We are incredibly excited to announce that Once Human, our free-to-play strange worlds survival shooter, is now officially available on XBOX Series X|S! Since our launch on August 25, it’s been amazing seeing the XBOX community jump into the wasteland. With full support for cross-play and cross-progression, and XBOX Play Anywhere (XPA), you can survive alongside all your friends no matter where they play – and rest assured, the game remains strictly committed to a fair experience with zero pay-to-win mechanics.
Even better, we are thrilled to announce that Once Human is available Day One with XBOX Game Pass, complete with exclusive membership benefits! To celebrate our launch today, we’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we brought our surreal, strange worlds to life, and give you a sneak peek at what’s coming next.
The Strange Worlds of Once Human: Meet The ‘Strange’ Within the ‘Familiar’
Once Human is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the outburst of a cosmic being known as “Stardust” has altered the planet into a supernatural landscape. In this world, players – known as Meta-Humans – must battle grotesque anomalous creatures called “Deviants,” establish personal territories, and uncover dark conspiracies.
When establishing our visual identity, we drew heavy inspiration from the “New Weird” genre. New Weird is a literary genre that blends fantasy, science fiction, and horror through surreal, grotesque, and biological weirdness, often transforming the everyday into the uncanny. Key examples include Jeff VanderMeer’s “Annihilation” (part of the Southern Reach trilogy) and China Miéville’s “Perdido Street Station.”
From the very beginning of Once Human‘s game design, we have strongly aligned with this style, extending it from creature concepts to the shaping of diverse, anomalous worlds. Our core philosophy for designing anomalies and monsters is not simply to create bizarre shapes, but to “strange within the familiar” to evoke a deeper psychological resonance. Creatures like the Devourer (a massive biomechanical worm disguised as a subway train) and the Wanderer (a bus walking on giant human arms) turn ordinary, everyday objects into living anomalies. This highlights the residual beauty and horror of being “once human,” as seen in the Mother of Life: a hybrid retaining human traces, like a tattered white dress, fused with an alien jellyfish head.
Furthermore, this New Weird aesthetic profoundly shapes our environments and gameplay. The Stardust Pollution Zones were designed to mirror Area X’s transformative Shimmer, where reality itself mutates. Beyond that, anomalous environments like the Dream Zone, which plunges regions into twisted, surreal nightmares during the Endless Dream scenario and the Blood Moon – a dynamic global atmospheric and combat event that mutates the world and empowers its monsters – deeply alter the open-world atmosphere and its underlying gameplay rules. We are also constantly expanding this New Weird style in our level design. In areas like the Securement Silos, players encounter mind-bending spatial dislocations and illusionary reflections, offering a rich, surreal visual experience that continually pushes the boundaries of the genre. In our world, nothing is quite what it should be.
Where Cthulhu Meets Creature-Catching
Survival goes beyond traditional crafting. Players can catch and tame anomalous beings known as “Deviations” to assist in combat and survival. Some can provide levitation abilities for rough terrain, while others act as defensive tools for your territory. By combining New Weird strange worlds with creature-catching mechanics, whether you are exploring, building, fighting, or taming anomalies, every moment offers something unexpected.
Re-engineered for the Couch: The XBOX Experience & First-Person Perspective
We’ve optimized Once Human from the ground up for XBOX Series X|S to deliver a flawless living room experience with seamless controller integration and stunning 4K resolution. To give you complete control over how you brave the horror, we’ve officially brought the highly requested First-Person Perspective (FPP) to consoles. You can dynamically toggle between First- and Third-Person at any time. Switching to FPP on a massive display brings you eye-to-eye with the strange chaos!
Exclusive XBOX Game Pass Benefits
For our XBOX Game Pass members, we’ve prepared some exclusive perks to kickstart your journey. Subscribers can claim an Exclusive Avatar, a METAPASS Benefit Card (which includes 300 star sources, 30-day benefits, and allows you to try 14+ outfits), a Discount Voucher Bundle, and Battle Pass XP Cards. It will also include free outfits with monthly updates.
What’s Next: The Ocean Expansion
Currently, Once Human offers over 300 hours of content, but we are just getting started. This October, we will be launching our biggest content update to date: the Ocean Expansion. This expansion delivers a revolutionary survival experience spanning islands, the ocean surface, and the deep sea. The ocean is a living entity where you will encounter gazing lighthouses, ghost ships, and mechanical behemoths. You’ll be able to build your own Exclusive Sea Fortress, starting from a simple wooden raft and upgrading it into a mobile maritime sanctuary.
Rally your teammates, claim your Game Pass benefits, and prepare to enter the anomaly. We’ll see you in the wasteland on XBOX TODAY!
Once Human
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