10 Best Simulation Games on Xbox Game Pass (August 2026)

Simulation games have this weird pull where you sit down to try something for twenty minutes and suddenly three hours have disappeared. Whether you’re flipping burgers, fixing engines, or running a convenience store, these games turn ordinary jobs into something you genuinely want to spend your evening doing. Xbox Game Pass has a pretty solid lineup right now, so here are the best simulation games on Game Pass you should be looking into this year.

What Defines the Best Sim Games?

A good simulation game pulls you straight into its world through believable systems and steady engagement. It should let players step into everyday tasks or extraordinary jobs in a natural, easy way. The best ones offer space to experiment, learn, and see real progress from effort. Whether it’s cleaning, building, or farming, a proper sim delivers satisfaction through steady improvement and clear results. Every small action should lead to something visible, something that feels earned through consistency and curiosity.

For this list, the goal was to pick titles that capture that sense of steady involvement and detail. Each game here gives you control, purpose, and a satisfying loop that feels grounded in real-world logic.

With that in mind, here are ten simulation games on Xbox Game Pass in 2026 that offer strong day-to-day tasks, meaningful detail, and a steady sense of growth. Starting at number 10, these picks cover a wide range of jobs and routines, from kitchens and farms to workshops, stores, and cleanup work.

10. Cooking Simulator

Run your own kitchen and try to plate dishes properly

Cooking Simulator has over 80 recipes and 140 ingredients spread across a full professional kitchen with griddles, gas stoves, ovens, fryers, and dozens of utensils. You physically pick up each ingredient, place it in pots or pans, adjust burner temperatures, and monitor cooking times. The food itself reacts to heat, so a steak changes color and texture the longer it sits on the grill. Seasonings and herbs go on individually too. Even the way you stack food in a pan matters, since items piled unevenly can cook at different rates. Customer orders come in with specific recipes, and you need to follow the steps closely to score well on each dish.

However, the physics engine here is also wildly unpredictable at times. You can accidentally knock plates off surfaces, and they shatter on the floor. In between the serious cooking, this chaos creates some genuinely funny moments. Plus, different recipes unlock over time, and the menu expands from basic stuff to more complex multi-step meals. Additionally, there is a sandbox option with zero restrictions, so you can practice recipes freely or just mess around in the kitchen. So if you have ever been curious about what it takes to run a commercial kitchen, this is a pretty great sandbox to experiment in.

9. Stardew Valley

Inherit a rundown farm and slowly build it into something great

Stardew Valley has been around for a decade now, and the 1.6 update brought so much fresh content that even veteran players had reasons to come back. Your grandfather’s old farm is overgrown with weeds and rocks when you first show up. Clearing it out, planting seeds, watering them each morning, and watching crops grow through 28-day seasons is the core loop. The calendar also brings festivals, seasonal fish, and different foraging items scattered around the map. Four seasons rotate through the year, and each one changes what you can grow and find.

Alongside farming, there are mines to explore underneath the town with creatures and rare ores deeper down. You can also raise chickens, cows, and other animals once you build the right structures on your property. The town has over 30 residents with their own daily schedules and personal preferences. Talking to them regularly, figuring out what gifts they like, and showing up to local events gradually deepens those connections. Eventually, you can even date and marry certain characters. Lastly, multiplayer now allows up to eight players on the same farm through the latest update, so you can invite your friends to split chores and cover more ground together.

8. theHunter: Call of the Wild

Track and hunt wildlife across massive open wilderness areas

theHunter: Call of the Wild stretches across enormous open reserves filled with dense forests, wetlands, grasslands, and mountain ridges. Animals here follow daily routines tied to specific zones, so deer gather near water to drink at dawn, rest in shaded cover during midday, and move toward feeding grounds by late afternoon. You learn these patterns by investigating tracks, droppings, and vocal calls scattered across the landscape, and over time your map fills with reliable spots you can revisit. Wind direction plays a critical role in all of this, since your scent travels with the breeze, and animals at distances beyond 100 meters will detect you and scatter if you approach from the wrong angle.

