On October 6th, Medieval Dynasty will be available for Xbox Series X/S players. This is a survival RPG with crafting and town management elements, currently available for PC. The first two seasons of Telltale’s The Walking Dead will also be available for PC players.

On October 11th, Double Fine’s Costume Quest is available on consoles and cloud along with the social deduction game Eville, playable on consoles and PC. Dyson Sphere Program joins the service on October 13th for PC players. On October 14th, Ebb Software’s Scorn finally releases for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and cloud.

The first wave wraps up with A Plague Tale: Requiem on October 18th for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and cloud. Several titles will also leave the service on October 15th, so play them now while you have the chance. They are as follows:

• Bloodroots (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Echo Generation (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Into The Pit (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Ring of Pain (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Sable (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Good Life (Cloud, Console, and PC)

October is pretty much here, and as always, it’s the spookiest month of the year due to Halloween. Who knows what Halloween will actually look like this year due to everything going on, but at the very least, Microsoft is putting on their most Halloween line up together for their Games with Gold for Xbox Live users.

For the entire month, Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut will be available for Xbox One users. The game is a bloody puzzle title where you control a masked killer out for revenge and to kill everyone in his path. From the 1st to the 15th, it’s a blast from the past with the original Xbox’s Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, an action game inspired by Egyptian myth. From the 16th to the 31st, you can get Double Fine’s cute send up to the Halloween holiday with the RPG Costume Quest, and for a bit of legit shock and horror, in that same time frame you can also get Maid of Sker, the most recent release of the line up that sees you try to sneak through various settings against murderous foes.

These games will begin going live starting tomorrow, October 1st. All titles will, of course, be redeemable and playable on all Xbox One systems for those with a Xbox Live Gold or Game Pass Ultimate account.

The week ends this week on the spooky Holiday itself on Halloween. Today there’s two very different sides of the horror-themed Holiday available for the PC players who are partaking in the free Epic Games Store giveaways with Costume Quest and Soma.

Costume Quest is a fun RPG that follows three children on Halloween to save their neighborhood from the Grubbins who are stealing all the candy. It’s a charming little game that has a coming of age story at its core and features plenty of costumes.

Soma is a much different experience, as it takes place in an underwater facility where something has gone wrong. You must hide from corrupted humans, robots and other horrors as you try to figure out what happened across the ruined facility.

Costume Quest and Soma are available now for free on the Epic Games Store and will be free until November 7th. They will be replaced then by Nuclear Throne and Ruiner.

Ever since it was announced, the backwards compatibility list on the Xbox One has grown. Over the last few weeks we’ve seen some big titles from the last generation of consoles come over. Most notably, two entries in the legendary Ninja Gaiden action series (well, one is legendary for the wrong reasons, to be fair). Now, though, the service is going a bit small-scale, as From Dust and Costume Quest join the list.

Costume Quest was originally released in 2010. Developed by Double Fine, it was a turn-based RPG with a Saturday mourning cartoon look and feel. The gameplay focused on costumes you collected, with a story set during Halloween, where one sibling must save the other from a monster with a sweet tooth.

From Dust is a game from Ubisoft released in 2011. It’s a “god game”- a bit of a lost genre, where you play an overseeing character, known simply as “The Breath,” as you manipulate the environment around a tribe to help them regain the lost knowledge of their ancestors. The game has both a story and challenge mode as you try to assist the tribe.

A steady release of smaller, budget priced titles is something that’s pretty regular today, but such things were more novel and innovative during the Xbox 360 era, thanks to Xbox Live Arcade, so it’s a good thing to see them bring some of those earlier innovators back. From Dust and Costume Quest are available now and playable on any version of the Xbox One.

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After both IPs were auctioned off by THQ following the publisher’s bankruptcy earlier this year to Nordic Games, the rights to Costume Quest and Stacking have finally returned to original creator Double Fine Productions.

Double Fine president and CEO Tim Schafer stated, “I am pleased that we have regained full control over Costume Quest and Stacking, following a daring and top-secret midnight raid on the Nordic Games headquarters in Vienna,” said .

Business development VP Justin Bailey stated that, “Double Fine is dedicated to controlling its own IP, and we will continue working to bring all associated rights back in-house whenever possible, no matter how many split-second security system hacks or painstaking tunneling operations we have to execute.”

Lars Wingefors, owner and CEO of Nordic Games, added that, “We can’t wait to partner with Double Fine for this upcoming retail launch of three of its most excellent games. However, I feel compelled to point out that we were happy to transfer distribution rights for Costume Quest and Stacking back to Double Fine in an entirely non-secretive and heist-free manner.”

The Broken Age developer has also revealed that it will be partnering with Nordic Games to bring out retail releases for Costume Quest, Psychonauts and Stacking for Mac and PC in 2014.

The first DLC for THQ’s rather enjoyable downloadable game, Costume Quest, has been released today, and it’s titled Costume Quest: Grubbins on Ice. It is available on Xbox Live for a price of 400 Microsoft Points, and is expected to release on PSN on 22nd December, and will be priced at $3.19.

The new DLC includes:

-New costumes with special abilities:
-A pirate costume with a zipline ability that allows players to slide down wires using their hook hand
-An eyeball costume that has a zoom-out ability letting players see more of the environment and potentially find secrets
-A Yeti costume with the ability to shield the entire party in battle
-New characters, including the new boss Araxia; new monsters such as the Repugiarchs; and new neighbors – non-player character monsters with unique outfits
-Eight new battle stamps and 18 new “Creepy Treat” cards to collect
-All-new storyline and quests filled with Double Fine’s trademark humor and charm

Stay tuned for more information.