We’ve had a string of months where some excellent titles have been added to the Xbox Game Pass catalog, with both March and April seeing some strong games joining its ever-growing library. May is looking similarly exciting, and offers a number of great games. Of the eight games being added, the most notable is Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, which is probably among the best stories and single player campaigns you’ll find in a first person shooter.

Chucklefish’s recently released turn based strategy title Wargroove also joins Game Pass. With solid gameplay, a decent campaign, and excellent creation tools, it’s a great game regardless, but at the price of free, it’s an absolute steal. Also part of the new games is Fullbright’s excellent science fiction adventure title Tacoma, while Paradox Interactive’s unique simulation game Surviving Mars joins the library as well.

Deck13’s Soulslike sci-fi title The Surge is also coming to Game Pass, while the recently released Xbox One version of the MMO Black Desert, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, and strategy RPG For the King are included as well.

You can get the details on exactly when each of the eight titles joins the Game Pass catalog below:

• Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus – May 2
• Wargroove – May 2
• Surviving Mars – May 9
• Tacoma – May 9
• Black Desert – May 9
• For the King – May 10
• The Surge – May 16
• Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham – May 16

Fullbright’s Tacoma released in August 2017 without too much fanfare in spite of being a compelling mystery set in space. If you missed out on it or haven’t been sure of taking the plunge, then you’re in luck. The Humble Store is currently offering Tacoma for free on PC.

The only real catch is needing an account on the site and subscribing to the Humble Bundle newsletter. Also, supplies are limited, so grab it now- or before March 24th. This also isn’t a Steam key, but a standalone installer for the game without DRM. Simply download the files, install them, and enjoy.

Also available for Xbox One and PS4, Tacoma focuses on the player venturing into an abandoned space station to seemingly investigate the disappearance of its crew. Players will discover different events through audio recordings, scrub back and forth through scenes to uncover secrets, and much more. It’s a short experience, but worth checking out – read our official review for more information.

Gone Home developer Fullbright’s newest game Tacoma, which launched last year on Xbox One and PC with strong critical acclaim, will be heading to the PlayStation 4. It’s out on May 8th and will feature a new mode called Developer Commentary Mode.

In this mode, players can hear how the different team members brought the experience to life. From how the Tacoma station was built to constructing the different augmented reality scenes and crafting the audio, there’s quite a lot to learn about how the game came to be.

Tacoma is the story of Amy Ferrier who is hired by the Venturis corporation to enter the abandoned station and retrieve the AI within. From there, she learns about the events that took place and what became to the crew. If you pre-order the game for PlayStation 4 via the PlayStation Store, you’ll receive a 20 percent discount. Check out our official review of the game here or watch the announcement trailer below.

"Events unravel over a timeline which you can play forwards and backwards or pause at any point. Certain key points will indicate AR data that can be accessed for more information."

Amy Ferrier is you as Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma opens its hatches. An AI named Odin, owned by the Venturis Corporation and the oldest thus far, keeps the station up and running though you’re greeted by a pre-recorded message instead of actually talking to him. When boarding the station, you don a pair of earphone-like devices called ARDWare that gather your body positional data. This allows the station to create a life-size model of your movements and actions throughout your stay on Tacoma, for the sake of archiving. It’s also the means to investigating what happened to the Tacoma‘s crew. Where did they go? What’s up with Odin and why does the Venturis Corporation prohibit you from talking to him?

You start off in the Observation module, downloading data from the station and exploring while you wait. Events unravel over a timeline which you can play forwards and backwards or pause at any point. Certain key points will indicate AR data that can be accessed for more information. At first, they seem like your rudimentary boxes to tick for progressing forward but whether you want to learn more about the characters or not is up to you. You could theoretically stick around near the data access point and not do anything if you so desired (though it will take a lot longer for the download to complete).

Make no mistake – this is a cast that you’ll be interested in, even if you don’t particularly like them. E.V. St. James is the station administrator, a forthright leader who’s also down-to-earth and approachable. She’s in a relationship with the talkative but welcoming operation specialist Clive Siddiqui. Andrew Dagyab is the gentle but somewhat shy and nervous botanist. Roberta Williams is the erstwhile and warm engineer who’s unsure of herself while her lover Natali Kuroshenko is the outspoken, K-pop loving network specialist who’s prone to outbursts. Then there’s the mysterious but gentle Sareh Hasmadi who’s the medic on Tacoma and seems to know more than she lets on. Odin interacts with the crew constantly but their relationships all interplay with each other as well. It’s in those tangles that these characters really begin to shine thanks to excellent writing and top-notch voice acting.

"The very fact that Tacoma can be compared to a movie in terms of narrative, pacing and overall engagement is noteworthy. Once you’re properly invested, you won’t want to stop playing until the end."

The player’s connection to the Tacoma crew is made even more amazing when you consider that you’re viewing hologram figures composed of body positional data via augmented reality tech. There are no facial expressions or features. Outside of the rudimentary shapes of their bodies and some wonderfully expressive animations, Tacoma‘s voyeuristic power fantasy is established when you think you’re so much more whole than these shadows of the past.

