The Steam charts are filled with various examples of the best survival games, including classic survival horror games and new hardcore survival sims. To help any bewildered adventurers, we've gathered together the best survival games to help you pick and choose which emergent stories and unexpected adventures to undertake.
If you've got the grit to outlast a frigid wasteland or an underwater abyss, our picks will help steer you toward the (not so) safe pastures of the best PC games that call for you to fight for your life. Whether you like surviving the horrors of war or you're into the new breed of hunger and disease management games, get ready to endure agony and plenty of pain in these scintillating survival games.
Here are the best survival games:
1. Valheim
Abandoned in the Norse wilderness with nothing but a loincloth and your wits, you - and up to nine other Vikings - must build shelter, forage for food, and steadily build up your strength by forging armor and weapons, before heading out in search of boss fights and trickier biomes. The meadows you begin your journey in are relatively safe, but the procedurally generated wilds contain various biomes of escalating difficulty - you do not want to stumble into the plains before you're ready, believe us.
Each of Valheim's biomes features a unique and magnificent boss. Once you locate it, summon it, and defeat it, you unlock resources and powers that help you progress to the next region. You'll also trigger increasingly powerful raids on your home base, so you must construct a well-defended homestead; don't forget the chimney, or smoke inhalation will get you before that giant blue troll does.
It's not all scrappy battles and collecting resources. Valheim lets you relax into life as a Viking, with impressive building mechanics to create great Viking halls and stretches of farmland. Also, if you can play over LAN, you don't need an internet connection to enjoy Valheim, as it works perfectly as an offline game.
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2. 7 Days to Die
7 Days to Die spent over 11 years in early access before 1.0 finally released in 2024, so now is the best time to jump into one of the best survival games on this list. You've likely heard of 7 Days to Die, potentially in the same breath as DayZ or Rust, or other popular PvEs it tends to get lumped in with, but what makes 7 Days to Die truly unique is that you really do have 7 days to prepare for a game-ending event.
The Blood Moon occurs every seventh day - don't worry you'll be reminded - and on this day when the sun sets, the sky turns red, there's a drawn-out silence, and then… well I don't want to ruin it for you. Although 7 Days to Die is all about discovery and adventure, the base building and farming is a bit lacking, but it more than makes up for it by creating that 'just one more house raid' feeling. It also feels huge, really huge, and as someone who plays with people who love to explore every inch of a map before they can settle into a game, it's been a feat.
7 Days to Die should jump straight to the top of your list, especially as the best 7 Days to Die mods can change and improve your game to create a truly unique experience.
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3. Abiotic Factor
This love letter to Half-Life and the SCP Foundation drops you into the hapless shoes of a paranormal scientist fighting back against a containment breach in an underground research facility. You might not have a PhD in fighting aliens, but you can work your way up the ladder from lowly lab assistant to researcher, physicist, or even gastrologist - scientists have to eat, too!
The facility itself is ripe for the picking, and you can scavenge materials to craft weapons and traps that can help you fend off all the strange anomalies with a taste for human flesh. Abiotic Factor is very silly, often chaotic, and probably the closest we're ever going to get to Half-Life 3… with a little sprinkling of Lethal Company for good luck.
Developer Deep Field Games has also been putting out some big updates to keep things fresh. You don't even have to take our word for it; the Abiotic Factor Steam reviews speak for themselves.
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4. The Planet Crafter
The Planet Crafter takes survival into the vast reaches of outer space. Your mission is to terraform a hostile planet to make it habitable for humans, but before you can do that you need to find a way to keep yourself alive, and fast. Your ticket to survival lies in the rich resources available on the planet's surface, which you can harvest to construct the facilities you need to generate oxygen, warmth, and food.
Eventually, you can transform this barren wasteland into a lush paradise that sustains plants, animals, and most importantly, humans. Planet Crafter's modular building system captures a similar NASA punk aesthetic to Starfield, so if you were underwhelmed with the building mechanics of Bethesda's RPG, Planet Crafter might be the perfect survival game for you.
