Summary
Survival games become a popular option for players who want games with that extra kick, where mechanics force them to think on their feet in order for their characters to survive the constant dangers of desolate wastelands, lush forests, and even threats of mutants and monsters. However, while many survival games use familiar mechanics surrounding nutrient depletion, crafting, and base-building, certain survival games separate themselves from the pack with unique and even odd mechanics.
Instead of simply relying on building bases and gathering supplies, certain survival games require players to use unconventional tactics in order to survive. These quirks usually coincide with some unique mechanic hidden in the game, be it through the introduction of a resource, an immersion element, or a result of a gameplay loop.
Set in the aquatic planet of 4546B in the Andromeda Galaxy, players ofSubnauticacan experience a wildly different survival game when the oceans become their enemy. Players spendtheirSubnauticagameplayas Ryley Robinson, salvaging what’s left of their crashed spaceship and searching the depths of the ocean planet for parts and supplies. WhileSubnauticais known for its base-building feature to ensure Ryley has a sustainable stay in 4546B, it’s one particular mechanic that leads to the game’s most unconventional survival strategy: the lack of an in-game map.
To make the depths ofSubnauticamore menacing, the game doesn’t give players an in-game map to work with during their exploration. However, the game does let players install beacons that will indicate their current location. When viewed as a list, players can even color-code their beacons for more efficient organization. This functionality givesSubnauticaplayers a more personalized survival experience, especially since players organize and place beacons in locations according to their terms.
When a plane crash separates Eric LeBlanc from their son Timmy inThe Forest, the search brings them to a complex network of caves, villages, and even mutants who seem to be only interested in eating the players. That is, unless players get to eat them first. While players canenjoyThe Forest’sbase-building mechanicsto create structures such as houses, tents, and even traps, it’s necessary to gather food where an unconventional mechanic resides: possibly eating the mutants after killing them.
Resorting to cannibalism does lower the player’s Sanity, a mechanic that allows them to build Effigies that may ward off mutants. Due to the frequency of mutant appearances throughout a player’s session, mutant limbs can become a more reliable source of nourishment than animal meat. While Sanity doesn’t have any noticeable detrimental effects on players, gamers enjoying the game’s survival element may feel a moral conflict when deciding whether to resort to cannibalism for survival or retain their character’s humanity.
As players explore Wellington Wells inWe Happy Few, the game’s protagonists eventually reveal a horrible truth:a dystopia whose collapse is only hindered by the constant consumption of the hallucinogenic Joy. Citizens have been conditioned to become so dependent on Joy that it’s become a community-wide addiction, with blissful Wellies becoming increasingly hostile to non-conforming Downies and the other way around. As players attempt to escape Wellington Wells, they must use stealth, disguises, or even outright violence.
While the game is more of an action-adventure experience, its stats-based survival components introduce an unconventional mechanic: the choice to take Joy. Exploration becomes easier with Joy as townsfolk will become friendlies, although players who stop taking the drug experience withdrawal symptoms as debuffs. Likewise, refusing Joy risks townsfolk becoming hostile much easier, prompting deadly chases and town-wide fights.
Permadeath System Introduces Advantages For Planned Gameplay
Sunless Sea
Sunless Sea is a Gothic Horror RPG with a focus on exploration, exquisite storytelling and frequent death. Captain a Victorian steamship on a vast underground sea, stray from the gas-lamps of civilization, and carve a life for your captain in a cruel and unique world. Light and dark, terror and madness: spend too long on the wide, dark sea and your crew will grow fearful and eventually lose their sanity.If the giant crabs, sentient icebergs and swarms of bats don’t get you, madness and cannibalism certainly will. But that old black ocean beckons, and there’s loot for the brave souls who dare to sail her. Seek out intriguing individuals for your crew. Hire unique officers like the Haunted Doctor and the Irrepressible Cannoneer. Each has a story to tell, if you’re able to draw it out of them.Your captain will die. Pass on resources from one generation to the next. Acquire a family home and a hoard of heirlooms. Build a legacy of sailors who braved the sea and lost - or, occasionally, won. A deep, compelling world packed with 350,000+ words of stories and secrets awaits you.
