Summary
Part of the great appeal ofsurvival gamesis that the player is thrown into a dangerous world, and it’s up to them to survive and thrive. That means playing whatever way suits the player best. Maybe that means playing aggressively and hunting down threats, or playing as the peaceable trader. It’s all up to the player.
Luckily, there are plenty of greatsurvival games that let players play whatever way they so desire. This list is ranked not just by the quality of the games covered, but by how much freedom they give the player to play their own way.
During the early and mid-2010s, when open-world survival games from indie studios were dominating the gaming world,The Foreststood out from the crowd by injecting the genre with a much-needed dose of procedural horror gameplay, where the player is forced to survive on an abandoned island full of horrific beasties.
Sons of the Forest,the sequel, was released in 2024, and it was worth the wait. Improving on almost every single element of the original game,Sons of the Forestrefines the fantasy of making a player survive against horrors however they like, whether that’s avoidance, gathering astrong backpack of items, or going to war with their cannibal and mutant neighbors.
In the early 2010s' indie open-world survival game boom, none defined the period more thanDayZ, once a mod forARMA 2, then an infamously buggy but widely beloved standalone game.DayZplops the player into a massive open world with no guidance. The map is full of zombies and players willing to make their day hellish.
Survival in the world ofDayZis all about tactics, risk, and reward. Going into cities means better loot, but also other players who could be aggressive. Players are free to choose whether to stick to the countryside or head into the thick of the action and even forge friendships or start clan wars if diplomacy is really (or really not) their thing. And that’s saying nothing aboutthe game’s vibrant mod scene, further increasing player agency.
Somehow, it took until the tail end of the survival game boom of the 2010s for a dev studio to commit fully to rendering the open-world survival game formula in an entirely underwater setting.Subnauticabecame one of the smash hits of the year, and one ofthe most unexpectedly terrifying survival gamesever made.
Players are forced to fend for themselves on a hostile ocean world after they crash-land there, but after that, it’s up to them what to do. If they’re a builder, they can spend loads of time building the perfect mega-base, or if they want some thrills, they can try exploring Reaper-infested waters for rare loot. It’s entirely up to them.
Every indie game developer dreams of the reception thatValheimhad when it first released. Capturing the zeitgeist perfectly with a unique setting and visual style,Valheimstormed the gaming world and brought many players back into the survival genre that had reached peak saturation some years before.
One major reasonValheimworks is the freedom it offers players. While the game is ostensibly about hunting down massive God-like creatures, building, hunting, and PvE elements mean players are free to do whatever they like in the beautiful voxel-based world.
It’s hard not to feel bad forTerraria. Despite having a massive fanbase all its own and being successful in almost every way, it hurts to imagine whatTerrariacould have been like if it hadn’t been released directly in the shadow ofMinecraft,which was beginning to reach truly massive levels of popularity in 2011 for the first time.
In the modern day, many players have returned toTerrariaand love the level of freedom the game gives with the truly massive amount of content to work through. People tend to put hundreds of hours into a single save file, meaning that survival game fans will find something fulfilling to do no matter how they want to play.
In the world of base management simulations, player freedom is absolutely key and a major expectation for any game in the genre. While some players want to min-max their bases, others want to cause utter chaos and have their weirdest dreams come to life.
RimWorld, the modern successor to the isometric base-building gameEclipse Colony, is one of the best places to find that kind of freedom today. Though its art style is basic, it offers unparalleled freedom and emergent gameplay that adapts to whatever the player finds fun to do.
In the world of emergent survival base-builders, no game is more legendary thanDwarf Fortress. Infamous for its incredibly difficult gameplay and the almost inevitable disaster that faces the poor dwarves under the player’s stead, few games offer as much freedom asDwarf Fortressdoes.
Even better, a modern re-release of the game has done away with the classic ASC2-style graphics in favor of a more simple and immediately readable style that’s far more inviting to new players. This is one of the best games ever made, and the new version makes a great game even better andmuch more approachable for newcomers.
It is truly difficult to imagine any other game that gives the player as much freedom asMinecraftdoes. Providing procedurally generated and functionally infinite worlds, the player can do almost anything they like, whether that’s building massive towns, going on emergent adventures, or reaching The End and the end credits of the game.
That’s saying nothing aboutthe near countless custom servers and modsthat make an infinite game ever more expansive. There are story servers, RP servers, servers that replicateThe Hunger Games, and so much more.Minecraftis the ultimate survival sandbox that lets the player play however they please.
