We Love It's Guide to…
In a sun-scorched procedural wasteland, scavenge, craft, trade, build settlements, and navigate faction conflicts alone or with others.
Released 17 Feb 2023
Scavenge Rusted Wrecks
Outrun Solar Heat
Build Hover Vehicles
Enter a living post-apocalyptic sandbox where the world doesn't wait for you. Build, craft, trade, earn the trust of factions, and forge your own path through a brutal procedural wasteland.
Developed by Cobra Byte Digital · Published by Cobra Byte Digital
You begin as an unknown survivor in a wasteland devastated by extreme solar flares. Explore a procedurally generated world alone or with others, where heat, thirst, hunger, radiation, and hostile inhabitants threaten your survival.
Scavenge ruins and wrecks, hunt, fight enemies, and trade with faction-aligned NPCs to secure supplies. Complete quests and jobs to earn resources, reputation, and experience; spend skill points to develop abilities and improve your survivor’s prospects.
Craft weapons, armor, equipment, and vehicles from materials and blueprints. Build modular bases and settlements, supply residents to grow their population and production, and defend them from attacks. Faction reputation can also open the way to capturing contested outposts.
Players who enjoy the game often highlight its harsh wasteland atmosphere, open-ended survival, and the satisfying cycle of scavenging, crafting, and gradually expanding their capabilities. Faction activity, base-building, and hover vehicles also feature in positive accounts, as does the developers’ ongoing updating of the game. Reviews are mixed, with recurring complaints about bugs that can lose vehicles or gear, awkward menus and inventory management, and the game’s unfinished feel or limited content.
The sun is your deadliest enemy.
In Plains of Pain, you fight extreme heat, thirst, toxic air, and ruthless enemies in a vast post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Build bases and settlements, trade with NPCs, craft gear and anti-gravity hover vehicles, and use them to move faster across the desert.
Outposts are constantly fought over by factions. Survive solo or with friends and decide where you stand.
Humanity stood at the peak of technological achievement when it all went wrong. For reasons no one could explain, the sun began unleashing colossal solar flares—so powerful they vaporized Mercury and Venus within days. Earth was next. The heat rose, fast and merciless. Panic spread like wildfire.
The world’s leaders didn’t save anyone. They saved themselves. In a secret evacuation project, the powerful and the wealthy abandoned Earth, leaving the rest behind to face the inferno. Civilization cracked, then crumbled. What was once a thriving world fragmented into chaos and dust.
The land is now a scorched wasteland. Blistering heat and relentless drought have drained the planet dry. Most of the remaining survivors lost their minds long ago—wandering the deadlands in search of scraps of food or drops of water.
Two factions now fight to bring some semblance of order to the madness. Each claims to be humanity's last hope—but they have very different visions of what the future should look like. If you don't have reputation with them, you're nothing. Just another ghost in the heat.
And this is where your story begins.
You're no one. No past, no protection—just the will to live. Survive however you can. Earn trust from the factions... or walk your own path. Stay neutral, or pick a side. There are no easy choices. Trade, build, explore. Dig into the ruins of the world and decide for yourself who’s right, who’s wrong—and who’s already lost.
Survive your way—solo or with others. Plains of Pain offers full singleplayer, co-op with friends, and online play on official or community servers. Prefer local play? Host or join a game over LAN. Whether you're a lone survivor or part of a crew, the wasteland is waiting.
Build your home, your base—or an entire settlement. Use modular pieces for total creative freedom. Set up stations to purify water, craft materials, and survive. Grow into an outpost with barracks, sniper towers, and a Grand Shack that supports wastelanders—if you can supply food and water. Find blueprints in the wasteland, trade for them, or loot them off the dead.
Traverse the wasteland in advanced hovering vehicles built with future tech. Craft them from blueprints found or bought, fuel them up, and hit the dust. Each vehicle comes with storage, a fuel tank, and unique fuel types. Upgrade speed, acceleration, armor, durability, and more. If you want to explore the far reaches of the world—you're gonna need a ride.
The wasteland doesn’t forgive. Learn to manage thirst, hunger, heat stress, radiation, biohazards, and fatigue—or die trying. Face off against deadly enemies, loot their bodies, and decide what’s worth carrying. Deal with Overheat events, meteor showers, and brutal bandits. Choose your allies, find traders, upgrade your gear. There’s no single way to survive—only what works. For now.
The wasteland’s outposts hold rare and vital resources—and the factions want them all. Their forces fight to claim and defend each one. As a lone survivor, you can tip the scales. With enough reputation, you can capture outposts for a faction of your choice, shifting power across the land. No outpost stays safe for long.
