Survival games become a popular option for players who want games with that extra kick, where mechanics force them to think on their feet in order for their characters to survive the constant dangers of desolate wastelands, lush forests, and even threats of mutants and monsters. However, while many survival games use familiar mechanics surrounding nutrient depletion, crafting, and base-building, certain survival games separate themselves from the pack with unique and even odd mechanics.

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Instead of simply relying on building bases and gathering supplies, certain survival games require players to use unconventional tactics in order to survive. These quirks usually coincide with some unique mechanic hidden in the game, be it through the introduction of a resource, an immersion element, or a result of a gameplay loop.

10 Subnautica

Use Beacons Since There’s No Map For Exploration

Set in the aquatic planet of 4546B in the Andromeda Galaxy, players of Subnautica can experience a wildly different survival game when the oceans become their enemy. Players spend their Subnautica gameplay as Ryley Robinson, salvaging what’s left of their crashed spaceship and searching the depths of the ocean planet for parts and supplies. While Subnautica is known for its base-building feature to ensure Ryley has a sustainable stay in 4546B, it’s one particular mechanic that leads to the game’s most unconventional survival strategy: the lack of an in-game map.

To make the depths of Subnautica more menacing, the game doesn’t give players an in-game map to work with during their exploration. However, the game does let players install beacons that will indicate their current location. When viewed as a list, players can even color-code their beacons for more efficient organization. This functionality gives Subnautica players a more personalized survival experience, especially since players organize and place beacons in locations according to their terms.

9 The Forest

Cannibalism Is A Viable Way To Stay Alive Against Mutants

When a plane crash separates Eric LeBlanc from their son Timmy in The Forest, the search brings them to a complex network of caves, villages, and even mutants who seem to be only interested in eating the players. That is, unless players get to eat them first. While players can enjoy The Forest’s base-building mechanics to create structures such as houses, tents, and even traps, it’s necessary to gather food where an unconventional mechanic resides: possibly eating the mutants after killing them.

Resorting to cannibalism does lower the player’s Sanity, a mechanic that allows them to build Effigies that may ward off mutants. Due to the frequency of mutant appearances throughout a player’s session, mutant limbs can become a more reliable source of nourishment than animal meat. While Sanity doesn’t have any noticeable detrimental effects on players, gamers enjoying the game’s survival element may feel a moral conflict when deciding whether to resort to cannibalism for survival or retain their character’s humanity.

8 We Happy Few

A Hallucinogen Can Determine The Difficulty Of The Game

As players explore Wellington Wells in We Happy Few, the game’s protagonists eventually reveal a horrible truth: a dystopia whose collapse is only hindered by the constant consumption of the hallucinogenic Joy. Citizens have been conditioned to become so dependent on Joy that it’s become a community-wide addiction, with blissful Wellies becoming increasingly hostile to non-conforming Downies and the other way around. As players try to escape Wellington Wells, they must use stealth, disguises, or even outright violence.

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While the game is more of an action-adventure experience, its stats-based survival components introduce an unconventional mechanic: the choice to take Joy. Exploration becomes easier with Joy as townsfolk will become friendlies, although players who stop taking the drug experience withdrawal symptoms as debuffs. Likewise, refusing Joy risks townsfolk becoming hostile much easier, prompting deadly chases and town-wide fights.

7 Sunless Sea

Permadeath System Introduces Advantages For Planned Gameplay

Set in the world of Fallen London where the aforementioned city has plunged deep into the underground and eldritch Neath, Sunless Sea takes place in the vastness of its Unterzee. Players take the role of a steamship captain as they explore the dangerous underground ocean in search of fame, treasure, or even hidden knowledge.

However, the threats of the Unterzee make a player’s journey extremely perilous. A successful Captain’s career may be permanently cut short after an attack from zee monsters, pirates, or otherworldly threats. This is where the game’s Warrant of Redemption comes in, where players can select what their new Captain will inherit from the previous Captain. This allows players to potentially start new playthroughs with advantages, especially if they save some of their predecessor’s monies, officers, progress, or special in-game story currencies.

6 Raft

The Base Is A Player’s Lifeline In The Sea Setting

Loading Raft for the first time reveals a world suffering the extremes of climate change: extreme flooding due to melted polar ice caps caused the near-collapse of the civilization, with players taing the role of Maya as she tries to look for her missing family amid societal collapse. Set in quite literally a massive ocean, Maya and players only have the aforementioned 2x2 raft to cling for survival.

