By Chloi Rad![Games Games](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124864981/148684288.jpg)
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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has found massive success since it hit Steam Early Access on March 23. While the concept of a battle royale isn’t new, Battlegrounds’ refined, no-nonsense approach to the free-for-all, last-player-standing-style survival shooter has earned it immense fame and fortune among enthusiasts of the genre.
50 Games like Horizon: Zero Dawn daily generated comparing over 40 000 video games across all platforms. This suggestion collection includes stealth open-world RPG games for PS4 (Playstation 4), Xbox One, Switch, PC Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The order in this selection is not absolute, but the best games tends to be up in the list.
But this Arma mod-turned-standalone isn’t the only option for survival game fans looking to pit their skills against others. Several mods and standalone games have come before and after (some even made by the creator himself), though how active each community is varies from game to game.
TL;DR: Here's 7 more games that are like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds:
- DayZ: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale
- H1Z1: King of the Kill
- The Culling
- Unturned: Arena Mode
- Rust: Battle Royale
- Ark: Survival of the Fittest
Whether you’re new to the genre, a huge Battle Royale fan curious about the rest of the genre, or simply don’t like PlayerUnknown’s approach and want an alternative, here are seven games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
DayZ: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale
Interested in seeing where it all started? Before Brendan Greene was making bank on Battlegrounds, he was known as the lead designer on DayZ: Battle Royale, an Arma 2 mod for the popular open-world survival mod DayZ. After DayZ went standalone in December 2013, Greene began work on PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale, an Arma 3 mod that launched on the Steam Workshop in 2015. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the culmination of Greene’s ideas for his work on mods like this, and later his consulting on H1Z1, but if you’re interested in testing out the origins of his most popular work, DayZ: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale are where you should start.
H1Z1: King of the Kill
Daybreak Game Company’s H1Z1 actually split off into two separate game projects in 2016, becoming H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Kill. The multiplayer zombie survival version, Just Survive, is comparable to DayZ with a larger emphasis on team-building. If you’re looking for battle royale-style deathmatch action, King of the Kill is what you want. Players parachute onto land, find weapons, and try to survive against others within the boundaries of a noxious green fog. While the mind behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds worked as a consultant on H1Z1, many Battlegrounds fans describe H1Z1 as more “arcade-y” than tactical. H1Z1’s accessibility is partially a result of this “arcadiness,” but there are other accessible, “Arma-lite” style survival games if you’re looking for something more realistic.
The Culling
The Culling is on a much smaller scale than Battlegrounds, with only 16 players battling it out for victory. Its 8-player Lightning Mode offers even quicker matches. Unlike Battlegrounds, The Culling features a crafting system, perks, the ability to set traps, and a much wider range of melee weapons. Its dystopian game show theme makes for a much wilder style than the fairly grounded Battlegrounds and even the typical zombie apocalypse of H1Z1. While this one’s been on Steam Early Access since March of last year, developer Xaviant is bringing The Culling to Xbox One’s Game Preview program in June.
Unturned: Arena Mode
One of the most popular games on Steam (the 5th most owned in the United States, according to Steamspy) is Unturned, a free to play online sandbox with a zombie apocalypse theme. Unturned features survival-based single- and multiplayer modes that let players team up, build bases, and collect supplies to fight hunger, thirst, disease, and zombies. Its Arena Mode bears the closest resemblance to games like Battlegrounds, where several players randomly spawn on a map and fight until one person or team is left standing. But unlike the other games on this list, Unturned completely eschews a realistic, military sim style in favor of a more blocky, low poly look reminiscent of Minecraft.
Rust: Battle Royale
Rust, the popular multiplayer survival game from Facepunch Studios, has a few servers running an unofficial game mode called Rust: Battle Royale. It starts you out naked, with nothing but a rock to defend yourself with, then follows the usual flow of gathering loot within a gradually constricting arena and killing off other players until just one is still alive. Unlike Battlegrounds, Rust: Battle Royale does allow you to form unofficial alliances mid-game without risking a ban, but the likelihood of that happening seems slim — especially since the game rules don’t accommodate for more than one winner. At least, not yet.
Ark: Survival of the Fittest
What began as Ark: Survival Evolved, an open-world survival game with a prehistoric theme, eventually split into two separate projects similar to H1Z1 — Ark: Survival Evolved and Ark: Survival of the Fittest — before merging back into a single game again. The Survival of the Fittest mode pits up to 72 players (solo or tribes) against each other in what it calls a “multiplayer online survival arena.” Ark’s dinosaur theme changes up the usual battle royale formula, with dangerous creatures and “evolution events” like acid rain, extreme cold, and dense fog posing as much of a threat as enemy players. And just like in Ark: Survival Evolved, you can still tame dinosaurs for use in battle, though they’re much less powerful than they are in the main game.
