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 leaves. 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 2, 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 like Warzone 2 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 150 players into conflict 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 plan on risking 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.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Fall Guys borrows elements from the battle royale genre and the hit Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle to create something completely 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. Check out our Fall Guys review if you want to know more.

Apex Legends

With the dystopian charm of Titanfall’s mech-ravaged world and the intense gunfights that make PUBG so gripping, it’s no wonder that Apex Legends’ player count reached over 25 million players in its first week. Respawn’s battle royale game came out of nowhere and surpassed genre stalwart Fortnite on Twitch in viewership figures in its first seven days.

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 gunplay, 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.

Better still, there are lots here for casual players. Apex Legends uses a ping system to ease the burden of mic-free communication. Clicking the scroll wheel highlights places of interest, valuable loot, and charging hostiles. 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. Check out our Apex Legends review to find out exactly why this BR is so good.

Deceive Inc.

Deceive Inc is one of the games on this list that completely stands out from the rest thanks to an entirely unique concept. Choose from a collection of badass spies, each with their own unique weapons and skills, before you are dropped into a bustling cityscape, shopping mall, or one of the other Deceive Inc 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. While there technically aren’t as many foes to beat than in other games here as Decieve Inc lobbies are made up of 12 people, whether that’s solos, duos, or trios, this premise ups the ante. 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 or moving in an unusual way 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 and take you down.

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

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. With frequent PUBG updates and new PUBG maps, the chart-conquering sensation is replete with features and is addictive beyond belief.

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. We have a PUBG review here if you want to know more.

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. On top of that, Epic Games continue 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 up mountains. This is a battle royale game for those who like to get creative.

While you still have the option of the popular, newer no-build mode, building changes the rhythm of the game considerably, increasing the emphasis on resource-gathering throughout the match so that you’ve got plenty of materials to build cover and fortify as the player count dwindles. Being able to build also means a lot of scope for unconventional tactics. Pinned down behind a tree? Pull out your pickaxe, gather a few logs, and build yourself a wall that will give you a bit more protection. Need a sneaky way of getting to an opponent? Try building a series of ramps to flank them from an unexpected angle.

And if you tire of the BR aspect then you can hop into Fortnite Creative mode and play some of the incredible player-made maps, creations, and game modes using Fortnite Island codes. The Fortnite vs. PUBG debate isn’t going to be settled any time soon, so just be grateful we have two spectacular survival shooters to revel in.

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 us tell you some of the entirely new and original and definitely not expected minigames you can experience in Crag Game.

You may have already gathered that Crab Game differs from many other Battle Royales in this list as, like Fall Guys, it isn’t an FPS game, and instead, players have to just concentrate on their own success, hoping that they last longer and that everyone else fails first. In a selection of childhood games that you may remember from back then and definitely not anything more recent, such as The Floor is Lava and Red Light, Green Light, you only goal is to simply 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 fight to the death. Yes, you read that correctly, the game is called Super Animal Royale. 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. You can play the game in solos, duos, and squads all without paying a penny as it’s a completely free game.

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 coup de grâce is its exaggerated physics, which sees your character flopping up staircases and tumbling over obstacles, not to mention the recoil from high-caliber weapons, which punts you backward with every shot. Developer 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. Unsurprisingly, the default binding for this is G.

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 Minecraft Survival servers pay tribute to the blockbuster franchise by spawning players in a circle around a huge 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 that 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.

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.