If you're tired of open world collectathons and cookie-cutter shooters, the Game Pass library is home to more weird and wonderful experiences than you might expect. Here are a few of the strangest games on Xbox Game Pass... https://www.trueachievements.com/customimages/138399.jpg Sometimes, you might find that you just want to get out of your comfort zone and try something new. While there's no shortage of bizarre games out there across all platforms — from the mind-bending, rule-breaking stages of perplexing puzzler Baba Is You to the meta madness of things like There Is No Game and Pony Island — but handily, you don't even need to leave the comfort of your Xbox to find a selection of wild examples. Even nestled among the best games on Game Pass, you can find plenty of weird stuff to play, so we decided to round up some of the craziest and most unusual games in the service for anyone looking to expand their gaming horizons. Give this selection of oddities a try, and let us know what you thought of both these and Game Pass' other strange games down in the comments! Bugsnax https://youtu.be/lbvoPxFwsAI Given that Bugsnax comes from Octodad developer Young Horses, you probably shouldn't expect it to be anything other than out of the ordinary. 'You are what you eat' is order of the day here, with the many catchable food-based creatures that call Snaktooth Island home able to be fed to any of the Grumpuses you meet to cause them to morph, turning their legs into hot dogs or hair into curly fries and so on. There's a light puzzle solving aspect to combining your gadgets and the environment to catch some of the rarer critters, and it's all held together by an entertaining and surprisingly dark narrative as you try to get to the bottom of what Bugsnax actually are and where they came from, not to mention the strange effects they seem to have on the Grumpus population. It's a fairly straightforward completion once you get into the swing of things, plus how many other games let you mess around with a ketchup catapult? Exo One https://youtu.be/BDWNDdmwzAs An out-of-this-world surreal exploration game, Exo One puts you in control of a strange shape-shifting UFO as you soar around breathtaking alien landscapes. It's a mesmerising one-of-a-kind offering, and even though gameplay is actually very simple, it's the nature of the entire experience that lands it a spot here — even if you've flown your fair share of spaceships in games in the past, it's never been quite like this. Exo One cruises along the line between video game and interactive art, and it's worth playing if only for the incredible sights and sounds you'll encounter on this unique interstellar adventure. Genesis Noir https://youtu.be/AyvOoCZyWRQ Very much what you might call an "art game," Genesis Noir is a stylish, jazz-fuelled cosmic adventure spanning the birth and death of the universe. Mechanically, it's an experimental point-and-click in the same vein of Amanita Design's wonderful titles like Samorost, more about fiddling with the environment than the genre's typical inventory puzzles and with its intriguing narrative told primarily visually. The minimalist art style won't be to everyone's tastes, nor will the trial-and-error nature of some of the more abstract puzzles, but it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome — Genesis Noir is among Game Pass' quickest completions, with an estimate of just 3-4 hours. Goat Simulator https://youtu.be/79xjgsBzFcE Some games are just daft for the sake of being daft, and that's pretty much the entire ethos of Goat Simulator, making it a shoo-in for this list. One of the most notable 'meme games' since Garry's Mod, Goat Sim is an intentional mess of wonky physics, bizarre objectives, and general nonsense that is almost certain to get a few laughs out of you before its one-note humour starts to get a bit old. The only thing stranger than this very silly game existing is the fact that it got a sequel — called Goat Simulator 3, because of course it is — and while the expanded follow-up hasn't launched itself into Game Pass just yet, the simpler original has, should you have a hankering to play something that couldn't take itself less seriously if it tried. Immortality https://youtu.be/kCMoOoRRMB0 Immortality is the latest FMV adventure from Sam Barlow and Half Mermaid, and while there's not much to talk about in terms of gameplay, it still makes for a fascinating experience as you piece together a mystery by exploring various lost clips from three fictional unreleased movies. Just the act of unlocking new clips is itself pretty weird — clicking on an object or person in a scene will take you to another where something or someone similar appears, sending you down a spiralling rabbit hole in search of new clues — but things get even stranger once you start manipulating the footage, with hidden clips and messages to be found that can get pretty wild. Crucially for a game like this, performances are great, especially Manon Gage as central character Marissa Marcel around whom the core mystery revolves, and the glimpses at candid off-camera movie set goings-on also help Immortality feel quite unlike anything else out there. Lawn Mowing Simulator https://youtu.be/G9dJTttuysQ While Goat Sim and Surgeon Sim both play fast and loose with the word 'simulator,' Lawn Mowing Simulator employs it in its strictest sense and would struggle to play things much straighter. It's just one of a growing number of po-faced Mundane Task Simulator games to hit Game Pass in recent years — joined by things like last year's surprise hit PowerWash Simulator and House Flipper — and while some people might not see the point in games so seemingly tedious, others will find them to be great ways to relax and destress, perfect palette cleansers after coming out of something like an intense shooter or hardcore RPG. If you've always dreamed of driving around very slowly while getting paid to do chores for people too lazy to do them themselves, you're unlikely to find a better game for you on Game Pass than this. Merge & Blade https://youtu.be/bpurz7QoOog We've seen some odd genre hybrids in our time, but Merge & Blade is up there with the quirkiest of the lot. Like Game Pass newcomer Loop Hero, battles here are basically hands-off thanks to an auto-battle system, albeit with this one having a much greater scale than Loop Hero's more reserved fights. As there, your involvement comes ahead of combat, and that's where things get weird in Merge & Blade. Party composition takes the form of a match-three puzzle game where making sets of the same unit type promotes them to the next tier up, setting up balance challenges as you try to find the right mix of plentiful rank-and-file fighters and fewer, more powerful attackers to send into battle. It's pretty bonkers but good fun when it clicks, and you won't find anything else quite like it. Omori https://youtu.be/TonM40Nt_sU Omori's weirdness comes on multiple levels. The first is in the wacky whimsy of its old-school RPG action, evoking a somewhat tipsy Earthbound while toying with elements of Undertale's playful genre deconstruction. Another, though, comes in the game's sheer extremes in tone, veering from that colourful fun to seriously heavy beats and themes to such a degree that the resulting emotional whiplash makes both sides all the more impactful. It should be noted that Omori goes to some extremely dark places, so it's not a great recommendation if you're not in the right headspace or are easily upset or traumatised. But with plenty of wonderful characters, moments, and twists and a tonal range that is practically unrivalled in gaming, it's absolutely worth diving into if you think you can take it. Superliminal https://youtu.be/fEY8HrRn-aU Perspective is everything in surreal puzzle game Superliminal. Manipulating objects lets you alter their size, so lifting a small object up high will see it grow as it changes from being 'small' to being 'far away' and falls back into place, for instance, or lining up partial objects might let you form something new with which to progress. It's fairly short — there's a speedrun achievement for beating the game in under 35 minutes — but tightly packed with ingenious brain teasers, so if you enjoyed games like Portal (is it even possible to not enjoy Portal?), you'll want to check this out. Umurangi Generation https://youtu.be/tn52oDzHVHU Umurangi Generation is ostensibly a fairly simple photography game, but there's much more to it than meets the eye. Set in a dystopian future New Zealand, your quest to throw up a middle finger at The Man as you go in search of the perfect picture slowly reveals more and more about this messed-up world through some masterful environmental and passive storytelling. It doesn't hurt that the game has a wicked sense of style, creating a lo-fi cyberpunk Pokémon Snap, and one with a message — if you're the kind of person who complains about politics in games, Umurangi Generation ain't for you. Anything here you might give a go, or that you also recommend? Any other Game Pass oddballs you'd like to champion? Get in the comments and let us know!