Best sci-fi games on PC 2024

What are the best sci-fi games on PC? From the mind-bending visuals of Psychroma to the bustling Night City streets, sci-fi games come in all shapes and sizes. There’s the cozy aesthetic and cerebral puzzles of Outer Wilds and the tense, tactical shootouts in XCOM 2 — sci-fi is more of a flavor than a specific type of game, which means that those of a future-leaning ilk have always eaten well.

There are the remastered classics, like System Shock, the dystopian blueprint for the immersive sim, and the unappreciated masterpieces like Arkane Austin’s Prey. Of course, there are all-time classics like Mass Effect, a series that, while it may have faltered with Andromeda, dominated the space with the initial trilogy. Sci-fi games encompass RPGs, FPS games, and, of course, space games where you fly and fight among the stars. These are some of the best PC games out there.

The best sci-fi games to play right now are:

Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation is a game that understands the source material. Like, really understands it. From moody interiors to clicky buttons and CRT monitors, Alien Isolation takes you and puts you in a familiar nightmare. No huge bombast, no Colonial Marines, just a Xenomorph. Playing cat and mouse with a perfect organism is a tough ask, but that’s the hand you’ve been dealt – run, hide, do everything you can to escape a most grisly death.

First up is Psychroma. You play as a woman who’s woken up inside an abandoned house controlled by a sentient AI. It’s a retro side-scrolling mystery that touches on the more philosophical side of the sci-fi spectrum, making it the perfect game if you’re looking to plumb the depths of humanity and how AI fits into a new future.  

While we all love playing indies and undiscovered gems, hugely popular games come with big communities of modders, and Cyberpunk 2077 is no different. This first-person RPG has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. It launched in a pretty rough shape, playable only on the best PCs, but after a few years of improvements and a complete gameplay overhaul, it’s a remarkable experience. Night City is a place you can truly lose yourself in thanks to the densely packed streets filled with missions and little vignettes to get distracted by.

Prey is the best game you’ve (probably never) played. Developed by Arkane Austin, it carries on the legacy of immersive sim Dishonored and distills all the studio’s knowledge into a fantastic sci-fi game set aboard a space station. Ingenius problem-solving comes in the form of being able to transform into any object on the space station, so if the mind-bending plot doesn’t get you, the limit of your imagination will. 

There aren’t many games like Outer Wilds. This sci-fi game is set in a fully simulated solar system full of mysteries for you to uncover. You play as a member of a four-eyed alien species with a knack for space travel. Set off in a cozy — and mostly wooden — spaceship in what is a fairly cottagecore space adventure. You’re trapped in a time loop and have to figure out its source. The base game is phenomenal as it is, and the DLC, Echoes of the Eye, adds even more hours of magic to the experience. 

You’ve got a choice with System Shock, either the original 1994 version that kicked off the immersive sim genre or the 2023 remake that makes the game prettier but still maintains a lot of the original design aesthetic and direction. You play as a hacker forced to take down Shodan, a rogue AI with a vindictive hatred for humanity. She’s taken over a space station and it’s your job to fix it. 

Once you’ve had your fill of sci-fi games, why not check out our list of best fantasy games for a change of pace? If you’ve already played all of these, then keep an eye on our list of the best upcoming PC games, to keep an eye on.