Consequently, every stalk becomes a slow puzzle of repositioning, crouching, crawling, and reading the green wind cone on your compass before closing the gap. Your loadout is just as important as your positioning. Different caliber rifles, shotguns, and bows each perform differently depending on the species and range, so matching the right weapon to the right target is essential. The game currently features over 100 species across 17 reserves and constantly expanding DLC content, and it remains a top pick if you’re browsing the best simulation games on Xbox Game Pass for a slow, methodical outdoor session.

7. Car Mechanic Simulator

Diagnose broken cars, replace parts, and restore rusty vehicles

In Car Mechanic Simulator, cars roll into your workshop with specific complaints, and your job is to figure out what’s actually wrong. You run diagnostic scans, poke around the engine, check the suspension, and inspect individual parts until you find the culprit. The part catalog here is wild, though, with over 4,000 unique components spread across 72+ vehicles. You unscrew bolts one by one, pull assemblies apart layer by layer, and swap out worn stuff with fresh replacements. And once you’re done with a repair, you can actually take the car out on a test track to see if everything holds up. Your garage starts small, and the money from completed repairs slowly funds better equipment and specialized rigs.

Furthermore, the junkyards and old barns around the map have abandoned cars covered in rust, and you can buy them dirt cheap to rebuild from the frame up. These restoration projects are something else entirely. You strip everything off, assess every component, fix or replace damaged parts on the workbench, and then piece it all back together in the right order. The paint shop handles the bodywork once the mechanical side is sorted. I have to admit, watching a corroded shell turn into something clean and drivable hits different. It’s easily one of the best Xbox Game Pass simulation games 2026 if you’re curious about how cars actually work under the hood.

6. Crime Scene Cleaner

Probably the weirdest sim game on Xbox Game Pass right now

Crime Scene Cleaner is basically a janitorial job taken to the extreme. You’re a regular guy, a janitor by trade, who gets pulled into working for the mob to cover his daughter’s medical bills after insurance refuses to pay. And so, the gigs involve mopping blood off floors, scrubbing walls clean, tossing bodies into bags, and removing anything that links back to the crime. The tools are straightforward: a mop, a sponge, a pressure washer, and garbage bags. Still, finding every last stain requires a careful eye since blood splatters end up in places you’d least expect, like behind doors, on ceilings, or underneath furniture.

Meanwhile, the jobs themselves vary quite a bit in how they challenge you. You might be scrubbing down a cramped apartment in one mission, then dealing with a sprawling villa or an art gallery the next. And your performance on each job gets graded based on how much evidence you leave behind. Even a tiny missed spot can tank your score. Fresh water is also something you have to manage constantly by refilling buckets at faucets scattered across the scene. And personally, the best part is how methodical the cleaning is. You scan a room, prioritize the worst areas, scrub them down, and move on section by section.

5. Construction Simulator

Manage your construction business and operate real branded heavy machinery yourself

Construction Simulator hands you a fledgling construction company with barely any equipment. Your first jobs are small, like digging a foundation or laying a stretch of sidewalk. Still, even these early contracts require you to physically operate excavators, cranes, bulldozers, and concrete mixers with controls that mirror how the real machines work. Digging a foundation, for instance, means positioning the excavator bucket at the right angle, scooping out specific volumes of earth, and dumping it into a truck parked nearby. And once the digging is done, you switch to a different vehicle to pour concrete or haul prefabricated walls to the site.

Over 90 licensed machines from brands like Caterpillar, CASE, and Bobcat make up the catalog, and each one handles differently depending on its weight and purpose. The contracts themselves range from repaving a road to constructing multi-story buildings across an open world map. However, the construction process is sequential, so you can’t skip ahead or rush through phases. Pouring a foundation comes before framing, framing comes before roofing, and every stage requires the right machine and the right materials hauled from suppliers across town. Logistics, then, are just as important as the building itself. Your revenue from completed work funds bigger equipment, and bigger equipment unlocks more ambitious contracts.

