52 Best Post-Apocalyptic Games to Play on PC, PS5 & Xbox

The best post-apocalyptic games are more than just Fallout and Metro: the genre long ago grew to include RPGs, shooters, survival sims, and even tiny indie gems. This list rounds up 50 post-apocalyptic games on PC and consoles — time-tested classics like The Last of Us, Metro, and Left 4 Dead 2, alongside the strongest releases of 2024–2026, from ARC Raiders to Dying Light: The Beast. Nuclear wastelands, ruined megacities, a daily fight to survive in a hostile world… Nobody would want to see any of it for real, but in games the end of the world turns into stories about the price of survival and the choices it forces. How far would you go to stay alive? The old world is gone — and it's up to you whether to become a hero or a villain in the new one.

Let's start with the newcomers — post-apocalyptic games released since 2024. The genre has come alive over the past couple of years: big-budget action games, multiplayer hits nobody saw coming, and modest indies that nail the mood of decay and solitude in a ruined world. If you're looking for something new to play, start with these six.

Fans of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and survival games set in radioactive disaster zones had been waiting for a sequel since 2009. At one point, the chances of seeing it released seemed about as slim as seeing Half-Life 3 or Bloodborne arrive on PC. Yet in 2024, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl finally made it to store shelves and brought players back to the Zone—the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, albeit in an alternate reality where the laws of physics have been distorted and the forests and swamps are filled with mutants and warring human factions.

Set against the backdrop of Eastern European post-apocalyptic aesthetics, players must survive by managing hunger and radiation levels, fighting off mutated creatures and hostile NPCs, tossing metal bolts ahead to detect anomalies, and navigating the complex relationships between competing factions. But according to longtime S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans, the game’s greatest strength is its uniquely melancholic atmosphere, created by gloomy landscapes, campfire guitar sessions, the comfort of safe shelters, and the constant fear of the unknown.

Atomfall drew comparisons to Fallout and Metro the moment it launched. The game does have its own "Zone" — the land behind the Wall that people are trying to escape after a nuclear disaster. Survival works the classic way: you scavenge ammo and med kits and watch your stamina in combat. The story is nonlinear, and to leave the quarantine zone you'll have to decide which faction deserves your support.

Beyond that, though, Atomfall is a thoroughly original project. Unlike Fallout and Metro, it's neither a sprawling RPG nor a life sim: there are no character levels and no open world. What it has instead is British flavor by the gallon: in place of the usual American or Soviet wastelands you get picturesque English villages, pubs, red phone boxes, tea breaks, and absurdist black humor straight out of Monty Python.

The success of ARC Raiders caught a lot of people off guard. The market seemed oversaturated with co-op extraction shooters, and the project looked doomed. The skepticism quickly turned into admiration: the game sits at 86 on Metacritic — a rarity for a multiplayer title.

Its visual style blends retrofuturism, high tech, and the aesthetics of a rusted, broken world. In this far-future sci-fi apocalypse, Earth was attacked and all but wiped out by the ARC — highly advanced machines. Your job is to drop onto the map, gather valuable loot and robot parts, and make it to the extraction point alive. What stands in your way isn't zombies, mutants, or bandits, but smart machines whose behavior forces you to constantly rethink your tactics.

Dying Light: The Beast brings back Kyle Crane — the hero of the first game, missing from the series for ten years. Crane spent all those years as the prisoner of the Baron, a local tyrant who ran brutal experiments on him. Now free, he's out for revenge — and learning to turn the aftermath of those experiments to his advantage: zombie DNA grants him inhuman strength, bestial claws, and savage takedowns. The action unfolds in Castor Woods, a resort town in the alpine forests overrun by the infected.

The series formula is instantly recognizable: rooftop parkour, melee combat with improvised weapons, and a day-night cycle that sends the deadliest creatures into the streets after dark. The campaign supports co-op for up to 4 players. Critics welcomed Crane back too: 78 on Metacritic is the best score in the franchise's history, even if the game isn't without controversial design choices.

Road to Vostok is still in early access — the game is being built by a single developer from Finland. Yet it's already being compared to the genre's best: it sold 140,000 copies in its first five days. You find yourself in a region gripped by an unknown catastrophe, and to reach the safe zone you'll need to comb through ruined buildings, gather loot, build up a base, and upgrade your weapons. But there are no mutants, zombies, laser guns, or anomalies here: your real enemies are the harsh wilderness, scarce resources, wild animals, and patrols of hostile survivors.

Play it for the thick atmosphere: tension, isolation, and the raw Scandinavian climate. It borrows heavily from the mechanics of Escape from Tarkov — minus the toxic community that tends to come with multiplayer games of that kind.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a sci-fi survival horror from Bloober Team, the studio behind the Silent Hill 2 remake. Earth has been through a cataclysm that fused people into writhing masses of monstrous flesh. The heroine — an agent of the mysterious Collective — travels between the ruined Poland of the future and the 1980s, extracting human souls moments before their deaths.

