Earlier today during Geoff Keighley's Xbox Games Showcase pre-show, he ran a brief sizzle reel of a few indie games that are being optimized for launch on Xbox Series X. Between our first glimpse of Halo: Infinite gameplay and the reveal that Playground Games is working on the next Fable, there's been no shortage of Xbox news. These indie games will stand tall next to Master Chief when they launch optimized exclusively on Xbox Series X.


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Shredders (FoamPunch)

Shredders from FoamPunch studios looks like it's doing its best to eat Steep's lunch. Featuring beautiful mountain-top vistas and "epic shredding," Shredders looks like it aims to bring the exhilarating feeling of snowboarding on top of the world to Xbox Series X.


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Last Stop (Variable State)

Last Stop's Steam page describes it as a "third-person action game," in which you play as three Londoners, each impacted by a mysterious supernatural event in different ways.


The Artful Escape (Beethoven & Dinosaur)

The Artful Escape is a psychedelic music platformer that centers around a teenage guitar prodigy's universe-hopping quest to find inspiration for his stage persona.


Tunic (Andrew Shouldice)

Coming from a one-man studio, the highly-anticipated Tunic captured the hearts and minds of everyone watching Microsoft's E3 presentation in 2018 with its gorgeous, adorable art-style and clearly Zelda-inspired gameplay.


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Lake (Gamious)

Lake puts you in the shoes of a mail carrier for two weeks. Gamious prides itself with its branching narrative, which allows you to learn more about certain people in your town.


Sable (Shadworks)

Sable is an open-world adventure game with an emphasis on exploration and a unique and interesting art style.


Song of Iron (SoloDev, Escape)

Touting an interesting photo-realistic art style, Song of Iron is a side-scrolling brawler set in a mythological Nordic world that promises an involved storyline.


EXO ONE (Exblative)

Exo One might be the strangest game on the list. Its premise is as simple as it is intriguing: you pilot a disc-shaped alien spacecraft that resembles a metallic frisbee through beautiful landscapes. Sometimes you hit the ground and sink to the depths of a valley, others, you find yourself in the clouds.


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The Falconeer (Tomas Sala)

The Falconeer sets out to fill the dogfighting game-shaped hole in my heart left by the likes of Star Fox 64. Set in a faraway land, you pilot a giant falcon across a vast ocean world and engage in dogfights and uncover new mysteries.


12 Minutes (Luis Antonio)

12 Minutes was another standout indie appearance from Xbox E3 past. The game centers around a 12-minute time loop, in which you have to change the outcome of a violent break-in.


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The Ascent (Neon Giant)

The Ascent isn't your every day action RPG. Featuring all the gameplay trappings of a top-down arcade shooter, the first game from Neon Giant aims to blur the lines of what defines an action RPG.


The Big Con (Mighty Yell Studios)

Unlike what its title might suggest, The Big Con centers around a series of small cons, which you have to pull off in order to come up with $97,000 to save your family video store in a heavily 90s-inspired adventure game.


Gunexplored 2 (Ludomotion)

Gunexplored 2 makes a big promise: it's an action RPG that sets out to tell an in-depth story in a procedurally generated world.


Madstreets (Craftshop)

Madstreets is a unique take on the couch-co-op beat-em-up. It mixes realistic physics and animations with realistic, destructible and interactive environments.

Microsoft promises that every single game on this list will see a console-first launch on Xbox Series X. However, given their recent track record of promising some level of exclusivity for games that won't necessarily have it, so take the promise of Series X exclusivity for this whole list with a grain of salt.