PlayStation Plus Essential Games for September 2025, Explained

The PlayStation Plus Essential games for September 2025 are three hits in completely different genres. Psychonauts 2 is the platformer of the bunch. Stardew Valley is the cozy farming sim. Viewfinder is the first-person puzzler. And while there is a variability to their level of acclaim, all three have been received relatively well. But each game has a story and its own intricacies, so it’s worth explaining every one of them to paint a better picture for subscribers who are going to redeem these games and potentially play them for the first time.

Here’s the rundown for all three PlayStation Plus Essential games for September 2025.

1) Psychonauts 2

Psychonauts 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the original mind-melding platformer. It was released in 2021 to widespread acclaim, garnering an average score of 89.

Like the first game, this follow-up is a 3D platformer that tasks players with delving into the brain cavities of its inhabitants in order to unlock the next piece of the story. It’s a unique premise fitting of a unique developer like Double Fine Productions and gives the team room to explore various traumas and pieces of emotional baggage — the latter of which is literally a type of collectible.

These mental anguishes made manifest give way for novel concepts since the game isn’t bound by reality. There’s a trippy psychedelic stage set during a music festival, as well as one revolving around a post worker that’s filled with all sorts of office-related hazards (and an interactive typewriter you can almost type swear words on). The story can get a little too twisty for its own good, particularly at the end, but it uses these stages to coherently tie into the narrative and look into how past hardships can deform our current realities.

And as was the case with the 2005 debut, the gameplay isn’t always able to keep up with its level of narrative originality. Its controls are tighter and deeper than the ones seen in that first installment, and jumping around its various stages is often smooth enough, but it’s mostly rather pedestrian and doesn’t mechanically offer much that hasn’t been done (and done better) before. 

Psychonauts 2 did not see much post-launch support, like many modestly scoped single-player games. However, this PS4 game was patched to run at 60 frames per second on PS5. This update also added a fair bit of quality-of-life changes that make its collectibles easier to track, making that attainable Platinum trophy even more attainable.

2) Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is the wildly successful farming simulator that’s received a huge following that consists of hardcore and casual players since its release in 2016. It has received an average score of 90, making it just barely the highest-rated game of the PS Plus trio.

Stardew Valley has often been seen as a modern and slightly different take on Harvest Moon, and that tracks since the two have many similarities. Stardew Valley lets players farm, fish, and mine, which are all fairly standard tasks that are elevated because of how they are implemented. Everything in Stardew Valley is dictated by a timer and this pushes players to manage their time wisely, lest they finish the day unfulfilled. But it’s been expertly balanced to ensure that users always have half-finished tasks that they are motivated to wrap up first thing in the morning. This push and pull, as well as the will to optimize, is at the heart of Stardew Valley and is why it is still often seen as one of the genre’s best games.

Stardew Valley has notoriously been supported for an incredibly long time. Solo developer ConcernedApe has spent almost a decade adding new features and tweaking the game, making it radically different from the version that launched all those years ago. Along with a litany of bug fixes and quality-of-life additions, it has received new events, cooperative multiplayer, tailoring, new enemies, additional upgrades, more music, a ton of cosmetics, endgame content, more pets, and much, much more. Its last major update came in March 2024, but even though ConcernedApe is working on Haunted Chocolatier, he has recently confirmed that another update is on the way.

3) Viewfinder

Viewfinder is a first-person puzzler where players snap pictures to morph the world in front of them. It was mostly received well, nabbing an average score of 83.

Viewfinder has a light story bubbling in the background that doesn’t land, but the main attraction here is the aforementioned puzzle-heavy gameplay. Taking 2D pictures of the environment with an enchanted instant camera and then placing those pictures down to materialize a 3D version of said image is an eye-catching mechanic that makes it easy to see why clips of this game blew up on social media. This one-of-a-kind mechanic requires players to think in different dimensions. For example, if there’s a gap between two platforms, taking a picture of the floor and then positioning it in the right position will literally bridge the gap. 

It gets slightly more complicated from there as players have to duplicate batteries and work around substances that cannot be photographed. However, Viewfinder doesn’t fulfill its vast potential and ends up rarely having puzzles that go beyond the most basic form of copying batteries and making bridges. It’s a short puzzler with a central mechanic as novel as Portal’s portals, but it lacks the brilliant game behind it to fully execute on its ideas.

Viewfinder also didn’t see much post-launch support, as is to be expected for a brief single-player puzzle game. However, it did receive a simple tracker that made its well-hidden collectibles easier to, well, track. 

Which of these three games is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

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