Whether you're looking for laid-back exploration on a distant world or a hardcore struggle against all odds, Planet Crafter has a wealth of difficulty options to tailor your experience, while the Creative Mode gives you complete freedom to build without restrictions. You can even invite up to nine players in online co-op if you find a solo excursion on an alien planet a little too lonely for your liking.
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5. V Rising
Released in early access during the wake of survival behemoth Valheim, V Rising is the vampiric solution to survival games, and it makes you realize just how challenging being a vampire is. As you build the castle of your dreams, complete with a coffin and human servants, this moody, gothic open-world game has light and dark moments as you gather resources, take on bosses, and master powerful skills. Just be sure to stay out of the sun.
V Rising might not be as relaxing as Valheim, but exploration is just as challenging and rewarding as you raid villages and capture the locals to turn them into faithful servants. Now V Rising is out of early access, the game has received plenty of updates to keep content fresh and fangtastic for new and veteran players.
You can also play V Rising on closed servers, either solo or with friends, or go against other vampires in PvP servers, just to add to the peril. If you've chosen the latter, we have plenty of resources in our ultimate V Rising guide to help you get started.
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6. Frostpunk 2
In the first Frostpunk, you were tasked with pulling humanity back from the brink, scavenging and rationing resources during harsh winters, and surviving against the odds during the most desperate of situations. You steered New London away from certain death, but that wasn't the end. Frostpunk 2 expands on the original in a way that isn't just bigger and better - society survived, in a way, and now it looks to thrive. Your people have a voice, and they're willing to use it. Politics takes the spotlight in Frostpunk 2, and everyone has an opinion on the future of humanity. It's your job to be the guiding light of civilization while also avoiding a revolt. Take an iron fist approach or be a little canny in your dealings with various factions, but whatever you do, the city must not fall.
Reid McCarter praises the management game in our Frostpunk 2 review, saying "Frostpunk 2 makes clever reconsiderations of, and expansions on, the first game's design, offering a better rounded, even harsher follow-up to the original's concept."
There's a lot we wish we'd known when we first started rebuilding our civilization, so we've put together the best Frostpunk 2 tips for beginners for those looking for guidance on what to prioritize.
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7. Sons of the Forest
Sons of the Forest is the follow-up to Endnight Games' sleeper survival hit The Forest, and though both could be included in this list, we've chosen the sequel. If you've played The Forest, you'll quickly get the gist: a terrifying forest, an unforgiving world, and the threat of mutant cannibals. Sons of the Forest returns with a similar island mystery, with a vast map to explore and secrets to uncover, all while trying to survive the dangers of the forest. To combat these threats, you can build a base, which quickly turns into a fortress as you forge new weapons, gear, and defensive items to protect you not just against the elements, but the growing dangers of the island's denizens.
As Whitney Meers says in our Sons of the Forest early access review, it's "as twisted as its predecessor, with solid survival mechanics and gory gameplay." The sequel stays faithful to the original, with old tools, like the modern axe, being joined by new weapons, including the mighty shotgun. Just don't think this makes surviving any easier, though, as you'll be short on ammo, and those enemies are considerably tougher this time.
The game is now out of early access, so it's the best time to play, and if you want to know how to craft some of these new additions, here's a complete list of all the weapons in Sons of the Forest.
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8. Palworld
You'd be forgiven for thinking this is a Pokemon clone, but Palworld actually has a lot in common with other survival games on this list, and perhaps even a few management games like Factorio, too. There isn't so much of a goal in Palworld, and it can be enjoyed at your own pace as you explore the expansive map, encountering world bosses and new pals, if you fancy it. You can tame and capture pals and bring them back to base to put them to work either cooking, crafting, or foraging for the items and resources you need to build better gear. Or you can take powerful pals out into the world to fight bosses or just aid you in getting around difficult terrain.
