Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers can start the weekend a little early, because the next Free Play Days event begins today, January 22 and goes through Sunday, January 25. One of the four games available to players is South Park: Snow Day!, which seems appropriate given the cold weather sweeping much of the US.

Snow Day! is a four-player co-op title that casts players as the new kid in town opposite Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny. A blizzard has blown through South Park, and set the boys off into a fantasy realm of adventure where they get to battle it out to save the world. Or at least some of the world, since they won't be leaving South Park any time soon.

As the name implies, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an origin story for the world's greatest non-Batman detective. But he hasn't hit his peak of deduction yet. This game puts players in control of a much younger Sherlock as he attempts to unravel the events surrounding the sudden death of his mother.

I first heard about Hytale a few years ago. My son, a huge Minecraft fan, told me how the Hypixel server on Minecraft was a major landing spot for some dedicated players. He added that the team running that server, today known as Hypixel Studios, was making its own game, Hytale, and it had already spent years in development. It was to be a new Minecraft competitor, building on what players loved about the Hypixel server while establishing ways to stand out as an experience that even Minecraft diehards could not deny. In January 2026, Hytale is certainly not that. Instead, it's a Minecraft clone that rarely justifies its existence. Presumably, it's going to change a lot over the next several years, but for now, it's best left to players who are so dedicated that they're compelled to get in on the game's ground floor.

Starting out in Hytale, you'll drop into a procedurally generated world full of trees, rivers, a few villages and ruins, and mines, of course. The blocky, voxel art style is a bit less pixelated than Mojang's titan of the genre, but in most other ways, the early moments of Hytale are remarkably familiar to anyone who has played Minecraft.

You'll collect a few basic resources so you can craft a pickaxe and a hatchet, use those to chop down trees and smash small boulders, thereby crafting things like workbenches, which quickly open up the world to many more craftable items, from target dummies and beds to teleporters and various meals. It's not long before you've built yourself a humble abode, both stylish and sturdy in the face of enemy "mobs" that roam the land, like rats, skeletons, and rock golems.