What's your favorite gladiator game?
I love tooling around in sim/management games, tweaking my business or team to the best of my ability. Sometimes, however, it gets tedious. I need something to break up the monotony.
That’s when I turn to gladiator simulator. These allow me to nitpick and feel in control while also murdering and maiming anyone who challenges my greatness. These 12 games are gladiator games where you (youre team, usually) fight to the death. To glory!
12. Age of Gladiators
Age of Gladiators Gameplay
Age of Gladiators is a strategy/management simulator set in Ancient Rome. This single-player game allows you to manage your own gladiators, building their attributes and abilities to create the fighter of your dreams. You set your gladiators up in matches to level them up and gain expertise points to add to your fighter’s attributes and abilities.
Your staff members will scour the local provinces for more fighters to hire, manage their morale, and equip them for battle. There are side missions, stables to upgrade, and wealth to manage. All while killing in order to grow your business as a gladiatorial icon.
Detailed Character Sheets: This is a screenshot of the character sheet for the gladiator Crispinus. Keep their morale high, their pay good, and their health in check, and they will fight to the death for your honor.
Campaign Mode: is the only game mode in Age of Gladiators. It takes you through events that unfold throughout Utica, Leptis Magna, Brundisium, and Rome. Your goal? Dominate the arenas of each province. Become the ultimate victor!
11. Domina
Domina Gameplay
Like pixel-art and bloody combat? You’ll really like Domina then. Domina is a pixel-art strategy simulation game with a vague Romanesque feel to it. You’ll need to win favor from the powerful Romans to increase your odds of winning. This means you will need to have some political strategies in place. You can even increase the fame of the family name, all while acquiring, training, upgrading, and pitting gladiators against opponents in the local arena.
Battle to the Death: Pixel-blood will be spilled when you unleash your gladiators upon their foes!
Train Your Troops: Training is easy work at the Ludus school.
10. GORN
Gameplay:
GORN is a violent VR gladiator simulator. Tear the heads off of your enemies, or any other body part for that matter, as you collect armor and weapons. To play GORM, you’ll need a VR headset, like an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive, and tracked motion controllers. Don’t forget, you’ll also need room to move—the developers at Free Lives suggest at least a 2mx2m room.
You’ll be throwing punches, swinging clubs, and tearing people limb from limb—that means you need that extra space. This single-player game is still in its early access phase, so you may still encounter bugs. That just means you can help make a fun, bloody game better—report those bugs! Then bathe, my warriors, bathe in the blood of your enemies!
It Gets a Bit Bloody: GORN can get a bit bloody, body parts will litter the virtual floor.
Knock Out: If stabby stabby isn’t up your alley, fisticuffs may be for you. That’s a KO, gentlemen. Good show! Good show!
9. Gladio
Gameplay:
Gladio is a small, experimental game that focuses solely on combat. You can use your PC keyboard or a VR set to play this game. As with other VR games, you’ll need space to play. Destroy your foes by chopping them to pieces and stay alive as they come at your in phases. While you can play this game sitting down or simply standing and swinging, nothing beats the feeling of swinging at an enemy with all your might.
En Garde: Your enemies will come at you in waves. Raise your sword and get to work, gladiator!
No Mercy: Show no mercy to your enemies, as they will surely show none to you.
Gameplay:
While not strictly a gladiator game, you still get to beat people to death. You also besiege castles and raid villages, so that’s a plus! Combat your friends (or strangers) online in this fast-paced first-person slasher. When you are bored with pillaging and warring, you can fight in the arena with up to 31 other players. Don’t worry, though, newbies, there is an offline mode available to help familiarize yourself with the game before you go out into the big wide and make trouble.
Play in Different Maps: Some maps have objectives for you to complete (along with killing, of course). This one is the death wagon that is in the Dark Forest map. Poor peasants. They dead.
Out to Kill: Everyone is out to kill you. Make sure you get that final blow. Wonder how this fight ended?
7. VALHALL
Gameplay:
VALHALL is a new game. Very new. As of January 14th, it is still in beta. The videos and screenshots show beautiful graphics—a lot of attention seems to be paid to the environment, without ignoring character movement. In this game, you are playing as a survivor of Odin’s army. So, while not strictly gladiatorial in a Roman fashion, you still will get to murder.
