This article surveys many of the recent works regarding simulation functions and Z-contractions that came into existence after the publication of Khojasteh et al. (Filomat 29(6):1189–1194, 2015). These results assess inclusive of simulation functions, Z-contractions, b-simulation functions, Suzuki-type Z-contractions, Darbo’s fixed point theorem, α-admissible Z-contractions, first-order periodic problems and variational inequality problems. Additionally, we consider many of the metric frameworks that have been taken into account while exploring the results. © 2018, Springer-Verlag Italia S.r.l., part of Springer Nature.