Editor’s Picks: Xbox Game Pass

by Luke Condon (Gaming Editor)

I’m more of a PlayStation guy myself, but Xbox’s game subscription service differs from its competing counterpart in that it’s available on both Xbox devices and PC, rather than being restricted to a singular platform. Microsoft frequently run an offer that allows customers to buy a single month of Xbox Game Pass for just one euro, which was more than enough time for me to sample some of the service’s finest games on PC. Again, a number of big-budget titles have found their way to Game Pass, but the following list is composed of smaller games that you might have missed. 

Signalis

Scarcity is the name of the game in Signalis, a survival horror isometric solution game by Rose-Engine studios. As you fight your way through an underground facility filled with unspeakable horrors, you’ll constantly find yourself lacking in ammunition, health, and the courage to go on. Signalis’ Lovecraftian inspirations are evident in its every facet, from enemy design to the overall atmosphere of confusion and otherworldly terror. You won’t find any jump-scares here, but the game’s horror isn’t impeded by this; after a few hours in Signalis’ oppressively unsettling corridors, a mere jump-scare starts to sound infinitely preferable. 

Signalis fully commits to its genre, and makes no concessions. Effective inventory management is necessary to ensure your survival, a mechanic reminiscent of the Silent Hill games that paved the way for modern survival horror titles. The game’s pixelated art style is detailed enough to allow for clear level and character design, but still works to enhance a general sense of unease by obscuring the finer details of darker areas and mangled hostile creatures. Signalis doesn’t slack in the story department either; beyond the surface level of scary monsters lies an intriguing and somehow even heart-warming narrative. 

Frostpunk 

Frostpunk is a resource management and strategy game with a survival-based twist. Many strategy games are characterised by in-game goals of expansion and conquest, growing a mighty empire from humble beginnings. In Frostpunk, you’ll recognise early on that your humble beginnings are only going to get humbler. Tasked with managing a group of survivors living in a frozen Earth that has been ravaged by climate change, your decisions will shape the fate of one struggling settlement rather than the usual strategy game fare of sprawling cities or even intergalactic domains. Growth isn’t necessarily something to strive for in Frostpunk; expansion means more mouths to feed, homes to heat, and people to keep alive. 

Frostpunk’s narrowed scale retains the epic feeling of grand strategy games by providing a more intimate connection to the characters you’re responsible for. Instead of numbers on a list, you’re dealing with a small population whose lives you can directly influence. This makes the game’s important decisions all the more difficult; will you risk the lives of your people by sending them out to hunt for food, or deprive them of heating in order to conserve power? Playing like a tyrant might grant you a better chance of survival, but Frostpunk will rightfully make you feel bad about doing so. 

Citizen Sleeper

For those who don’t mind a bit of reading, Citizen Sleeper offers a poignant adventure with a focus on narrative. The game derives much of its inspiration from the acclaimed 2019 role-playing game Disco Elysium, including its prose-heavy style, usage of dice mechanics, and themes of class struggle and anticapitalism. However, Citizen Sleeper sets itself apart by opting to focus directly on the individual stories of its wonderful cast of characters, using them as vessels to highlight inequality and injustice under an advanced capitalist regime. 

In Citizen Sleeper, you control an unnamed person/robot (it’s hard to explain) who, after being enslaved by a corporation, flees to a distant space station and desperately attempts to eke out a living there. Every in-game day, or ‘cycle’, you’ll use dice rolls to determine how effectively you perform odd jobs to earn money, with high rolls granting a better chance of success. By completing tasks like these you’ll get to know the game’s characters, through a text-based medium. Some you might want to help out, and some you might want nothing to do with, but each of them has their own compelling tale. Citizen Sleeper specialises in this style of down-to-earth (well, down-to-space-station) writing, and the resultant narrative is as engrossing as video game stories get.