This Week in Games: E-Day Is Out on Game Pass, and Thursday Brings Echo Weaver, Hellraiser, and Jonathan Blow's New Puzzle Epic

Tuesday, October 6, 2026 — Emergence Day has finally come. Gears of War: E-Day launched today on Xbox Series X|S, PC and cloud, available day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass — The Coalition's Unreal Engine 5 prequel that rewinds the clock 14 years before the original game, to the day the Locust Horde first tore through Sera. Young Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago are back in the mud, and after an early-access window for Premium Edition owners, everyone else joins the fight tonight. It is the headliner of one of the busiest weeks of the fall release calendar — more than 20 games are hitting Xbox between Tuesday and Friday, with Thursday, October 8 packing in five significant launches in a single day.

This is the week that sets the table for the rest of October: Game Pass keeps stacking day-one releases (Keeper landed last week, Deep Dish Dungeon and Valor Mortis arrive October 13), PlayStation's October Plus lineup goes live today, and one of the most ambitious puzzle games ever made finally ships. Here's everything worth your download bandwidth.

Out now: E-Day, a Star Wars racer, and Kingdom Hearts

Gears of War: E-Day ($69.99) is the big one. The origin story follows Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago through the Locust invasion's opening hours, with Horde Siege and Versus multiplayer rounding out the package, per the Xbox release listings. Premium Edition owners have been playing since an early-access window opened ahead of launch, and early impressions from players have been strongly positive. Check our launch-day guide for everything in the game and what's coming next on Game Pass.

Right beside it: Star Wars: Galactic Racer ($59.99), a high-speed, run-based racing game set in the criminal racing circuits of the Star Wars galaxy — a roguelite take on podracing from veterans of the arcade-racing world (our launch story has the details). And the Kingdom Hearts Collection [I～III] ($74.99) bundles the HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX and HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue compilations with Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind, with Xbox Play Anywhere support — the entire saga's Xbox debut in one purchase.

Thursday, October 8: the busiest day of the week

Clear your evening. October 8 has the largest number of releases this week, led by two day-one Game Pass additions. Echo Weaver is Akupara Games' knowledge-based Metroidvania built around time loops and time-altering abilities — the kind of game where what you learn in one run is the weapon you bring to the next. It launches at $19.99 with Xbox Play Anywhere support, and it's in Game Pass from minute one.

Right next to it in the subscription: Neon Abyss 2, Kepler Interactive's fast-paced cybermyth roguelike with run-and-gun combat and deep item synergies. The first Neon Abyss built a cult following on its endless item combinations; the sequel ramps up the pixelated chaos, and it too is day one on Game Pass with Play Anywhere support. Two genuinely exciting day-one subscription launches on the same Thursday is the kind of thing Game Pass was built for.

Horror fans get their fix the same day with Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival ($39.99), a first-person survival horror game from Saber Interactive starring Aidan, the Genesis Configuration puzzle box, Pinhead and the Cenobites. It is the rare licensed horror game that goes straight for the source material's darkest corners rather than sanding them down.

And then there's the week's most ambitious swing: Order of the Sinking Star, the new puzzle epic from Jonathan Blow — the designer behind Braid and The Witness — and his studio Thekla, Inc., published by Arc Games. Ten years in the making since The Witness, it packs more than 1,000 hand-crafted interconnected puzzles (Blow himself has put the number north of 1,400) across four distinct worlds that collide and intertwine, with hundreds of hours of gameplay. Design contributions came from some of the sharpest puzzle minds in the industry, including the creators of Patrick's Parabox and Miegakure. It launches at $29.99 on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 — the one big release of the week that isn't on Xbox. A free Steam demo ran during Next Fest in June, and demo save data carries over to the full game.

Thursday's deeper bench is worth a glance, too: Deck of Haunts ($19.99) lets you play as a haunted house manipulating visitors and feeding on their fear, while Forever Ago, Gear.Club Unlimited 3 (40+ cars across Japan and the French Mediterranean), MyPOPGOES, Silver Pines and Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts round out one of the densest single-day lineups of the year.

PS Plus October is live: F1 25 headlines

PlayStation owners aren't left out this week. Sony's October PlayStation Plus Monthly Games went live today, claimable from October 6 through November 2 — and it's one of the stronger lineups of the year. F1 25 (PS5) headlines: the official game of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship, with Career mode, My Team 2.0 and a new F1 World squad mode where friends race together against AI drivers. Hunt: Showdown 1896 (PS5) brings its unforgiving PvPvE extraction shooting to the subscription, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 (PS5 and PS4) delivers four-player online co-op against giant voxel enemies. The lineup was announced September 30 by Sony's Adam Michel on the PlayStation Blog, and subscribers can also grab Halloween-themed in-game bundles for Call of Duty: Warzone, Hunt: Showdown 1896 and Overwatch 2 rolling out through the month.

Friday and the rest of the slate

Wednesday, October 7 fills the gaps with curiosities: Hidden Dogs (500+ hand-drawn pups hidden across the English countryside), Titanic Escape Simulator (investigate a suspicious death aboard the doomed ship, with Play Anywhere support) and Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire ($19.99), JanduSoft's action-farming roguelite about Dracula's rebellious son surviving on plants instead of blood.

Friday, October 9 closes the week with a Dragon's Dogma 2 DLC listed in the Xbox release calendars, plus Gear.Club Unlimited 3, Silver Pines, Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts, PAPERHEAD, Horse Club: Ride West and Sesame Street: Friends & Fun. And for the full month view, check the games hub — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 lands October 23, Final Fantasy Resonance on October 22, and the Game Pass calendar keeps filling with Deep Dish Dungeon and Valor Mortis next week.

The takeaway: this is a Game Pass week, full stop. E-Day today, Echo Weaver and Neon Abyss 2 on Thursday, and a genuinely historic puzzle game landing everywhere but Xbox. Clear the backlog — October only gets busier from here.