Survival games traditionally have meters that players have to watch of and keep up with in order to survive, which is always one of the primary goals that must be kept in mind. Generally, there are a few simple needs that players have to upkeep as part of surviving in such games, but occasionally it gets more complicated.
The most common needs are things such as hunger and thirst, and in many survival games, these are the only factors that a player needs to upkeep to fill their survival meters. However, there are some cases where unique other problems arise that have to be dealt with.
6 Dead In Bermuda
Most survival games more recently found themselves in an open-world style more often than not, but some still try different styles. Dead in Bermuda is a survival management game that forces the player to take control of eight different survivors of a plane crash and try to keep a variety of survival meters high enough for each that they can all make it out alive.
The difficulty with Dead in Bermuda is that each character becomes less useful when their traits are worse, and their capabilities lessen, making keeping them alive even more frustratingly hard. Players have to keep the hunger, fatigue, sickness, injury, and depression all within reasonable limits, and they have to do this for every character. Dead in Bermuda is a brutally hard management game that will intrigue survival enthusiasts because so much strategy comes into play. Each character gains skills in a variety of disciplines and can specialize, but there are so many traits to keep track of while trying to escape the island that players can easily become bogged down and struggle.
5 Subnautica
Subnautica is a survival game that was unique in a number of ways. Players crash-land onto an alien planet almost entirely covered by ocean. To survive there, they must build a base, use local materials and pieces from their crashed ship to put together vehicles that they can use to explore, and plenty more. However, being set in the ocean, players have a constant struggle against a unique survival metric.
While Subnautica players have to worry about hunger and thirst as many survival game players will be accustomed to, there is another more immediate concern that can irritate players early in the game. To explore the ocean further and gather the materials required to escape the alien planet, players first need to deal with the problem of oxygen. Just having enough air to breathe is an immediate issue, and players need to keep a plan in place between staying close to the surface and later not straying too far from the nearest vehicle so that they can survive.
4 Fallout 4
Fallout as a game series sets itself in a very survivalist environment, taking place after an apocalyptic war that changed the world forever. While the various characters players will take on have challenges to face in the new world, none are quite so prominent and consistent as the problem of radiation.
Fallout 4 is an excellent example of how the Fallout series introduces a completely different sort of survival meter to an RPG. Players don’t have too many bars to keep track of in Fallout 4, but their health bar will lessen the more that players encounter radiation unless they have other ways of protecting themselves from it. This forces players to avoid certain areas unless they are well-prepared, making for an intriguing challenge.
3 The Long Dark
It is a simple idea when dealing with surviving in a harsh environment that warmth may come into play. But not many games manage to deal quite so well or make the reality of potentially freezing to death seem as harsh as The Long Dark does.
In The Long Dark, players take control of a crashed pilot who is trying to survive in remote Canada after a storm brings him down. Known for being one of the more difficult survival games available, The Long Dark makes a much bigger deal than other survival games of trying to stay warm enough to survive than any other survival game.
2 Don’t Starve
Don’t Starve makes it sound from the title as if the primary problem players will face in the game is hunger. While meters like that are a part of the problem in this unique 2D environment, as well as health and wetness, the unique idea is that of sanity. Players experiencing Don’t Starve for the first time will be shocked to see nightmarish creatures appearing around them the lower their sanity bar goes.
Not only that, but meat sources available in the game, such as rabbits, transform into more dangerous ones when sanity gets too low. Trying to keep sanity high is another factor in being alone in a survivalist situation which makes a lot of sense but is often overlooked by survival games in favor of other, simpler ideas such as hunger.
1 Green Hell
Green Hell is another survival game known for being brutally hard in comparison to many others, and one of the factors which it introduces at a much more high-level than other survival games is sickness. While it is possible in other survival games to get sick, players have to actively find ways to avoid it in Green Hell because the potential is everywhere.
Between unsafe water, which has to be boiled first, parasites that can infect players, and eating unsafe food, players can quickly find their survival in doubt due to sickness. This is a sensible part of the game when trying to survive in such a harsh environment, and while some sicknesses like food poisoning can be fought off by the body, it will limit players or even threaten their life.