In gameplay terms it's classic survival horror in the vein of Dead Space: cramped corridors, scarce ammo, and tense fights. The signature mechanic is absorption: fail to burn a downed enemy's body, and the next monster will merge with it and grow stronger. Grim, creepy, and refreshingly unformulaic — 79 on Metacritic.

Hell is Us is an action game with soulslike elements set in a country torn apart by civil war — while something supernatural crawls out from under the earth. The end of the world here didn't happen at some point in the past; it's unfolding right before your eyes, a rare angle for the genre: an apocalypse in progress.

The protagonist, Rémi, returns to his isolated homeland to find his parents and ends up caught between human war crimes and enigmatic hollow monsters. The game refuses to hold your hand on principle: no map markers, no quest log — just attention to detail, conversations with survivors, and 78 points on Metacritic for its boldness.

Few people remember now that post-apocalyptic video games actually began with role-playing games — with 1988's Wasteland, the direct inspiration for the Fallout series. Modern post-apocalyptic RPGs mean open worlds, nonlinear quests, and moral dilemmas where the fate of entire settlements rides on your decisions.

The Fallout franchise is legendary in its own right, but Fallout: New Vegas holds a special place in it — and in the hearts of the fans. Why? It was made by Obsidian Entertainment, home to the creators of the original Fallout 1 and 2, so there are no strictly "good" or "evil" characters and factions, and the story is nonlinear. Nearly every quest can be solved multiple ways — with force, cunning, diplomacy, or science skills.

You land in the wastelands around Las Vegas, where after the nuclear war desert vistas sit side by side with neon casino signs and robot security guards. Unlike many post-apocalyptic games, New Vegas shows a world that has already survived — and the war being fought here is over power, not resources. Through it all, the game deftly balances serious political questions with black humor and absurdity.

By the time Fallout 4 arrived, the franchise had passed into the hands of Bethesda Softworks, which shifted the series away from classic RPG mechanics toward action. The backdrop is a ruined Boston and its surroundings. In this atompunk setting you're asked to settle the conflict between the Institute and the survivor factions — the Brotherhood of Steel, the Railroad, and the Minutemen.

In the series tradition you get a vast world to explore, punchy shooting with targeted body parts (V.A.T.S.), mountains of loot for modifying gear, base building and settlement management, and that trademark retrofuturistic aesthetic — upbeat jazz on the radio, Nuka-Cola vending machines, two-headed mutant cows, and robot butlers. Compared to the bleak worlds of Metro or The Last of Us, Fallout 4 is bursting with life — you're not so much surviving as rebuilding civilization from the ruins.

Fallout 3 is the game that rebooted the series in 3D back in 2008 and introduced millions of players to the Fallout universe. The hero grows up in Vault 101, then steps out into the Capital Wasteland — the ruins of Washington, D.C. — in search of a missing father. Along the way you'll decide the fate of settlements, haggle with ghouls, fight the Enclave, and listen to the legendary Galaxy News Radio.

This is where the iconic V.A.T.S. targeting system was born, along with the "leave the vault and go anywhere" formula that Fallout 4 later polished. It holds 91 on Metacritic — still the record for the main series. One caveat: on modern Windows the game may need community patches to run smoothly.

Fallout 76 is the multiplayer Fallout, where you explore the wastelands of West Virginia alongside real players. At launch in 2018 the game was torn to shreds — but years of updates, above all the Wastelanders expansion with living NPCs and proper quests, turned things around: it now sits at Mostly Positive on Steam with over 130,000 reviews.

You can pitch your C.A.M.P. anywhere on the map, team up with friends to hunt Scorchbeasts, launch nuclear missiles, or simply live in the wasteland: trade, stockpile resources, and roleplay. If you've ever wanted "Fallout with friends," this is the only option in the franchise.

Wasteland 3 trades the usual desert for the frozen state of Colorado, ruled with an iron fist by the charismatic Patriarch. Unlike Fallout, you're not a lone Chosen One but the commander of an entire paramilitary outfit: Wasteland 3 is a party-based tactical RPG with an isometric view. You build up a headquarters, recruit personnel, and walk a tightrope between the local regime, raider gangs, religious fanatics, and feral mountain clans.

The game wins you over with squad progression where skills directly shape the story, biting black humor, sharp satire of American culture, and gray morality: you're constantly choosing the lesser of two evils — betrayal or death, survival or a deal with a tyrant.

