Best battle royale games to play in 2024

What are the best battle royale games? Each one of these multiplayer games revolves around one core idea: lots of players go in, and only one can leave. Battle royale is a violent, unpredictable, and frenzied multiplayer mode where the only goal is to endure until you’re the sole survivor. All tactics and styles of play are equally viable in the best battle royale games. You can win by hiding in bushes and waiting for the herd to thin out, or scavenge a weapon and start reducing the numbers yourself.

With the explosion of free PC games like Fortnite, Warzone, and Apex Legends, you would be forgiven for thinking there are only three battle royales out there, but there are now numerous other contenders to challenge them, each with its own spin on the established formula. Whether you’re after a battle royale FPS game or an inventive new twist on the formula, there’s something out there for everyone. So, to help you broaden your horizons, we have assembled this handy guide to the best battle royale games on PC.

The best battle royale games on PC in 2024 are:

CRSED: F.O.A.D.

It may have started out as a joke, but the game formally known as Cuisine Royale is still pulling in steady player counts more than a year after its initial launch. The secret to their success? PUBG-like gameplay, steady updates that bring fresh content to the game, and a cosmetics-only free-to-play model.

CRSED also offers its own tweaks to the established battle royale games formula. The most obvious one is that instead of military armor and equipment, every player has to use pots, pans, and various other pieces of kitchenware to keep themselves safe from bullets. Other neat tweaks like a severely reduced player count and simple WW2 games-inspired weaponry keep fights simple and competitive. If you’re looking for a semi-realistic, free-to-play BR game, then CRSED: F.O.A.D. is one of the best currently around.

Play CRSED: F.O.A.D. for free.

Naraka Bladepoint

Naraka Bladepoint was the most anticipated battle royale game of 2021, with over 160,000 concurrent players joining the fray during its second open beta period. Though the game does include traditional weapons, you settle most fights by melee combat. This is where Naraka Bladepoint separates itself from the rest of the competition. Combat plays out like a fighting game – players need to consider every move to avoid being punished by their opponent.

Naraka Bladepoint focuses on verticality, as each player has access to a grappling hook and parkour abilities. Depending on which Naraka: Bladepoint character you pick, your playstyle can drastically change. For example, Matari has powerful stealth abilities, which can be great for picking off injured enemies, or Tarka Ji can throw fireballs that deal AoE damage. Read our guides to pick up some helpful beginner tips, find out what the best weapons are, and discover how to customize your character. For more on this frantic melee BR, check out our Naraka Bladepoint review.

Play Naraka Bladepoint for free.

Call of Duty: Warzone

Warzone deviates from the standard battle royale games formula in pretty much every area… save for the fact that there’s still an ever-shrinking circle of death, forcing all 100 players into conflict on Urzikstan until only one team remains. There are respawns in the form of a bizarre 2v2 duel in the Gulag. You can collect cash and spend it on respawning teammates or killstreaks at Buy Stations, and you can even set up your best Warzone loadout before a match, if you intend to risk it all for your preferred guns. All of this helps make Warzone a BR game where losing one teammate really isn’t a big deal, meaning you’re free to play as aggressively as you want.

Pretty much any common assault rifle is good enough to net you a kill – looting is mostly useful for earning cash and ammo – so you can focus on getting into and out of as many scraps as possible. Other tweaks aid to the simplicity: the zone is incredibly lethal so there’s no camping in the gas meta, armor plates cover your whole body so you don’t need to worry about helmets, and health regenerates just as it does in multiplayer. So if you’re looking for a free battle royale game that’s fast-paced and accessible, then Warzone is one of the best options out there, and one of the best war games too.

My Hero Ultra Rumble

Leap into the hectic world of My Hero Academia as one of the unique school kids equipped with a unique Quirk, a special ability that gives that superhero-like powers. In this 24-player battle royale game, players pair up with two additional players as they look to become the last team standing on the battlefield.

Each hero is split into five archetypes: Assault, Rapid, Technical, Strike, and Support. You’ll want to pick characters on the roster that provide a good mix of everything, rather than rely entirely on one class to get you through matches. New seasons drop every few months, unlocking more characters, costumes, and stages for players to get their hands on. The best part is that the game is free to play, so you can give this third-person anime game a shot without spending any cash.

Fall Guys

Fall Guys borrows elements from the battle royale genre and the hit Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle to create something entirely unique. Bringing together 60 contestants, each player must defeat their fellow jelly beans in a mad dash for the finish line, but only the top number of players can progress through each round to eventually be crowned victorious. The challenges aren’t always obstacle courses either, they range from memorization games, clinging to a platform for dear life, and even an oversized football match that splits players into two separate teams.

The beauty of Fall Guys is that no matter how skilled you are, almost anyone can win, and that random factor is what makes Fall Guys so entertaining. Even if you don’t win, you’ll have a good story to tell. While the popularity of Fall Guys has dropped off since it launched back in August 2020, the game is still incredibly popular. The developers continue to release new content every few months, like new games, skins, and challenges, and they listen to community feedback to fine-tune the experience for new and experienced players alike.