Set in the world ofFallen Londonwhere the aforementioned city has plunged deep into the underground and eldritch Neath,Sunless Seatakes place in the vastness of its Unterzee. Players take the role of a steamship captain as they explore the dangerous underground ocean in search of fame, treasure, or even hidden knowledge.
However, the threats of the Unterzee make a player’s journey extremely perilous. A successful Captain’s careermay be permanently cut shortafter an attack from zee monsters, pirates, or otherworldly threats. This is where the game’s Warrant of Redemption comes in, where players can select what their new Captain will inherit from the previous Captain. This allows players to potentially start new playthroughs with advantages, especially if they save some of their predecessor’s monies, officers, progress, or special in-game story currencies.
LoadingRaftfor the first time reveals a world suffering the extremes of climate change: extreme flooding due to melted polar ice caps caused the near-collapse of the civilization, with players taing the role of Maya as she tries to look for her missing family amid societal collapse. Set in quite literally a massive ocean, Maya and players only have the aforementioned 2x2 raft to cling for survival.
While it’s true thatRafthas base-building and crafting mechanicssimilar to other survival titles, the game relying on the base as the player’s home makes it their lifeline. The limited resources, aquatic dangers, and Maya’s quickly-depleting stats make each round of exploration a matter of life and death. Players need to be economic in expanding their raft, constantly weighing the risk-reward scenario of expanding their vessel with quality of life options or opting to use their resources for momentary reprieve such as food.
The premise ofValheimfocusing on a fallen Viking’s journey to prove oneself of entering Valhalla is tied heavily to defeating Odin’s sworn enemies in the realm’s different biomes. WhatValheimlacks in depletion mechanics, it makes up for with a Stamina and per-use Skill leveling system that can punish characters whenever they face enemies unprepared. To survive,Valheimplayers need to master the game’s intricate crafting mechanics, figure out which strategies work against enemies, and gather resources to build bases.
WhileValheimuses a familiar gather-then-craft mechanic for base-building, its structural integrity mechanic forces players to think twice about the overall physics of their structures. Whenever players snap parts together, a blue-red color spectrum dictates the stability of the resulting building. At best, the player’s next piece will force the entire structure to crumble and force them to start from scratch. At worst, mobs from biomes of defeated bosses will randomly spawn and potentially cause structures to break with enough strikes.
Unlike other survival games, the added competitive nature ofRustcan make its hectic survival mechanics extra unforgiving for both newcomers and veterans. After all, it’s not all the time that players have to scrounge up for resources while having to fend off against fully-equipped marauders, only to come back to a base utterly destroyed by raiders. It doesn’t help that since servers persist when players log out, they might log in to find their progress completely set back with a round of casual looting.
Thankfully,Rustdoes offer various means for playersto defend their bases even when offline, among the most popular include a fully-functional Auto Turret that needs Electricity to work. This in itself becomes a wholly new crafting mechanic for players, as Electricity needs generators (renewable or otherwise), storage (different-sized batteries), and a Wire tool to transfer them to gadgets. The ever-changing environments inRustmeans players need to be careful about their Electricity generation, forcing them to stay on high alert how their renewable energy sync with their current supply.
Set in the besieged fictional city of Pogoren,This War of Mineat first plays a lot likeFallout Shelterwhere players need to curate their base to accommodate not just survivors but their survival as well. Unfortunately for players,This War of Minesimulating the horrors of warmeant survivors constantly have to grapple not just with survival but their choices in pursuing it. A key gameplay aspect affecting this is Morale, a character state that may affect not just a character’s performance but the way they act.
When characters perform, witness, or suffer cruel acts such as stealing or even killing, Morale can start turning them from Sad to Depressed. In worse instances, characters not only make negative comments but also trigger traumatic responses such as fighting, crying, or even taking one’s own life. As Morale is a constantly-depleting status, players need to constantly manage their character’s emotional state through talking, resting, or even drinking alcohol as part of their daily routines.