Wasteland 2 is the revival of the genre's founding series — a sequel fans waited 26 years for. Nuclear-scorched Arizona is held together by the Desert Rangers, the last semblance of law among the radioactive ruins, and you command one of their squads: allocating skills — from lockpicking to field surgery — and making decisions that let some settlements flourish while others perish.

The Director's Cut edition added voice acting, a perk system, and noticeably improved visuals — it holds 87 on Metacritic. It's a drier, more hardcore game than Wasteland 3, but it's the one that brought classic party-based wasteland RPGs back from the dead: the sequel grew straight out of it.

ATOM RPG was built as a spiritual successor to the first Fallout games, offering classic role-playing in the Soviet Wastelands devastated by nuclear war. Combat is turn-based and driven by action points. You'll track hunger and radiation, and craft ammo and medicine from scavenged supplies.

It's a treat for anyone who loves the original Fallout 1 and 2, Wasteland, or Arcanum — and for fans of quest variety and Soviet flavor: collecting waste paper, debating communism, treating radiation sickness with vodka, and criminal turf wars in the middle of a nuclear desert. The world of ATOM RPG is gray, brutal, and cynical: everyone survives however they can, and the most dangerous monsters are people who have lost their humanity. For more games with this flavor, check out our best Soviet post-apocalyptic games.

ATOM RPG Trudograd is a direct continuation of ATOM RPG in which the developers listened to the criticism and tightened up everything: the combat system, the balance, and the quest design. The hero travels to Trudograd, a surviving Soviet metropolis where party officials, criminals, and cultists carve up power as a new catastrophe looms.

A city of high-rises, trams, and communal apartments feels completely different from the first game's wastelands, and the variety has only grown: nearly any problem can be solved with muscle, science, theft, or a silver tongue.

UnderRail is often called "Fallout underground" — and that's about right. The Earth's surface became uninhabitable long ago, humanity moved into the tunnels of a vast subterranean rail network, and the sun survives only in legends. You're a rookie at South Gate Station who gets slowly drawn into the intrigues of underground states, faction wars, and the secrets of a dead world's technology.

This might be the most merciless isometric RPG in the genre: no level scaling, an enormous tree of skills and psionic abilities, and any fight can kill you within a couple of turns. In exchange, the game offers a rare sense of genuine exploration: the dark tunnels hide secrets no quest marker will ever point to. Critics gave it a modest 72, but players long ago enshrined it as a modern classic of the genre.

In NieR: Automata, humanity made it to the year 11945 — only to lose Earth to hostile machines and flee to the Moon. To take the planet back, humans built an army of androids, who now explore the overgrown ruins of megacities, deserts, and abandoned amusement parks. Mechanically, NieR: Automata is a fast, flashy character-action game with RPG elements. The combat is built on rapid combos, perfect dodges, and counterattacks, while the role-playing layer asks you to manage resources and customize your androids' abilities.

Unlike classic post-apocalyptic settings, where survivors fight each other over resources, there are no people here at all: the story is about androids and machines trying to understand what it means to "be human." The game uses its post-apocalyptic scenery to meditate on love, hatred, the cycle of war, and the nature of humanity. Its worldwide fame owes much to a masterpiece of a soundtrack — and, of course, to its protagonist, 2B.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... is the updated version of the first NieR and the prequel to Automata, set thousands of years earlier. The world has already had its apocalypse: humanity is dying out from a disease called the Black Scrawl, and mysterious Shades roam the ruins. The hero is a young man ready to do anything to save his terminally ill sister.

The 2021 remaster rebuilt the combat in Automata's image: lightning combos, magic, and those famous segments where the game suddenly turns into a shoot 'em up or a text adventure. But the heart of it is the story — one of the most devastating in the genre, with an ending that demands multiple playthroughs to reach. It's worth it.

Horizon Zero Dawn is the beginning of Aloy's story and one of the most striking takes on the "green apocalypse." A thousand years after civilization fell, Earth is blooming again, human tribes live by hunting, and machine-beasts roam the forests and mountains. A red-haired outcast sets out to learn who she really is — and along the way uncovers the mystery of the old world's death, one of the best sci-fi reveals in games.

Hunting tactics decide everything: every machine has its weak points, which you pick off with bow and sling, while the deadliest beasts are best lured into traps. The Remastered version brought the visuals up to Forbidden West's level, and the original holds 89 on Metacritic.

In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy explores lush jungles, the sunken neon ruins of San Francisco, and scorched deserts to stop another end of the world. The game's world is vivid and alive: nature recovered long ago, and humanity is starting over — with tribes, spears, and hunting. What stands against it isn't zombies or radiation but high-tech machines once created by humans themselves.

The Horizon series began as a Sony exclusive and made its name on a gorgeous open world, tactical hunts built around finding weak points, battles against mechanical titans, and deep sci-fi lore explaining exactly how the machines inherited the Earth.

