During the past few years, survival games have exploded. Like classic survival horror games and modern extreme survival sims, all sorts of examples fill the Steam charts—adventures to pursue to help any bewildered adventurers.
There are several great survival games, a large proportion of which are unfinished Early Access ventures, but there are plenty of cheap-and-nasty cash-ins as well.
This guide will help you hunt for only the best, as a survivor scanning for beans in abandoned cupboards.
The Long Dark
Available in Steam, GOG, Humble
The vast, snow-blanketed wilderness of The Long Dark is a rugged and uncompromising place. Wintermute, its episodic story mode, serves as a gentle introduction to its harsh but beautiful setting. Still, it's the game's survival mode that is your mettle's real, open-ended test, dropping you into a freezing world, then leaving you to find your own way.
You have to find shelter and then go out to find supplies, all while trying to keep up your calorie intake and warm your body. It feels like organizing a desert expedition to get ready to leave the shelter.
The Long Dark sticks to the basics and works magic with them. The Long Dark fills them with atmosphere instead of filling journeys from A to B with rivals, competing players, and more junk than you would know what to do with.
While you keep an ear out for wolf howls and hope that the wind doesn't pick up, hikes are fraught with tension. There's always time to play the role of tourist sometimes, though. The map is a gorgeous slice of the Canadian wilderness, so who can be blamed for taking a break to take a few shots from scavenging?
Subnautica
Available in Steam, Humble
Survival games are no more alien or less hospitable to human life than Subnautica. Stuck on an underwater world, to find food and energy, you must delve beneath the waves, eventually creating your own underwater bases and submersible vehicles.
Even the tedious act of collecting scrap pieces makes 3D motion and a lack of oxygen a tense adventure. Danger can come from either direction, and if you remain underwater for too long, you'll have an ugly reminder that you're an intruder in this universe, dying as you gasp for air.
However, cars, air pumps, and oxygen tanks allow you to remain under for longer, and the more you become acquainted with the globe, the more the ocean begins to become home.
Conan Exiles
Available in Steam
This austere adventure takes you to the fictional Hyborian Prehistoric Period, where players play the part of an exile, cast away from the safety of their Exiled Land tribe.
You're charged with navigating 53 km2 of the Exiled Lands, armed with absolutely nothing (not even the clothes on your back), to find out a way to redeem yourself and stay alive while doing so.
But there are ferocious beasts and creatures, as well as hunger, thirst, and other players, out there to get you. Good luck living long enough to do the right things.
Darkwood
Available in Steam, GOG, Humble
This eerie survival horror adventure occurs in Poland's odd woodland, where players have been stuck for some time. They can search the area, scavenge for supplies, and cook in the open world to get through the daytime.
But then you have to think about the coming night, where several intruders are going to do their best to get you. Overnight, it's possible to die, and if you do, well, it's game over.
It just sounds at first, scraping on the walls, knocking, banging, but it's not going to remain that way. Your barricades will finally be broken into splinters. The forest is surreal and continually shifting, moving further and farther away from reality, so you still feel like you're on your back foot.
The Forest
Available in Steam, Humble
Years after early access first emerged, we still vividly recall our first brush with The Forest's mutated cannibal tribe. The Forest is a nightmare that is stressful and frightening. It's much worse at night. That's when the cannibals become more audacious.
If you see their torches flashing in the distance, you know you're going to have to find a place to hide. However, you're not entirely powerless. With traps and fortifications, you can encircle your fortress, taunting the cannibals to try their luck.
They're fierce, but they're also smart, working together to take you down and protect the wounded. These are not mindless beasts, but rather an entire culture willing to make dinner for you.
Conclusion
In these scintillating survival adventures, whether you like enduring the horrors of war or you're into the latest breed of hunger and disease control games, get ready to suffer agony and lots of pain.
