PlayStation Plus is a great subscription service for players looking for the best value in gaming right now, and while the catalog includes a ton of great games that are widely discussed and hugely popular, it’s also chock-full of hidden gems that nobody talks about.
Games like the heavily slept-on action RPG Banishers: Ghost of New Eden or Syberia – The World Before are hugely underrated games, delivering players unmatched storytelling and world-building, with countless others like it that PS Plus subscribers can fire up today for free.
Abiotic Factor
Abiotic Factor is a co-op survival-crafting game set in a vast underground research facility after a catastrophic dimensional breach takes place. You play as scientists scrambling to survive, with hostile anomalies, strange creatures, and environmental hazards overruning the labs.
Gameplay features base-building, resource gathering, combat, puzzle-solving, and class-based abilities, with a strong emphasis on teamwork and cooperative strategy. It has a similar tone to the Half-Life games in terms of humor, and it’s a fresh take on survival games that doesn’t get enough love that you can play with an Extra or Premium PS Plus membership.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
I tend to jump at any chance I get to recommend Banishers: Ghost of New Eden, and it’s arguably one of the most underrated RPGs to release in the past couple years. Banishers has been available on PS Plus since June of this year, and was also recently released on Xbox Game Pass, so it’s starting to gain the recognition it deserves.
While it isn’t a perfect RPG, it has a really strong story and an original world, set in a colonial frontier settlement in 1695 North America. Players fight back against evil supernatural forces and make decisions that can change the course of the story, and the story alone is well worth checking out while Banishers is available on PS Plus.
Child of Light
Child of Light is a 2014 “hand-painted” fairy-tale RPG that follows Aurora, a young girl transported to the magical land of Lemuria, where she must restore the stolen light and find her way home. The game blends side-scrolling exploration mechanics with turn-based combat, using an active “timeline” system.
Its poetic storytelling, watercolor art style, and enchanting music create a dreamlike atmosphere rarely seen in modern RPGs. Though its mechanics are relatively simple, Child of Light is way underrated in terms of style, narrative, and presentation. It’s a memorable, timeless experience from Ubisoft that feels like an indie game that could’ve released this year.
Humanity
One of my favorite puzzle-strategy games of the past few years, Humanity is a must-play platformer-style game with unique mechanics, and it can be completed without a massive time investment. The game keeps you highly engaged inside its short 11-hour main story, offering players sometimes tricky puzzles with increasingly difficult obstacles.
Humanity also has an incredibly active community of fans that are constantly developing new challenges for players through the Stage Creator feature. If you are a fan of puzzle-platformers, Humanity deserves a spot on your list of PS Plus games to check out over the holidays.
Magicka 2
Magicka 2 is a 2015 spell-slinging action-adventure game built around co-op combat and an inventive elemental magic system. Players combine elements to create custom spells and powerful attacks. The sequel continues the series’ irreverent humor and slapstick fantasy storytelling as wizards journey across Midgard to stop a new magical threat.
Magicka 2 deserves more attention because it’s a rare co-op game that’s both creative and unpredictable—but mostly just pure fun. Its blend of comedy, spell-crafting depth, and “chaotic” teamwork makes it an overlooked gem for players seeking something funny, challenging, and unique.
Pacific Drive
Pacific Drive is a great first-person survival driving game set in a surreal, abandoned region of the Pacific Northwest known as the Olympic Exclusion Zone. You rely on a single, customizable station wagon as your lifeline while navigating storms, anomalies, and deteriorating roads.
Scavenging resources, maintaining your wagon, and planning out routes are all part of the gameplay loop, where every trip into the Zone will be a surprise. As you explore, you uncover the mysteries behind the region’s collapse through environmental storytelling. Pacific Drive offers a fresh twist on survival games by letting you build a bond with your car and immerse yourself in its atmospheric world.
Sand Land
Sand Land is an action RPG based on Akira Toriyama’s manga, set in a vast desert world where water is scarce. You play as Beelzebub, the mischievous Demon Prince, who teams up with Sheriff Rao and the wise demon Thief on a quest to uncover a long-lost water source.
The world is vibrant, humorous, and filled with quirky characters true to Toriyama’s iconic art style. Sand Land combines heartfelt storytelling with inventive exploration, mixing in some really fun action sequences to boot. It’s a charming, colorful world, with solid RPG systems, and is an underappreciated game that stands out as far as adaptations go.
Still Wakes The Deep
Still Wakes the Deep is a 2024 narrative-driven horror game set on a remote oil rig in the North Sea, where an ordinary worker finds himself trapped and haunted by an otherworldly presence invading the structure. With no weapons and limited resources, you use stealth and survival mechanics to navigate the rig, pushing you to crawl through tight spaces, repair failing systems, and stay ahead of the lingering threat.
The rig itself acts as both the setting and the main antagonist, with haunting creaks and groans mixed with violent storms constantly keeping you on edge. Still Wakes the Deep‘s storytelling and realistic characters immerse you in the game without relying on cheap scares. It’s a really great cinematic experience with solid stealth-based gameplay, and was recently made available on PS Plus’s November rollout.
Syberia – The World Before
Syberia – The World Before follows the intertwined journeys of Kate Walker and Dana Roze, two women separated by decades but connected through art, war, and a mystery that spans continents. The game blends classic point-and-click mechanics with clever environmental puzzles, letting you unravel its story at a calm, steady pace.
The game is the newest entry in the Syberia saga, with a 2022 release that many players loved, despite the game not garnering much attention. Syberia – The World Before’s is a rare adventure game that feels genuinely human, carried by strong performances and really great, nuanced writing. Despite that, it slipped under many players’ radar, and is a great find on PS Plus.
Thymesia
Thymesia is a criminally overlooked soulslike that, despite getting great reviews, didn’t make it into most soulslike fans’ lineup, likely due to so many other great souslike games releasing around the same time, the biggest being THE Souls game of the decade, Elden Ring. Both games launched in 2022, with Elden Ring absolutely dwarfing any other soulslike game released in its vicinity.
However, while Thymesia is smaller in scale and budget than genre giants like Elden Ring or even the more recent hit, Lies of P, that’s also what makes it refreshing, with focused, stylish, and unapologetically challenging gameplay that rivals any soulslike experience out there. In a crowded landscape of endless top-tier soulslike RPGs, Thymesia is one of the best you’ll find on PlayStation Plus.
- Brand
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Sony
- Original Release Date
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June 29, 2010
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$59.99 (Essential), $99.99 (Extra), $119.99 (Premium) – Per Year
- App Store
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PlayStation Store