Apex Legends

Apex Legends zips along at an astonishing pace. Sure, it may not be the parkour and wall-running we’ve come to expect from Respawn’s famous robot game, but this battle royale moves in its own way. Sprinting is swifter than you’d expect, and sliding takes you a greater distance, especially with the mountainous terrain considered. Movement sets the tone of the gun play, too: if your team successfully flanks another in a well-timed push, you earn their bounty.

Apex Legends weapons themselves are finely tuned, showing Respawn’s confidence in launching Apex Legends as a full game rather than in early access. Shotguns fire off with a fearsome crunch that can punish a poorly timed push as much as a well-placed headshot will aid anyone who is a dab hand with a sniper rifle. What’s more, from a time-hopping assassin to a zip-line quip-happy robot, the cast of Apex Legends characters is wonderfully diverse, quirky, and cool to inhabit.

Deceive Inc.

Deceive Inc. is one of the games on this list that stands out from the rest thanks to a unique concept. Choose from a collection of badass spies, each with unique weapons and skills, before you are dropped into a bustling cityscape, shopping mall, or one of the other interesting maps.

Once in, you’re kitted in a disguise to blend in with one of the many NPCs going about their business — as are your opponents. Deceive Inc. lobbies are made up of 12 people, significantly less than most battle royale games. Not knowing who your enemies are among the countless NPCs around you makes it feel like there are hundreds of them. Watch out for characters doing anything shifty, and you can take the chance to take them out, if you’re willing to off an innocent bystander. Nearby AI guards won’t like this, though, and they might also try to take you down.

While all of this is going on, you also need to gather intel, complete the objective, and extract a mysterious suitcase. Deceive Inc. can be won by taking out every other spy or by extracting successfully. You can choose to go in all guns blazing, or simply wait by an extraction point to take out your foe in the last seconds. Either way, there’s an array of spy tools to help you on your mission. 

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

There’s a reason PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds regularly boasts hundreds of thousands of concurrent players and has sold millions of copies: it’s the basic battle royale premise done right. PlayerUnknown isn’t just a cool-sounding title either, it’s the pseudonym of Brendan Greene: the creator of PUBG, and the man responsible for the incredibly popular Arma 3 Battle Royale mod.

That experience shows in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which forgoes complications like crafting and a complex melee fighting system and instead focuses on razor-sharp firefights, tactical play, and scavenging. More so than any other battle royale game on this list, PUBG feels and controls realistically, resulting in reactive gameplay that never grows old.

Fortnite

Want some poppy, comic book visuals with your 100-man massacres? Fortnite Battle Royale takes the perfectly poised match structure of PUBG and ditches all the gritty realism for bright colors and soft edges. Moreover, Epic Games continues to outdo themselves with each new Fortnite season, changing the map, adding heaps of new Fortnite skins, and overhauling gameplay mechanics. It’s no wonder Fortnite player numbers continue to swell: this is the current king of battle royales.

In the original build mode, you’re also able to harvest resources and build structures like houses to camp in, walls for cover, and ramps to help you climb mountains. This is a battle royale game for those who like to get creative. That said, building takes quite a while to get good at, but you can jump directly into the fight by playing the No Build mode. This game mode offers exactly what it says, giving you the freedom of Fortnite without any of the resource gathering or building mechanics to get confused by. And if you tire of the BR mode, then you can hop into Fortnite Creative mode and play some incredible player-made maps, creations, and game modes using Fortnite Island codes.

Crab Game

As it says on the Crab Game Steam page, this fun battle royale game
is “definitely not based on any online streaming pop culture Korean TV show”… While we let you decide whether that’s true or not, let’s take a closer look at some “new and original” games you can experience in Crab Game.

Unlike some games on this list, players have to concentrate on their own success in hopes that everyone else fails first. In a selection of childhood games such as The Floor is Lava and Red Light, Green Light, your goal is to survive until the clock runs down. Pride is the only prize on offer here though, we’re afraid, and not a life-changing sum of money.

Super Animal Royale

Super Animal Royale is a top-down 2D battle royale where 64 players playing as adorable critters fight to the death. These cute animals may look innocent and sweet, but they’re capable of wielding an array of weapons. The battles take place in an abandoned safari park, though that doesn’t explain where the weapons came from…

If you’re after a Hotline Miami-style battle royale game, Super Animal Royale is for you. This colorful BR also supports cross-platform, allowing PC players to square off against their console friends. The best part is that this game is completely free, and it can be played in solos, duos, and squads, for co-op multiplayer fun.

Totally Accurate Battlegrounds

What started development as an April Fool’s Day joke turned into one of the most inventive battle royale games of 2018, and developer Landfall can claim three million Totally Accurate Battlegrounds downloads in four days as proof. Totally Accurate Battlegrounds (TABG) boasts countless melee and ranged weapons, attachments, and gear to ensure every gun battle is as unpredictable and messy as the ragdolling character models.