It's in early access at the moment, meaning more pals, guns, and other features will likely come in the future, but for now, we recommend reading our Palworld early access review to see what you're getting yourself into. As Nat Smith says in the review, "Palworld's environments oscillate wildly between beautiful and barren, but they're also a blank canvas waiting for community servers to fill it with sprawling settlements and player-made secrets."
If it looks like the game for you, we have a Palworld guide to help you get started, as those first few hours are a doozy.
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9. Raft
Starting on a small 4×4 raft, either solo or in co-op, you must survive at sea in this open-world adventure. Drifting aimlessly at first, gathering materials such as plastic, planks, and metal scraps to slowly increase the size of your raft and build newer, better tools, playing Raft is a constant fight for survival, battling hunger, thirst, and a furious shark.
As you start to moor up at islands you find at sea, you'll also uncover letters and secrets that lead you to new locations. Raft does a wonderful job of doubling as a relaxing game as you sail along the beautiful ocean, crafting new areas on your raft and tending to your seed garden, but the tides can quickly turn, and before you know it, you're dying of thirst. It also has its fair share of powerful critters lurking on islands, so our best advice, like any survival game, is don't get ahead of yourself.
On your adventures, you'll find Trading Posts, handy shacks where you can trade to gain items to aid you on your journey, or for cosmetics to change the look of your character. Here's how to get the main currency, Raft Trash Cubes, to buy new tools.
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10. Ark: Survival Evolved
Ark isn't just the best dinosaur survival game you can buy; it's arguably one of the greatest dinosaur games ever made. After all, prehistoric beasties make everything better. It's a survival game that fills every edge of the template: punch trees to get wood, use wood to build shelter, kill animals to find food, and inevitably die because you forgot to drink water. Yet Ark transcends the typical survival game pattern by including leathery leviathans that both want to hunt and eat you, but with some perseverance, you can also tame and ride them. Moreover, cold wars rage between Ark Survival Evolved mega tribes as they seek dominance over their world.
Everything Ark does is rock-solid, as attested in our Ark Survival Evolved PC review. As we say: "it's always more enjoyable to spend time with a game that tries something new and exciting, stumbling along the way, than a game that tries to tick focus group-inspired boxes." The survival elements may be similar to what you've played before, but they're the bedrock for the game's more ambitious elements (and a strong Ark mods scene). Your character has RPG-like stats, and you can head into the world to hunt sci-fi secrets that offer a little more incentive to play rather than just 'stay alive'.
It's these various promises that make playing Ark worthwhile: other survival games rely on you being satisfied with making it through the night, whereas Studio Wildcard sets you long-term goals such as 'tame and ride a T-Rex'. Having a true sense of progression makes your time in Ark feel valuable, and that's something many other survival adventures struggle with. If you're keen to give it a go, the best Ark Survival mods are well worth checking out to tailor your experience.
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11. Don't Starve
The most horrifying idea in most survival games is having to do it alone in a hostile environment full of unknown threats. That's exactly what Don't Starve makes you do, as it's an entirely solo experience. The terror of fending for yourself in the wild is thankfully offset by the lovely Tim Burton-style 2D art and the collection of utterly bizarre creatures lurking in this sepia-tone world. Werepigs, Beargers, Deerclopses, and many more absurd monsters roam the land looking to make things difficult for you.
Don't Starve focuses heavily on crafting to make your way through life, and so much of your time is spent harvesting raw materials, just like other crafting games. But rather than crafting houses like in Rust and Minecraft, this indie game is all about the tools and contraptions you can make. The Science Machine and Alchemy Engine will become your best friends before making way for ancient wonders and the art of magic. Like Minecraft, Don't Starve happily embraces the mad and the mystical, and it's all the more enjoyable for it.
If all this sounds wonderful, but you don't want to harvest twigs and dry grass on your own, Don't Starve Together also lets you play with a friend.