Begin with intro quests that teach you the basics—but the real journey starts when you explore. The wasteland is filled with NPCs offering hidden tasks, challenges, and rewards. Some quests are key to increasing your skill caps, letting you grow stronger. Bigger, story-driven missions are coming later—but even now, there’s no shortage of quests. You just have to find them.
Customize your survivor with a bunch of unique skills that shape how you play. Earn experience points (XPs) by eliminating enemies, building, trading, looting, or completing quests. Each level grants a Skill Point to spend—boost your health, regeneration, melee damage, or fine-tune your stealth, critical hits, trader prices, firearm accuracy, and more. Every choice makes a difference in the wasteland.
Craft to survive. Build melee weapons, firearms, ammo, armor, and gear like backpacks or shoulder plates. Cook food, assemble vehicle parts, or make containers for precious liquids. In the wasteland, crafting isn’t a choice—it’s your lifeline.
Traders are scattered across the wasteland—in camps, settlements, and hidden corners. Each one belongs to a faction, and trading with them boosts your reputation. Most deal in Rusty Nuts, the common currency, offering everything from random goods to specialized gear. Some even offer cargo delivery jobs for a solid profit—turning you into a wasteland courier. Buy what you need, sell what you don’t. In a world this harsh, trading can keep you alive.
Build and supply settlements to shape life in the wasteland. Bring food and water to attract wastelanders and grow the population. As your settlement expands, it activates production buildings that generate useful items—and defending units to fight off waves of mad lowlifes and ruthless bandits. The bigger the population, the tougher the attacks. But with strong defenses and smart support, your settlement becomes a lifeline—and even draws in traders to keep it thriving.
The wasteland is never quiet. It breathes, it moves—and it hunts. Massive hordes of Lowlifes roam the scorched lands, drawn to movement, noise, and any sign of life. Camps, outposts, and settlements are like beacons to them. These heat-crazed madmen don’t think—they swarm. If you're caught unprepared, they’ll overwhelm you in seconds. Survive long enough, and you’ll learn: it’s not a question of if the horde comes. Only when.
Every choice counts in the wasteland. Barter, complete quests, or eliminate faction targets to earn reputation with the factions. Higher reputation unlocks access to special outposts, better trading options, and unique production opportunities. You can fight in faction wars anytime—but only with enough reputation will a faction trust you to claim outposts in their name.
Wherever The Network’s signal reaches, you can call in cargo—vehicles, fuel barrels, even faction battle drones. Your order is delivered by flying transport straight to your location. But be smart about where you call it in—enemy factions can spot the drop and shoot it down before it reaches you. In the wasteland, every delivery is a risk.
No two journeys are the same. Each world is shaped by a unique seed, creating endless variations in terrain, enemy spawns, trader inventory, and loot. Biomes offer distinct challenges—extreme heat, radiation, oxygen loss, or rare enemies and resources. Some offer better shade, others hide deadly threats. Choose your world size—up to 26x26 km—and dive into a wasteland that’s always changing.
This world doesn’t just kill—you have to outthink it. Global events like Overheat and Meteor Showers can wipe you out in seconds. When the Overheat hits, your only chance is shade. When the sky rains fire, find cover fast and learn where it’s coming from. These events are brutal, unpredictable, and always deadly. Surviving them means paying attention—or paying the price.
We don’t follow a rigid roadmap—our development is flexible, shaped by player feedback, our own ideas, and the evolving vision of Plains of Pain. But make no mistake: we know where we’re heading. More vehicles, weapons, and blueprints. Expanded settlement systems. New enemies, biomes, and extreme events. Storyline quests, deeper NPCs, and more locations to explore. Whether you prefer PvE or PvP, there’s a lot on the way—and we’re just getting started.
Plains of Pain is in Early Access—and your voice matters. We're building this world with the community, listening to your feedback, suggestions, and experiences. At the same time, we have a strong vision of where the game is headed: a brutal, immersive survival experience set in a world that doesn’t hold your hand. Join us on the journey. Help shape the wasteland, one update at a time.
We’re Cobra Byte Digital—just three people with a big vision and a love for brutal survival games. Plains of Pain is our passion project, and no matter what, we’re committed to reaching full release. After that, we’re not stopping. As long as we have ideas—and as long as the community sticks with us—we’ll keep the wasteland alive and evolving.
| Platforms | Windows |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 4 |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller required | No |
| DRM / EULA |
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| Content notices |
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| AI disclosure | Additional images for merchants, difficulties and skills. |
| AI disclosure categories |
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| Website | Official website |
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