Xbox Game Pass closed retired October with a bang, and November is already disconnected to a large start. The first-party drought is temporarily over, with Obsidian Entertainment’s Renaissance-era execution enigma RPG Pentiment on the mode successful the coming weeks. If you conscionable privation to crook your encephalon off, however, console owners volition soon beryllium capable to get their hands connected the astir smooth-brained Steam deed of the year: Vampire Survivors. Here’s everything coming to the Microsoft subscription work successful the first fractional of November:

November 1

The Legend of Tianding — (Cloud, Console, and PC)

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – The Complete Season — (PC)

The Walking Dead: Michonne – The Complete Season — (PC)

November 3

Ghost Song — (Cloud, Console, and PC)

November 8

Football Manager 2023 — (PC)

Football Manager 2023 Console — (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Return to Monkey Island — (Cloud, Console, and PC)

November 10

Vampire Survivors — (Console)

November 15

Pentiment — (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Somerville — (Console and PC)

Vampire Survivors is simply a clever arcade-style bullet-hell game that took implicit Steam earlier this twelvemonth owed to its approachable premise and habit-forming gameplay loop. You take a character, prime a map, and past commencement sidesplitting mobs of monsters portion choosing betwixt a cavalcade of upgrades and power-ups arsenic each lucifer progresses. It lone takes a infinitesimal of playing for the entreaty to descend in, and past dozens much volition spell by successful the blink of an eye. While it’s champion described arsenic an auto-battler roguelike, successful actuality it’s 2022's champion 8-bit meditation game. It was antecedently lone disposable connected the PC broadside of Game Pass, and has gained a ton of caller contented pursuing the caller 1.0 merchandise aft astir a twelvemonth successful Early Access.

It’s bookended by Return to Monkey Island, a nostalgic but assured return to the classical point-and-click escapade series, and 2 of the games I’m astir excited astir for the remainder of the year. The first, Pentiment, is an open-ended escapade crippled with a medieval art-style astir trying to lick a friend’s murder. The second, Somerville, is helmed by a co-founder of the workplace down Inside, 1 of the astir beautiful, haunting, and evocative games of the past decade. Unlike that game, it’s not a cinematic puzzle platformer. Director Chris Olsen has antecedently said the gameplay is harder to pin down than that. What we bash cognize is that it’s astir a begetter trying to reunite with his household during an apocalyptical alien penetration and the presumption is moody and foreboding arsenic hell.

As always, immoderate games are besides leaving the work this month. Here’s everything disappearing from Game Pass by November 15:

• Football Manager 2022 (PC)
• Football Manager 2022 Xbox Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Art of Rally (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Fae Tactics (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Next Space Rebel (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• One Step from Eden (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Supraland (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Plenty of decent games, particularly Art of Rally, but thing large getting shifted retired of the rotation truthful acold this month. If you privation a chaotic modern instrumentality connected Mega Man Battle Network that combines deckbuilding with roguelike mechanics, decidedly springiness One Step from Eden a try. It’s a cleanable campaigner for streaming to your phone.