15 Most Unique PS4 Games

The Last of Us came out on the PS3 first, and The Last of Us Remastered brought it to the PS4 in 2014. To make it, Naughty Dog split into two teams for the first time, with the other one working on Uncharted 3. Joel and Ellie's relationship became the focus of development, and the rest of the game was built around it. Gustavo Santaolalla composed and performed the score.

It had sold 17 million copies by April 2018, which makes it the most famous game on this list by a long way. That is an odd fit for a list of unusual games. Still, players looking for something different kept naming it. Its pull is less about one strange mechanic and more about how quiet and patient it is for a big action game.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is by The Chinese Room, and it is considered a spiritual successor to their game Dear Esther. It came out on the PS4 on 11 August 2015, and on Windows the following April. While making Dear Esther, the team had wanted to add interactive elements, and this is where that idea went.

The story is a quarantine. A man named Stephen is convinced something will spread beyond his village if it is not contained, so he urges the local government to seal the area off, with the roads blocked and the phone lines cut. He comes to believe it can travel down telephone lines and through television sets. You walk the empty village and piece it together. It received positive reviews from critics, and players who ask for something different keep pointing to it.

Everything was developed by the Irish artist David OReilly, and it came out on the PS4 on March 21, 2017, a month before Windows and macOS. You take control of lifeforms and objects, then hop into new things you find. Keep going and you end up shifting down to the sub-atomic level, and after that the game lets you climb back up to bigger things.

Before this, OReilly made Mountain, a game where you have limited interactions with a virtual mountain. Learning Unity for that one gave him part of the idea for this one. Double Fine published both. When someone asks for the strangest thing on the console, this is the game that answers most literally. Players who want something unlike anything else keep naming it, and nobody has to argue very hard.

Outer Wilds began in 2012 as director Alex Beachum's master's thesis. He wanted an exploration game where the player character was not the center of the game world. After it won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2015 Independent Games Festival, Annapurna joined as publisher and paid to grow it beyond a student project. You play an unnamed space explorer in a small planetary system, the first to travel with a translator for the writing of the Nomai.

It won Best Game at the 16th British Academy Games Awards, and it is regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made. Players looking for something unconventional keep naming it. Do yourself a favour and look nothing up before you start, because finding things out is the whole game.

Shadow of the Colossus started on the PS2, and Bluepoint Games remade it in high definition for the PS4 in 2018. The monster movie, with the original Godzilla as the famous example, was a source of inspiration for the idea. The colossi do not venture outside their own territory in the forbidden land, and some are peaceful and will only attack when provoked.

Only one animal changes how you play: eat the tail of a certain kind of lizard and Wander's stamina gauge goes up. The mysterious voice that sends you out, Dormin, speaks with a male and a female voice at once. A whole game made of empty fields and giant boss fights still sounds strange today. Players who want a game built on very little keep naming it.

Death Stranding is the first game from Kojima Productions after the split from Konami, and it came out on the PS4 in November 2019. You play Sam Porter Bridges, a courier delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them through a communications network. Norman Reedus plays him. Kojima called it the first strand game, a new genre built around social elements, and compared it to Metal Gear, which was called an action game during its release because the stealth genre had not been established.

Porters carry a BB with them in a pod that simulates a womb. That is not even the strangest part. Critics praised the voice acting and the soundtrack, and were more mixed on the gameplay and story. Players who want something unlike other big games keep naming it.

Journey was released on the PlayStation Network in March 2012 and ported to the PS4 in July 2015. You meet anonymous players along the way, and the only form of communication between the two of you is a musical chime. The cloaked figure does not have visible arms, so the chime does most of the work. The music, composed by Austin Wintory, dynamically responds to what you do.

It was the last game made under a three-game contract between Thatgamecompany and Sony, and the score was nominated for a Grammy. Critics have called it a moving and emotional experience. It is short, and it never explains itself. Players asking for something different keep naming it, and for a lot of them it is the first game that comes to mind.

Detroit: Become Human came out on the PS4 in May 2018, and it is based on Kara, Quantic Dream's 2012 technology demonstration. To research the setting, the developers visited Detroit. Writer and director David Cage completed the script in over two years. Kara, Connor and Markus, the three androids you play, each got their own composer.