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12. Subnautica
With its dreamy underwater setting - partly created by the Subnautica community - and compelling gameplay loop, Subnautica is one of the best exploration survival games there is. It even comes with its own Subnautica freedom mode for a more hopeful and relaxing experience compared to other survival adventures. Sure, you're a lonely man lost at sea on an alien planet, but it's a game all about terraforming your new environment and making unfamiliar ground your home.
The art direction helps push the idea of hope home, with bright and shiny technologies, beautifully blue oceans, and schools of tropical fish filling your vision at every turn. You explore the ocean depths in your submarine, searching for new materials in marine trenches and coral reefs. And when you've found everything you need, you can construct bases on the ocean floor. As we say in our Subnautica early access review, "there's the pressure of the depths to worry about, and aquatic beasties that don't take kindly to strangers. The environment itself can be a bit deadly, too."
Seeing as you're continually threatened with the prospect of drowning due to managing oxygen levels, you really should read our Subnautica guide to ensure you squeeze every last drop out of your diver's life. Every survival game has the ominous shadow following you around, but it's simply good old O2 here. The only downside to Subnautica is its lack of official multiplayer. Well, developer Unknown Worlds has clearly listened to the clamoring of fans and paid attention to the most popular mods, as multiplayer comes to the survival game's sequel in Subnautica 2.
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13. This War of Mine
For all the stress that some survival games can put on you, nothing compares to this harrowing 2D adventure. The game offers a different breed of survival. It's a depiction of a group of civilians struggling to stay alive in their war-ravaged country. Trapped in a besieged house, pinned down by snipers, and attacked by other survivors looking to take what you've found, it's a game of traumatic decisions and life-or-death consequences. It's the side of conflict that few war games truly deal with.
As we say in our This War of Mine review, "Finding food and medicine, not fighting, becomes the focus. It's a goal that can only ever be temporarily achieved before the fridge and shelves become bare and it's out into the wild, war-torn city once again to search for something, anything, that will aid the band of survivors whose lives the player protects."
Each of your randomly generated survivors has a backstory, providing them with abilities for survival. Ex-firemen are fitter and more robust, while those who used to cook professionally can now feed the starving. But heading out into the world to find the things you need - medicine, ingredients, scrap to make beds - could bring you face-to-face with those willing to kill. And turning a survivor into a murderer leads to misery, depression, and - if not treated well - suicide. It's a bleak existence, and making what seems to be the obvious right decision at one point in time can lead to disastrous conclusions. The end of the war constantly seems like a pipe dream, and everyone will probably be dead before you get there. If you think you can live with yourself in such dire circumstances, though, This War of Mine is a must-play.
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14. The Long Dark
Set in the bitter cold of northern Canada, The Long Dark trades zombies for bears and tropical islands for deadly snow drifts. Mother Nature is your true adversary here, and to combat her, you'll need to keep your calorie count up, your body hydrated, and a flame roaring whenever you curl up for the night.
The stylish aesthetic makes it quite an arty game, but don't let that fool you into thinking this slows the pace, as The Long Dark is a genuinely challenging survival game with real bite. This chilly adventure is similar to most of the games mentioned above, but it has some of the best horror game features, and unlike other titles on this list, The Long Dark has a fascinating story mode (called Wintermute) to sink your teeth into.
If you like the look of The Long Dark, keep an eye out for Hinterland Studio's follow-up game, Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2.
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15. Rust
Rust is a tale as old as time, repopularising the PvPvE style of survival games that started with the likes of heavy-hitters DayZ and 7 Days to Die. Rust's strong point is construction: as you gather materials from its wilderness, you can begin to lay down various items in a Sims-like manner, creating your perfect rural retreat by slotting together floors, walls, staircases, and windows.
