Baldur's Gate 3
2023Baldur's Gate 3
A tabletop campaign given a budget, where almost every stupid idea you have actually works.
RPGStrategy
The best Xbox games
58 hand-picked games
Games available on Xbox. Many are on Game Pass at any given moment, which is worth checking before you buy anything outright.
Elden Ring
2022Elden Ring
An enormous, hostile world that explains nothing and rewards you for poking at it anyway.
Action RPG
Stardew Valley
2016Stardew Valley
Inherit a farm, meet the neighbours, lose four hundred hours. One developer made all of it.
SimulationRPG
Minecraft
2011Minecraft
The default answer to "what should we play together" for an entire generation.
SandboxSurvival
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2015The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The side quests are better written than most games' main stories. Budget accordingly.
RPG
Hades
2020Hollow Knight
2017Hollow Knight
A vast, quiet, hand-drawn ruin that trusts you to find your own way through it.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Red Dead Redemption 2
2018Red Dead Redemption 2
Slow on purpose. Give it the first six hours and the pace becomes the point.
ActionAdventure
Grand Theft Auto V
2013Grand Theft Auto V
Still the benchmark for a city that feels like it was running before you arrived.
ActionOpen World
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
2025Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Turn-based combat with real-time dodges and parries, wrapped in the most striking art direction in years.
RPG
Terraria
2011Terraria
Looks like a side-scrolling Minecraft, plays like a boss-rush RPG with a construction habit.
SandboxAdventure
Cyberpunk 2077
2020Cyberpunk 2077
Launched badly, rebuilt thoroughly. The version on shelves now is the one that was promised.
RPGShooter
Rocket League
2015Rocket League
Car football. Explains itself in ten seconds and takes a decade to get good at.
SportsRacing
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
2025Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Medieval Bohemia with no dragons and no chosen one. Learning to fight is genuinely learning to fight.
RPG
Monster Hunter Wilds
2025Monster Hunter Wilds
The most approachable Monster Hunter yet, which still means the first ten hours are a tutorial.
Action RPG
Apex Legends
2019Apex Legends
The battle royale with the best movement, and a ping system every other game copied.
ShooterBattle Royale
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
2016Sid Meier's Civilization VI
The one-more-turn game. Start after dinner and watch the sun come up.
Strategy
Split Fiction
2025Split Fiction
Two-player only, from the It Takes Two studio, and it throws away each good idea before you tire of it.
PlatformerCo-op
Deep Rock Galactic
2020Deep Rock Galactic
Four dwarves, one cave, no map. The best drop-in co-op shooter nobody talks about enough.
ShooterCo-op
Monster Hunter: World
2018Monster Hunter: World
Fight a big animal, wear the big animal, fight a bigger animal. Deeply satisfying loop.
Action RPG
DOOM: The Dark Ages
2025DOOM: The Dark Ages
Slower and heavier than Eternal. You stand and block instead of flying and dodging.
Shooter
Forza Horizon 5
2021Forza Horizon 5
An open-road racer you can play badly and still enjoy. Rare and underrated quality.
Racing
Sea of Thieves
2018Sea of Thieves
The sailing is a four-person job, which is exactly why it works with friends.
AdventureCo-op
Valheim
2021Valheim
Viking survival with genuinely good building. Made by five people, sold millions.
SurvivalSandbox
Assassin's Creed Shadows
2025Assassin's Creed Shadows
Two protagonists with genuinely different playstyles — one sneaks, one very much does not.
ActionOpen World
Hollow Knight: Silksong
2025Hollow Knight: Silksong
Faster and more aggressive than Hollow Knight. Worth the wait, which is not a low bar.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Dark Souls III
2016Dark Souls III
The most approachable entry point to the series that made every other game harder.
Action RPG
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2019Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Not a souls game with a sword — a rhythm game about deflecting, wearing a souls game's coat.