4. Farming Simulator 25

The most realistic farming simulation title in the Game Pass 2026 library

Farming Simulator 25 introduced rice cultivation for the first time in the series, and it works differently from traditional crops. Rice requires flooded paddy fields with proper water retention, specialized planting equipment, and a separate harvest cycle compared to everything else you grow. Alongside rice, spinach, peas, and green beans also joined the crop roster, bringing the total past 25 varieties. And so, the seasonal planning becomes pretty involved when you’re rotating between crops that all have different soil preparation steps, growth timelines, and machinery requirements.

Weather plays a bigger role here too. Twisters and hailstorms are capable of damaging your fields mid-season, and you have to assess the aftermath and sometimes replant sections that got hit. Ground deformation is also new. Now, vehicle tires leave visible marks on the soil as you drive across your property. Water buffalos and goats are new livestock arrivals alongside the returning cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and horses. Overall, the sheer volume of things to manage across crops, animals, forestry, and production facilities is pretty staggering once your farm starts expanding past those initial fields.

3. Supermarket Simulator

Stock shelves, set prices, and grow your own retail store

Supermarket Simulator blew up massively on PC, and now it’s available on Xbox Game Pass. You own a small shop, and it’s on you to turn it into a thriving store. However, the daily grind of running it is surprisingly absorbing. You order stock through an in-game computer by watching wholesale prices fluctuate in a live market, then unpack those goods by hand into your storage room. You place products on shelves, fridges, and freezers yourself. Pricing is manual too, with you constantly adjusting margins on individual items to stay competitive while still turning a profit. On top of the in-store work, online orders come in from customers who want home delivery. You physically pack their bags, load them up, and drive the delivery route yourself.

The store layout is completely yours to design, from aisle placement and floor materials to wall paint and signage. Still, the operational side is what pulls you in the most. Shoplifters walk in and try to pocket items, forcing you to install security cameras, alarm sensors, or hire guards to catch them. Floors get dirty, trash piles up, and windows need polishing to keep the place looking presentable. As revenue grows, you reinvest into expanding the physical space of your store, bringing in more product categories and higher foot traffic. Also, co-op lets up to four people split the workload in the same store simultaneously. Supermarket Simulator is easily one of the best Game Pass simulation games to enjoy with friends right now.

2. Shift At Midnight

Work a gas station night shift, but your customers might be monsters

Shift At Midnight is set in the early ’90s, where your character has taken a late-night gas station job to pay for a sick pet’s medication. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, the town is dealing with a doppelganger outbreak. So while you’re stocking shelves, ringing up purchases, pumping gas, and accepting deliveries, you also need to figure out which customers are actually human. You check IDs, ask probing questions, and look for behavioral inconsistencies before they finish paying and walk out. And if you let a doppelganger slip through, it comes back later in a monstrous form. At that point, the shift turns into a scramble to barricade doors, set bear traps, and find somewhere to hide.

Your tasks are still the priority since the station has to run properly regardless of anything else going on. Furthermore, each night is randomly generated, so customer encounters, store tasks, and threats change with every playthrough. There’s a constant push and pull between doing your actual job well enough to meet the nightly sales quota and investigating every person who walks through the door. I mean, the ’90s setting with flickering fluorescent lights and old CRT monitors does a lot of heavy lifting here. Co-op supports three players with proximity voice chat. Still, solo play holds up on its own with the same randomized structure and multiple endings to uncover.

1. inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories

Manage a Japanese convenience store while uncovering neighborhood stories

Konbinis are a pretty big deal in Japanese culture, essentially small corner stores that carry everything from snacks and drinks to household essentials, and they’re open around the clock. inKONBINI is set inside one of these during the early 1990s, in a rural town where the shop is deeply woven into the daily routines of the neighborhood. You’re Makoto, a college student covering night shifts at your aunt’s konbini called Honki Ponki while she’s away for a week. Each shift starts with leftover tasks from the day crew, like sticky notes asking you to restock certain aisles or reorganize shelves. Your routine settles in pretty quickly: fetch items from the storage room and freezer, arrange products where they belong, place phone orders when stock runs low, and ring up customers at the register.

