10 of the best new Xbox and Game Pass releases for April 2024

Spring has sprung and the gaming world has woken up to a host of new Xbox and Game Pass games on the horizon.

But what are the 10 finest games set to release on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and through Game Pass in April 2024? Well, we’ve got a list of those you really must play. 

Turbo Golf Racing

We’ve been playing Turbo Golf Racing on Game Preview since July 2022 but the full release will be coming to Xbox and Game Pass this month. 

We’d describe the game as the offspring born from an encounter between Rocket League and Golf with your Friends, as it sees vehicles boost, dash and glide to get their ball into the hole in a variety of different themed courses including ancient Aztec temples, gravity defying space courses and industrial wastelands. 

Turbo Golf Racing offers the choice of playing alone, 1v1 or with up to eight players online in a Grand-Prix style competition. 

Botany Manor

If neither golf nor racing are your thing then maybe history and botany are? If so, you’ll enjoy the horticultural game Botany Manor, a first-person puzzle game set in a Victorian English manor.

It’s 1890, and you play as botanist Arabella Greene, who is working to finish her botanical research book ‘Forgotten Flora’. Your task is researching how to grow rare, fantastical plant specimens from seed. You won’t need green fingers, but you will have to think outside of the box to work out the ideal conditions for each plant by exploring the manor for clues and using fascinating Victorian contraptions. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants

Now let’s travel from 1890 to 1990 and get all nostalgic. Yes, the heroes in a half shell are back in another turtley awesome game. 

Take control of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello or Raphael in this classic beat-em-up, a re-release of the arcade classic but with three additional stages and an extra six boss battles. You’ll have to fight waves of enemies on your way to defeat your arch-nemesis Shredder in his own lair. 

Cowabunga!

Let’s! Revolution!

If you are ancient enough to remember watching the Turtles in the 90s then you will definitely remember playing Minesweeper on your brand new Windows PC. Yes, there was a time before Xbox was a thing and we whiled away many hours trying to locate the position of mines on a small grid. It was that or Solitaire. 

Lets! Revolution! Is based on the rules of Minesweeper but instead of searching for mines, you’ll be hunting down a corrupt king across a beautifully illustrated and hand-animated land.

Harold Halibut

Another game releasing onto Game Pass this month is Harold Halibut, a narrative adventure game set aboard a spaceship that has crash-landed in an alien sea. 

Playing as lab assistant Harold, you’ll embark on a mysterious adventure as you try to help the ship escape from its watery location. 

What really sets this game apart though is the stop-motion style animation that adds a touch of retro vibes to proceedings.

Sker Ritual

Indie developers Wales Interactive are known for their live action games, but their latest offering, Sker Ritual, deviates from this. It’s a spin-off from the award-winning horror game, Maid of Sker and is an intense, round-based, zombie horror shooter. 

You can choose to face the waves of ‘Quiet Ones’ solo or with up to three online friends but it’s not just about the mindless killing. You’ll also get to solve mysterious missions, uncover Easter Eggs (although not the chocolate variety unfortunately) and make use of steampunk weapons and Miracles — a vast network of Celtic God powers.

TopSpin 2K25

If you’ve recently been watching the Miami Open, then you might fancy playing a bit of tennis yourself. Not the real thing of course, that would involve running around, but a virtual approximation in the form of TopSpin 2K25. 

The TopSpin games have been around on the Xbox since the early days and this latest iteration promises the chance to play as one of 24 tennis pros, including legends like Roger Federer and Serena Williams, to take Centre Court at Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, the US Open, and the Australian Open.

2K look to be firing off some aces with this one.

Lunar Lander Beyond

The latest in a long line of old school Atari reboots, Lunar Lander Beyond sees players take on the role of newly appointed captain of the Pegasus corporation. 

Your mission? To guide a group of rookie pilots through a taxing series of missions to deliver cargo, retrieve resources, and rescue stranded comrades. 

It rarely goes wrong for Atari and so hopes are high for this reboot of a classic. 

SAND LAND

In this action-RPG, players get to explore a nostalgic world by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball. 

You’ll play as Prince Beelzebub and lead your company of heroic misfits across a desert world in search of the Legendary Spring. Not only will you have to contend with a lack of water, you’ll have to battle bandits and fierce wildlife, as well as develop tanks and other vehicles that will help you navigate the vast world of SAND LAND.

Tales of Kenzera: ZAU

Actor Abubakar Salim voiced Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins and is the founder and CEO of Surgent Studios, the developers behind new release Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. 

Based on Salim’s own experience with grief, the game promises to take you on a thrilling emotional journey inspired by the rich myths of Bantu cultures. It’s a 2.5D single player platformer where you play as a young shaman who bargains with the God of death to bring his father back from darkness. 

What’s next?

Of course, there are other games you could well play too. House Flipper 2 was a last minute delay from March, and you should probably be checking out the likes of Another Crab’s Treasure on Game Pass in April as well. 

And then May will be here in a flash – System Shock, Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER from Chorus Worldwide and MotoGP 24 are just a few hotly anticipated titles. 

As always though, let us know what you’ll be playing. The comments are below.