Action
Elden Ring Nightreign
2025Elden Ring Nightreign
Elden Ring restructured into three-player roguelike runs. A strange idea that mostly works.
Action RPGRoguelike
DOOM Eternal
2020No Man's Sky
2016No Man's Sky
The redemption arc is real — years of free updates turned it into what it claimed to be.
SurvivalExploration
Halo Infinite
2021Halo Infinite
The moment-to-moment shooting is the best it has been since the original trilogy.
Shooter
Persona 5 Royal
2020Persona 5 Royal
Part turn-based RPG, part calendar management, entirely the best-dressed game ever made.
RPG
Subnautica
2018Subnautica
Underwater survival that understands the scariest thing in the ocean is not being able to see.
SurvivalAdventure
Disco Elysium
2019Disco Elysium
No combat. You argue with the parts of your own mind and lose most of those arguments.
RPG
Dead Cells
2018Dead Cells
Fast enough that a failed run costs you nothing but the urge to start another one.
RoguelikeMetroidvania
Slay the Spire
2019Slay the Spire
The game that made deckbuilding a genre. Still the cleanest version of the idea.
RoguelikeCard Game
Balatro
2024It Takes Two
2021It Takes Two
Two-player only, start to finish, and it invents a new mechanic roughly every ten minutes.
PlatformerCo-op
Cities: Skylines
2015Cities: Skylines
You will spend four hours on a roundabout and consider it time well spent.
SimulationStrategy
RimWorld
2018RimWorld
A story generator wearing a colony sim's clothes. The disasters are the content.
SimulationStrategy
Crusader Kings III
2020Outer Wilds
2019Outer Wilds
Knowledge is the only upgrade. Go in knowing nothing else and do not read about it.
AdventurePuzzle
NieR: Automata
2017NieR: Automata
Finishing it once is not finishing it. The credits are a checkpoint, not an ending.
Action RPG
Celeste
2018Celeste
Brutally precise, and gentle about it. The assist options are part of the design, not an apology.
Platformer
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
2020Ori and the Will of the Wisps
The prettiest thing on this list, and the movement is as good as it looks.
PlatformerMetroidvania
Vampire Survivors
2022Vampire Survivors
You barely press anything and it is still one of the most compulsive things ever made.
RoguelikeAction
Portal 2
2011Portal 2
Fifteen years on, still the gold standard for teaching mechanics without a tutorial.
Puzzle
Don't Starve Together
2016Don't Starve Together
Harsh, funny, and much easier to stomach with friends dying alongside you.
Survival
Cult of the Lamb
2022Cult of the Lamb
Half village-management cosy game, half dungeon crawl, entirely about starting a cult.
RoguelikeSimulation
Tunic
2022Two Point Hospital
2018Two Point Hospital
A management sim with jokes, which sounds like faint praise until you play a humourless one.
Simulation
Overcooked! 2
2018Return of the Obra Dinn
2018Return of the Obra Dinn
Identify sixty corpses from frozen moments in time. Deduction, with no hand-holding whatsoever.
PuzzleMystery
Firewatch
2016Firewatch
A summer in a fire lookout tower and a voice on the radio. One evening, well spent.
AdventureMystery
What Remains of Edith Finch
2017What Remains of Edith Finch
Short stories about a family, each told with a completely different set of rules.
Adventure
Untitled Goose Game
2019Untitled Goose Game
You are a horrible goose. That is the entire pitch and it is entirely sufficient.
PuzzleSandbox
A Short Hike
2019A Short Hike
Walk up a hill, talk to some animals, feel better afterwards. That is all it wants.
Adventure
How this list is put together
Every game here was added to the PlayNext catalog by hand and tagged individually. The order is editorial — a popularity weight set by a person, not an aggregate review score — so the games most people are actually looking for come first rather than whichever obscure title happens to have a 9.4 average from forty ratings.
Length estimates are how long the game takes to finish, or to feel done with if it doesn't end. Use the game finder to narrow any of these lists further by time and budget.