19 Survival Games Everyone Should Play at Least Once

Once Human

• Release Date — July 9, 2024
• Publisher — Starry Studio
• Developer — Starry Studio
• Review Aggregate Score — 71% (Mixed or Average)
• Steam User Rating — 71% (Mostly Positive)
• Platforms — PC

One of the newest games on this list, Once Human is quickly taking the survival genre by storm thanks to its captivating visuals and unique, post-apocalyptic setting. Despite the title’s somewhat middling Steam user reviews and critical reception, Once Human‘s player counts show that the title is much more popular than its scores might let on. After reaching a peak of nearly 230,000 concurrent players, Once Human continues to average roughly 105,000 players per day, making it one of the most popular games on Steam (survival or otherwise).

As a free-to-play game, most of the negative reviews for the title center around the lack of content, but the title’s adoption of a seasonal model means new content will always be around the corner. And for now, what’s there (both its combat and survival mechanics) is great, with many players noting that the grind and progression curve are more generous than in other survival games.

Grounded

• Release Date — September 27, 2022
• Publisher — Xbox Game Studios
• Developer — Obsidian Entertainment
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 90% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

After a fruitful two years spent in Early Access, Obsidian’s Grounded finally launched its 1.0 release in September 2022. The game’s core premise centers around humans being shrunk down to microscopic size and being placed into their own backyard, echoing some of the more iconic scenes from the classic film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. More than just a nostalgic callback, though, Grounded has plenty of gameplay chops to back up its excellent setting. Unlike a lot of other survival games that utilize procedural generation for their maps, all the spaces in Grounded are intricately crafted and bursting with character. Add to that the ability to play through the entire game in co-op, and Grounded is a survival experience that is not easily topped.

Day Z

• Release Date — December 13, 2018
• Publisher — Bohemia Interactive
• Developer — Bohemia Interactive
• Review Aggregate Score — Console version scores: 44% (Generally Unfavorable)
• Steam User Rating — 76% (Mostly Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Beginning its life as a fan-made mod for the military shooter Arma, Day Z has been through quite the journey from its initial stages to full 1.0 release. After entering Early Access in 2013, the title would finally hit 1.0 in 2018 and has since enjoyed a steady level of popularity among fans of both zombie shooters and survival games. Part of Day Z‘s appeal is its ability to give players pause over whether it’s better to trust fellow survivors or take them out in the competition for limited resources. Or, if you’re truly diabolical, you can team up with others in a server only to betray them later on and steal their gear. The freeform nature of exploration and the emergent gameplay and player-driven narrative help makeDay Z an experience like no other, even if its technical issues sometimes hold it back.

Terraria

• Release Date — May 16, 2011
• Publisher — Re-Logic
• Developer — Re-Logic
• Review Aggregate Score — 81% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 97% (Overwhelmingly Positive)
• Platforms — Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Launching right around the same time as Minecraft, Terraria is yet another legendary survival game responsible for introducing millions of fans to the genre. However, unlike Minecraft, Terraria is a third-person action-platformer that mixes in Metroidvania elements to its incredibly complex world and crafting systems. There’s seemingly no ceiling to the different types of items that players can create in Terraria, and seeing how players creatively bend (and then break) the rules of the game is nothing short of impressive. Terraria‘s continued patches and updates ensure that the game only keeps improving, and its use of procedural generation gives players with thousands of hours of playtime reason to keep coming back for more.

Palworld

• Release Date — January 19, 2024
• Publisher — Pocketpair
• Developer — Pocketpair
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Steam User Rating — 93% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC (Early Access)

While the initial reaction to Palworld was somewhat unfairly reductive (“It’s Pokemon with guns!”) that still doesn’t discount the fact that the game seems like it was cooked up within the fever dreams of an 8-year-old. But, to its credit, Palworld‘s runaway success and continued relevance speaks to the quality of its gameplay, which becomes even more impressive when you realize that the team at Pocketpair was fewer than 50 people at the time of Palworld‘s development. Palworld blends elements of monster-taming RPGs like Pokemon with full-blown crafting and farming systems, satisfying combat, and open-world exploration, and it’s no wonder that the game was one of the first major success stories of 2024.

