8 of the Best Survival Games in History to Play Today

The survival game genre is one in which players must strive to stay alive in hostile open worlds. It is a genre in which character management, resource gathering and crafting, and base building typically come into play. Today, survival is one of the most actively expanding video game genres in the gaming industry. These are some of the best survival games in history that have popularized the genre.

Subnautica

Subnautica is a game that perfectly captures terror and beauty. This game places stranded players on Planet 4546B, where they must dive deep to gather resources, fabricate gear, and build underwater bases to uncover the mysteries of an alien world.

Subnautica is rated one of the best survival games because of its masterful environmental storytelling and progression. Sea depth is an ingenious progression mechanism in Subnautica, and the game gets increasingly terrifying the deeper you go. Yet the beauty of the ocean is also something to behold in Subnautica.

Minecraft

Although world-building is Minecraft’s primary appeal, many players play it because of its Survival Mode. The Minecraft Survival Mode has set a gold standard for the open-world sandbox gameplay loop. In Minecraft’s survival game, players collect resources and build bases by day and fend off zombies and creepers by night, which was a basic gameplay loop that defined the genre. It is one of the best survival games in history because of its high-stakes exploration and gameplay freedom.

Subnautica: Below Zero

Below Zero is a standalone expansion (but not a DLC) to the original Subnautica game. This takes everything that made the original game great and freezes it within an Arctic region of an alien world. Players have to monitor oxygen, food, water, and body temperature in the Below Zero game.

Although it’s quite similar to the original, Below Zero offers more land-based exploration and a fully voiced narrative campaign. Below Zero’s voiced protagonist breathes a bit more life into the game. This expansion effectively expands the lore from the original game onto icy glaciers and also retains its signature tension.

Valheim

Valheim is one of the greatest survival games ever inspired by Viking culture. This is a game in which players can explore a huge procedurally generated world, gather resources, cook food, craft tools, build Viking outposts, and defeat mythological bosses. Players love Valheim because of its more forgiving survival mechanics, with no persistently draining meters, an amazing physics building system, and expansive biomes to explore.

Terraria

Terraria is affectionately dubbed the 2D Minecraft as a massive survival sandbox with a deep, flat worlds to explore. This survival game places more emphasis on RPG-looting and combat progression than other alternatives. Terraria is a great survival game because of its masterful progression loop, engaging environmental combat, deeply satisfying town-building mechanic, and endless replayability value. It’s among the highest-grossing video games in history today, and not without good reason.

RimWorld

If you fancy playing a sci-fi-themed survival game, check out RimWorld. RimWorld is a sci-fi colony management simulator in which players manage a group of survivors stranded on an untamed alien planet. It is a game in which players build colonies, grow crops, research technology, and craft items to keep the survivors going.

What sets RimWorld apart from more mundane survival games is how it avoids repetitive resource grinding by blending colony management with unpredictable storytelling. The game incorporates a legendary AI Storyteller that dynamically adjusts the narrative based on the state of your colony. Survival is much more than just about growing potatoes in RimWorld, as a game that thrives on unpredictable chaos.

The Forest

This is a survival game that places you on a remote, mutant-infested peninsula. The Forest is another of the best survival games for how it effectively blends traditional resource gathering and base building with a terrifying horror story and dangerous enemy AI. It’s terrifying, and unpredictable mutant tribes keep players on their toes. The Forest’s lush, immersive world for players to explore is another of its highlights, along with a cooperative multiplayer mode.

Frostpunk

Although Frostpunk is not a standard survival game, it mixes city building with societal survival. This is a game that makes you the leader of Earth’s last city, in which you must manage a steam generator during a global ice age. Players rate this one of the best survival games for how it blends intense resource management with enacting laws. It is a game with a heavy, bleak atmosphere and beautiful soundtrack in which players must make harrowing tactical decisions to keep their cities afloat.

Those best survival games above have profoundly shaped the genre in various ways. Games like Minecraft, Subnautica, and RimWorld reshaped the survival genre with their creative freedom, atmospheric immersion, and deep storytelling. They are games with slightly different gameplay styles and formats, but all of them represent the pinnacle of human resilience in digital gaming worlds.