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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Saqib Shah

Xbox Game Pass games for June include survival horror Still Wakes the Deep

Xbox’s surprise drop of the Octopath Traveler games on Game Pass wasn’t the only treat it had in store for members.

The two RPGs are part of the June line-up of the game subscription service, the gaming giant has revealed. Starting today, six titles in total are being added to Game Pass, including Still Wakes the Deep, a new release from celebrated indie studio The Chinese Room.

Here’s what’s included in the first batch of Xbox Game Pass games for June.

Xbox Game Pass games for June

The following games are part of the first wave of Xbox Game Pass games for June, with more likely to be announced in the coming days:

  • Octopath Traveller 1 and 2 (out now)
  • Depersonalization (June 12)
  • Isonzo (June 13)
  • The Callisto Protocol (June 13)
  • Still Wakes the Deep (June 18)

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass on June 15

Xbox is removing the games below to accommodate the newcomers:

  • Bramble: The Mountain King
  • High on Life
  • Rune Factory 4 Special
  • Spacelines from the Far Out
  • The Bookwalker

Highlights

The eye-catching new addition this month, aside from Octopath Traveller 2, is Still Wakes the Deep. In this cinematic horror game from The Chinese Room, the Bafta-winning studio behind Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, disaster strikes an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, leaving you fighting for survival.

If that wasn’t scary enough, the marooned facility has taken on a life of its own in ghastly and nightmarish ways. The trailers show organ-like innards and tendrils growing from the walls, which appear to be feeding on trapped crew members. No wonder it’s being compared to horror touchstones like John Carpenter’s The Thing, Rosemary’s Baby, and Alex Garland’s hypnotic Annihilation. 

This being the brainchild of The Chinese Room, which is known for its haunting, narrative-driven indies, the game is deliberately paced. It starts by establishing the crew of the oil rig through a series of encounters and conversations. That should help raise the stakes when you’re called upon to rescue your hapless co-workers. Reaching them will involve traversing the infested rig, its bulkhead now flooded and the outside world locked out, while you battle the hallucinatory demons in your head. Don’t drop that torch!

This is also your last chance to play High on Life before it departs on June 15. The zany, first-person adventure, which features talking alien guns, was one of the first high-profile releases on Game Pass, and quickly went on to become one of its biggest games.

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