Abiotic Factor

• Release Date — May 2, 2024
• Publisher — Playstack
• Developer — Deep Field Games
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Steam User Rating — 96% (Overwhelmingly Positive)
• Platforms — PC (Early Access)

Another newer survival game, Abiotic Factor is quickly rising to prominence within the survival genre thanks to its pitch-perfect execution of what can sometimes be the survival genre’s largest barrier to entry — the lack of a dedicated story. In Abiotic Factor, players take on the role of a researcher at the world’s most advanced scientific facility. When a failed experiment results in the facility being overrun with otherworldly lifeforms and the military responds, it’s up to you and the rest of the researchers to scavenge for survival while planning your eventual escape. Abiotic Factor has some of the most forgiving crafting of any survival game, allowing players to get right into the joy of building without needing to hoard resources, and it’s a story that smacks of John Carpenter’s The Thing provides the game with a sense of narrative weight that is all too often missing in the genre.

Green Hell

• Release Date — September 5, 2019
• Publisher — Creepy Jar
• Developer — Creepy Jar
• Review Aggregate Score — 78% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 86% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch

While it would be all too easy to joke about Green Hell being “The Jungle” to Endnight Games’ The Forest, that would be missing the forest (pun intended) for the trees. Green Hell, as the name implies, errs on the side of unforgiveness, forcing players into a desperate bid for survival in a harsh and deadly environment. And, truthfully, it’s the better game for it. Its brutality and incredibly challenging early hours allow Green Hell to stand out among other survival games. But suppose players can overcome its mechanics and figure out how to survive in its hostile environment. In that case, they get to experience one of the better power fantasies afforded to players in the survival genre, complete with some of its most visceral and satisfying combat.

7 Days to Die

• Release Date — July 25, 2024
• Publisher — The Fun Pimps Entertainment LLC
• Developer — The Fun Pimps
• Review Aggregate Score — Console version scores: 40% (Generally Unfavorable)
• Steam User Rating — 88% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Another of the newer survival games quickly rising to prominence within the genre, 7 Days to Die is an enticing genre mix. Part survival game, part tower defense, part FPS, and part survival horror, 7 Days to Die drops players into an unforgiving zombie apocalypse. Within that desolate landscape, it becomes necessary to scavenge for supplies, survey the environment, and eventually build a shelter that can withstand an assault from the undead. After spending more than a decade in early access, 7 Days to Die finally hit its 1.0 launch this year. In that time, several players have total playtime in the range of 3,000 hours or more, signaling that 7 Days to Die is a survival experience that sinks its teeth in and won’t let go.

Rimworld

• Release Date — October 17, 2018
• Publisher — Ludeon Studios
• Developer — Ludeon Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — PC version: 87% (Generally Favorable), Console version: 92% (Universal Acclaim)
• Steam User Rating — 97% (Overwhelmingly Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Ludeon Studios’ Rimworld is both one of the most complex survival game experiences and one of the most rewarding. More than just the traditional solo survival experience, Rimworld puts players in charge of an entire colony. You need to manage more than just the physical buildings, too, as the colonists inhabiting your settlement each have their own personalities and needs that you have to address. At its core, Rimworld is all about the story of your makeshift colony, leveraging a powerful AI to act as a “dungeon master” behind the scenes doling out events for you and your survivors to respond to. While the survival mechanics are all solid (and surprisingly deep), it’s Rimworld‘s storytelling and unpredictability that raise it to be one of the most unforgettable survival games ever.

