5 Survival Games to Get You Hooked on the Genre

The immediate appeal of the survival genre is having the opportunity to play out in-game apocalyptic fantasies that audiences often dream of. The best kinds of survival games also aim to provide a truly realistic experience for surviving harsh environmental conditions through the need to satisfy physical needs, grow and maintain food supply, build a proper base of operations, and defend against (or subjugate) the native flora and fauna.

If you are getting started in the survival genre and don’t know where to start, there are already several games that are genre-defining. These titles offer a balanced gaming experience, strong narrative elements, unique environmental stages begging to be explored, and the ability to truly craft and survive in those unique conditions. Here are some of the best survival games to get you hooked on the genre.

The Forest and Sons of The Forest

Endnight Games are the creative minds behind the survival horror games The Forest and the sequel Sons of the Forest. Starting off in The Forest, you are a survivor from a tragic plane crash on a remote island that is inhabited by mutant cannibals. After waking from the plane crash, the player’s son is kidnapped by one of these cannibals, leaving the protagonist to venture forth and find their son. Along the way, you’ll need to account for basic needs: food, water, and shelter. Managing those basic needs leads into one of the most satisfying crafting systems for creating survival gear like basic spears, snow shoes, armor, traps, and base building to defend against native cannibalistic islanders.

Following along the storyline to find and retrieve the lost son will lead to searches across various biomes and underground cave structures that reveal horrid and creepy truths behind the island’s lore. These truths ultimately set the stage for Sons of the Forest.

The sequel offers, in general, a more polished experience, higher graphic fidelity, and more options for base building customization. However, Sons of the Forest doesn’t offer the same robustness for gear crafting in the early part of the game as compared to The Forest. Weapons and gear are more easily found across the island, which negates the need for that early crafting system experienced in The Forest.

Grounded

Nothing takes you back to the feeling of a Goonies adventure quite like the game Grounded by Obsidian Entertainment. After being shrunk down to the size of an ant, you are stuck in a position of figuring out how to survive in the world of insects whilst figuring out how to restore yourself to a normal size.

The adventure is fraught with challenges between researching and discovering how to create meaningful survival gear to combat spiders, ants, stinkbugs, bees, ladybugs, and other insects. Additionally, the player will need to traverse various biomes that require unique gear like gas masks and underwater gear to survive those harsh environments.

The narrative of Grounded is completely charming and brings an air of nostalgia to the memories of being an imaginative child again. That level of creativity is extended to the base building of the game that utilizes grass stalks, stems, spider silk, and other lawn variety materials to craft defensive structures.

Ark: Survival Evolved and Ark: Survival Ascended

Studio Wildcard captured the imaginations of survivalists and dinosaur fans in one fowl swoop with the Ark franchise. Stranded on an island with little more than your fists and a loin cloth, you’ll begin a quest of technological discovery starting from the prehistoric era through to the post-modern era, whilst attempting to survive against Jurassic inhabitants of the island. The ability to craft gear from various elements and tame and breed dinosaurs all serves towards the purpose of gaining more experience and leveling up. Every time a new level is reached, new gear is available to be researched and unlocked for crafting.

A signature of a good quality survival game is the amount of recipes that are available to unlock and build, but integrated in a fashion that feels manageable. Ark provides the ability to scale how fast the player levels up, which can more meaningfully allow the player to advance, appreciate, and utilize various gear from different eras – whether it’s a stone axe, metal sword, crossbow, or the futuristic Tek rifle.

Ark has built out several different maps that offer new biomes and different dinosaurs (and mythological beasts) to tame or kill so that the experience is easily replayable over and over again. If you desire to ride a triceratops, fly a pteranodon, battle mammoths, or swim frantically away from a mastodon – Ark makes for the perfect survival experience.

7 Days to Die

If you are wondering how long you would last in a zombie apocalypse, then start your journey with 7 Days to Die. All the requirements for getting started after a zombie apocalypse are present – the need to explore and loot, the need to alter terrain and build a fort to defend against the hordes, and the need to maintain food resources.

As you traverse and loot across the open world setting in 7 Days to Die, there will be many interactions with the undead and a variety of undead types like crawlers, burnt undead, screamers, and spider zombies. The unique twist is that every seven days, a Blood Moon event occurs, where you will be swarmed by hordes of the infected undead to contend with. The waves of hordes become increasingly more challenging upon each additional Blood Moon event.

Character development offers some diversity against other survival games. As a two pronged approach, experience will unlock different options, like hunting, along a skill-tree. The second prong for character development is through finding magazines across the map and within different buildings. From reading the magazines, players unlock different recipes within the skills that have been unlocked.

Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero

The feeling of loneliness cannot be better felt in a survival game than with what Subnautica manages to achieve, and that makes the experience so much more meaningful and impactful. After surviving a spaceship crash into an alien ocean world, you are left in a desperate situation to find sustenance, discover if anyone else survived the crash, and find out what happened to life on the planet. The answers always lead in the same direction, further down into the deeps of the ocean.

It quickly becomes apparent that a playthrough of Subnautica occurs without the company of other intelligent NPC life as you descend further into the deep – further evoking the feelings of loneliness, claustrophobia, and thalassophobia from the beautiful but vast ocean environments. The sea life and exploration gives the feeling of wonder like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the threats make you feel extremely vulnerable without any form of substantial defense to what lurks in the water. Respite is only found within the crafted submersible bases that will always feel just a little too empty with only one inhabitant within.

Subnautica extends the journey with Subnautica: Below Zero. While the playthrough is fairly similar in terms of mechanics, there are the additions of new recipes, collectable soundtracks, new aquatic life to discover, and several intelligent forms of NPC life out there. Subnautica: Below Zero also offers a twist with a meaningful addition of gameplay that takes place above and below the water.