Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Leaves Game Pass in Two Weeks — Stop Putting This Off

The Xbox phone app has spoken, and Pure Xbox ran the list: on October 15, eight games leave Game Pass. A Plague Tale: Requiem. Crime Scene Cleaner. Donut County. Evil West. Pacific Drive. The Casting of Frank Stone. Nova Roma on PC. And the one that actually hurts — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, on console, PC, and cloud.

If you've been 'meaning to play' Expedition 33, this is the meaning. Sandfall Interactive's turn-based RPG was a day-one Game Pass addition back in April 2025, and it's been sitting at a 92 on OpenCritic — one of the highest-rated games on the entire service. The premise: Expedition 33's desperate run to stop the Paintress. The hook: turn-based combat with real-time dodges, parries, and actions woven through it, so your hands never check out just because it isn't your turn.

Here's the backlog math, because I do this for a living now. GameRant put the main story at 25 to 30 hours. You've got thirteen days. That's a little over two hours a night — a completely normal gaming schedule for a normal person with a job. The game has been on the service since April 2025; if eighteen months wasn't enough to start it, thirteen days with a deadline is exactly the pressure that works.

The feel-first case, since that's my lane: Expedition 33 is the rare RPG where the parry timing makes turn-based combat feel like action combat. The dodge window is generous enough to learn and tight enough to matter. As an ex-QA guy, I respect a combat system that trusts your reflexes inside a genre built on menus. This is why it scored a 92. Not the story, not the art — the game respects your hands.

The rest of the list deserves a line each. A Plague Tale: Requiem — Amicia and Hugo's plague-ravaged sequel, rats the size of weather systems — is the other one worth prioritizing, per gg.deals. The Casting of Frank Stone is a Supermassive cinematic horror joint set in the Dead by Daylight universe, which is exactly on-theme for mid-October. Pacific Drive is the weird, wonderful station-wagon survival run. Donut County is the palate cleanser: you're a hole in the ground that eats a neighborhood, and it's delightful.

Subscription games are borrowed games. That's the whole philosophy. You don't own Expedition 33 — you've been renting it with your subscription, and the lease is up on the 15th. Two weeks, thirty hours, one of the best RPGs of the decade. Start tonight.

Here's why this departure stings more than the usual monthly churn. Expedition 33 has been on Game Pass since day one — April 24, 2025 — which means subscribers have had roughly eighteen months to play one of the most decorated games of the decade for the cost of their subscription. On OpenCritic it holds a Top Critic Average of 92 with a 98% critic recommendation rate, and Sandfall Interactive's debut went on to sweep most 2025 awards ceremonies, taking nine trophies at The Game Awards including Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, and Best Narrative. Games this decorated don't usually leave a subscription service while the confetti is still in the air. When one does, it's a signal of confidence: the studio no longer needs the visibility boost that day-one Game Pass placement bought it.

Now the deal math, because the clock is real. Microsoft gives Game Pass members at least 20% off every departing title in the Xbox Store until the removal date, and Expedition 33's standard edition is $49.99 — with the member discount it drops to $37.49, a full quarter off. Buy it and you keep it permanently, subscription or no subscription. The removal only ends the rental; the game stays on sale afterward, but the member discount disappears with it. If you're anywhere past the opening hours and know you'll finish, buying before the 15th is the cheapest this game will ever be.

The triage list for everyone else. The Casting of Frank Stone is the move if you only have a weekend: about six hours long, a Supermassive cinematic horror joint set in the Dead by Daylight universe — exactly on-theme for mid-October. Pacific Drive is the weirder ask at around twenty hours: a survival run built around a haunted station wagon and a zone full of strange anomalies. Donut County is the palate cleanser, a few hours of playing as a hole in the ground that eats a neighborhood. Evil West and Crime Scene Cleaner are the mid-length single-player plays, both doable if you start this week. Nova Roma is PC-only Game Preview, and Superball is free-to-play anyway — what ends on the 15th there is just the extra content members got, not the game itself.

And the service giveth while it taketh away. October's additions include the heavy hitters Gears of War: E-Day and Valor Mortis, so the library isn't exactly going dark. For more on what's landing, check our Gears of War: E-Day launch coverage and the Ace Combat 8 launch; this weekend's Xbox Free Play Days also have Ubisoft titles up for grabs, and there's a Castlevania: Belmont's Curse demo out if your backlog somehow isn't already screaming.