Ever since Sony launched its new PlayStation Plus tiers and the games catalogue for members of the Extra and Premium plans, there have been a whole host of top-notch, AAA games available to download and play at no extra cost.
However, there are also plenty of lesser known or forgotten gems available on the service too,. While the likes of God of War, Demon’s Souls, Death Stranding, and Ghost of Tsushima are ready to get stuck into, so too is a great collection of indie treats you really should check out.
We’ve picked three of them for you here – games from smaller developers you might not have considered before. They’re available for PS5 and PS4 – all you need is access to PS Plus Extra or Premium membership to get them for free.
Shadowrun Trilogy
Originally released for the Super Nintendo (SNES) in 1993, Shadowrun was based on the popular cyberpunk tabletop RPG of the same name and was always remembered fondly by the few who actually bought it at the time.
A sequel/reboot followed 20 years later in the guise of Shadowrun Returns, which enjoyed more success thanks to being enthusiastically backed on Kickstarter to aid its production costs. Hairbrained Schemes then followed it up with two further sequels, Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong, which were released on PC and mobile over the next couple of years.
Now all three isometric role-players are available in 4K remastered form on PS5 and PS4, having been released as a trilogy collection by Paradox Interactive in 2022, and you can download them individually on PS Plus.
They stand apart from many other RPGs of their time thanks to excellent character progression and storytelling. They each also have great musical scores and don’t take too much space on your drive, so there’s little excuse not to give them a whirl.
Unpacking
Perhaps not a hidden gem as such, considering it has won numerous awards including two BAFTAs, Unpacking might nonetheless not have been on your radar before.
It’s a puzzle game of sorts, as you have to unpack items from boxes in a collection of different rooms that represent different stages of an unseen character’s life. Each item must be found a home in each room, although there are few wrong answers and the experience is largely cozy.
Where the game excels is that the story is largely unspoken, as you discover more about the lead’s life and experiences through the objects you find in each box. Not only does this make the game more accessible, but it is entirely up to you to realise the narrative as you go.
Unpacking is simply genius in its design (by developer Witch Beam) and a joy from start to finish.
Slay the Spire
With a sequel recently announced, there’s no better time to check out Slay the Spire if you haven’t before.
It is a rogue-like deck building RPG that tasks you with travelling through rooms in increasingly more challenging spires, working your way to the top of each and taking on their ultimate bosses.
Most of the rooms feature monsters and enemies to battle using turn-based card play, and your character (one of four that can be unlocked in the game) can gain extra cards and powers as you progress.
The rules are relatively simple and you are shown the health meter and next action of each foe per turn, but the randomness of deck pulls ensures there’s always a sense of strategy. Building your deck as you go is vital, therefore, and it’ll take plenty of plays before you realise which cards perform best in certain circumstances.
This makes for a ridiculously addictive game that we’ve spent hours at a time on. We suspect you will too.
How much is PS Plus?
While there are three PS Plus membership tiers available, only two of them give you access to the games catalogue – PS Plus Essential is the cheapest but restricts the free games to a handful of curated titles per month (much like a legacy PS Plus subscription).
PS Plus Extra, however, has full access to the library. It costs £10.99 / $14.99 / AU$18.95 a month and you also get the same benefits of Essential membership – multiplayer online play across thousands of games on PS5 and PS4, and the curated monthly titles.
PS Plus Premium is more expensive still, at £13.49 / $17.99 a month, but adds cloud streaming and access to an additional library of classic and retro games, too.
In Australia (and some other regions), there’s also a PS Plus Deluxe plan which replaces Premium in some regions. This costs AU$21.95 a month for access to both the main and classic catalogues, but doesn’t include cloud streaming.
