As of December 2017, the PS4 had sold just over 70 million units around the world. While fans had flocked to the console for big budget exclusives such as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Bloodborne, and Horizon Zero Dawn, many are also interested in playing the weird, wonderful and highly unusual games that the PS4 has to offer. From delightfully strange indies to genre mashups you’d never expect to see, here are seven peculiar PS4 games for you to enjoy.
1. The Witness
First released in 2016, 3D puzzle game The Witness is the latest game from talented (but often divisive) game developer Jonathan Blow. Known for the innovative design style of 2008 game Braid, Blow used this same approach with The Witness, tasking players with exploring an island containing unusual structures and puzzles to solve. Containing more than 500 puzzles, each involving rules, grids and paths, The Witness is a tough game to solve. But this is only all the more appealing to players, with the game having made more than $5 million in sales in its first week.
2. The Four Kings Casino and Slots
Most of the MMOs available on the PS4 are in the fantasy trope, with games like The Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy 14 pitting players against mythical creatures. Casino MMO The Four Kings Casino and Slots is part casino game and MMO, bucking the trend for a genre mashup that you may not have expected. The game is regarded as one of the best PS4 casino games, allowing players to create their own avatar and play games such as blackjack and roulette. The social elements mean that players can also interact with one another as they play.
3. Push Me Pull You
Push Me Pull You could not be more unusual if it tried. The game is a multiplayer, sports-like game featuring humans with sausage bodies that have heads on each end (players can also switch the human heads for dog heads to make sausage dogs). The aim of the game is to gain control of a ball which players must then try and pull towards their goal space in order to score. Gameplay is a squidgy mess to watch as the sausage characters crawl around on their hands, it is hugely entertaining though and it is considered one of the most fun local multiplayer titles around.
4. Journey
In games with multiplayer features that see you running into other players, the typical forms of interaction involve chat windows, voice headsets, and funny dance emotes but Journey is the total opposite. First released on PS3 in 2012 before being re-released on PS4 in 2015, Journey sees players travel through a desert towards a mountain, flying, exploring and discovering symbols along the way. Players may also come across one another and are able to help each other and use musical chimes to communicate. It completely goes against typical entertaining features but Journey is a much-loved critically acclaimed title nonetheless and one that holds a place on many people’s lists of best PS4 games.
5. Octodad: Dadliest Catch
If you were to imagine a game about an octopus, you would probably assume that it involved the seabed. Maybe you would gobble up fish, avoid fishermen and mines and explore lost cities of Atlantis. But think again because humorous indie game Octodad: Dadliest Catch has none of those features. Instead, it sees protagonist Octodad try and “blend in” in a suburban, human community. Players control his tentacles and they have to fight to stay undetected (even though they are an octopus in a business suit), including avoiding scientists and security guards, going shopping, and working in a hospital.
6. Surgeon Simulator
Despite the name, Surgeon Simulator is anything but a serious medical sim game. Released on PS4 in 2014, Surgeon Simulator tasks players by performing surgery on a patient from a first-person perspective, including performing heart, eye, and even tooth transplants. Completing the surgery successfully is the total opposite of “simple” though as the game keeps things difficult, by making players work on patients in the back of a moving ambulance (in some levels) making the tools bounce around the game screen. The game’s ridiculous (but also ridiculously fun) gameplay has proved a hit with fans and developer Bossa Studios is also planning to bring the game to Nintendo Switch, allowing players on the portable platform to enjoy the tricky title too.
Since launch, PS4 platform holder Sony has embraced the full community of game developers including those who want to make strange games that don’t quite work on paper. As the company continues to encourage devs with odd ideas to release their titles on the platform, we can expect more unusual PS4 games to become available. However, due to their nature, you probably won’t be able to guess what the next crop of weird games will be about.
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