The free games available to all The Game Awards 2024's GOTY honor. Every month, Sony's gaming subscription service offers at least three games to and play at no additional cost as long as your subscription remains active. These games are available in all three tiers – Essential, Extra, and – starting May 6.

As revealed by PlayStation Blog, May 2025's monthly PlayStation Plus games are Balatro, Ark: Survival Ascended, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Solo-developer effort Balatro competed for TGA's Game of the Year award in December, losing to Astro Bot, but still taking home three awards: Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. Ark: Survival Acended is an Unreal Engine 5 remaster of the perenially popular Ark: Survival Evolved. Finally, Boltgun is a notable entry in the revival of old-school first-person shooters, colloquially known as "boomer shooters."

PS Plus Monthly Games For May Are Balatro, Ark: Survival Ascended, & Warhammer 40K: Boltgun

Available To May 6

Balatro is a roguelike deckbuilder that riffs on poker from solo developer LocalThunk. It quickly rose to be among the roguelike deckbuilder genre's greatest games, tasking players with playing poker hands that synergize with a set of jokers to meet increasing score requirements. There are 150 different jokers to use (some of which need to be unlocked), as well as decks of varying mechanics, multiple difficulty tiers, and plenty of strategy in altering your playing cards themselves.

Ark: Survival Ascended is an ongoing project from Studio Wildcard, which seeks to transfer all of Ark: Survival Evolved's content to Unreal Engine 5, revamping the visuals and gameplay mechanics. ASA is planned to feature not only every expansion that came to ASE, but new DLC as well, including fresh creatures to tame and brand-new storylines. Survival Ascended is being made alongside Ark 2's long development.

Warhammer 40K: Boltgun comes to PlayStation Plus representing the relatively new wave of boomer shooters, which hope to recapture a bygone era of FPS gameplay. Boltgun sees the player don Ultramarine armor and fight the forces of Chaos. Boomer shooters generally follow design principles laid down by the likes of DOOM and Wolfenstein, and Boltgun thrusts the subgenre into the iconic grimdark setting of 40K.

Our Take: Balatro Alone Is Enough To Get Excited About May 2025's PlayStation Plus Games

A Deceptively Addictive Game

May will be a solid month in general for PlayStation Plus subscribers – there's some great variety between the three monthly games – but it's another great chance for Balatro to reach new fans after it has already landed on Xbox Game . Balatro is my personal game of the year for 2024, and I haven't stopped singing its praises. It looks simple at first, and its video poker interface isn't necessarily eye-catching, but it's one of those games that can reconfigure your ideas of what it means for a video game to be fun.

In addition to virtually endless gameplay permutations and exceptional depth, Balatro's aesthetic is ultimately charming, with hypnotic music and exceptionally satisfying sound effects. It's a quirky game that will dig its claws in deep, having you desperately looking for the right joker to elevate your deck and make that oh-so-satisfying flame effect appear on the score counter. It's a wonderful game to get at no additional cost via PlayStation Plus, and it contributes to a strong lineup for May 2025 alongside Ark: Survival Ascended and Warhammer 40K: Boltgun.

Sources: PlayStation Blog, PlayStation/Bluesky