattack!
Image: Undercodes/Fireshine Games
Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X
This totally original, scintillating indie is a barmy mash-up of train simulator and extreme sports game, with an aesthetic inspired by the cel-shaded Dreamcast classic Jet Set Radio. It's a lightning-fast take on a score-attack arcade game, in which you jump, drift, and flip your train car around a surreal post-apocalyptic Japan, participating in the illegal train stunt races staged by a rogue community of surface-dwellers. It's blindingly fast, yet somehow your fingers keep up, and it's guarnateed to plaster a huge grin on your face. Pure, distilled video gaming. —OW
Read Giovanni Colantonio's full review of Denshattack!
5 Blood Dungeon
Image: Messhof
Where to play: Game Pass Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X
There's a brutal, scuzzy simplicity to this lo-fi dungeon crawler from Messhof, makers of Nidhogg. It mashes up Vampire Survivor's "bullet heaven" style of auto-shooter with 2D platforming and a gleefully immature sensibility in which crude doodle figures transform into unstoppable murder machines. It's got a faster pace than some other games in the genre, while the platforming gives you a little more to do, but it's still all about escalating your firepower as fast as possible over repeated runs. Dumb but totally hypnotic. —OW
Read Giovanni Colantonio's full review of Blood Dungeon.
6 Hades 2
Image: Supergiant Games
Where to play: Game Pass Premium and Ultimate on Windows PC and Xbox Series X
Supergiant's sequel to its universally adored hit roguelike finally arrives on Xbox — and on Game Pass. Officially the best new game of 2025 if you believe Metacritic (or second best, if you believe us), Hades 2 is another sexy, circuitous, sharply drawn and designed dungeon-crawl through the highways and byways of Greek mythology. This time you play Melinoë, princess of the Underworld and sister to the first game's protagonist, Zagreus, and your mission is to kill Chronos, the Titan of Time.
Hades' brilliant structure hasn't changed at all; you're still dying and starting again, dying and starting again. The game's focus is less on increasing your power than increasing your tactical options, and steadily inching forward the storyline and relationships, too. Hades 2 fixes some things and adds quite a lot more; arguably it embellishes a little too much, given the first game was nearly perfect. But it's still a fabulous, beautiful, challenging, and beguiling action game. —OW
Read Ari Notis' full review of Hades 2.
7 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Image: Warhorse Studios/Deep Silver
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. —OW
Read Marloes Valentina Stella's full review of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, "the best RPG I've ever played."
8 Minishoot' Adventures
Image: SoulGame Studio/IndieArk
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."
9 1000xResist
Image: sunset visitor
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.
10 The Alters
Image: 11 Bit Studios via Polygon
Where to play: Game Pass Premium and 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.
