Survival games

7 Days to Die is probably the standout one there for me. Have about 500 hours into it. A19 drops in a little over a week. This game has been in development for the better part of a decade, but it's basically released enough (each alpha just brings sweeping changes, so be prepared for once a year to have a somewhat different game as they figure out what they want).

Rust is super boring solo.
Ark I have never been able to get into.

Green Hell is decent, but absolutely brutally hard. If I ever put more time in it I'd probably enjoy it, but fuck...it's hard.

Scum is more of a BR than survival.
Raft is on my list to try as I've heard good things.

The Forest is kind of inbetween 7 Days and Green Hell. It's more story driven than open world. Not nearly as much replayability, and the building aspect is kind of meh.
The Long Dark is similar, just in a cold setting. Bit harder than The Forest. I didn't love this one mostly because everything is fucking white. It's one where I enjoyed the story more as otherwise you have no fucking clue what to do.

Haven't played any of the ones I didn't mention.

Other games that are kind of similar are Terraria (323 hours logged), Forager which I just picked up this week and I'm enjoying so far (8 hours in), Subnautica (22 hours; not super replayable), Stardew Valley (80 hours, this is heavily tilted to farming), and My Time in Portia (pretty much a 3d version of Stardew Valley). Stardew/Portia aren't necessarily survival, but are similar enough in my opinion.

Don't Starve is also one people have lots of good things to say about, but I never got too deep into it.

I haven't played SCUM in forever, but its online and PVP enabled like DayZ. TTK is pretty low, so many times you're dead before you know wtf is happening. It also tries to go for more realism, so you actually have to shit/piss and overheating is a constant issue if you get fully geared up.

7 Days to Die has a decent single player experience if you don't want to do online. They've added quests so it isn't 100% sandbox "make your own content". Difficulty ramps up longer you are alive, so it has a Tower Defense aspect in that sense (every 7 days is a blood moon and the zombies go apeshit/swarm you at night. The longer you're alive, the tougher zombies that show up). Skill trees and decent base building. There is also decent variance in the various environments. Cities have nice loot, but are chock full of zombies.

As he mentioned, Alpha 19 is coming out soon and supposedly changes a lot, so if you do try it now, don't go hardcore into it. The massive patches tend to be complete rehauls of many systems, resulting in older saves not always working.

Project Zomboid is a decent survival game as well. It's isometric perspective, but pretty deep. It can get a little boring after a while, though, and patches are rare (like 1 every couple years it seems, because the team working on it is very small and basically treats it like a side project).

Cybsled said:

Alpha 19 is coming out soon and supposedly changes a lot

Click to expand...

Zzzz. The game is never coming out.

I had my fun with Alpha 16 though, before they added that bullshit where zombies get bonus block damage if they cant reach you and horde bases became all about exploiting the dumbass AI and physics rather than intelligent and well-thought out construction.

R/basebuilding games constantly discusses this. Frankly, they are all pretty much lacking. Very very few stand out. most are just slight rehashes of each other. A number of decent ones, get shot in the foot with PVP ruining them.

The problems.
conan/ark and friends basically all get ruined by dev time and balance spent on PVP. the core games end up hollow. this is then doubled up with private servers being a giant PITA to deal with. official servers have their shit rules and mods. any decent server is 50/50 on having good mods, and/or the owner deciding to shut it down on you at any given time.

most of them end up feeling exactly like each other, with just some window dressing changes.

Lacking base building/settlement/colony building. empty lifeless bases suck ass. and this ruins most of the games in this genre. FO4 is one of the best, with its settlement system. and even that is far too rudimentary. settlement mods help alot here..
I hear minecraft colonies mod does this "fairly" well..

Dragon quest builders 2. does pretty good at this. but, kindof falls off as it goes.
Kenshi. one of the best. allies are 100% under your control, though. ai programmed robots, not living settlers.

Terraria super basic basebuilding.... but at least tries making your homebase "alive". the npcs fight, sell things, die, have buffs, etc..
Terraria also has a unique game loop far too many others have failed to replicate. explore, collect unique items. kill bosses, collect unique items, and materials to craft progression items. each boss unlocking more progression. Its baffling there are not ANY terraria clones. or even games that match its progression.

Subnautica is very solid. pretty. decent loop. stands out from the others. not the same, "craft spear, craft gun".
the forest I see recommened alot. and 7days to die.

cataclysm:dark days ahead. the dwarf fortress of survival games..
Giving empyrion:galactic survival a shot right now. it is/was on sale. I haven't played enough atm to give a real review. its rough though. EarlyAccess. better/worse? than no mans sky.

Outward is its own beast. eurojank. its not like the other survival, where you are naked in the woods and need to cut down everything, and craft everything. its more of a traditional first person rpg.

Satisfactory count? hear great things about that. havent tried it yet though.

I saw survivalist:invisible strain recommended recently. Need to try it. heavenworld as well.

Starsector and mount and blade are both also, not quite survival games, but hit a similar itch. Esp if you are coming from 4x games. Starsector with nexerlin mod.

Caliane said:

Satisfactory count? hear great things about that. havent tried it yet though.

Click to expand...

Satisfactory is more an economy sim. 3D first person Factorio but with less combat. No waves of enemies, just somewhat random wildlife that you clear out when expanding/exploring.

I'll post thoughts on the games that I'm familiar with.

Rust - PvP game with building/survival elements. If you don't have a regular crew to play with and play often, you're going to have a bad time.

Ark Survival - Expensive and bloated, but a lot of fun to be had. Not a full voxel world.

7 Days to Die - This is kind of the gold standard of survival games right now, which is odd because it hasn't gone gold. Fully voxel world, PvE based multiplayer, RPG like character development, acceptable building, and tower defense like challenge every 7 days to test your building. Random generated maps keep the game fresh for multiple playthroughs.

I've been playing off and on since 2015. I still play every weekend with a group of pals. We're pretty hype for the new alpha.

The Forest - Good for a playthrough or two, but single player focus with no random gen hurts.

The Long Dark - See above, except snow. There really isn't base building here, either. Emphasis on cold weather survival.

This War of Mine - This doesn't really fit with any of the above games. It's fun, but kind of a different animal since there is no fps component.

Also, check out Empyrion: Galactic Survival. They just dropped a huge alpha build. The game is updated quicker than 7 Days to Die.

I would have mentioned Subnautica immediately but he was pretty specific about wanting hunting/killing which Subnautica doesn't have.

No Man's Sky is decent, but the survival aspect becomes very trivial once you get over the new player start. It's more "explore and find better ships/build better bases" vs. being threatened by shit.

I have significantly more hours in NSM than Subnautica. But NMS has literally almost no elements of danger. Basically after the first hour or two, things are just annoying versus deadly.