Xbox Game Pass has its own Super Mario Odyssey, and it’s a delight

PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have a lot of advantages over the Switch, but there’s one advantage Nintendo never loses: games. While Sony and Microsoft struggle to put out consistent exclusives, Nintendo always manages to put out fairly high-quality games on a monthly bases (even if some recent releases have felt like filler). The fact that you can only play Super Mario Odyssey on a Nintendo console will always be the company’s ace in the hole.

Thankfully, enough developers have been influenced by Nintendo’s design that it’s not hard to find a great title that scratches the same itch as a Nintendo classic on competing platforms. Just look at games like the Pikmin-inspired Tinykin. Xbox has been especially smart about seeking out games like that over the years and adding them to Xbox Game Pass. It’s done that once again with one of its newest additions, the delightful Hauntii.

Released last week on most major platforms and Game Pass, Hauntii is a stylish adventure game about a little ghost on a quest to track down mysterious beings known as Eternians. But before you dive into any of that, it’s the art style that’s likely to catch your eye. Hauntii features a unique, hand-crafted world made up of black-and-white squiggles. It’s somewhere between Genesis Noir and Bayonetta Origins: Cerveza and the Lost Demon — and it looks spectacular. It uses that style to craft an otherworldly adventure that makes me feel like I’m lost in the woods at night. It’s both eerie and serene in the same breath.

While that might be enough to draw you in, it’s the Nintendo-like design that will really grab you. Hauntii plays like a smaller take on Super Mario Odyssey, successfully playing on several of its best features while adding some light twin-stick shooter combat. The core hook is that players can possess a variety of objects, each of which has their own use. Inhabiting a tree will let players shake out some currency, while jumping into a ladybug will let them fly and climb. While