Classic post-apocalyptic games like Fallout taught us that surviving in the ruins of the world takes a trusty shotgun. How else do you gather food and resources, or fight off mutants, zombies, and fellow survivors eyeing your loot? This section collects the best action and shooter games in post-apocalyptic settings — from metro stations to neon wastelands and co-op zombie shooters.

Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light open the trilogy based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels, and the Redux editions with updated visuals are the right place to start. After a nuclear war, the last Muscovites survive in the metro: every station is a tiny state with its own ideology, pre-war bullets serve as currency, and nobody goes to the surface without a gas mask.

The first game tells the story of Artyom, who must save his home station from the mysterious Dark Ones; the second is a direct sequel with more spectacular set pieces and moral crossroads. Both remain the gold standard of claustrophobic horror shooters: the Redux versions hold 92% and 91% positive ratings on Steam.

Metro Exodus takes you on a journey across post-apocalyptic Russia. Out of the gloomy tunnels of the Moscow metro, Exodus moves the action to vast, varied locations — the frozen Volga river, the dried-up Caspian Sea, blooming summer taiga, and autumnal Novosibirsk. The game blends shooter, survival horror, and sandbox: consumables are crafted from scavenged loot, weapons need cleaning, and your gas mask needs patching.

There's no traditional open world — instead, a chain of semi-open locations. And no reputation meter either: a hidden karma system quietly remembers your choices and picks your ending accordingly. On top of it all sits that post-Soviet texture: rusting heavy machinery, the interiors of abandoned apartment blocks, harsh Siberian nature, and songs by Viktor Tsoi strummed on a guitar by the campfire.

The The Last of Us franchise sidesteps the usual clichés of nuclear war or a zombie virus. The threat here is a parasitic fungus that turns people into mindless, aggressive creatures. But unlike most post-apocalyptic games, the protagonists — Joel and Ellie — aren't out to save the world; the world is merely the backdrop for their intensely personal story.

Both games are famous for cinematic storytelling and drama that prestige TV would envy: the first game's prologue is still considered one of the most powerful openings in the industry. The world is a "green apocalypse": skyscraper ruins overgrown with moss and trees, flooded streets, and abandoned districts prowled by wild animals and aggressive mutants you'll shoot, sneak past, or run from.

Days Gone is aimed not only at post-apocalypse fans but at anyone who loves biker culture. It's set in the Pacific Northwest after a global pandemic turned most of humanity into Freakers — fast, feral, zombie-like creatures. Against a backdrop of snowy peaks, dense pine forests, and abandoned farms unfolds the story of Deacon St. John and his brothers in arms.

Your motorcycle is a full-fledged companion: it needs fuel, repairs, and upgrades. Add dynamic weather, outpost clearing, and the horde battles that made the game famous. Days Gone stands out for its melancholic soundtrack, satisfying bike handling, motor-club aesthetics, and monsters that behave like part of the ecosystem: Freakers eat, sleep, and even migrate like wild animals.

Back in 2015, Dying Light proved that a zombie apocalypse is best experienced on the move. The city of Harran is gripped by an epidemic, and protagonist Kyle Crane crosses it by parkour: rooftops, walls, and ziplines are all faster and safer than the streets. By day you loot buildings and help survivors; at night the rules change — Volatiles come out to hunt, and the prey is you.

Ten years on, it remains one of the community's most beloved games: 95% positive on Steam across nearly half a million reviews — very few games can match that. Four-player co-op, heaps of content in the Definitive Edition, and that meaty melee combat are all still here. If you like it, Crane's story continues in Dying Light: The Beast from the top of this list.

The Mad Max franchise laid the foundations of dieselpunk post-apocalypse — endless sands, marauder gangs, rusty war machines, and the cult of the combustion engine. Which makes it all the stranger that the world of Mad Max has only ever gotten one big video game — Mad Max.

Civilization has collapsed, society has descended into savagery, and Max, together with the hunchbacked mechanic Chumbucket, plunges into brutal road wars where fuel, loot, cars, and his own life are all on the line. Unlike most end-of-the-world games, in Mad Max the car is a genuine second protagonist — without it, the desert will kill you.

RAGE 2 mixes acid-soaked punk post-apocalypse in the Mad Max vein with high technology and screaming color. No coincidence: it was co-developed by the DOOM veterans at id Software and the Mad Max studio Avalanche. After an asteroid strike, humanity survived — but now the hero must fight off General Cross's cybernetic army along with gangs of punks and marauders.

The game flatly rejects the genre's trademark depressive grays. RAGE 2's visual identity is built on hot pink, purple, neon, explosions, and deranged enemy design. No hoarding ammo, no hiding in bushes, no fear of radiation: the protagonist is a walking engine of destruction, shredding enemies by the dozen against post-apocalyptic scenery.

