Best Battle Royale games that will test your skills

Battle Royale games are still a relatively young genre, but it has more than its fair share of heavy hitters you should try.

The gaming world was seemingly caught off guard in 2017 when the battle royale genre suddenly became an unstoppable juggernaut that dominated discussions of the time. Ever since then, it’s been one of the landmark genres of modern gaming, with just about every developer under the sun trying to get their own version of Fortnite on shelves.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been that much of a shock though. The basic concept is so much fun that battle royales were bound to blow up as soon as technology met the requirements to have 100 people on a massive map at once. It’s a very simple but really fun gameplay loop to throw yourself into a map with an overwhelming number of opponents with nothing but your wits to help you be the last person standing.

The genre has had a long time to develop and expand now, so we’re picking out the best battle royale games to play in 2024.

Hunt: Showdown

This battle royale sees just 12 players take to the bayous of New Orleans. It may not sound like much, but the goal here isn’t always to kill your opponents. Instead, you need to explore the map and look for clues that will help you track down a terrifying monster who lurks on the map. Your job is to kill that monster, get the loot from them and get out. Alternatively, you could let everyone else do the hard work and then ambush them as they try to escape, but what dirty tactics you employ is none of our business.

Minecraft Hunger Games

You can’t talk about battle royales without talking about one of the game modes that helped innovate and popularize the genre. While modded DayZ servers were doing similar things around this time, it’s the Minecraft Survival Games servers that made the desire for a game like this clear. While there are more complex Minecraft PvP modes out there now, this is still good for a classic game every now and then.

Game of Bombs

This is something a little different, as it's a free game you can play in your browser.

Bomberman is a somewhat niche title, but one that you'll find addictive if you've never tried it before. You walk around on a grid-based map and place bombs that explode along the grid - if you get caught by an explosion, you die. It's that simple, but it's endlessly fun with all sorts of weird upgrades and massive maps full of players.

PUBG Battlegrounds

Aside from the fact that the name change now means the game is called “Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds Battlegrounds”, PUBG is still going strong all these years later. Sprouting from a DayZ mod that helped kickstart the genre, PUBG was the first battle royale game to reach the amazing heights the genre has been experiencing for the past five years. It digs into the realism of gunplay a little more than most battle royales, so it continues to be a favorite for many.

Spellbreak

Spellbreak is an unfortunate tale, as it shut down last year, but the ideas it brought to the table shouldn't be forgotten. We've already seen various attempts at magic combat in 2023. This may have sadly died out, but if someone takes a more robust magic system like that in Hogwarts Legacy and turns it into a game like Spellbreak, it could be a huge deal.

Call of Duty: Warzone

Call of Duty getting in on the battle royale action was only a matter of time, and no one was surprised when Warzone released – almost immediately becoming one of the kings of the genre. It had all of the features people had come to expect from battle royale but added that nice layer of CoD polish. It expanded the number of players in a match, gave us more complex maps, and surprisingly intricate gunplay.