Some survival video games in the present day are so demanding that committing 100 hours will barely scratch the floor. Progress is gradual by design, and that’s precisely what retains gamers invested for weeks and even months. These survival video games sometimes drop gamers into hostile lands full of harmful creatures, starvation, thirst, and enemies that don’t care how ready anybody feels.
The Next 5 Huge Survival Games
Followers of the survival style who’re on the lookout for their subsequent favourite recreation ought to keep watch over these upcoming releases.
It’s additionally essential to know that survival in these video games will not be solely about fight. Gamers even have to determine find out how to survive dangerous climate. Gamers who take pleasure in dwelling inside a world, whatever the threats, fairly than ending it shortly, could have a swell time taking part in these survival video games.
The completionist occasions on this checklist had been pulled from HowLongToBeat, so precise completionist time might differ from participant to participant.
Conan Exiles
Completionist Time: 129 Hours
- Brutal fantasy land the place gamers construct shelters, tame thralls, and survive harsh climates.
- Exploration, crafting, and fight drive lengthy playtime.
Conan Exiles is a brutal recreation as a result of it places gamers in a harsh environment the place they have to collect sources, fend off threats, and construct to outlive. Gamers start as exiles freed by Conan, beginning with minimal gear and needing to craft clothes, instruments, and shelter to outlive excessive warmth, chilly, starvation, and thirst.
Gamers should handle survival techniques like starvation, thirst, and temperature, which have an effect on well being and efficiency, particularly in harsh climates. Total, Conan Exiles is constructed round freedom of selection. Gamers can deal with building massive bases, exploring harmful lands, mastering crafting techniques, or testing their power towards the hardest enemies the Exiled Lands have to supply. Anybody who’s prepared to discover the whole Exiled Lands and survive no matter it throws at them must be able to commit round 129 hours.
7 Days to Die
Completionist Time: 326 Hours
- A zombie survival sandbox centered on scavenging, crafting, and surviving more and more lethal hordes.
- Massive map with deep development techniques and base constructing.
In 7 Days to Die, there’s plenty of crafting, scavenging, exploration, and fight towards the undead. Taking out zombies is only a fraction of the job. Gamers even have to assemble meals, water, instruments, and weapons to remain alive. One of many signature mechanics is the Blood Moon, which by default seems about each seven days. Throughout a Blood Moon evening, big waves of zombies assault the participant’s location, pushing survivors to arrange sturdy bases or intelligent defensive constructions. If unprepared, these nights can actually grow to be lengthy.
Development in 7 Days to Die depends upon exploration, leveling up, and unlocking abilities. Gamers discover magazines and books in loot caches or from merchants that unlock new crafting recipes and enhance the standard of substances they’ll make. Easy objects will be crafted early, however superior weapons, automobiles, and higher-tier gear require studying the appropriate magazines and investing in ability perks.
Rust
Completionist Time: 65 – 188 Hours
- A multiplayer survival recreation the place different gamers are the most important menace, not the atmosphere.
- Ending every little thing requires mastering advanced techniques.
Rust is a multiplayer survival recreation with no official ending, the place gamers create their very own targets by way of survival, crafting, base constructing, and PvP fight. As a result of there’s no story or formal win situation, “completion” time varies broadly relying on what a participant considers success. However it’s very probably gamers will spend near 200 hours in Rust, or much more, as a result of it’s a fairly hard open-world survival game.
That is one other recreation the place gamers start nearly defenseless, spawning with out gear on a seaside with solely fundamental instruments like a rock and torch. From there, they collect wooden, stone, and different supplies to craft higher instruments, construct shelters, and survive in a harsh open world. The most important problem usually comes from different gamers, since fight and raiding are central to the expertise.
ARK: Survival Developed
Completionist Time: 246 – 301 Hours
- Island filled with dinosaurs that gamers can tame, trip, and use for battle or useful resource gathering.
- Completionists should journey throughout totally different maps to defeat highly effective bosses and unlock the Ascension.
ARK: Survival Evolved is in style for its dinosaur taming mechanics, that are a number of the most time-consuming within the style. When a participant desires a dinosaur, they sometimes should knock it unconscious and feed it most well-liked meals till it turns into loyal. Bigger or rarer creatures are likely to take longer to tame, including to the time funding.
8 Open‑World Games That Reward Solo Survival, Ranked
Teaming up would possibly make these open-world video games simpler, however taking part in alone will be much more satisfying.
The sport additionally has plenty of caves to discover. These caves usually include distinctive artifacts. Gathering the appropriate artifacts is critical to summon bosses on the map’s obelisks, that are large constructions used as gateways to boss arenas. The exploration, dinosaur taming, and lengthy fights are what stretch ARK: Survival Developed to so long as 300 hours of completion time.
Valheim
Completionist Time: 145 Hours
- Norse-inspired survival recreation centered on exploration, crafting, and boss-driven development.
- Huge procedural worlds and harmful biomes gradual progress and reward cautious planning.
Valheim doesn’t have a conventional ending or a narrative marketing campaign, which is why completion time varies a lot between gamers. In Valheim, development is tied to defeating biome-specific bosses. Every boss requires preparation, exploration, and crafting higher gear. Discovering boss summoning objects alone can take many hours, since they’re usually hidden deep in dungeons or unfold throughout a big procedurally generated world.
Gamers begin within the comparatively secure Meadows biome and step by step progress by way of more and more harmful areas just like the Black Forest, Swamps, Mountains, Plains, and Mistlands, every providing distinctive sources and stronger enemies that require preparation and correct gear, and all that takes an excessive amount of time.