Ubisoft has its own take on the apocalypse — bright, pink-neon, and decidedly not depressing. In Far Cry New Dawn, 17 years after the nukes fell, Hope County, Montana has turned not into gray desert but into a riotously blooming wasteland terrorized by the raiders of twin sisters Mickey and Lou. You rebuild the survivor base of Prosperity, liberate outposts, and hunt for ethanol — the new world's most precious currency.

It's a direct sequel to Far Cry 5 with all the series staples: specialist companions (including a dog and a sniper grandma), vehicle hijacking, and shooting everything that burns. Not the deepest game on this list, but a great "light" apocalypse for a couple of evenings.

Death Stranding is that Hideo Kojima game about a courier reconnecting America. After a cataclysm called the Death Stranding, the worlds of the living and the dead bled into each other: invisible BTs roam the land, timefall rain ages everything it touches, and survivors hide in bunkers. Sam Porter Bridges is one of the few still able to carry cargo through this nightmare.

On paper, a "delivery simulator" sounds dull; in practice it pulls you in like meditation — plotting routes through mountains and rivers, building roads and bridges that other players will later use. The Director's Cut added new missions and mechanics, and with the sequel out, the first game is essential.

The apocalypse in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is everything you'd expect from Kojima — surreal, mystical, and frequently absurd. The sequel takes Sam beyond America, to Mexico and Australia, hands him an entire mobile base ship, and cranks up the action: shooting feels dramatically better this time.

The Death Stranding franchise turned the "walking simulator" into a "delivery simulator," pairing its post-apocalyptic setting with cargo-stacking physics, firefights against raiders and monsters, and long drives across melancholy landscapes. The joy here isn't in wiping out an enemy outpost — it's in a delivery safely made, a bridge rebuilt, your own small contribution to putting humanity back together. Critics approved: 89 on Metacritic.

Stellar Blade unfolds in a sci-fi post-apocalypse: Earth has been overrun by a race of grotesque biomechanical monsters, and heroine EVE must destroy the invasion's leaders and win the planet back for humanity. The visual style fuses Korean futurism with cyberpunk: sand-buried megacities of the old world, underground labs, and the planet's last surviving refuge city.

The game's trump cards are spectacular combat built on precise parries and dodges, soulslike-style, and a superb soundtrack. Instead of a rusty, grimy world you get glossy cyber-futurism: immaculate androids and neon in stark contrast with Earth's ruined scenery.

Terminator: Resistance is the exception to the "movie games are bad" rule — it's the best Terminator project in any medium since the early films. The story takes you into the future war from the first two movies: Skynet has already burned the world with nuclear fire, and the remnants of humanity fight the machines in the ruins of Los Angeles. Private Jacob Rivers discovers that Skynet is hunting him personally.

The T-800's red eyes glowing in the dark, that unmistakable soundtrack, and the constant feeling that you're prey rather than hero — the atmosphere of the future war is nailed. Critics shrugged with middling scores, but players caught on: its Steam rating sits above 90%. For fans of the universe, an unconditional must-play.

Left 4 Dead 2 is the gold standard of co-op zombie shooters, still going strong a decade and a half later: 97% positive on Steam across a million reviews speaks for itself. The apocalypse here took mere weeks: the cities of the American South fell to the infection, the army pulled out, and four survivors fight their way from plague-ridden Savannah to New Orleans through hordes of infected and special mutants like the Tank and the Witch.

The real magic is the AI Director, a system that reshuffles enemy and item placement on the fly, so no two runs ever play the same. Add thousands of community campaigns in the Steam Workshop and you get a co-op game you can return to forever.

World War Z in its Aftermath edition carries the torch of Left 4 Dead — a shooter set in the World War Z universe, famous for its hordes: hundreds of zombies on screen piling into living pyramids and scaling walls, just like in the movie. The world has lost the war against the undead almost everywhere, and squads of survivors battle through fallen New York, Moscow, Jerusalem, Rome, and Kamchatka, with soldier classes and weapon progression adding a layer of RPG depth.

Aftermath introduced a first-person mode, new campaigns, and melee combat. Salvation for anyone who has played Left 4 Dead 2 to death and wants their hordes bigger and more modern.

Survival and the post-apocalypse are a natural couple: find your own food, fight off the mutants, hide from the cold and the radiation. Here are the best survival games in post-apocalyptic settings — both single-player and co-op you can share with friends. Console players should also check out our best survival games on PS4 and PS5.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human builds on the first game's formula: fast first-person parkour, melee combat with zombies, weapon crafting, and a day-night cycle — it's all here. The protagonist, Aiden, is infected himself, and he arrives in humanity's last surviving stronghold after the zombie epidemic — a city where society has degraded and people war over resources.

