Xbox Game Pass is a great way for people to try out plenty of excellent titles for a relatively low cost. One of the best features of the service is when new games are listed. While all of Microsoft's first-party titles come to the service on the day they launch, some third-party games come a few months after they release, as with one of this month's Game Pass additions: The Forgotten City.

The Forgotten City is generally regarded as one of the best games of the year so far, and hopefully Game Pass will allow plenty of new fans the opportunity to try it. The game's plot revolves around a time loop, one of 2021's most popular narrative devices, so it may have been lost in the crowd of higher-profile titles like Returnal, Deathloop, and 12 Minutes. Now that it's on Game Pass, subscribers have no excuse to sit the adventure game out.

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What is The Forgotten City?

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Originating as a Skyrim mod before becoming a standalone experience, The Forgotten City is about a person from the modern day who magically enters an ancient Roman city. As they meet and get to know some of the 22 occupants of the town, the player discovers that everyone lives under a system called "the Golden Rule," which is that "the many shall suffer for the sins of the one." Essentially, everyone has been told that if they commit a sin, they'll all be turned to gold and killed instantly. As a result, the town lives in fear that someone, somewhere, will commit a sin and doom everyone.

If the idea of not committing a "sin" sounds vague, The Forgotten City asks a lot of questions regarding individual morality, the morality of only following rules out of fear, and the definitions of what constitutes a sin. The player eventually discovers that the ruler of the city, Magistrate Sentius, has been resetting the world every night because, no matter what, someone commits a sin and everyone turns to gold. He tasks the player with finding out who's doing it and stopping them. In exchange, they'll be sent back to their own time.

The player needs to get to know everyone in the city and get to the bottom of the mysterious Golden Rule while trying not to commit any sins of their own. Fans will definitely be able to see The Forgotten City's origin as a Skyrim mod when playing it, but the gameplay is much more conversation and exploration-focused than many of Skyrim's quests.

The Forgotten City is an adventure game purely motivated by the player's ability to gather information and deduce what comes next. The game keeps track of all of the player's leads in menus, but it's usually up to the player to decide how they want to go about solving the game's many problems. It also features multiple endings depending on the choices made by the player, some of which can be triggered from the first moments they set foot in the Roman city. While it isn't a particularly long game, The Forgotten City is worth a play for anyone who enjoys adventure games or deductive reasoning, and its place on Game Pass means that more people have the option to play it.

The Forgotten City is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: Why Skyrim Fans Should Check Out The Forgotten City