Peeing Is Vital For Travel But Can Increase Difficulty
Urge
As a survivor of a car crash, you enter a world affected by a mysterious drug substance that controls everything around you. Formerly known as a joyful place, now transformed into a wasteland full of disturbing monsters, mysteries and an eerie atmosphere. Here, any action can lead to the increase of the hazardous fog, which when maxed-out will make a living hell out of your life. Every moment is a choice, will you kill this enemy easily by hitting him in his substance-filled head (and thus risk increasing the fog), will you drive a vehicle with limitless fog-spreading fuel and so forth. Play nomad style, wandering between towns or set up a base somewhere and call it home. Learn from your past mistakes to prevent death and uncover the truth of this strange place.The hazardous fog, player-caused or not, is the punishment for your corner-cutting actions, which brings a variety of problems (e.g., special enemies, physical dangers, speeds up your urge, and the like).Chop down trees to build yourself a complex base or just look around for plywood to barricade one of the abandoned houses. Lay down traps to keep you safe inside.Use a variety of firearms, melee weapons and throwables against junkies and other scary creatures. Discover hidden vehicles, fuel them with the fog-spreading “piss” and use them to travel between towns.Explore, search for supplies, combine items and build to prepare for the rise and fall of the hazardous fog.
When players startUrge, they begin the game as a car crash survivor who wakes up in a world affected by a mysterious Fog that manipulatesthe grimy apocalyptic worldaround them. Most of their actions can increase the Fog and spawn not just mutated opponents but also hazards such as conditions and the like. And like other base-builders, survival in theUrgeuses base-building and weapon crafting, as well as cars for travel.
This is where the game’s rather quirky mechanic comes in, as players have to make use of their pee (as in the bodily fluid) to facilitate other actions. Pollution in this world has become so strong that pee has become some sort of biofuel, replacing gasoline in cars so players can hop from one location to the next. However, peeing strengthens the Fog, making the choice of exploration or simply barricading one’s location a point of risk-reward for players.
Regular Person Thinking Ties Into Mechanics
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
An apocalyptic cataclysm has happened… more precisely, all of them did, all at once. Within the last few years, riots and wars shook the Earth, devastating its population, and finally, the grid has completely collapsed. As if that weren’t enough, there are zombies?! Evil mushrooms!? Giant hornets?! You’ll need to make the best of things and figure out a way to survive. In this expansive survival RPG, you’ll have to find or craft tools, kill monsters, gather allies, build your home base, grow crops, and survive a world that grows ever harsher around you. Find a working vehicle and use that to explore the wasteland of New England! Who was the mysterious “XEDRA” that left artifacts around the dying world, and how are they connected to the cataclysm?Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is the epitome of a modern roguelike: with turn-based play and a RPG-like skill progression system, it hearkens back to the classics of the genre while building on them in unexpected ways. The depth of this game will surprise you, with a cleverly-designed inventory system, the ability to drive vehicles on land or water, well-written NPCs with their individual stories, and more. The scope of Cataclysm is unparalleled in the genre, thanks to a dedicated community that works to create this game collaboratively, as we have for over ten years.
The retro presentation ofCataclysm: Dark Days Aheadseems to be a callback to some of theoriginal roguelikes of the past, with the game’s turn-based, tile-heavy nature seemingly off-putting at first until players begin getting to the meat of the game. In a post-apocalyptic world, players wake up as their amnesiac characters and try to survive. While fast zombies are the norm, players contend with threats like hunger and thirst, raiders, robots, and mutants.
The sheer depth ofCataclysm: Dark Days Aheadmakes it one of the most immersive survival simulation games. Unlike other survival sims,CDDAneeds players to think like a “regular person” so that expected interactions between objects work similarly to how they’re expected to do in real life. Examples of these interactions include clothing possibly being layered, or even more intricate ways of how the character’s senses might work.