The brilliantly executed parkour turns exploration into a headlong race across rooftops, balconies, and even the open air on a paraglider — you can cross an entire district without once touching the ground. The distinctive art direction adds personality: instead of standard-issue ruin, a "new medieval" world of cold steel weapons, markets in abandoned metro stations, and vegetable beds in rooftop crates. The game also features in our best zombie games.

7 Days to Die is remarkable for combining a first-person shooter, survival horror, an RPG, and a full-on voxel building sandbox in the style of Minecraft. For six days you gather resources, level up skills, craft weapons and ammo, build a fortress with traps, turrets, and barbed wire, and manage hunger, thirst, and body temperature. On the seventh day, an avalanche of zombies crashes into your base: survive the assault and you earn six more days to repair and prepare.

Years of early access built a huge community: the finished version holds a Very Positive rating across 400,000 Steam reviews. You can hold the fort alone or with friends on a private server.

Project Zomboid is a realistic zombie apocalypse in 1990s small-town America. Unlike Fallout or Days Gone, you will not save humanity here — your character will die, and the only question is how long you can hold out. The zombies win through sheer numbers, while your means of survival are meager. There are no autosaves, and a single bite means infection and your character's inevitable death within days. Who you become is up to you: a quiet farmer on the edge of the woods, a roaming looter with a car, or the leader of a survivor community clearing out the city.

Frostpunk is one of the decade's most unusual strategy games, from 11 bit studios. In a Victorian world rapidly freezing over, humanity's last city huddles around a giant coal generator. You're not a hero here — you're the government: sign the child labor law or don't, feed the terminally ill or don't, execute dissenters or don't. Every decision nudges society toward survival — or tyranny.

The climax is the legendary storm, with temperatures plunging past minus 150, which makes every earlier hardship feel like a warm-up. The first game is shorter and more intimate than the second, but it hits harder emotionally: the final question — "the city survived, but was it worth it?" — stays with you for a long time.

In Fallout or Metro you fight monsters, radiation, and marauders; in Frostpunk 2, humanity's worst enemy is people themselves — their greed and their inability to agree. Instead of sun-scorched atomic deserts, the game offers the rare aesthetic of a frozen apocalypse and industrial steampunk.

You build the city, push laws through the council, weave intrigues, and outfit scouting expeditions. The game captures exactly what it's like to govern a fractured society: pleasing everyone is impossible, and every decision turns one faction or another into your sworn enemies.

The first State of Decay offered such an unconventional model of the zombie apocalypse that it caught the attention of Xbox Game Studios. Under the corporate wing, Undead Labs built a game combining survival, base building, and co-op raids against the undead.

The sequel — State of Decay 2 — develops that formula with a bigger world and new mechanics. The core is the same: after the zombie outbreak you're responsible not just for your own survival but for an entire community. The signature twist is permadeath: when one of your group dies in the field, the game goes on — you simply continue as another survivor with a different skill set. Beyond gathering resources and building up the base, you'll raid plague hearts — zombie nests that must be destroyed to make the area safe.

DayZ has earned its reputation as one of the most hardcore games in the genre. The setting is a fictional post-Soviet state ravaged by a zombie epidemic. But the zombies are merely an annoyance — the deadliest predator is the other player. You never know whether the stranger you've just met will help you or put a bullet in your back for a can of beans.

You'll manage your character's condition, maintain weapons, build bases, and repair vehicles — with no minimap, no compass, no resource highlighting, and no safe zones. Death wipes your loot and sends you back to the start.

The Long Dark is the quietest survival game on this list. No zombies, no mutants: after a geomagnetic disaster kills all electronics, pilot Will Mackenzie finds himself alone in the frozen Canadian wilderness. The enemies are cold, hunger, wolves, and your own mistakes. Death is permanent, and every sip of hot tea by the campfire feels like a small victory.

More than a decade of development has added the Wintermute story mode with voiced characters and moral choices, but the heart of The Long Dark is still its survival mode, where you can last hundreds of in-game days while learning predator behavior and the moods of the weather.

Kenshi is like nothing else on this list. It's a sandbox with no story and no chosen one: your character is a nobody in an enormous post-apocalyptic world where slavers, cannibals, and ancient war robots roam the wastes. The game gives no quarter — within the first hour you'll most likely be beaten, robbed, and sold into slavery.

In exchange, the freedom is total: become a trader, build a city, raise an army, forge a legendary swordsman out of a starving cripple, or start a farm in the middle of an acid desert. The world doesn't revolve around the player — and that's exactly why people adore Kenshi: it hasn't left the upper reaches of Steam's user charts in years.