ARK: Survival Evolved

• Release Date — August 27, 2017
• Publisher — Studio Wildcard, Snail Games USA
• Developer — Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement LLC
• Review Aggregate Score — 70% (Mixed or Average)
• Steam User Rating — 83% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One

If you’ve ever watched Jurassic Park and thought to yourself “I’d love to play a survival game set on that island”, ARK: Survival Evolved is the game for you. One of the most popular survival games of its time, ARK puts players onto an island crawling with prehistoric life (including dinosaurs) and sets them loose to build outposts, settlements, collect supplies, and either defend against or actively hunt down dinosaurs. And, like Day Z, players can choose whether to cooperate or compete against the hundreds of other player-controlled survivors on the island, turning ARK into more than just a fight against the island’s endemic life.

V Rising

• Release Date — May 8, 2024
• Publisher — Stunlock Studios
• Developer — Stunlock Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 88% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5

Outside of Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, and Vampire: The Masquerade, there just aren’t enough vampire games. Thankfully, Stunlock Studios saw fit to craft one of the better survival games in recent memory and give players the ultimate vampire power fantasy. V Rising takes all the best parts of a survival game (collecting supplies, crafting, and building) and turns it into an excuse to craft the most lavish vampire castle imaginable, all while mixing in some truly great isometric action RPG combat that’s not dissimilar from the Diablo series. That V Rising has a crossover with the legendary Castlevania is just a further testament to its honorary place among other vampire game legends, and it’s one of the easier survival games on this list to use as a stepping stone into the genre.

Pacific Drive

• Release Date — February 22, 2024
• Publisher — Kepler Interactive
• Developer — Ironwood Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 79% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 82% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5

Ironwood Studios’ Pacific Drive is a genius idea. Take the traditional mechanics of a survival game, but instead of maintaining and modifying a building/settlement/shelter, you’re keeping a rusted-out station wagon from falling apart (just barely). Pacific Drive succeeds by making its survival mechanics easy for newcomers to the genre to pick up and enjoy, all while emphasizing a feeling of urgency. You never feel truly safe or ahead of the game in Pacific Drive, like you’re constantly behind the curve and just struggling to make it from point A to point B. That pervading sense of dread and need ties into the game’s peerless atmosphere, which uses its Pacific Northwest setting to great effect and is never short on plenty of weird moments. To say that Pacific Drive is a survival game like no other is almost an understatement.

Project Zomboid

• Release Date — November 8, 2013
• Publisher — The Indie Stone
• Developer — The Indie Stone
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Steam User Rating — 94% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC (Early Access)

One of the most popular zombie survival games, Project Zomboid is the game by which all other titles in the subgenre are judged. Despite still being in Early Access, Project Zomboid is an incredibly deep and rewarding experience, affording players what might be the most accurate representation of minute-to-minute survival in the zombie apocalypse. The amount of detail and depth in the game’s maps is impressive, to say the least, and the freedom to go anywhere and do just about anything within that sandbox is PZ‘s greatest asset and most deadly threat to the player. With realistic effects pertaining to disease, infection, hunger, thirst, and injury, Project Zomboid is never shy about killing off players’ survivors either, but a new run is always just a few clicks away.

Frostpunk

• Release Date — April 24, 2018
• Publisher — 11 bit studios
• Developer — 11 bit studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 84% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 92% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Like Rimworld, Frostpunk is about more than individual survival. Instead, Frostpunk tasks players with managing and holding together the last city on Earth. As you might expect, that job is easier said than done, and how players respond to the many and varied threats that face the city and its inhabitants will determine success or failure. The game’s combination of city-building and survival mechanics makes it unique among survival games, and its deep well of content means that players will likely never run out of things to do. There’s a main story to Frostpunk that contains some of the better storytelling in the genre, but it’s the Endless Mode that gives the game near-limitless replayability to try your hand at keeping civilization alive.