What are some of your favorite battle royale-style survival games? Let us know in the comments!
Don't forget to also check out our Early Access review of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, where we offer our current impressions on the battle royale shooter.
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Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.
Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine
7 Games Like A Way Out
Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine, is surprisingly not the only neon-drenched, co-op fueled game on this list of games that match A Way Out. However, it is one of the most unique. You and up to 3 other friends must work together in a variety of different missions to rob banks, museums, and police stations all in the name of money. While this all sounds very similar to Payday, its vibrant art style and top-down perspective make it stand out from the crowd. Think the frantic action of Hotline Miami, mixed with the tactics heavy gameplay of The Escapists. If you liked A Way Outs focus on criminal activity and co-op focused gameplay then Monaco is the experience for you. Better yet, it’s incredibly easy to pick up and play, so within minutes you and all your friends will be pulling off heists like the pros.
This post was originally written by Dawson Roberts.
Overcooked
7 Games Like A Way Out
If you think that you’ve tested your friendship to the max by completing A Way Out together, then you would be sorely mistaken. Overcooked is a true test of how strong your friendships really are. This is a game which prides itself on being an incredibly stressful and frantic experience and it’s all the better for it (some would probably go as far as saying it’s the Dark Souls of cooking games). By working with up to 4 people you must try your best to complete various food orders and cook them to perfection. While that sounds relatively simple you’ll be faced be faced with a whole host of obstacles to stop you in your path, from sinking pirate ships to busy crossroads. By the very end, you and all your friends will finally be able to relate to how stressed Gordon Ramsay gets in the kitchen. That is, if you have any friends left.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
7 Games Like A Way Out
Imagine for a second that you’re the pilot in Galaga. You’re trying to simultaneously fly a ship, figure out who you’re going to shoot next, and avoid the enemy bullets coming your way, all while things go wrong left, right, and center. That is exactly the experience you’re in for when playing Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.
By working with teammates, you must control every aspect of a ship as you fly through space trying to defeat enemies in your path. It’s an experience that relies on working with your respective lover as each person mans a specific element of the ship, whether that be the ship’s flight path, a gun, or the force field. It’s yet another game on this list that really emphasizes the fact that you need to work together to solve your problems, a message A Way Out heavily imposes on you. But its cutes-y, neon-filled art style is but a disguise for its rampant difficulty and within mere minutes you’ll wish you never left earth.
The Escapist’s
Games Like A Way Out
A Way Out tapped into what made shows like Prison Break great – the camaraderie, tactics and convoluted ways of escaping prisons – and if that’s exactly what you’re looking for in a game, then The Escapists should be your next venture. You play as a simple prisoner who is desperate to escape his capture and must work your way through increasingly more complex prisons, trying to escape as quickly and elegantly as possible. But in true Prison Break fashion, the ways in which you escape get more and more ridiculous as time goes on.
Each prison has its own obstacles to face whether that be electric fences or tighter security and you’ll be spending a lot of time figuring out exactly how you’ll execute the perfect escape. But by the end of the game, you’ll be able to escape anything that comes your way, you might even be able to give Houdini a run for his money.
Payday 2
Games Like A Way Out
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If you’re looking to break into the prison instead of escape, then look no further than Payday 2. You and a band of robbers must work together to rob jewelry stores, car dealerships and of course the odd bank, all while wave after wave of police officers try and hunt you down. Each level plays out exactly like those cliché heists you see in movies like Heat, it’s very tactics-focused but in the blink of an eye you could be being swarmed by armed police. If you’re looking to walk away with all the cash you can hold and a complete team, then you’ll have to work together to pull off the perfect heist.
Snipperclips
Games Like A Way Out
If you’ve come straight out of A Way Out looking for another great couch co-op experience, then Snipperclips may fill that gap you’ve just created. Its imaginative take on the puzzle genre makes it one of the best multiplayer experiences available for the switch. In it, you play as up to four miscellaneous shapes (with each player controlling a shape) and your aim is cut each other into the exact right shape so to solve a puzzle at hand.
Each puzzle is remarkably different from the last and while one minute you’re playing a friendly game of basketball the next you’ll be shouting at each other as you carefully try and transport a very fragile egg to a goal. Snipperclips is a game that requires some intense levels of communication and teamwork but the satisfaction of completing a particularly tough level is unrivaled.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Games Like A Way Out
Both A Way Out and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons are created by eccentric developer Josef Fares and are both games in which you control two characters simultaneously. However, while A Way Out sees a friend control one character, Brothers sees you solely control both characters at the same time.
By using each thumbstick, you must move the brothers through the fairy-tale environments at hand, solving increasingly difficult puzzles and performing some impressive finger gymnastics along the way. Don’t be fooled by its cute exterior, though, Brothers is a game with some heavy themes behind it and it’s unlikely you’ll leave without shedding a tear or two.