Chernobylite is sci-fi survival in the Exclusion Zone from The Farm 51 — a studio that photoscanned the real Pripyat to build the game. Physicist Igor returns to the Zone 30 years after the disaster to find his missing fiancée. Days are for scavenging runs and recruiting companions; evenings are for base upkeep and planning the final assault on the Chernobyl power plant.

The highlight is nonlinearity with time loops: dead comrades and failed decisions aren't lost forever — the past can literally be replayed. The radioactive forest and Soviet ruins are rendered with documentary precision.

Once Human is a free-to-play multiplayer survival game set in a surreal post-apocalypse: the world is contaminated by a cosmic substance called Stardust, everyday objects have fused with flesh into grotesque monsters, and you're one of the Meta-Humans able to survive the madness. Base building, crafting, giant bosses, and seasonal scenarios add up to hundreds of hours of content.

The project wins on scale and sheer strangeness of design: the deer tower, the octopus bus, and other SCP-flavored horrors stick in the memory. As with any free-to-play game there's monetization and grind, but players have received it surprisingly warmly.

The post-apocalyptic genre has accumulated its share of clichés: nuclear wastelands, ruined cities, zombie plagues, survivors at each other's throats over scraps… But there are games that break the mold — some mix in mechanics the genre rarely sees, others show the end of the world from an angle you don't expect.

The world of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden has been through everything at once: global nuclear war, a deadly pandemic, and climate collapse. Humanity is extinct, and the Earth now belongs to mutants — anthropomorphic animals and humanoids with no understanding of how the old world worked. Exploring the ruins is paired with turn-based combat in the spirit of XCOM. But the key mechanic is stealth. Charging in head-on is suicide: first you deploy the full guerrilla toolkit — set an ambush, learn the patrol routes, and silently pick off the stragglers.

There's no survival meter, no factions, no politics. The world is seen through the eyes of the mutants who inherited the planet and regard the leftovers of human culture with sincere bafflement.

Pacific Drive is a rare "survival game on wheels." Your main companion isn't a dog or a motorcycle but a beat-up old station wagon you'll repair, refuel, and deck out with upgrades. In it, you make run after run into the Olympic Exclusion Zone — a sealed-off slice of the Pacific Northwest where reality cracked open after secret government experiments. Anomalies drift through the forests, and energy storms can tear your car apart.

Every run follows extraction rules: gather resources, loot abandoned labs, and reach the exit gate before the zone collapses. The haul goes into upgrading your garage and car while the radio slowly unspools the story of the Zone. The blend of dread, 90s nostalgia, and cozy garage tinkering earned the game 79 on Metacritic and Very Positive reviews on Steam.

In Darkwood the end of the world looks like this: a forest that surged after an unexplained catastrophe has swallowed part of Poland, cut the survivors off from the outside world, and is slowly driving them mad. By day you explore the woods from a top-down view, gather resources, and trade with unsettling characters like the Chicken Lady; by night you barricade yourself in a hideout, board up the windows, and pray that whatever is scratching outside doesn't find a gap in your defenses.

The game refuses to use jump scares on principle — only crushing atmosphere, sound design, and your character's limited field of vision. If you have a taste for Eastern European dread, don't skip it: little else in indie horror is scarier.

Rain World is a post-apocalypse where humanity is simply gone. You play a slugcat — a small creature in a giant ruined ecosystem where every predator hunts, migrates, and survives by its own rules. Between lethal downpours you have to find food and reach shelter; the rest is luck and skill.

It's one of the most honest wildlife simulations in games: nothing is scripted, and you are far from the top of the food chain. Critics didn't get it in 2017, but players turned it into a cult classic: 94% positive on Steam and one of the most devoted communities in indie gaming.

FAR: Lone Sails shows its apocalypse without a single word: the ocean has dried up, civilization is gone, and across the exposed seabed — past ship skeletons and abandoned settlements — rolls a giant wheeled machine with a lone girl at the helm. You stoke the furnace, fix the machinery, raise the sails, and occasionally climb out to solve a puzzle or scrounge fuel.

It's short — two or three hours — but a remarkably complete meditative journey about loneliness and moving forward. Perfect for a single evening when you want the genre's quiet sadness rather than its survival grind.

1000xRESIST became one of the biggest narrative discoveries of recent years. Unlike most post-apocalyptic games, there's no resource gathering, no survival, no shooting mutants, no crafting ammo. 1000xRESIST is a walking sim with visual novel elements, built on piecing together information and conversations with NPCs that branch toward different endings.

The story takes place 1,000 years after humanity's destruction at the hands of alien occupiers. As the sole survivor, you dive into other people's memories to understand how the lies and traumas of the past shaped a totalitarian society. The plot weaves classic Evangelion-style science fiction together with urgent themes of migration and state control. Critics rewarded the ambition: 86 on Metacritic and a Peabody Award — almost unheard of for a video game.

