Games like Playerunknown's Battlegrounds - Battle Royales coming in 2018

When Brendan Greene, a photographer and graphic designer, published Battle Royale, a mod he created for ArmA 3 in 2013, he probably didn’t expect that his concept (and nickname) would take the whole industry by storm. Based on a Japanese movie, the mod offered extremely unforgiving gameplay that kept players on their toes the entire time. And it really hit the jackpot. During the following years, Brendan “Playerunknown” Greene developed and reiterated his ideas – not only mods anymore, but also an official installment of the popular H1Z1 franchise, and eventually a standalone game, created under the auspice of Korean publisher Bluehole.

Released under an unusual title, Greene’s brainchild achieved an enormous success. According to the latest data, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has sold over 24 million copies, which makes it one of the twenty best-selling games ever. The players fell in love with the simple premise of “Deathmatch 2.0” – getting dropped without any equipment in the middle of nowhere, within an enormous (although constantly shrinking) arena, where you first have to find everything you need and only then start thinking about being the last man standing – or at least about surviving longer than the most.

As often is the case with such successful games, you didn’t have to wait long for the industry’s response. Similarly to MMORPGs, MOBAs, Minecraft clones or survivals, everyone suddenly needed their own Battle Royale, with the first titles to claim a piece of the pie being the free-to-play Fortnite and the abovementioned H1Z1. But the real outpour of these games is still ahead of us. Below, you can get acquainted with the most interesting Battle Royales that are slated for release in 2018.

Dying Light Bad Blood

The creators of Dying Light are no exception to the rule and want their own Battle Royale, too. The popular zombiepocalypse game from 2015 will receive a standalone expansion that will take players to the zombie-infested city of Harran. This time, however, the player won’t be alone – apart from the hordes of undead, there will also be five different players. The main goal – get rescued by a chopper before dawn. In order to secure a seat in the heli, the players will have to cooperate to gather as much blood samples as they can. If they feel like it, that is – the game will also allow them to take matters in their own hands and start hunting others.

Project X

Its temporary production title is Project X, and it’s supposed to be an MMO shooter seasoned with Battle Royale elements. The thing already looks impressive – up to four hundred players will be able to compete in a single match, on an area of 12 square kilometers (as compared to PUBG’s 8 square kilometers). The visuals, powered by CryEngine, makes an impression as well. The game will utilize the SpatialOS technology, which provides a complex simulation of the environment.

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile: Battlefield

This year, the most popular Battle Royale in the world will attempt to conquer the mobile platforms – and with two games at that. Playerunknown's Battlegrounds Mobile: Army Attack will feature vehicle-based combat, and PUBG Mobile: Battlefield will bring the gameplay known from the “big” game to mobile phones. For now, both games are being developed with the Chinese market in mind, but the potential to make heaps of money is too great for the publishers to forget about a Western edition.

The Darwin Project

In The Darwin Project players will not only fight against each other, but also struggle with the forces of nature – bitter cold, and snow covering the arenas. The proper dynamism of gameplay will be ensured by different ways of tracking down enemies (from revealing their location with a special map to following their footprints) and a drone controlled by one player, which will hover above the battlefield, able to modify the gameplay by cutting players off from certain areas, for example.

Stand Out: VR Battle Royale

Only thirty players will be able to compete in a single match in Stand Out: VR Battle Royale, and the map will only be 4 square kilometers big. The visuals will also be less realistic than in other games of the kind. The game by Raptor Lab has, however, one feature distinguishing it from other Battle Royales, and which should give you an unparalleled thrill – it’s designed for Virtual Reality sets. The market for this game will be somehow limited because of the number of people who have that kind of hardware at home but hey, you never know – this might help the technology a bit.

Prime Arena

The game by the developers of Heroes of Might and Magic V, Etherlords and Blitzkrieg will be a marriage between Battle Royale and MOBA. There’s still only one winner, but the game features an isometric perspective, and the character chosen by the player from among a few dozen will have unique special skills. The fans of Prime World and Prime World: Defenders will surely appreciate the setting – the world known from exactly these two games. The game will be free to play with optional microtransactions.

Crazy Justice

The developers of Crazy Justice seem to have quite a few ideas for making their game stand out from the crowd. The first one is a single player/co-op campaign that will allow a convenient introduction to the game’s mechanics before heading into the whirlwind of online play in two modes – one will be traditional Battle Royale, the other will feature a map divided into six sectors annihilated in random order. The cross-platform play between PC, XOne and Switch also seems very interesting indeed.

Islands of Nyne: Battle Royale

Contrary to the other games on this list, Islands of Nyne can’t be accused of jumping on the bandwagon of PUGB’s success – the game had been financed in a crowdfunding campaign long before Playerunknown’s Battleground was conceived. Islands of Nyne will offer three maps, where up to 100 players will fight for survival. First person perspective will be the only available point of view, and the players will be able to find futuristic gadgets on the battlefield, among them laser guns and teleporters.

SOS

SOS is essentially the mechanics of Battle Royale with a Hunger Games dressing – the matches of up to 16 players will be streamed via Twitch, and the viewers will be able to help their favorite players by dropping them weapons or meds. Analogically, if some player proves to be particularly annoying, the viewers will be able to vent their anger by, for example, bombing that player’s location. Hence the players will not only need combat skills to win; what is going to be even more important will be the ability to win the audience.

Paladins: Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds won’t be a standalone title, but an additional game mode for the popular free online shooter Paladins: Champions of the Realm. The original mechanics – a combination of magic and advanced technology, four classes of characters and frenzied gameplay – will be transplanted into the world of Battle Royale, where a hundred players, all of them having only one chance to live, will compete on a large arena.

2018 – the year of the Battle Royale?

Let’s face it – most of these games will not be hugely successful, and will probably not have the legs to keep going for more than a few months – just as the clones of World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and others didn’t. Still, one could assume that among an avalanche of mediocre games designed solely to make profit off the current fads there are going to be some ambitious and fun titles, which may not replace PUGB as the MVP, but should at least be an interesting alternative to that game. Let’s also not forget that Mr. Greene’s game is constantly being polished and updated as well, and is hence bound to become even better. For the fans of massive, free-for-all games this means just one thing: there’s quite a year ahead of us.