Discover New Experiences in Week 1 of the ID@Xbox Game Fest

In case you haven’t heard, we’re kicking off our first ID@Xbox Game Fest, which runs throughout the month of May and is designed to show off some of the coolest Xbox One games from our ID@Xbox independent developer program. Each week, we’ll be highlighting a new batch of very special games that coincide with some very cool themes that we’ve chosen.

For this first week of ID@Xbox Game Fest, which runs from May 3-9, we’re focusing on a number of games that embrace new kinds of experiences, and the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that will have you rethinking the way that you define what a video game can be.

Funcom’s The Park takes you for a day at a very creepy amusement park with Lorraine, a woman who’s facing every parent’s worst nightmare: a missing child. You’ll unravel Lorraine’s story as well as the dark and tragic history of the Atlantic Island Park as you search for her missing son, Callum, among the park’s dilapidated rides and discover the grotesque truth beneath the happy facade. As darkness falls on Atlantic Island Park, you will experience panic and paranoia through a narrative written by a team of award-winning storytellers.

Superhot (created by, aptly enough, the Superhot Team) is a first-person shooter that blurs the lines between cautious strategy and unbridled mayhem. In this game, time moves only when you move. It’s a new, disruptive kind of FPS, with a minimalist visual language that helps you concentrate on what’s most important: The fluidity of gameplay, and the cinematic beauty of the fight. In Superhot, there are no regenerating health bars and no conveniently placed ammo drops; it’s just you, outnumbered and outgunned, grabbing the weapons of fallen enemies to shoot, slice, and maneuver through a hurricane of slow-motion bullets.

The Molasses Flood’s The Flame in the Flood debuted to critical acclaim earlier this year, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a unique kind of post-apocalyptic wilderness survival game, in which a girl and her dog travel by foot and by raft down a procedurally generated river. You’ll scrounge for resources, craft tools, remedy afflictions, evade the vicious wildlife, and (most importantly) try to stay healthy in a very dangerous wilderness. And when you die, the next playthrough is a whole new experience. To set the proper mood, The Flame in the Flood also features an original, full-length soundtrack by acclaimed alt-country rocker Chuck Ragan, featuring The Camaraderie, The Fearless Kin, and others.

And to round out our list of featured games for this week, Night School Studio’s Oxenfree is a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift. You step into the shoes of Alex, a bright and rebellious teenager who brings her new stepbrother Jonas to an overnight party on an old military island. The night takes a terrifying turn when you unwittingly open a ghostly gate spawned from the island’s cryptic past. How you deal with these events, your peers, and the ominous creatures you’ve unleashed is up to you. You’ll uncover the base’s dark past… and potentially change the course of your friends’ lives.

Beyond these games, there are plenty of other fresh, recently released experiences to be had in the ID@Xbox family, including Bracket Games’ Three Fourths Home, The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home, Storm in a Teacup’s N.E.R.O.: Nothing Ever Remains Obscure, Upper One Games’ Never Alone, Uppercut Games’ Submerged, Tiger & Squid’s Beyond Eyes, and Bacon Bandit Games’ Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey Remastered.

And that’s not all – make sure to check out some of the revolutionary hits that you may have missed the first time around, like Asteroid Base’s Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Crescent Moon Games’ The Deer God, Stage 2 Studios’ Lifeless Planet, A Crowd of Monsters’ Blues and Bullets, Deco Digital and Bevel Studios’ Pneuma: Breath of Life, Rain Games’ Teslagrad, and Mike Bithell’s Thomas Was Alone.

We hope that you’ll check out some of these classics-in-the-making from our many independent development partners. And this is just the start – check back here on Tuesday, May 10 for a slew of free-to-play games, as the ID@Xbox Game Fest moves into its second week!