While it’s true that Raft has base-building and crafting mechanics similar to other survival titles, the game relying on the base as the player’s home makes it their lifeline. The limited resources, aquatic dangers, and Maya’s quickly-depleting stats make each round of exploration a matter of life and death. Players need to be economic in expanding their raft, constantly weighing the risk-reward scenario of expanding their vessel with quality of life options or opting to use their resources for momentary reprieve such as food.

5 Valheim

Structural Integrity Adds A Layer Of Stress To Base Building

The premise of Valheim focusing on a fallen Viking’s journey to prove oneself of entering Valhalla is tied heavily to defeating Odin’s sworn enemies in the realm’s different biomes. What Valheim lacks in depletion mechanics, it makes up for with a Stamina and per-use Skill leveling system that can punish characters whenever they face enemies unprepared. To survive, Valheim players need to master the game’s intricate crafting mechanics, figure out which strategies work against enemies, and gather resources to build bases.

While Valheim uses a familiar gather-then-craft mechanic for base-building, its structural integrity mechanic forces players to think twice about the overall physics of their structures. Whenever players snap parts together, a blue-red color spectrum dictates the stability of the resulting building. At best, the player’s next piece will force the entire structure to crumble and force them to start from scratch. At worst, mobs from biomes of defeated bosses will randomly spawn and potentially cause structures to break with enough strikes.

4 Rust

Electricity Is A Vital Part In The Game’s Automated Options

Unlike other survival games, the added competitive nature of Rust can make its hectic survival mechanics extra unforgiving for both newcomers and veterans. After all, it’s not all the time that players have to scrounge up for resources while having to fend off against fully-equipped marauders, only to come back to a base utterly destroyed by raiders. It doesn’t help that since servers persist when players log out, they might log in to find their progress completely set back with a round of casual looting.

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Thankfully, Rust does offer various means for players to defend their bases even when offline, among the most popular include a fully-functional Auto Turret that needs Electricity to work. This in itself becomes a wholly new crafting mechanic for players, as Electricity needs generators (renewable or otherwise), storage (different-sized batteries), and a Wire tool to transfer them to gadgets. The ever-changing environments in Rust means players need to be careful about their Electricity generation, forcing them to stay on high alert how their renewable energy sync with their current supply.

3 This War Of Mine

Morale Determines If Survival Is Even Worth It

Set in the besieged fictional city of Pogoren, This War of Mine at first plays a lot like Fallout Shelter where players need to curate their base to accommodate not just survivors but their survival as well. Unfortunately for players, This War of Mine simulating the horrors of war meant survivors constantly have to grapple not just with survival but their choices in pursuing it. A key gameplay aspect affecting this is Morale, a character state that may affect not just a character’s performance but the way they act.

When characters perform, witness, or suffer cruel acts such as stealing or even killing, Morale can start turning them from Sad to Depressed. In worse instances, characters not only make negative comments but also trigger traumatic responses such as fighting, crying, or even taking one’s own life. As Morale is a constantly-depleting status, players need to constantly manage their character’s emotional state through talking, resting, or even drinking alcohol as part of their daily routines.

2 Urge

Peeing Is Vital For Travel But Can Increase Difficulty

When players start Urge, they begin the game as a car crash survivor who wakes up in a world affected by a mysterious Fog that manipulates the grimy apocalyptic world around them. Most of their actions can increase the Fog and spawn not just mutated opponents but also hazards such as conditions and the like. And like other base-builders, survival in the Urge uses base-building and weapon crafting, as well as cars for travel.

This is where the game’s rather quirky mechanic comes in, as players have to make use of their pee (as in the bodily fluid) to facilitate other actions. Pollution in this world has become so strong that pee has become some sort of biofuel, replacing gasoline in cars so players can hop from one location to the next. However, peeing strengthens the Fog, making the choice of exploration or simply barricading one’s location a point of risk-reward for players.

1 Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Regular Person Thinking Ties Into Mechanics

The retro presentation of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead seems to be a callback to some of the original roguelikes of the past, with the game’s turn-based, tile-heavy nature seemingly off-putting at first until players begin getting to the meat of the game. In a post-apocalyptic world, players wake up as their amnesiac characters and try to survive. While fast zombies are the norm, players contend with threats like hunger and thirst, raiders, robots, and mutants.

The sheer depth of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead makes it one of the most immersive survival simulation games. Unlike other survival sims, CDDA needs players to think like a “regular person” so that expected interactions between objects work similarly to how they’re expected to do in real life. Examples of these interactions include clothing possibly being layered, or even more intricate ways of how the character’s senses might work.

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