Key Takeaways:
- Xbox Free Play Days this week has six games — three free for all Xbox users, three requiring an Xbox Game Pass subscription.
- Free for All (until October 25): Monster Hunter Stories, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.
- Free for All (until October 26): Riders Republic.
- Xbox Game Pass subscribers also get free access to Dying Light 2: Stay Human, Let’s Build a Zoo, and Tropico 6 until October 25.
- All six games can be found through the Xbox Store or the Subscriptions tab on Xbox consoles.
- Progress and achievements carry over if you purchase any game after the free period ends.
Xbox’s weekly Free Play Days is back, and this weekend’s lineup is genuinely one of the better ones in recent memory. Six games across a wild range of genres — from turn-based monster collecting RPGs to open-world extreme sports, parkour zombie survival, zoo management with DNA splicing, and Caribbean political strategy. Three are free for any Xbox owner, and three more open up if you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription. Here’s the full breakdown.
Free for All Xbox Users
Monster Hunter Stories (Free Until October 25)
If you’ve only ever played the mainline Monster Hunter action RPGs, the Stories spin-off might catch you off guard — in the best way. Monster Hunter Stories swaps out the traditional hunting loop for a turn-based RPG built around collecting and bonding with monsters rather than slaying them. You play as a Rider rather than a Hunter, hatching creatures from eggs, building up a team of what the game calls Monsties, and taking them into battle through a rock-paper-scissors-style combat system built around Power, Speed, and Technical attacks.
The original Monster Hunter Stories is the introduction to this world, with a colourful cast, a story-driven campaign that runs around 30 hours, and all the familiar creatures from the franchise reimagined as companions rather than prey. It was ported to Xbox in November 2025 and scores a solid 79 on Metacritic for PC. Metascore data for the Xbox version isn’t yet available, but reception has been broadly positive across platforms.
Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin (Free Until October 25)
The sequel builds substantially on everything the first game established. The story in Wings of Ruin centres on a mysterious black-winged Rathalos that has lost its ability to fly — a creature with serious implications for the balance of the Monster Hunter world. Combat is more refined than the original, the world is bigger, and cooperative multiplayer is included for those who want to take on challenges with a friend.
Monster Hunter Stories 2 runs around 40 hours for the main campaign and carries an 82 on Metacritic for PC. If you’re only going to play one of the two this weekend, the sequel is arguably the better starting point purely from a gameplay feel perspective — but if you have the time, starting with the first and playing through both in order is the way to go. Both are free until October 25.
Riders Republic (Free Until October 26)
Riders Republic is Ubisoft Annecy’s chaotic, colourful open-world extreme sports playground — a game that throws mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, wingsuit flying, and more into one massive multiplayer sandbox inspired by real American national parks. The core appeal is the scale of it: Riders Republic lets you drop into huge multiplayer mass races with dozens of players all competing simultaneously, which creates a kind of beautiful mayhem that most sports games never go near.
It has a career progression structure and stunt challenges for those who prefer more structured play, but the large-scale multiplayer events are what make it stand out from typical sports game offerings. It scores a respectable Metascore of 79 on Xbox and takes around 15 hours to see the main content — longer if the competitive multiplayer hooks you. It’s free until October 26, giving you an extra day compared to the other titles this week.
Xbox Game Pass Subscribers: Three Extra Games
Dying Light 2: Stay Human (Xbox Game Pass Required, Until October 25)
Dying Light 2 is Techland’s open-world zombie survival sequel, set in the infected city of Villedor several decades after the events of the first game. You play as Aiden Caldwell, searching for his missing sister while navigating a city torn apart by competing human factions — all of whom want to use you for their own ends.
What separates Dying Light 2 from most zombie games is the movement. The parkour system is fast, fluid, and deeply satisfying — running across rooftops, vaulting over infected, and using the environment to get around feels genuinely great. Night shifts the danger up dramatically, when more powerful and aggressive variants of the infected come out and survival becomes significantly more tense. First-person melee combat with improvised weapons rounds out the core loop.
It carries a Metascore of 76 on Xbox and takes around 25 hours to complete the main story. A substantial amount of DLC has been added since launch if you end up liking it enough to invest further.
Let’s Build a Zoo (Xbox Game Pass Required, Until October 25)
The wildcard of the week. Let’s Build a Zoo is a zoo management and simulation game where you design enclosures, hire staff, keep visitors happy, and grow your zoo into something worth visiting. The management fundamentals are solid, but the twist that makes it genuinely memorable is DNA splicing: you can combine the genetic material of different animal species to create bizarre hybrid creatures that no real-world zoo has ever housed. Half zebra, half flamingo? Sure. The absurdity of the hybrids is a constant source of entertainment and gives the game a comedic edge that pure management titles often lack.
It has a Metascore of 74 on Xbox — slightly lower than the rest of the lineup, but the audience who enjoys management sims and has a sense of humour about animal hybrids tends to find it considerably more engaging than that score suggests. With around 40 hours of content, it’s also the deepest time sink of the free-for-Game-Pass selection.
Tropico 6 (Xbox Game Pass Required, Until October 25)
Tropico 6 gives you the reins of a small Caribbean island nation and the title of El Presidente, with the goal of turning it into a thriving paradise — or an oppressive dictatorship, depending on your leadership philosophy. The city-builder and strategy foundations are well-established: build infrastructure, manage the economy, keep your citizens (at least somewhat) happy, and navigate the demands of different political factions all vying for influence over your island.
What gives Tropico 6 its specific character is the tone — irreverent, satirical, and consistently funny as it pokes at political archetypes and Cold War-era international dynamics. The game progresses through multiple historical eras, each bringing new challenges and different political pressures. It has a Metascore of 78 on Xbox and a substantial 50 hours of content, making it the longest of the bunch this weekend.
How to Access This Weekend’s Free Games
The easiest route on console is to open your Xbox, head to the Xbox Store, and search for any of the titles above. Alternatively, go to the Subscriptions tab on your Xbox console and navigate directly to the Free Play Days section. The games are free to download and play through their respective end dates — most ending October 25, with Riders Republic running until October 26.
Any progress, saves, and achievements you earn during the Free Play Days window carry over if you decide to purchase any of these games afterwards. You won’t lose anything you’ve done during the free period.
Six games across turn-based RPGs, extreme sports, zombie parkour, zoo simulation, and political strategy — there’s genuinely something here for almost every kind of player. Whether you’ve been curious about Monster Hunter Stories for a while or want to finally try Dying Light 2’s parkour before committing, this weekend is the time to do it.
For more on what’s happening in gaming right now, check out our coverage of Zenith: Nexus shutting down for good in December, or take a look at Hookeye — one of the more unique horror game reveals hitting Steam later this year.