Why murder? Why don’t you just find a spot of land and start a family? The world is ending, of course. Odin’s warriors come back to find the sword of Odin and stop Ragnarok. And really, why should they get all the glory when it could be yours?
The world map has four separate parts that are all dependent on the season. Watch out for the weather as it will change on you. Because of the coming apocalypse, however, the map is currently shrinking. It is as if The Nothing is eating it away from the outside. Consuming it towards the center. Only the sword of Odin will stop it.
Breathe in the Beauty: Refresh your soul between slayings with the panoramic vistas and beautiful landscape.
Run ‘Em Through: Take time out of admiring the scenery now and then and make it your own by adding your own splash of color.
6. Mordhau
Gameplay:
Another upcoming multiplayer medieval hack and slash game. The website (https://mordhau.com) says it will be released on Steam in 2018, but it has not yet been released to Steam. This game is in beta, however, and the graphics are very well done.
You have freedom of choice in Mordhau. You’ll be able to pick your armor pieces and their colors. Even your weapons are highly customizable. You can be a Viking, an archer, or a crusader. The melee combat is skill-based and allows for combos, parries, and dodges. You can feint and destroy your enemy with a trick.
Combat is varied to defeat boredom. Fights will range from duels to open battles that can have up to 64 players at war.
Death Took Them: And your name is death.
Fight to the Death: Fight one on one or in all out war.
Gameplay:
Mortal Online is an MMO you won’t want to miss if you like killing and slashing. It is set in a giant world. Characters are customizable, as is the style of play. Are you tired of constant player killers? Choose to focus on player versus environment instead (PVE). Unlike many games, in Mortal Online, if you die, you lose all your stuff, as the game has “full loot” mechanics.
You don’t level up your character here either. You level up their skills.
Join a guild—there is strength in numbers.
Archery Kills: Be sure to practice. You can kill all sorts of things, all while keeping your distance and staying alive.
PVE or PVP: You can kill normal people if you want, but if you’re lucky, you may come across something like Mr. Minotaur here.
4. Conan Exiles
Gameplay:
This is an open world survival game set in the lands whence came Conan the Barbarian. Your goal is to survive and thrive. Crush your enemies and listen to the lamentation of their women in both single and multiplayer modes.
Explore the beautifully rendered world while you fight to come out on top, build your home and your name and that of your clan. Wage war using the weapons of your choice, control the avatars of the gods, harvest goods, and craft your resources.
Group Up: Group with friends and strangers in persistent multiplayer mode to defeat NPC characters and monsters or other players as needed.
Truly Explore: You can explore everything in this world. Did I forget to mention you can climb things? You can climb things.
Gameplay:
Gloria Victis is an MMO that is set in a low-fantasy medieval world. So, again, not really a “gladiator” style of play, but you still get to murder your friends and foes. With numerous classes to choose from, you can become part of this living world in the way you choose to be part of it. You can fight to the death in tournaments, besiege castles, and partake in epic wars.
Battle of the Beach: The different environments of the world don’t have much of an impact on how you kill, just on how pretty it looks when you do it.
Armor vs No Armor: Taking bets on the winner here.
Gameplay:
Ryse: Son of Rome, gives a cinematic view of ancient Rome. In single-player mode, you play as Marius Titus, and journey to Britannia seeking revenge for the murder of his family. You can also play this game in multiplayer and coop modes. The Colosseum mode has over 26 multiplayer maps to choose from, everything from Roman villas to Egyptian deserts. Your gladiator earns gold and valor, allowing you to customize the armor, weapons, shields and special consumable items to survive in the arena.
All Out War: Kill or be killed. There is no other.
Fight to the Death: Death does not always have to be ugly. Especially if the sun shines off your blade just the right way.
1. FOR HONOR
Gameplay:
For Honor looks pretty. Pretty scenery, pretty armor,pretty blood and death and dismemberment. There are 18 heroes, 18 maps, PvP and ranked modes, lots of gear to choose from, and other goodies. You can customize your heroes with thousands of available gear. You don’thave to play PvP right away, luckily. You can play the story in campaign mode to better learn to play first. Then you go to PvP and start to slaughter your enemies.
Samurai vs Knight: Which one do you think will win in this duel? I’m betting on the Samurai.
Trial By Combat: Fight one on one or in a dynamic battlefield.
Also be sure to check out:
15 Best Sword Fighting Games (Get Ready For Great Medieval Combat)