It’s immediately subverted upon realizing that Amy is a silent observer for most of the game. The past is highly involving and at times, you’ll feel overwhelmed by these utter strangers while still controlling the recording that binds them. I’d tell you how the game wants you to identify with one character in particular as a result but that would be saying too much.

Along with witnessing the crew’s conflicts and interactions, you will also dig through their personal mails, messages, voice calls and so on to learn more about them. At certain sections, you can head into a crew member’s personal quarters and witness them “raw”. As stated before, you may or may not like them, but Tacoma‘s cast comes off as incredibly human-like. The overall scripting and plot may be somewhat typical compared to other sci-fi properties like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Solaris. However, the very fact that Tacoma can be compared to a movie in terms of narrative, pacing and overall engagement is noteworthy. Once you’re properly invested, you won’t want to stop playing until the end.

"Tacoma lets you explore as much or as little of its story as you want, involving yourself deeper and deeper with its cast until they win you over."

I’ve talked plenty about the characters’ believable nature, the great presentation (though keep in mind that the visuals aren’t necessarily as cutting edge as, say, Adr1ft) and the involvement of the player as a voyeur. However, the real power of Tacoma‘s immersion lays in hunting the key events of each recording, witnessing the group’s discussion and then watching all of these other threads splinter off as a result. Nat and Roberta could be talking about the former’s tenure after E.V. leaves to talk to Clive.

The conversation could then be paused and rewound as you catch up to Clive who’s talking to an old friend of his before E.V. enters to discuss their future. Meanwhile, Sareh could be prepping for a workout and running into Andrew who’s doing yoga and talking to his son. In the midst of all this, you can explore Clive’s quarters and witness the man in his drunken reverie before returning to the previous recording. That’s not even taking into account the sheer amount of information that can be gleaned from the environment, be it books, pictures, dart-boards and so on. Tacoma lets you explore as much or as little of its story as you want, involving yourself deeper and deeper with its cast until they win you over.

It’s perhaps for this reason that the game is a relatively short experience. Even with several interruptions in between, it was possible to complete the story and explore a majority of the setting in just a few hours. Some may take issue with this while others may feel that the story could have been expanded upon even further or at least gone on for longer. While I do agree on the latter part, I feel that for its length, Tacoma offers a sublime and under-stated but still powerful experience that’s stayed with me longer than some games that have lasted for many more hours. That’s just me though. Cue the “Gone Home in space” comparisons and “LOL walking simulators” comments that you know and love.

"It’s a sympathetic story as well, one that identifies with our faults but still celebrates the compassion, unity and understanding that makes us human."

Jokes aside, despite Tacoma cleverly using its mechanics to tell a compelling story, they’re still fairly simple. This is good, don’t get me wrong, but at times I wished for a few actual puzzles instead of “memorize X passcode” or “find Y key to Z locker”. Also, for all intents and purposes, I wish the game actually allowed you to dynamically influence the story’s direction. The observer role is powerful but it felt like it was pushing me as a player to actually make a change, whether for the good or bad, before settling into a foregone conclusion. That being said, the emotional impact of being involved with these characters and witnessing their tribulations as I was there can’t be understated.

Even if I didn’t have the power to actually affect the results, the various perspectives of each character are all told using the same tools – that is, through dialogue, computer data files and animations. It’s fairly standard for games like this and handled very, very well. However, for those who’ve played What Remains of Edith Finch with its variety of gameplay elements and story-telling quirks or Her Story which featured a narrative labyrinth that the observer had to connect and unravel completely unaided, will that really be enough?

I feel that Tacoma stands firmly on its own despite these small quibbles. Tacoma is a great story told in a fantastic way. It’s core strengths are polished wonderfully and invite you to learn more about this world where you’re seemingly all powerful. It’s a sympathetic story though, one that identifies with our faults but still celebrates the compassion, unity and understanding that makes us human.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Tacoma, the new game from the developers of the cult hit indie title Gone Home, will now no longer be launching this year- the game has been delayed to 2017.

“We’ve had to push out our original schedule,” the developers said. “We’d originally planned mid-to-late 2016, so we’re giving ourselves an additional 6+ months, to land in Spring 2017. We’re currently polishing up a sample of our newly-minted alterations to the core game into something showable that we’ll be showing the world this coming summer.”

“After we did our big unveiling last summer we sent out a playtest build to a bunch of fellow developers we trust, took a long hard look at their feedback and our own feelings on where we were at, and decided to reexamine and rework a number of the core assumptions we’d held about the game. How would gravity really work on a deep-space facility like Tacoma? What are we trying to say about the function and implications of Augmented Reality– and how does the player interact meaningfully with the story content in the game, in a fundamentally different way than anything we’ve worked on before?

“We dove in and took this job seriously, redefining a number of elements that really needed it. It’s been an important process (and we’ve recently sent out another playtest, the response to which has made our months of deep-structure soul-searching feel very worth it) but it’s also taken time… time that would’ve otherwise been devoted to getting the game further on toward being finished and shipped.”

Tacoma is now set to launch in 2017 on PCs running Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Xbox One. It is a game that follows the story of Amy and her first day on the eponymous Tacoma, the lunar transfer station.