Xbox Game Pass Is A Huge Treat For Horror Fans This Month

Look, this is a terrifying screenshot if you’re as scared of crustaceans as I am.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we updated our guide to the best Halloween games on Game Pass, so naturally Xbox has gone and made it all out of date by announcing a slew of spoopy titles its add to the subscription service. With names like Amnesia and Soma, get ready for the top-level jibblies. Oh, and A Plague Tale: Requiem is on it today.

A Plague Tale: Requiem, the sequel to 2019’s action adventure misery-em-up Innocence, is the headline news, once more having you flee French Inquisition soldiers and the black plague, and reaffirming that Game Pass day-one release power that PlayStation refuses to touch. That should have appeared in your account already, filled with all the desperate human horror rather than the fun sort of Halloweeny spooks.

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In the latter department comes the wonderful Amnesia: The Dark Descent on October 20, a first-person horror that’s still terrifying over a decade since its first release, and here in its more recently upgraded console version. It’s genuinely one of the scariest games I’ve ever played, with its incredibly hands-on physics that has you pulling at drawers and doors, always expecting the worst. It arrives alongside all its sequels, and also 2020’s follow-up, Amnesia: Rebirth. Oh, and another terrifying first-person survival horror by the same team, Frictional, called Soma. That’s a lot of scares.

Obviously people will be pleased to see high school RPG Persona 5 Royal added, and indeed indie shooter Gunfire Reborn, but I’m most excited to see Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery arriving on the PC’s Game Pass. If you’ve never played the first two chapters of this astonishingly funny adventure series, then you’re in for such a treat. They’re joined by the brand new third and final chapter, all on the 27th (MY BIRTHDAY), and I’m psyched. They’re the most incredible mix of bizarre, cute, and hilarious.

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Here’s the whole caboodle:

October 18

A Plague Tale: Requiem (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)

October 20

Amnesia: Collection (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Amnesia: Rebirth (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Phantom Abyss (Game Preview) (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)

Soma (Cloud, Console, and PC)

October 21

Persona 5 Royal (Cloud, Console, and PC)

October 27

Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (PC)

Gunfire Reborn (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Signalis (Cloud, Console, and PC)

As everth, Xbox giveth, but Xbox taketh awayth, so we’re losing a bunch of games too. Gone on October 31 are:

• Alan Wake: American Nightmare (Console and PC)

• Backbone (Cloud, Console, and PC)

• Bassmaster Fishing 2022 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

• Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC)

• Project Wingman (Cloud, Console, and PC)

• Second Extinction (Cloud, Console, and PC)

• Sniper Elite 4 (Console and Cloud)

• The Forgotten City (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Which is terrible timing, Alan.