The 16 Best Battle Royale Games

Apex Legends was a little later on the scene than the aforementioned early wave of battle royales, but it emerged as a viable option for many and remains today one of the best options. It’s a game that casual gamers will be able to pick up, play and understand relatively quickly, but there’s enough meat on the bone that those who excel will find there are always ways to get better, whether that’s picking a certain line up of heroes or using certain attachments over others.

Battlefield’s WWII setting means that gameplay is intense, urgent, and feels realistic. "Firestorm" ticks all of the boxes that you want from a battle royale and though it might not be the perfect replacement for your big titles like Apex Legends, it makes for a great experience. The only problem you’ll encounter here is having to wait a little for a game to get started.

Warzone 2.0 hasn’t made the splash that its predecessor did at the start of 2020, but considering the circumstances there and how so many gamers had so much free time to play Warzone during the pandemic, that isn’t even a fair comparison. For gamers who like Call of Duty’s gameplay and want that kind of feel in their battle royale, it’s still hard to go wrong with this game, whether you’re playing a large-scale traditional game or the popular "Resurgence" game mode. At the end of the day, the game still holds up and is a great way to spend a weekend at home playing a multiplayer battle royale with friends. This free-to-play addiction has quickly morphed into one of the best battle royale games on the market.

CRSED: F.O.A.D. (full name Cuisine Royale Second Edition: Fulfilment of All Desires), started out as an April Fool’s joke (as you might have been able to guess from its full name), but due to just how unconventional and fun to play it was, it stuck around longer than most anticipated. The game hits most of your usual battle royale checkboxes but adds elements from other genres like being able to turn invisible, zombie summoning, and more.

"Danger Zone," Counter-Strike’s battle royale mode, was introduced to the game late in 2018. What it does uniquely to most of the other battle royales on here is bringing the battle down to a smaller scale, which only increases the intensity. From the start of the game, you and all 17 other players are given radars that tell you the vicinity that other players are in, so if camping and hiding is your thing, that’s tougher to do here. 

Fall Guys burst onto the scene in 2020 largely due to being free-to-play and its gameshow concept where you have to survive rounds. In the years since its inception, it’s gone through some highs and lows, the latter usually due to long, drawn-out seasons where even hardcore gamers feel the map rotation is a little monotonous. But past all that, for those picking up Fall Guys and playing with the intention of having competitive fun, it’s a great option. The developers recently added a creative mode which needs some tweaks but might be the exact foundation the game needs to hit a new wave.

Fortnite isn’t the game that started the battle royale wave, but it’s without a doubt the game that popularised it. You have Fortnite to thank for the battle pass system and for battle royale games often being free. The game has had an immeasurable impact on the genre and continues to boast a large player base today. If you played casually back when the game first boomed, took a break, and came back to it today, it’d almost feel like a different game with all of the new mechanics, but the general premise remains the same. Be the last person standing.

First introduced in Forza Horizon 4, "The Eliminator" is a battle royale mode where dozens of drivers compete in a constantly shrinking arena until only one is left and crowned the winner. Players start in a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle and their car gets better and better the longer they survive. It’s not a game mode that you should shell out the full price of the game for, but for fans of battle royales and driving games, it’s a mode that marries both genres together surprisingly well.

If you’ve only seen Minecraft from afar or even if you’ve only played in a server or on creative mode casually, then you still have an entire world that you haven’t yet been exposed to. The "Survival Games" are Minecraft’s take on The Hunger Games, one of the original popular battle royales in recent memory. You start in a circle with all of the other players and can either quickly grab a weapon from the center and battle it out or retreat and hope to find something for later.

The unique selling point of Naraka: Bladepoint is that its combat is entirely based on close counters, forcing you to melee. That adds a totally different type of pressure to fights and makes games feel that much more intense and tactical. Instead of spotting someone 100 feet away and pulling out a sniper, here you’ll have to grapple hook, and parkour to them and stick a sword through them.

Formerly known as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, PUBG was considered the more realistic alternative to Fortnite for a long while, and even today, it stands out in its field. You can play either in the first- or third-person viewpoint here, each with its own set of pros and cons. Weapons, armor, and attachments all must be looted and all of these years later, getting a "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" is still one of the most rewarding feelings in the battle royale genre.

Ring of Elysium pits players together in the standard battle royale way but adds enough of its own flavor to make it stand out. For a start, at the end of each game, only four players are let onto a rescue chopper, which switches things up and makes for interesting endgame scenarios. The traversal equipment here is solid too, giving players the option of using a bike, glider, BMX, and more to get from point A to point B.

Super Animal Royale does away with first-person and third-person mechanics in favor of a top-down, 2D view. Just that might be enough for you to give it a try, but there’s far more meat on the bone. Battles take place in an abandoned safari park and see you collecting guns and grenades to use against the 63 other enemies on the map. What’s great is cross-platform play is also supported here, meaning PC and console players can all play together.

If you’re out of the loop and are wondering how on earth a Tetris game would be played competitively and why that would be something appealing, do yourself a favor and check out some Tetris 99 clips, or better yet try it for yourself. Matches here start with 99 players (hence the name of the game) and once you clear a row of your own, you send a row to another player’s board. This makes for intense end-game scenarios and is a fantastic kind of thrill to get from such an old-school, simple game.

Totally Accurate Battlegrounds is a parody of battle royales that genuinely was fun enough that people, ironically, took it seriously as a game. The game naturally plays off of all of the clichés of battle royales but adds in over-the-top ragdoll physics and wacky weapons. To give you an idea of how out there this game is, there’s a dedicated button for being able to hold your gun sideways while shooting.

Formerly named H1Z1, Z1 Battle Royale is your quintessential battle royale, because it helped lay the foundation for what the genre is today. The name change came with a new developmental team who want the game to have the feel they felt was lost over time, so if you were a fan of the game initially and slowly phased out of it, you can expect to like it.