While many Rust servers operate with the classic shoot-on-sight mentality and each player for their own, Rust has plenty of havens for those looking for a more civilized lifestyle. You can find player-created towns, complete with attempts at government, trading, and even prisons. It's one of the nicest reminders that fantastic achievements can be made if people pull together and share their resources.
Rust underwent a massive overhaul that saw most of the original game scrapped in favor of a slightly new approach and completely new base code. The change ripped out many of the game's core features, such as zombies and rad towns, but over time, they've been gradually reapplied alongside new ideas. Rust remains one of the most played games on Steam, and if you're one of them, be sure to check out these useful Rust commands.
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16. Minecraft
If you're after the best crafting survival game out there, look no further than Minecraft. At some point, it seems someone decided survival was all about grueling punishment, sloth-like progression, and murdering anyone who isn't you. But before the big survival blow-out on Steam, we had Minecraft: a fun, colorful, creative survival sandbox game. You'll encounter some zombies that will try to eat your face, alongside spiders, skeletons, and more unorthodox enemies like creepers.
How you survive in Minecraft is entirely up to you. You could build an elaborate fortress and play a defense-style game, fending off the creatures of the night. Or you could craft exciting weaponry and venture out into the world's most dangerous zones, testing both your mettle and metal. The world is endless and filled with unique natural wonders begging to be explored. Just remember to eat something every now and again, and you'll be fine.
The creative possibilities are endless, so if you need some direction in getting started, so specific items and locations are available to you, check out our guide to the best Minecraft seeds. Just make sure the creepers don't put a spanner in your works.
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17. Pacific Drive
Ironwood Studios takes "drive to survive" to another level in Pacific Drive. As a hapless delivery driver, you are spirited away to the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a supernatural sandbox full of strange anomalies and cryptids abandoned by the United States government. With no obvious means of escape, you get behind the wheel of a beaten-up station wagon and take to the dirt roads of the Pacific Northwest to find a way out.
Nat Smith's 9/10 Pacific Drive review reassures us that it "effortlessly strips out much of the busywork that has crept into survival-crafting mechanics," letting you soak up its unsettling atmosphere to your heart's content.
Pacific Drive's roguelike loop sends you to areas in the zone afflicted by all sorts of conditions, from eerie darkness to a good old-fashioned downpour. Each trip demands careful preparation, kitting your trusty iron horse out with the latest upgrades, whether that's extra storage, gas reserves, or a portable EMP. If you're just booting up the engine, get started with our guide to what the Olympic Exclusion Zone is in Pacific Drive, to help you on your journey to survival.
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18. Project Zomboid
While it's easy to dismiss Project Zomboid's unassuming isometric presentation in favor of the shinier games on this list, The Indie Stone's decade-plus-old zombie survival hit is a genre masterclass. If you're after the deepest possible level of realism, excellent crafting, and a map that allows you to roam to your heart's content, Project Zomboid has it down in spades.
Our Project Zomboid early access review goes into detail on just how perilous, but rewarding, this game can be, saying, "Long-term survival is the goal, and for that, you need to rebuild. Entire farms can be constructed and maintained, ensuring a more consistent source of food, reducing the need for excursions and encouraging a more defensive playstyle, with the survivor barricading themselves in their fortified farm. Threats persist, of course, from prowling zombie hordes and the annual curse of winter."
If you're keen to give it a go, be sure to check out our best Project Zomboid mods guide, which covers two of the latest builds, depending on which version you've decided to play.
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New survival games
Be sure to check out our regularly updated list of upcoming PC games we're excited for, including many more survival games. Can you ever have too many? We're particularly excited for Light No Fire, Hello Games' upcoming project, as we eagerly await a release date. We're also looking forward to base-building game StarRupture, the underwater survival hit follow-up Subnautica 2, and medieval extraction game Blight Survival.
These 18 survival games should get you started, but if you want more recommendations or fancy telling us what you thought of these picks, head on over to our community Discord. If you want something that combines survival and other genres, check out the best zombie games and the best PC games for a little bit of everything.