The Forest

• Release Date — April 30, 2018
• Publisher — Endnight Games Ltd
• Developer — Endnight Games Ltd
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 95% (Overwhelmingly Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4

Like a lot of games on this list, The Forest spent plenty of time in Early Access before finally launching into 1.0 in 2018. Since then, the title has quickly earned its place as one of the most renowned survival game experiences of all time, blending elements of survival horror and dark humor into its compelling genre mechanics. Like some of the best survival games, The Forest‘s resource management and crafting mechanics are easy for players to wrap their heads around at first, all while providing a natural curve toward complexity as players get more accustomed to scavenging the environment and strengthening their shelter. The player may be stranded on a mysterious island infested with mutant cannibals, but with the right tools and strong initial placement of your shelter, you can build a fully automated settlement capable of swatting down enemies like bothersome flies.

Valheim

• Release Date — February 2, 2021
• Publisher — Coffee Stain Publishing
• Developer — Iron Gate AB
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Steam User Rating — 94% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC (Early Access)

Norse mythology is a great theme for video games (as evidenced by the God of War reboot and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla), so it was only a matter of time before someone got the idea to create a survival game in the setting. Valheim is still in Early Access but is already one of the more popular survival games of all time, drawing in players with its magical world and excellent gameplay. There’s a sense of mystery and discovery at the heart of Valheim that’s not unlike what it feels like to play Dark Souls for the first time, and that atmosphere helps to carry the experience. While its combat is nowhere near as complex, it’s still satisfying enough to warrant heading out into the unknown in search of materials to build and strengthen your own Viking Longhouse.

Subnautica

• Release Date — January 23, 2018
• Publisher — Unknown Worlds Entertainment
• Developer — Unknown Worlds Entertainment
• Review Aggregate Score — 87% (Generally Favorable)
• Steam User Rating — 96% (Overwhelmingly Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

The general loop of Subnautica is nothing new in the survival genre, but it’s executed at such a high level that the game has steadily worked its way into the hearts and minds of players as one of the greatest games ever made. As a lone survivor on an alien ocean planet, you need to dive into the depths in search of supplies, build and maintain a base/research facility, and contend with the many threats awaiting you beneath the surface. The “explore, collect, craft” loop that gets players hooked on survival games is front and center in Subnautica, and the game’s ability to get under your skin rivals the best survival horror games. It may seem tame on the surface, but Subnautica is not a game for anyone with even the slightest hint of Thessalaphobia.

Rust

• Release Date — February 8, 2018
• Publisher — Facepunch Studios
• Developer — Facepunch Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 69% (Mixed or Average)
• Steam User Rating — 87% (Very Positive)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Like Green Hell, Rust‘s main selling point is its cruelty toward the player and its pure distillation of the core survival game mechanics. Few survival games can compare to Rust in terms of its emphasis on pure survival. It’s a struggle just to make it through one day in Rust‘s harsh and unforgiving world, which makes surviving multiple days feel so rewarding as a result. Like the best challenging games, the sense of satisfaction that Rust is able to impart to the player for performing well is a feeling not felt often enough in the medium, but to get there you must first respect the game, its environment, and its mechanics. It might be brutally hard, but Rust is equally as rewarding for those who stick with it.

Minecraft

• Release Date — November 18, 2011
• Publisher — Mojang Studios, Xbox Game Studios
• Developer — Mojang Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 93% (Universal Acclaim)
• Steam User Rating — N/A
• Platforms — Mac, PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

The game responsible for shining a spotlight on the mechanics of survival games and making them more accessible, Minecraft is perhaps the most important game of the 21st Century. At just over 300 million units sold, Minecraft is the undisputable best-selling video game of all-time, and seeing the pure potential that the game affords players makes it easy to see why. Anything is possible in Minecraft, and the game caters to a wide variety of players.

On the more casual side, Minecraft is a phenomenal tool for teaching about resources, crafting, and architecture, all while maintaining a low barrier to entry and having mechanics that even young children can wrap their heads around. At higher levels of gameplay, Minecraft has a limitless ceiling for creativity and player expression, as evidenced by the stunning worlds that players have created on its servers. Minecraft is a must-play survival game simply for the fact that it can be all things to all players, and your experience with it goes as far as the limits of your own imagination.