It is Quantic Dream's best-selling game, at 15 million units sold by January 2026. A big-budget game about androids is not weird the way a game about being a speck of dust is weird. What sets it apart is how far the story splits depending on what you do. Players keep recommending it when someone asks for something weird.

Until Dawn was originally planned as a first-person game for the PS3's motion controller. It came out on the PS4 in August 2015 instead, with a cast that includes Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere. Players have to make quick decisions that may have unforeseen consequences, and the game keeps track of them with what it calls the butterfly effect. Critics praised the branching story and the butterfly effect system, and criticised the controls.

There was little marketing effort from Sony, and its sales surpassed expectations anyway. Supermassive followed it with a prequel, and later made The Quarry as a spiritual successor. Teen horror films are full of bad decisions, and this is the game that hands those decisions to you. Players asking for something different keep naming it.

Pyre was the third game from Supergiant, after Transistor, and it came out in July 2017. Its matches play like a sport of its own. You control only one character at a time by passing the orb among the three, and whoever holds the orb is the one you control. To connect the matches, you guide your party across an overworld and decide where to go based on available resources and timing.

It received generally positive reviews upon release. One player pitched it as the story of "a ragtag bunch of halfway heroes trying to claw their way out of the pits of hell", which is about right. Players who ask for something odd keep naming it. It is the one on this list most likely to have slipped past you.

Japan Studio approached FromSoftware about making a game together, and Bloodborne was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. It began development in 2012 under the working title of Project Beast. You follow a Hunter through Yharnam, a Gothic city inspired by the Victorian era whose people are afflicted with a blood-borne disease, and the horror borrows from Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

Many of its melee weapons transform between two forms with different attacks, and the Rally system gives back lost health if you strike an enemy quickly after taking damage. It had sold 7.46 million copies by February 2022, and it has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Few hard games have a world this odd, and players keep putting it forward when asked for something unusual.

Gravity Rush began development on the PS3 under the title Gravité before moving to the Vita. Gravity Rush Remastered, a remaster by Bluepoint Games, brought it to the PS4 in 2016 in the West. Director Keiichiro Toyama conceived it before his work on Silent Hill and the Siren series. The world, story and art style drew from Japanese and Western comics, including the work of the French artist Jean Giraud.

During early testing, the team built small rooms and tunnels just to work out what cues to give players about which way was up and down. Critics praised the art style and Kat, and criticized the controls. Players looking for something unique keep naming it, and most of them tell you to play the sequel right after.

Work on Gravity Rush 2 started when the development of the first game was finished. The core mechanic is still Kat's ability to manipulate gravity, which allows unique movements and navigation. This time you choose among three gravity styles: the original, Lunar and Jupiter. Jupiter makes Kat feel heavy, giving her attacks more impact, and you change between styles using the touch pad.

It has three times the missions of the first game and runs between 20 and 40 hours. Raven, who was an antagonist for most of the first game, becomes an ally who fights with Kat. The environments are destructible too. Falling sideways into a building never gets old. Players who want something unique keep naming it, often together with the first game.

Team Ico began developing The Last Guardian in 2007. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, and it shares a style and themes with his earlier games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Sony announced it at E3 2009 with a planned release in 2011 for the PS3. Then the delays came: Ueda and other Team Ico members left Sony, and hardware difficulties moved the game to the PS4 in 2012.

The creature is called Trico. So much of the game relies on non-verbal communication between the boy and Trico that Ueda felt a narrator would keep you in the boy's head. Critics praised the art direction and Trico, and some criticized the gameplay. Players who want something unique keep naming it.

Jonathan Blow started work on The Witness in 2008, shortly after releasing Braid. The first plan was a 2013 release on the PS3 and Xbox 360, but the engine became more demanding, and it came out on Windows and PS4 in January 2016 instead. The team developed their own game engine and hired architects and landscape architects to design the structures on the island.

The puzzles are based on grids on panels around the island, and there is no text or dialogue explaining their rules. The puzzles teach the rules themselves. Blow wanted players to learn from observation and come to their own epiphanies. It sold over 100,000 copies in its first week, about as many as Braid did in a year. When players ask for unique PS4 games, no game comes up more.