Over the last decade, survival games have exploded in popularity, to the point that the genre is arguably overexposed nowadays. Each month seems to coincide with the release of a couple of open-world survival games, most of which enter Steam Early Access and seem happy to never leave. Due to the sheer volume of competition and a few perennial titles that hog the spotlight, the industry moves on from new games pretty quickly, causing once-highly anticipated releases to be wiped from our collective memories.
Scavenging for resources, building makeshift huts, fighting off wildlife or zombies, and hanging out with friends; we know a survival game when we see one, and they have a habit of blending together. Most people are, at least, vaguely familiar with The Forest or 7 Days to Die, but they might want something else to play besides the staples. Let’s highlight a couple of great survival games that have mostly been forgotten.
Miasmata Doesn’t Adhere To The Constraints Of Modern Survival Games
Released Before The Survival Genre Was Even Really A Thing
- Built by just two people
- No overbearing hand-holding
- Hands-on cartography system
- The Creature stalks you
Released in 2012, Miasmata pre-dates the survival boom, so it doesn’t try to adhere to the beaten-to-death formula that evolved throughout the 2010s. Consequently, the indie game remains one of the most distinctive examples of its type. While its age shines through in places, its core ideas have stood the test of time pretty darn well, and I would recommend it to most survival fans, as long as they don’t mind a bit of jank.
Cast as a sick scientist exiled on a remote research island called Eden, you are a weak man whose goal is to forage the island’s plants, analyze specimens, cure his plague, and escape. Miasmata‘s defining feature is its cartography system, which forces you to navigate the island using real-world triangulation. Basically, you start with a blank map, catalog landmarks, pull out a compass, and draw sight lines to find your exact location.
Survival games don’t often allow you to feel genuinely lost, but that’s a regular feeling in Miasmata, and you need to use your knowledge and tools to find your way. Hopefully, you don’t run into The Creature, which is the only monster on Eden. This thing stalks the protagonist throughout the game and cannot be killed in normal gameplay.
NEO Scavenger Makes You Struggle For Each New Day
A Different Type Of Open-World Survival Game
- Difficult as hell
- Turn-based
- Cool world that incorporates cyberpunk elements
Nowadays, survival games tend to be associated with full-blown 3D open worlds, which makes sense, as the two concepts complement each other perfectly. However, “survival” extends well beyond first-person sandboxes, and the genre was more willing to experiment during its formative years. Developed by a former BioWare programmer (Daniel Fedor), NEO Scavenger shifts things to an isometric perspective and features turn-based gameplay, permadeath, no grinding, and procedural generation… oh, right, it is also brutally difficult.
After waking up in a ruined lab in Michigan, you quickly realize that you are just a meat bag that can explode at any moment, be it from drinking unboiled ditch water, a blow to the head, pneumonia, or a billion other ways. Rather than an HP bar or a screen that gradually becomes covered by blood, NEO Scavenger tracks damage to specific body parts, with different types of injuries requiring suitable reactions.
From the turn-based combat to the inventory system, NEO Scavenger fully commits to crafting a sense of ruthless realism, something that won’t necessarily hit the mark with everyone. If you are looking for a hard-as-nails, uncompromised survival game that feels wildly different from modern entries in the genre, you really won’t be able to find something better than this.
Wayward Has Been Cooking For A Decade
Another Great Early Access Survival Game
- Absurd value for money
- Frequent updates
- Intriguing risk-and-reward system
OK, I know what you are thinking: “A game that has been in early access for a decade with no end in sight? No, thank you!”
I completely get that perspective, but early access doesn’t have to translate to “half-baked and broken promises,” and some of the best survival games might never drop the label. Project Zomboid is an all-time great, and it’s been stuck in early access for 13 years now. Wayward is almost as old and, more importantly, just as worth playing in its current state.
A turn-based, tile-based roguelike, Wayward drops you onto an uncharted island archipelago and challenges you to actually integrate yourself into the climate’s ecosystem through a Malignity system. Basically, greedy exploitation causes the island to turn hostile against you, making nights harder to survive as monsters spawn at a higher rate. If you try to give back as much as you take, the world becomes more inhabitable and generous.
As you cannot really make technological leaps without stripping natural resources and causing the island to become more aggressive, you must constantly walk a tightrope to balance things out and not go too far. Wayward generally rejects traditional RPG progression, instead rewarding progression through use (chopping trees to become a better lumberjack).
At this point, Wayward is incredibly polished, dense, and well-supported by mods. It’s also $7.99.
Survival: Fountain of Youth Makes Every Second Count
An Open-World Survival Game That Doesn’t Let You Speed-Run Through Life
- Time matters
- Authentic setting
At a glance, Survival: Fountain of Youth might not seem all that different from Green Hell or even Stranded Deep, but the similarities don’t really extend beyond the surface because of one major difference: Time. In Survival: Fountain of Youth, time is your most precious resource, and every major action takes a set length of in-universe time to complete.
When you commit to crafting something, the game clock fast-forwards, causing your hunger to deplete, your skin to cook in the sun, and your lantern to burn fuel. Consequently, you cannot just turn your mind off and stumble your way through a random day without a care in the world; instead, every second must be used to good effect, and you need to leave time to cook, harvest, and return to camp.
Set during the 16th century on the Caribbean islands, Survival: Fountain of Youth‘s tech progression, aesthetic, and lore adhere to the time period and setting, and you will not be building any anachronistic tech that trivializes your everyday challenges. Similar to Miasmata, Survival: Fountain of Youth incorporates a cartography system, although the process is fairly different.
Vintage Story Proves You Should Go Beyond Steam
A Survival Game Like No Other (Despite Looking Like Another)
- Deep systems
- Technological eras
- Beloved by its fanbase
Let’s end with a special case. Vintage Story is far from “forgotten” in the traditional sense, and it has a fairly dedicated community… but it is not on Steam. For many people, if a PC game isn’t on Valve’s platform, it might as well not exist. Visually, it looks like Minecraft, which might also put off folks who don’t particularly enjoy that game.
Don’t be put off by the dedicated launcher or the voxel art style: Vintage Story is one of the best survival games of all time. The game goes through different technological eras (Stone Age, for instance), and crafting requires hands-on fabrication rather than just selecting a few items and calling it a day. In fact, the crafting system in general is incredibly complex, and that mentality extends to other systems, such as agriculture and automation.
