Best survival games

The search for the best survival games is about finding a balance between suffering and success. That equilibrium is what brings out a satisfying sense of reward and triumph unique to survival games, whether that’s slipping past zombies unnoticed or putting the finishing touches on your starter hut. It’s not about the trees we cut down, but why we cut them down.

Gathering resources isn’t the only key to a survival game, though; there are also all kinds of weird and horrifying enemies to contend with. From walking green sticks of dynamite to the lumbering undead, fellow players, and the weather, there are threats aplenty. The best survival games have memorable challenges that set them apart in a sea of second-rate pretenders. Here’s what it looks like when all the elements come together.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• Many of the best survival games feature co-op and occasionally PvP, like Rust.
• You’ll find the best survival games on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
• Mods elevate survival games like Minecraft and Project Zomboid into replayable superstars thanks to how much you can customize your experience.
• Even if you don’t like typical survival games, there are options with radically different atmospheres and settings, like Palworld or Subnautica.
• If you prefer to play alone, games like Project Zomboid, Rimworld, and This War of Mine offer a robust solo experience.

Rust

Available On: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Punishing, cruel, and unrelenting are tags that hang their hat on Rust and its mystery island setting. From the moment you spawn, naked and wielding a rock, you’re under threat from other players and the environment. Unlike many other survival games, Rust runs primarily on multiplayer servers, typically filled to the brim with cutthroat players who will pelt you with arrows and bullets just to steal the contents of your pockets. 

In between trips to scavenge from the various points of interest, you’ll have to build a home of your own – albeit one that will surely end up being destroyed – to research and craft better equipment to, in turn, hunt down lowly nakeds yourself. The whole cycle is a beautifully destructive process as you learn the tricks of constructing, raiding, and surviving.

Project Zomboid

Available On: PC

It turns out early 90s Kentucky is a prime setting for a zombie apocalypse. Project Zomboid delves deep into the sim genre to recreate everything imaginable, whether that’s the nutritional value of food, seasons and temperatures, sight lines and sound, or the dozens of skills and countless items on offer. Zomboid creates an incredible survival sandbox even without the massive range of mods, and its focus on detail makes it the best zombie survival game. 

When you’re tasked with scavenging from the recently ravaged Kentucky countryside and urban centers, you’ll be in for quite a surprise as you discover that the undead aren’t just filler. Instead, every single scratch carries the risk of transmitting the infection, and a bite is certain death. When every single encounter has the potential to kill your character, zombies morph from paper targets into the shambling (or sprinting) terrors they’re intended to be.

Minecraft

Available On: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC, Android, iOS

One of the ultimate platforms to express your creativity, Minecraft is also a fantastic survival experience – one further enhanced by countless mods. Your starter dirt hovel will inevitably evolve into a wooden hut, then a stone shelter, and more as you dive into Minecraft’s limitless possibilities. 
Ticking off new and more dangerous goals will see you delve into nightmarish realms, or simply digging deep underground to unearth new threats and riches. Whether you play alone or join a server with friends, Minecraft is a deep yet accessible game whose modding scene elevates it to one of the best survival games on PC.

Valheim

Available On: Xbox Series X/S, PC

Valheim is survival done Viking style, where you explore and build your way to new biomes full of threats to overcome and resources to claim. With each new leap in progress, you’ll have to defeat a new boss before getting proper access to a new biome. 

Once you’ve found a new biome, you can establish a home base and discover (not usually) friendly neighbors while you try to explore and exploit new resources. Eventually, you’ll graduate to rafts and longships, or even link your bases with portals, and managing your little Viking empire becomes part of the fun, if you can avoid having it all smashed to bits by trolls.

Subnautica

Available On: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC

Moments of awe and relaxation swim hand-in-hand with pure terror in Subnautica, with a massive alien ocean planet teeming with life just outside your tiny escape pod. After crash landing on this uncharted world, you have to survive the galaxy’s most dangerous beach-less resort. 

With minimal supplies and equipment, you’ll dive into deep waters to discover resources hidden among fans of coral and fields of kelp. Maybe more than anything else, Subnautica is a gorgeous game, with stunning tropical waters, geothermal caves, and bioluminescent creatures as the backdrop to genuinely terrifying moments.

Don’t Starve Together

Available On: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC

Don’t Starve Together is a quirky-but-spooky isometric survival game with stylized cutout art that’s a conspicuous nod to Tim Burton’s grim but enchanting worlds. 
Under the decorated hood is a fun and surprisingly deep approach to multiplayer survival thanks to a diverse world full of bizarre creatures, odd crops to farm, and all kinds of unusual structures to build. Don’t Starve Together is one of the best survival games for co-op, with bosses designed to be taken down through cooperation, tons of resources to gather, and numerous ways to resurrect your friends if they get eaten by deceptively cutesy creatures. Just be careful not to lose your sanity.

Abiotic Factor

Available On: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

If you’ve ever wondered how well Einstein would do in a resonance cascade incident, Abiotic Factor has some answers. Inspired by Half-Life, Abiotic Facto has you play as a scientist who has survived a major parascientific incident at a secret underground research facility in the early 1990s. 

With extradimensional creatures roaming the hallways, you’ll have to disassemble and repurpose everything from particle accelerators to coffee machines and office furniture to construct defenses and equip yourself with the tools to survive. It’s a brilliant and funny twist on the survival crafting genre that’s downright scary – like when the power is down, your batteries are empty, or there’s nothing on the TV but creepy info messages.

Palworld

Available On: PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Palworld skips right to the heart of the matter and asks: What kind of sweatshop factory owner would you be if legally distinct Pokémon were real? Anchored by creature-collecting and resource management, Palworld lets you capture ‘Pals’ and put them to work building and managing your logistics empire. 

These Pals can fight for you, serve as mounts, and most importantly, work on your assembly line to build machine guns. There’s something hilariously transgressive about arming cuddly creatures with weapons of mass destruction and then ordering them to unload on your enemies.

This War of Mine

Available On: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC

With This War of Mine, you get a differently seasoned survival sim game. It’s one where you’re trying to keep a group of desperate civilians alive in a war. Each day and night cycle is full of decisions that no person should ever have to make. 

Weighing up the value of life, choosing how big a risk to take when scavenging for food and supplies, and deciding how much you’re willing to compromise your humanity to stay alive are all daily occurrences in This War of Mine’s mosaic of suffering. This War of Mine succeeds at telling an important story. It’s a sobering thought that for many people, it’s a reality right now, not merely a story.

Rimworld

Available On: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Surviving a crash landing on a frontier planet is one thing, but can you handle your colonists eating without a table? Rimworld is, at its core, a colony management sim, but it has the hallmarks and pedigree of a survival game. You’ll start from nothing as your colonists scramble to put up basic walls and gather the barest of resources while braving wild animal attacks, plagues, marauding raiders, and countless other threats. 

Even without these challenges, your colonists are hard to keep alive. You’ll need to manage their moods and morale if you want to avoid internal bickering and fistfights, just as a hive of alien bugs pops out of your fridge.

FAQs