Still, the store operations stay intentionally simple here, with zero time pressure or optimization targets rushing you through the work. However, the customers walking in during those late hours carry something more personal with them. The regulars show up at roughly the same time each night, and through branching dialogue choices, you gradually learn who they are and what they’re dealing with outside the store. I mean, the conversations themselves look like visual novel-style exchanges, and your responses shape how these relationships develop over the course of the week. The way these small-town stories unfold through something as ordinary as a night shift is rare to see done this well. It’s also the biggest reason inKONBINI ranks first on this 2026 list of best simulation games on Xbox Game Pass.

FAQs

Which Xbox Game Pass simulation games support co-op or multiplayer?

Several titles on this list let you play with friends, and the way multiplayer is handled varies quite a bit between them. Farming Simulator 25 supports multiple players on the same farm where you can split responsibilities like fieldwork and animal care across your group. theHunter: Call of the Wild allows cooperative sessions with several people sharing the same wildlife reserve. Stardew Valley, on the other hand, lets four people share a single farm together. Meanwhile, Construction Simulator has two-player co-op where both of you operate heavy machinery on shared job sites. If co-op is a priority for you, these four are the strongest picks from the list.

How often does Xbox Game Pass rotate simulation games in and out?

The rotation schedule is pretty unpredictable, and Microsoft (MSFT ) typically announces removals about two weeks before they happen. Simulation titles, in particular, tend to stay longer than average since they have dedicated fanbases that keep the player counts steady over time. Still, there’s always a chance your favorite could leave the catalog on short notice. And so, the best approach is to check the “Leaving Soon” section on the Xbox app regularly, and if you see something you’re deep into, you can usually buy it at a discounted price before it disappears from the library.

Which simulation game on Xbox Game Pass is the easiest to pick up for beginners?

If you’ve rarely played simulation games before, Supermarket Simulator and inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories are probably the smoothest entry points. Supermarket Simulator has a very straightforward loop of stocking shelves, pricing products, and managing your store layout, and the difficulty curve is gradual enough that you can learn while doing. inKONBINI, on the other hand, is even lighter on the management side since the focus leans heavily toward conversations and storytelling. I mean, both of them let you ease in at your own speed without overwhelming you with menus or complicated mechanics right away.

Are there relaxing simulation games on Xbox Game Pass to wind down with?

Absolutely, and a few titles on this list are specifically designed around calm, low-pressure experiences. Stardew Valley has a gentle rhythm of farm life with zero fail states, so you can spend your evening watering crops and chatting with townsfolk without any urgency. inKONBINI is similar in tone, with its soft ambient audio and slice-of-life storytelling set inside a small Japanese convenience store. Cooking Simulator, while slightly more chaotic, can also be pretty meditative once you get comfortable with the kitchen and settle into the recipe flow. If stress relief is the goal, these three are your best bets from the list.

Do simulation games on Xbox Game Pass support controller on PC?

Controller support on PC varies by title, but the majority of simulation games in the Game Pass library do support Xbox controllers natively. Titles like Car Mechanic Simulator, Construction Simulator, and Farming Simulator 25 all recognize your controller the moment you plug it in or connect via Bluetooth. However, a few games may default to keyboard-and-mouse controls, and you’d need to switch the input method manually from the settings menu. Still, if you prefer the couch-and-controller setup on your PC, these simulation titles accommodate that pretty well across the board.

Which simulation games on this list have the longest playtime?

Farming Simulator 25 and Stardew Valley are comfortably the longest experiences here, and both can stretch well past a hundred hours if you get invested. Farming Simulator 25 has an enormous equipment catalog and multiple maps, plus a massive modding community that continuously extends the content. Stardew Valley, meanwhile, has years of free updates baked in along with its multiplayer farm mode, so there’s a pretty deep well of things to do. On the shorter side, inKONBINI wraps its story across roughly a week of in-game nights, and Crime Scene Cleaner is structured around individual contracts rather than an open-ended playthrough.

Will more simulation games be added to Xbox Game Pass in 2026?

Microsoft has been consistently expanding the simulation category on Game Pass over the past year, and the trend points toward more additions as the year goes on. I mean, simulation titles tend to perform really well on subscription services since they attract a specific audience that plays them for extended periods. And so, the likelihood of seeing new simulation releases land on Game Pass as day-one additions is pretty high, especially from mid-tier studios looking for visibility.