The Lengthy Darkish
Completionist Time: 228 Hours
- Life like survival expertise set in a frozen wilderness.
- Lengthy-term survival depends upon managing starvation, chilly, wildlife threats, and restricted provides throughout massive areas.
This recreation is a quiet survival expertise set within the frozen Canadian wilderness. There are not any zombies, solely the chilly and wild animals, so the large query on the minds of many is: why does it take so lengthy? Properly, simply making an attempt to outlive for a very long time and map the entire world takes without end in The Long Dark. Actually, to get the Trustworthy Cartographer achievement, a participant has to map each named location within the recreation.
8 Best Survival Games Where The Player Is Hunted
These glorious survival video games set gamers free in hostile settings, the place they have to keep away from being hunted by harmful foes.
Mapping in The Lengthy Darkish is gradual work. A participant has to face outdoors within the chilly and use charcoal to attract the map. They’ve to do that for lots of areas. And the climate additionally forces gamers to attend. If a blizzard begins, a participant has to cover in a cave or home and await it to go. This could take all day. Surviving entails plenty of every day chores like melting snow for water, repairing garments, and hunting deer. So The Lengthy Darkish requires plenty of persistence.
Mission Zomboid
Completionist Time: 433 Hours
- Large map with everlasting loss of life system makes surviving even a couple of in-game months a serious achievement.
- Deep zombie survival simulator.
Project Zomboid is a fairly powerful zombie survival recreation. In an effort to outlive, gamers will discover themselves not simply looting but in addition crafting, farming, and preventing. The map is based on real towns in Kentucky, and it’s big. There are many buildings to loot. The sheer variety of objects to gather and set up takes plenty of time.
8 Best Games That Use Permadeath Creatively, Ranked
Permadeath is an intimidating idea and a devastating consequence, however these video games put a artistic spin on it that retains issues attention-grabbing.
One of many hardest mechanics in Mission Zomboid is permadeath. If a zombie scratches a participant, there’s a likelihood they get contaminated. In the event that they get bitten, they’re 100% useless. And if a personality dies, they lose all their abilities. So a participant has to start out a brand new character from zero. To finish the sport often means surviving for so long as doable. This lets the participant see all of the seasons change. Surviving winter may be very onerous as a result of crops do not develop, and fishing is tough. Attempting to dwell that lengthy with out making one deadly mistake is an enormous problem.
Core Keeper
Completionist Time: 134 Hours
- Massive cave networks, crafting development, and boss encounters encourage lengthy exploration.
- A top-down survival recreation full of monsters and hidden biomes underground.
Core Keeper is an underground journey, the place gamers get up in a cave and should dig to seek out secrets and techniques. The explanation it takes over 100 hours is the combo of mining, constructing, and preventing. Gamers should dig by way of miles of partitions to seek out new biomes just like the clay caves or the stone ruins.
The sport additionally encourages constructing automated factories. Gamers create advanced drills and conveyor belt techniques to mine ore routinely. Organising these techniques, together with farms for uncommon crops, eats up plenty of time. There are additionally a number of non-obligatory bosses hidden within the outer biomes, akin to Azeos the Sky Titan and Omoroth the Sea Titan. Gamers should farm summoning objects to battle them. It’s that mixture of boss battling with satisfying, block-by-block mining and manufacturing facility building that retains gamers underground for weeks.
RimWorld
Completionist Time: 312 Hours
- As a substitute of 1 individual, gamers crash-landed survivors making an attempt to construct a ship and depart a harmful planet.
- The story is managed by an AI that creates random occasions like illness, pirate raids, or climate disasters that gamers should overcome.
RimWorld is a sci-fi colony simulator the place gamers handle a gaggle of crash-landed survivors. The purpose is to construct a ship and depart the planet. However the recreation is designed to throw issues on the participant consistently. A Storyteller AI decides what occurs subsequent. It would ship a raid of pirates, a heatwave, or a pack of mad squirrels. Coping with these disasters stops a participant from engaged on the ship.
Researching the expertise for the ship takes a really very long time. The colony wants plenty of sources, like metal and elements. Gamers should commerce with different settlements and drill deep into the bottom to get what they want. In addition they should preserve the colonists blissful. If a colonist is unhappy, they could have a psychological break and destroy the bottom.
Kenshi
Completionist Time: 273 Hours
- This can be a sandbox the place gamers usually are not heroes and might select to be a dealer, a thief, or a warlord in a large desert world.
- Cope with totally different factions and harsh climate.
Kenshi is a sandbox RPG with no linear story, but it retains gamers occupied for practically 300 hours. The primary few dozen hours are sometimes spent simply making an attempt to outlive being overwhelmed up, which mockingly raises the character’s toughness stat. Leveling up fight stats to some extent the place the participant can battle a easy bandit takes a very long time.
The true completionist purpose in Kenshi is to alter the world state. Gamers can construct their very own metropolis, recruit a military of dozens of characters, and wage struggle towards the foremost factions just like the Holy Nation or the United Cities. Recruiting troopers, coaching them, and crafting armor for them takes dozens of hours. As a result of the sport is so open-ended, gamers can get misplaced in managing their squad and exploring ruins for tons of of hours with out nearing completion.
Survival Games Where The Biggest Enemy Is Yourself
In these survival video games, the most important menace is not the predators and even the atmosphere, however the participant’s fragile physique and thoughts.