Post-apocalypse fans hold a special love for stories about life in bunkers and vaults. Interest has surged again thanks to Apple TV+'s Silo, based on Hugh Howey's novels — season 3 launched to impressive numbers. While you wait between episodes, it's the perfect time to head underground yourself: here are three fitting bunker games.

Fallout Shelter is a free vault-management sim set in the Fallout universe. As a Vault-Tec Overseer you assign dwellers to rooms, produce power, water, and food, fight off raiders and radroaches, and send your bravest residents out to explore the wasteland. Great for passing an evening: keep a session running in the background on PC or your phone.

60 Seconds! Reatomized turns 1950s America's nuclear panic into satire. First you get 60 seconds to dash through the house grabbing essentials (don't forget a family member or two), then you stretch those supplies in a cramped bunker while facing absurd dilemmas: who goes outside for water, and what do you do about the giant mutant cockroach? Runs are short, and the outcomes are almost always tragicomic.

In Mr. Prepper you're a paranoid survivalist in a totalitarian state that looks suspiciously like retro America. While regime agents drop by for inspections, you secretly dig a doomsday bunker under your own house: crafting furniture and tools, growing food under lamps, and trading with neighbors for scarce parts. The game runs on the constant tension between your lawful life upstairs and the secret build below.

The genre doesn't need cutting-edge graphics — many of its classics run happily on old hardware. For role-playing survival, start with the series founders Fallout and Fallout 2 — isometric RPGs that will run on a potato. Fallout: New Vegas is also well optimized for aging processors and graphics cards, as is Wasteland 2. Among survival games, look at This War of Mine, Project Zomboid, and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. For action, there's the cult classic Metro 2033 and the 2.5D platformer Deadlight.

Xbox Game Pass includes the Fallout series (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Fallout 3, New Vegas), Metro Exodus, Wasteland 3, State of Decay 2, Atomfall, and Rain World — the slugcat survival sim in a ruined megacity.

The PlayStation Plus catalog offers The Last of Us Part I, Metro Exodus, Horizon Zero Dawn (Remastered) and Horizon Forbidden West, Days Gone, Death Stranding, and Pacific Drive.

Co-op post-apocalyptic games cover wildly different experiences — from building a base together to mowing down zombies and hardcore raids. Among co-op survival games, try 7 Days to Die, Project Zomboid, ARC Raiders, State of Decay 2, and Once Human, plus the zombie co-op classics Left 4 Dead 2 and World War Z: Aftermath. The campaigns of Dying Light and Dying Light: The Beast support up to 4 players. For role-playing, Wasteland 3 can be played through entirely in two-player co-op, and Fallout 76 offers multiplayer survival in the Fallout universe. More options — in our best co-op games.

The open world is the genre's natural habitat: exploring ruins and scavenging for resources work best across big spaces. The open-world classics are Fallout 4 and Fallout: New Vegas, both Horizon games, Days Gone, Mad Max, RAGE 2, and Dying Light 2. Among recent releases, Dying Light: The Beast and Stellar Blade offer semi-open zones.

The past two years brought several major post-apocalyptic releases. The headliners are Dying Light: The Beast, Hideo Kojima's sequel Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Atomfall — survival in the spirit of Fallout, but set in the Cold War-era British countryside. Don't overlook the horror game Cronos: The New Dawn, the unusual action game Hell is Us, and the anime action RPG AI Limit. On the multiplayer side, the biggest event was the extraction shooter ARC Raiders.

What would you add to this list? Share your favorites in the comments!

Fifty entries may sound like a lot, but the genre is so rich that plenty of worthy post-apocalyptic games still ended up outside the ranking — call them honorable mentions. They fell short of "best" status: middling reviews here, a saggy second half there. Fans of the setting will still find plenty to enjoy.

Miasma Chronicles is a turn-based tactics game from the creators of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Humanity is being consumed by a mysterious force called the Miasma, and the setting mixes techno-fantasy with neon-lit city ruins and the rusting factories of small-town America. A touching story about the friendship between a young man and his robot brother comes included.

ELEX II is an open-world action RPG from the creators of Gothic. It blends science fiction, post-apocalypse, and medieval fantasy: knights with swords, berserkers, and factions armed with laser rifles all share one planet. It's classic "Eurojank" — angular and rough around the edges, but full of soul and enormous freedom.

Encased is an isometric RPG in the vein of classic Fallout about an expedition beneath a giant Dome covering an anomalous zone full of artifacts. A strong start with a choice of expedition wing (your profession) gives way to a weaker second half — but genre fans should still take a look.

And remember: the best post-apocalyptic games are worth finishing before the real thing arrives. That way, you'll be ready for anything.