The PlayStation Plus Essential lineup for June 2026, as it usually does, contains a trio of games. The titles this month are Grounded Fully Yoked Edition, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, all of which are somewhat niche. However, they are all primarily focused around multiplayer, meaning those who want to strictly play solo are better luck visiting last month’s games or waiting for next month’s.
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Here’s an explainer for all three PlayStation Plus Essential titles and how they have evolved since launch. All three will be available to all tiers of PlayStation Plus subscribers from June 2nd to July 6th.
3) Grounded Fully Yoked Edition
Grounded Fully Yolked Edition is the complete edition of the survival crafting game that originally hit 1.0 in 2022 after a few years in early access. It came to PlayStation consoles (as well as Nintendo Switch) in 2024. It was received well and garnered an average score of 82.
Grounded is set in a backyard starring shrunken children, making for quite a unique take on a crowded genre. This allows it to have a playful sense of humor that uses the setting well, as players will have to gather water from dew drops, traverse the fiery wreckage of a spilled grill, and fight giant bugs as if they were Dark Souls bosses. The RPG mechanics are quite deep here and make for a compelling loop of gathering resources, swatting bugs, and building both your base and character. It’s somewhat standard survival game fare, but it is all elevated through its aforementioned tone and premise as well as its vast amount of quality-of-life features, making for a solid base that bests many of its peers. Even though it has a robust sequel, this first entry is still solid enough in its own right.
Grounded was in development for years and saw many updates but those just came included with the PlayStation version. The “Fully Yoked” part of the title stems from the beefy patch that launched with said versions, and added ant queen factions to interact with, New Game Plus, and more items and upgrades. The only big update that came out following the PlayStation port release came with an AFK state that has the AFK player’s avatar 95% less thirsty and hungry while idling, as well as a few tweaks in various areas that make users move faster. Pets were also buffed, story quests could be enabled in its more freeform Playgrounds Mode, and armor could be upgraded even more, to name a few of the features found in this update. Grounded also didn’t receive any paid DLC.
2) Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is the 2023 platform fighter with a sizable roster of Nickelodeon characters. It was met with a lukewarm to solid reception, coming in at an average score of 71.
Even though it’s not the strongest platform fighter out there and made with a moderate budget, it is a vast improvement over its bare-bones predecessor. Hits are chunkier, combos are more in-depth, and the character variety is more impressive this time around. The Slime mechanic further makes brawls even more complex because it allows for players to augment moves, break out of combos, cancel out of attacks, or spruce up movement. Online play is rather smooth, too, and the roguelike solo mode is a novel, if temporary, distraction. Poor platforming and weak roguelike mechanics are partially what make it only a temporary distraction, but, much like Street Fighter 6’s shaky World Tour mode, it’s nice to see fighting game developers experiment with the genre.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 saw a fair bit of free and paid support after launch. Outside of numerous balance tweaks across the roster and bug fixes, these updates added features like more campaign save slots, the ability to use the D-pad for movement, an announcer for versus matches, a King of the Hill mode, more campaign power-ups, new items, additional stages, New Game Plus for the campaign, a Squads Mode with team fights, and a survival mode called Gauntlet Run.
The paid DLC comes in the form of a $19.99 costume pack that covers each of the 25 base roster fighters. More importantly, though, the game received four fighters for $6.99 each: Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants, Rocksteady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Iroh and Zuko for Avatar: The Last Airbender.
1) Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a cooperative-focused horde shooter set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game was received positively and has an average score of 75.
Darktide is one of the more popular cooperative shooters and for a good reason. Its blend of first-person gunplay and surprisingly deep melee combat makes the core gameplay loop solid and is put through its paces via the AI director that changes up the hordes and demonstrates the wide enemy variety. This chaos is also, like many of its ilk, enhanced when played with a communicative team playing different classes. So while the story is skippable and some of its modes aren’t as deep as others, it does the essentials rather well. However, the loot-based grind can be, well, quite grindy and rather frustrating. Even with some of the changes, this is a treadmill of a game meant to keep players on board, so it’s not always built for casual or short-term play.
Being a live-service game, Darktide has seen a ton of support over the years. Including significant balance changes meant to make players feel more powerful and “preserve the intensity of the combat, while making it more stable, more readable, and more supportive of different builds and loadouts,” the game has seen various live events, new enemies, additional cosmetics, an extraction-like Expeditions mode, skill tree reworks, additional modifiers, more campaigns, an overhauled stamina bar, extra banter between the characters, mini-campaigns, another character slot, bot AI improvements, a roguelike wave-based mode, a reworked mission board, player reporting, the endgame Havoc mode, overhauled weapon progression, a party finder feature, and much more. As demonstrated by that list that’s a mere sampler of what was added, Darktide has seen a ludicrous amount of updates since its 2022 launch.
As for the paid DLC — aside from the various costumes in the in-game shop — Darktide has two premium classes for $11.99 each and deluxe editions for both that come out to $18.99 apiece and come with more cosmetics. There is also another class coming to the game in June, meaning support for the game has not stopped almost four years later. A deluxe edition upgrade is available for players, too, and comes with cosmetics, currency for the in-game store, and Darktide’s soundtrack. And, of course, there are also various currency packs for use in its in-game store, which heavily exploits player FOMO and is a little gross.
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