The newly announced April lineup for Xbox Game Pass looks great but it’s kicking off with a horse training simulator that normally costs a shocking $40. Have you ever played an open world RPG and thought, ‘I’d love to have some dolls from the 1960’s in here’ no? Well clearly an exec at Microsoft has because the first game to be added to Game Pass this month is Barbie Horse Trails on April 3rd.
In Barbie Horse Trails you play as a junior ranger in Canterbury trails park, where you ride around collecting items, taking photos, and training your horse, Lucky. There are characters to meet and side quests to embark upon to unlock new cosmetics.
With that said, this game doesn’t exactly have the best track record, there isn’t even a score on metacritic because no one wanted to play it long enough to leave a review. The icing on the cake is that its highest ever player count on steam was 19 on its release date of October 10th 2025, with a current player count of two. Is this an omen of the future of Game {ass or a wild outlier, we’ll just have to wait to find out.
Mercifully, the second game is here to save the day, with it being a winner of nine game of the year awards and a 92 percent score on Metacritic. That being none other than the mighty Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This critically acclaimed turn-based RPG set in Belle Époque, France caught the gaming world by storm at the time of its release on the 24th of April 2025 with over half a million downloads on that day alone. Its highest concurrent player count was 145,000 a week after its release. If all of this hasn’t been enough to convince you to give it a try then I’ll add that it normally sells for $50 which is a sizable amount cheaper than your average AAA game. And now this absolute gem of a game is being released on Game Pass Premium, so take advantage and go kill the curator and break the cycle starting April 2nd.
That’s all for the first week but I’d say it’s more than enough to sink your teeth into, hell you might as well even give the Barbie game a try if it seems interesting given that it’s free. Both games are available on PC Game Pass too. Come back later for a piece on more of the upcoming games for the month, including the Final Fantasy 4 Remaster, Hades 2 console port, Replaced, Vampire Crawlers, Kiln and Aphelion.
