Survival games.

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Any of you guys and girls like this genre? You pop into the world, powerless and poor, find resources and build something out of nothing, the old world isn't there anymore (or at least very little of it) and no rules apply.

Some games typical to the genre:
- The Fallout series, especially FO4 with settlement building (Scifi RPG)
- Project Zomboid (Zombies)
- This war of mine (Wartime)
- 7 days to die (Zombies)
- State of decay (Zombies)
- Stranded deep (Island)

I like to play them and learn enough to succeed. In Zomboid, i generally create a large fortification and segment off zombies so they cannot cluster up, like "boxing them in". State of decay is pretty cool (like GTA with zombies), sort of an post apoc with lots of civilization still left, you tie new contacts and decide where the settlement should go towards (usually more food and protection). 7 Ways to die is pretty much like Zomboid but in 3D.

I love to scout these game worlds, find new resources and explore the game world. Recover technology and build the group stronger, find new people and rebuild. I just LOVE that whole concept in survival gaming.

Do you play similar games? Got any tips for games one should play?

I've gotten a good deal of enjoyment out of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It's an open world roguelike with ASCII graphics, although there are tile sets available that make it a little more pleasant to look at. It also has the largest variety of items I've ever seen in a game and a deep crafting system, even more so after enabling some of the mods that come with the download.

I like the idea of survival games.

I *dont* like that so many of them are freaking FPS games. I've seen enough FPS games to last the next 80 years. Frankly I hate the genre. So something like Fallout is a big NOPE for me.

As for other games though, hmmm.... I mean, it depends on what you consider to be a survival game.

For example, I think of games like Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld as being part survival game, since it's your group of dwarves and/or weirdos against the world around them with limited resources and every conceivable thing trying to kill them, including themselves. The challenge never stops. Even when you think your dwarfs have built up an impenetrable fortress to protect against the wildness around them, the game says "LOL NOPE" and lunacy happens. Often in ways that are absolutely hilarious.

There's also stuff like Minecraft, for instance. Where you start with literally nothing whatsoever and yet must survive against hordes of skeletons, spiders, and skeletons that ride spiders. And zombies and whatnot but the skeleton jockeys are the funny ones. Some people might say that Minecraft is too easy, but I typically use mods that increase the difficulty. And there are LOTS of mods to increase the complexity or even add to the direct "survival" elements (such as adding thirst and temperature). I play Minecraft quite alot.

I typically only play survival games of any sort though if they involve procedural generation. Otherwise the replay value breaks down really, really fast (because exploration only happens ONCE in that case, and then there's no more to do). I've avoided Zomboid for that reason.

What about Dont Starve? For alot of people that's pretty much *the* survival game.

Subnautica is another very popular one but I have not played it myself.


I'm familiar with Cataclysm DDA as well. Roguelikes in general, really.

I apparently own a copy of State of Decay. I was not aware of this.

Apart from the graphics, the game did sound well designed.



I like that the terrain is auto generated for unlimited gameplay, forcing you to move on all the time to find new resources, only game that does this is 7 Days to die, but you have the option to play on a pre-generated map so you know where all the stuff is and you don't risk starting out in a cold climate without clothes or in the desert without water.

Vehicles i miss in most games (Well, State of decay have them, but it is basically the day after the Z apocalypse, not 200+ years into the future like Fallout).

Maby the earlier versions? (1 and 2) Isometric 3D in all its glory.



I know of it, but my mind cant get past the cartoony graphics. Have a friend who plays it lots, i bought him the State of Decay collection on steam, too bad there is no multiplayer, hope they fix that in SoD 2 (comming soon i heard).

I'm same with Subnautica, heard of it but not much more.

Eh, I wouldnt get into any version of Fallout to be honest. 3 and 4 are FPS games at heart. 1 and 2 are RPGs. Definitely not what I'd be looking for in a survival game. Heck, I dont even consider them to be that, honestly. By my book the 3rd and 4th are "sandbox RPGs". AKA, Skyrim types.

Dont Starve, honestly to me the art has always added to it. It's not like it's done in a Looney Tunes sort of style... it's done in a very gothic, dark style. Lots of generalized creepiness. I personally prefer it that way, I'm not a fan of realism in terms of graphics (I dont see the point. If I want realism I'll look away from the screen, heh). I havent actually played it all that much though. It's one of those games where I always kinda feel like I need a tutorial.