TABG’s big selling point is its exaggerated physics, which sees your character flopping up staircases and tumbling over obstacles. You’ve also got the recoil from high-caliber weapons, punting you backward with every shot. Landfall embraces the goofy nature of their battle royale with a ridiculous character customizer and a dedicated key for holding your weapon sideways and beatboxing.

Minecraft Survival Games

Owing to the total freedom afforded to players by Minecraft, particularly on PC, it was only a matter of time before somebody made a version of The Hunger Games in Mojang’s family-oriented sandbox. That creative freedom means there are hundreds upon hundreds of maps, arena styles, weapons, armor setups, and rules to keep the experience varied depending on which Minecraft server you decide to play on.

Rather than players spawning or dropping into the map at random points, and unlike some of the best Minecraft maps in its parent game, most servers pay tribute to the blockbuster franchise by spawning players around a cache of weapons. When the timer hits zero, it’s anyone’s game. Rush to the weapons and risk dying in the immediate fray, or hope to scavenge one from a corpse later on? Minecraft Survival Games is a solid battle royale experience, and the sheer number of custom variants ensures it serves every niche.

Unturned: Arena mode

One of the most surprising things about the free-to-play Unturned is that it boasts some remarkably polished and realistic gunplay. Where that really shines is in Arena Mode, an official game mode that borrows the core mechanics of PUBG, cuts the player count to 16, and takes place on one of four small maps.

Don’t let Unturned: Arena Mode fool you with its blocky art style – it is a hardcore shooter deep down, which shows in its breadth of weapons and attachments. The fact that there are four distinct maps to fight through also adds an extra level of skill, as different tactics and map knowledge come into play. So if you’re after a less gritty battle royale game, but still crave the high-skill cap and realistic gunplay, then seek out Unturned: Arena Mode. It may not quite be one of the best zombie games on PC, but shooting Unturned’s cutesy undead hordes is still a blast. And it’s free, which is always welcome.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt

Vampire: The Masquerade is probably the last series you’d expect to have a battle royale game, but it works surprisingly well. Despite the initial hesitation from the VtM community, the devs have proven they know how to introduce battle royale to the World of Darkness series. It turns out that playing as powerful vampires with supernatural abilities makes for a fun time.

Bloodhunt plays a lot like PUBG with superpowers. These vampires may have abilities, but they still use weapons to get the business done. The supernatural abilities in Bloodhunt see fights ensue across the rooftops of Prague as teams leap from building to building. Players can revive if left alone for long enough, so be sure to ‘diablerise’ them before they get the chance. Bloodhunt rewards situational awareness almost as much as accuracy with the battlegrounds being more vertical than anything else on this list, you’ll do well to watch the skies, as well as your back. Sadly, the devs recently announced they will not be supporting the game anymore as Bloodhunt doesn’t have enough active players. The servers will not be switched offline any time soon, but don’t expect any new updates.

Super Bomberman R 2

If you were being cynical, you could argue that every game could have a battle royale mode. Well, Super Bomberman R 2 is proof of that, pitting together 64 players in multiple arenas, bringing the victors of each battlefield onto one arena.

Let’s be honest, the classic Bomberman formula is as good as it’s ever going to get. Up to eight players gather in an arena filled with blocks, and they’re equipped with bombs to clear those blocks and gain power-ups. The player who manages to stay alive at the end of the game is the winner. Battle 64 brings that nail-biting battle royale flavor to the game, leaving the last person standing as the ultimate winner.

Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs

64 Pacs enter one arena, but only one Pac leaves to determine who the best player in the maze is. Each maze is joined to several other mazes, creating one super maze. Your goal is to eat as many pellets as you can, survive the ghosts, make your way to the connected mazes, and do the same thing there. There are items scattered around the maze to power you up, including shields, and speed upgrades to give you an advantage against your friends and foes.

There are missions on offer for every player, giving you a score boost if you go out of your way to accomplish more than your standard goal. Once the lights start flashing in your arena, that means you only have a limited amount of time to get out of there before the battlefield collapses. Featuring the casual Elimination mode which pits together players of all skill levels, and a specialized Ranked mode that matches you up with the best players across all platforms, there’s plenty of Pac-Man action in Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs.

Slither.io

Take the classic mobile phone game, Snake, expand the battlefield, then add hundreds of players. The result is Slitherio, a battle royale version of Snake that turns the simple game into an all out brawl. As you collect pellets on the field, your snake grows larger, allowing you to trap smaller snakes using your body. If smaller snakes touch you, they burst into pellets, giving you the chance to become even larger. Depending on how good you are at outmaneuvering other players, your session could last a long time as you become the largest snake on the server.

That’s your lot, the best battle royale games on PC. If you need to kill some time while the best upcoming PC games finish baking, you really should fire up the brutal battle royales above. Granted, Fortnite and PUBG may have conquered the world, but there are some smaller wonders out there worth playing for yourself.