The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

Return to Moria is the one for Lord of the Rings fans who also want a crafting survival loop. You are dwarves reclaiming Moria, which means mining, managing darkness, building camp upkeep, and dealing with whatever is still living in the deep. The IP does a lot of the lifting in terms of setting, and the survival systems are genuine rather than decorative. It did not crack the top ten because the overall production quality is a step below the games above it, and the survival pressure is not quite as sustained. As a co-op experience for people who want something thematic and moderately demanding, it is a comfortable download from the PS Plus catalogue.

Return to Moria surprised me. I went in expecting a relatively thin Lord of the Rings tie-in and found a genuinely competent survival crafter built around the specific pressure of being underground in the dark with limited supplies. Food, sleep, temperature, and noise management all feed into the expedition structure in ways that feel considered rather than checklist-driven. The fantasy setting is the draw for anyone who grew up with Tolkien, but the survival loop holds up independently of the license. Up to eight players in a hosted persistent world is generous, and the co-op encourages the kind of natural role division, fighters out front, builders back at camp, that makes these sessions memorable. The polish is not quite top-tier, but for fantasy survival on PS5 this is the clearest recommendation.

I have a soft spot for anything set in Middle-earth. Always have. It's the fantasy world I keep coming back to across games, films, and books, and the idea of playing a Dwarf reclaiming Moria genuinely got my attention in a way that most survival crafters don't. You are a Dwarf. Moria has been reclaimed in name. Now you need to dig through it, rebuild it, and survive whatever is still lurking in the dark. Return to Moria is a survival crafting game in the vein of Valheim, set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth with lore that takes the source material seriously. Up to 8-player co-op online. The procedurally generated depths mean no two playthroughs share the same layout, which matters more than it sounds. Mining into a new cavern and not knowing what you'll find keeps the pacing alive in a genre that can go flat once you've seen everything. The building and crafting systems aren't as deep as some competitors, but there's enough here to keep a group busy for 20 to 30 hours. Solo is playable and honestly more atmospheric than I expected. Quieter, slower, but the feeling of being alone underground in Moria, hearing something move before you can see it, does a lot of the heavy lifting. If you have two or three friends who like survival games, though, that's clearly the better use case. This one lands near the top of the bundle for me.