Bugsnax, turnips, and taxes hit Xbox Game Pass in April

Bugsnax and a timely indie game about taxes star in lineup of games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the second half of April. Microsoft’s Tuesday morning announcement also mentioned that Ubisoft will be contributing two more games to the library “in the next two months,” under a vague partnership announced at the beginning of the year.

No dates were given, but the two games will be Assassin’s Creed Origins, for cloud, console, and PC; and For Honor: Marching Fire Edition on PC. For Honor is already available to cloud and console subscribers, and it will upgrade to the Marching Fire Edition for them at that time, too.

Ubisoft and Microsoft announced the team-up on Jan. 5 with the news that Rainbow Six Extraction would make a same-day launch on Xbox Game Pass, which it did on Jan. 20. Since then, there has been little movement on this particular development. Currently, the only Ubisoft titles available in Game Pass are For Honor, Rainbow Six Siege, and Extraction.

It is not, however, a melding of the Ubisoft Plus library with Game Pass, as EA Play and its library did at the end of 2020. Ubisoft Plus itself will come to Xbox at some point (it is currently only available for PC, Amazon Luna, and Google Stadia), but it will be a separate subscription, the publisher said back in January.

As for games available in the here and now, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, which Snoozy Kazoo launched to very positive player reviews on Steam one year ago, arrives one day after tax returns were due in the U.S. The clever and brightly colored game has players solving puzzles, crawling dungeons, and harvesting plants to help Turnip Boy repay his debt to The Man. Spoiler alert, that Man is “a corrupt onion mayor,” so ultimately the goal is to take down the system. I suggest Turnip Boy point out that the flag of onion town has gold fringe, and claim sovereign citizenship to get out of his societal obligation.

Where were we? Oh yeah, the rest of this month’s games:

• F1 2021 via EA Play (Cloud) — April 19
• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered via EA Play (Cloud) — April 19
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion — (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 19
• 7 Days to Die (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 26
• Research and Destroy (Console and PC) — April 26
• Bugsnax (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 28
• Unsouled (Console and PC) — April 28

The seven new additions mean four games will be leaving Game Pass libraries on April 30. Subscribers can buy them for 20% off their Microsoft Store price before the end of the month.

• Cricket 19 (Cloud, Console and PC)
• Outlast 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Secret Neighbor (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Streets of Rage 4 (Cloud, Console, and PC)