Highlights
- Frostpunk: In this city-builder strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic winter, players must strategically warm their city to ensure survival.
- Endzone - A World Apart: Players must navigate a radioactive and harsh climate in this strategy game to scrounge for resources and decide whether certain locations are worth the risk.
- Sheltered 1 & 2: Control a family living in an underground bunker, managing resources and keeping their sanity intact while venturing above ground for essential items.
Living in a post-apocalyptic world can be a scary scenario for most people. These environments often entail going from a relatively sheltered and secure life to a daily struggle just to survive via scavenging whatever supplies remain. Games have utilized such a dangerous setting to much success, from award-winning RPGs to open-world first-person shooters that let players experience what it’s like to live in such circumstances.
The same goes for post-apocalyptic strategy games. Planning out the best way to survive another day becomes paramount on anyone’s agenda. Which ones are the best post-apocalyptic strategy games?
8 Frostpunk
Frostpunk is a city-builder strategy game that is set in a post-apocalyptic setting where the world has succumbed to a seemingly endless winter. Players are tasked to run the last remaining great city and cultivate the last human society from utter ruin.
As the de facto ruler, players have to ensure their city is constantly being warmed by creating various furnaces. This entails strategizing the best city layout to maximize whatever resources their cities have: looking for resources in the form of food and fuel is essential to ensure the city continues to thrive. They also need to keep their subjects fed and happy to avoid any conflict or uprising.
7 Endzone - A World Apart
In Endzone - A World Apart, the world as players know it falls apart after a catastrophic ecological disaster which led to the few remaining survivors fleeing into underground bunkers called “endzones'' to have a chance to live through unfortunate circumstances. Fast-forward 150 years, and the survivors’ descendants are tasked to repopulate what remains of the world.
The environment in Endzone - A World Apart is an unforgiving one full of radioactive areas and severe climate changes that complicate things for players who need to raid depositories and scrounge for resources. Strategy is essential to remain alive and players have to decide if heading to a certain location for possible resources is worth it or not.
6 Sheltered 1 & 2
While most post-apocalyptic strategy games have players control a city or town of survivors, the Sheltered games have players control a family living under a bunker. Living in an underground bunker is a difficult one, especially since resources are about to run out. Players need to think about who among the family should venture above ground to look for food and other essential items to gather them, keeping in mind the dangers in the form of wildlife and other survivors on the prowl.
Apart from resource management, players need to keep in mind the family members’ well-being. Each member has different needs, and keeping their sanity in check is crucial to keep them alive for another day.
5 ATOM RPG
ATOM RPG is a CRPG that pays homage to classic post-apocalyptic titles like the early Fallout and Wasteland games. It's set in somewhere in Soviet Russia after the Western Bloc and the Soviet Union wrought nuclear catastrophe throughout the world.
ATOM RPG allows players to customize their characters. Each one has specialties and weaknesses, and it is up to the players to recruit a group of survivors that best reflect how they want to go about surviving the post-nuclear Soviet wasteland. Side quests are aplenty, and solutions to such quests can be achieved in more ways than one, players just need to be crafty.
Dealing with other survivors also falls under the players’ discretion. They can choose to be friendly or adversarial to them, but players need to be ready for the consequences of their actions.
4 They Are Billions
A zombie-infested world has become one post-apocalyptic scenario in recent games, and They Are Billions runs with this premise as its theme throughout the game. Specifically, players are given the reins of the last remaining city of humans and are tasked to keep humanity alive as best as they can, with the billions of infected amassing just outside the city walls.
Players have to decide when to send scouting parties out of the city to look for resources and weapons to further bolster the city defenses or expand the territory to eventually revive humanity and civilization, one colony at a time.
3 Project Zomboid
For those who want to experience the dangers of navigating through a zombie-riddled post-apocalyptic world on their own, Project Zomboid is the game that brings both fun and dread in a neat package.
Project Zomboid has a deep crafting system that lets players create an assortment of survival tools and weapons they can use to defend themselves against hordes of zombies. The game also has a clever survival mechanic that tracks whether the player has caught any sickness or any health-related abnormalities like getting infected via zombie bite and other wounds caused by other survivors. This mechanic adds more urgency for players to get to the safest place they can as quickly as possible.
2 Fallout 1 and 2
The Fallout games are synonymous with post-apocalyptic games, especially the more recent ones. However, while the latter titles are first-person RPGs, its first two titles, Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, stick to their isometric CRPG roots and let players explore a radioactive wasteland and endeavor to survive or become a hero while not succumbing to radiation poison and either dying or transforming into a mutant.
Both Fallout games give players the chance to talk, sneak, and fight their way against other survivors, mutants, and robots as they progress through their respective stories. Each decision players make when interacting or establishing relationships with NPCs will determine their narrative’s outcome, for better or worse.
1 Wasteland Series
Most people credit the Wasteland games as one of the first post-apocalyptic CRPG and strategy games that have a nuclear-wasteland setting. From the first game all the way to the most recent title, the Wasteland games kept their isometric CRPG style and focused on writing various interwoven narratives that are affected by players’ decisions as they progress through the game.
Players are treated to turn-based combat against all manner of dangerous mutants, fellow survivors, and other hazards. Surviving battles requires players to be knowledgeable about various treatments available to ensure their characters don’t get radiation sickness or other ailments.