Summary
After the massive success ofMinecraft, the indie game world exploded with new survival games, dominating the majority of the 2010s until the Battle Royale genre emerged to take its place. However, in that time, the survival game genre matured and developed some great experiences for dedicated fans.
The only problem is that sometimes these games assume a player has experience with survival games, which means they can have steep learning curves for new players. Whether it’s exploring hostile oceans or the zombie apocalypse, there are a lot of survival games out there with steep learning curves. These aren’t ranked by how good the games are but by how hard they are to get to grips with as a new player, particularly if they require guidance from a veteran or reading online to figure out how to excel.
Subnauticaexecuted an idea so simple that it’s hard to believe no one had done it before. Take the ever-popular open-world survival game, and make most of the world an ocean instead of land. What results is one of the most unique survival games in the entire genre, and the most terrifying too.
However, as much asSubnauticais self-evidently brilliant, it doesn’t explain the different nature of its biomes well, or how to conquerthe terrifying monsters of the deep, often requiring searching online instead. It’s not too bad once the player has to do the research, but there’s a definite learning curve to become the true master of the sea.
While games with a political message have almost always been a part of the gaming landscape, things ramped up significantly in the 2010s when indie games free of big publisher interference or money, could do or say whatever they liked, resulting in games likeThis War Of Minewhich put the player in a war-ridden hellscape and puts them in the impossible position to survive.
This War Of Minenecessitates difficult choices with very few resources available wheremistakes are easy to make. If the player wants to succeed, they’ll need to try and circumnavigate a game that’s doing its damndest to ensure they don’t. Determining long-term survival inThis War Of Minerequires time, patience, and emotional resiliency.
One of the most popular sub-genres of the survival game is the horror-survival game, where not only does the player have to survive against the natural elements, but usually some form of terrifying creature simultaneously.The Forestremixed this idea with cannibals and mutants, andSons of the Forestiterated on those ideas into one of the finest horror-survival games ever made.
However,Sons of the Forestis very resistant to tutorials or holding the player’s hand, meaning they need to learn the hard way about mutant/cannibal behaviors, effective defenses,which items are worth seeking out, and which mutants might even be friendly. A lot of mistakes must be made before a new player can genuinely thrive on the hellish island.
For some survival games, they want to lean as hard as they can into the harshness of the survival elements, involving many meters following sleep, hunger, thirst, warmth, sanity, and more.The Long Darkis one such game, following a lone survivor in a frozen over wilderness, struggling to survive against the elements.
It’s exceptionally rare for a new player to succeed their first few times throughThe Long Dark.The game tutorializes little, and players are forced to figure out for themselves the best strategy for survival.
Green Hellis a surprisingly simple premise, but harkens back to one of the greatest challenges humans have: how do we survive in areas of the planet tailor-made to kill us? The jungle is one such place where every minute requires constant vigilance if the survivor doesn’t want to end up caring for the local wildlife.
Green Helltakes an admirably detailed approach to simulate the jungle-survival process, where the player constantly needs to be on the lookout for traditional survival meters, as well as hostile animals, bug bites, and disease. Evenstarting a fire is a major problem. It’s incredibly stressful, and a hard time to survive, even for veteran players.
Though survival games may have first come to mainstream prominence in the 2010s, games likeDwarf Fortressare the original survival games, top-down simulators of entire colonies the player needs to look after, andRimWorldis the clear successor to that addictive legacy.
InRimWorld, players are tasked withbuilding a base on an alien planet, making a shelter, and thriving under rival faction attacks. Players don’t have direct control, so they can only issue a queue of commands that the pops will execute when they can, resulting in a high-skill environment where mistakes are easy to make. The majority of player’s first bases are unlikely to see past a week.
Of course, while survival games love to put the player into hostile environments like the ocean, the jungle, or the icy Arctic, one of the most popular survival scenarios of the 2010s was the zombie apocalypse, andProject Zomboidremains the premier simulator of that particular scenario.
In the game, players must scrap together resources, build a base, and somehow find a way to survive an increasingly dire zombie apocalypse where every bite is lethal. The game is brutally difficult, making it difficult for new players, but immensely rewarding for old hands.
Most survival games want the player to have their character or civilization survive, but not so withDwarf Fortress. This ASCII classic, now treated to a graphical overhaul, doesn’t want the player to fail but to fail horribly and irreparably, givingDwarf Fortressits reputation of brutal difficulty.
Not only doesDwarf Fortressintentionally let players make dire mistakes that can doom a newly minted Dwarven society, but it encourages it. Often, these doomed fortresses meet a farcical demise, with many veteran players having more failures than successes.