Oh, another one I've remembered, Unreal World. It's on Steam. It's similar to Cataclysm in alot of ways... that whole super huge open world and a million possible things to do... but instead of zombies, it's you VS the wilderness in the far north. LOTS of content. The game has been constantly worked on and improved since 1992 so the amount of depth to it is extreme. A bit like Dwarf Fortress in that regard (another game which is never truly "finished"). Brutal learning curve though. Like Dwarf Fortress, I'd want actual tutorial videos to start with this one.

State of Decay now, THAT game seems to be in a funky position. I randomly looked at the store page, and it's suddenly being flooded with negative reviews. ....It is also no longer for sale. It seems the devs (or publisher) pulled a *really* nasty move, creating a whole seperate version of the game, and selling it seperately, despite that it is the EXACT same game, but patched more. In essence, they're selling you a normal patch.... at full price. Buy it or you dont get future versions. Oh, but it's different because they altered the name slightly. Community is flipping out over it, and I cant blame them.

Based on all of that, I'd strongly suggest to anyone interested to hold off on it or it's sequel when that releases. When a developer or publisher gets THIS bad, they usually then stick to the dark side permanently.


Lastly, one more: Caves of Qud. It's.... hard to explain. It has alot of that "extreme depth" of Cataclysm, but it uses alot of very different ideas. It's one that I really mean to dive fully into. I had last played it quite awhile ago while it was still in an early state, and there was only so much that could be done with it. Now though it's entirely there and I'm constantly told that it's super amazing and I need to play it.


As for Cataclysm's graphics, it's pretty much the norm for roguelikes or anything evolved for them to use ASCII graphics, as in the videos there. The reason: ASCII allows for the displaying of monstrous amounts of information on the screen at once. It's very easy to see everything at a glance, and more importantly, not miss anything. Dwarf Fortress is the same way. Yeah, there are tilesets for a game like this or DF, but I've always found that they actually DETRACT from the game. They can make it more confusing and harder to tell what's happening. ....Also to many fans of such games including myself, NOT having it in ASCII is just.... somehow wrong.

For me it's also a very welcome change from games that are super obsessed with graphics in general (a trend I'm really, really tired of... I stopped caring about that years ago).

SoD collectors edition is on sale, the other version got discontinued. Never had any probs with that game, never patched it. It's an enjoyable experience i can say, survival game with vehicles are rare. It is sad that they removed the vanilla version that allowed you to test the game without paying for the entire pack.

Wasn't overly impressed with Unreal World. In the 20 years they have been tinkering with it, you'd think they spend some time on the user interface? Stuff like that brings down the entire experience, regardless of the amount of content:

The reason no time is spent on the interface: It doesnt need it.

And by that, I dont mean "bah the interface is fine!" What I mean is, the devs and the players *literally* dont think it needs it. As in, it's simply unnecessary.

It's like Dwarf Fortress: That game has one of the most convoluted interfaces I've ever seen. It's part of the game's hellish learning curve, it really is. It stops alot of players from getting into it. But.... I'll put it this way. It confused the hell out of me at first, but now that I actually know how to properly play DF? I wouldnt change it. It's not a pretty UI, it's a purely *functional* UI. That difference is very important. The way it works means that you can get at any of the game's functions *very* quickly. Have you ever seen top players going at it in Starcraft 2? All that rapid keypressing they do and all the flickering nonsense on the bottom of their screens that seems like an incomprehensible mess to everyone that doesnt play it? It's alot like that. You spend less time seeking through menus and more time performing the actual functions you want. Taking for example DF, compared to Rimworld, a game inspired by DF. Rimworld's interface is nice and easy to use. .....And to someone used to DF, it's slower than a dead turtle in sludge. It just takes too long to do most things in it, considering the sheer number of things you're going to want to do. It gets.... tedious. It's one of the reasons why I just dont really play that despite being a fan of DF and that type of game.

Unreal World, as well as most roguelikes, does this same thing. The UI is horrible to learn. But it's actually easy to USE once you have learned it even despite the massive amount of content. It's an annoying aspect of the genre or anything similar to it, this is absolutely true. I often think that it's part of the genre's problems, pushing players away like it does. Though at the same time.... if a player is pushed away by that alone, they'd be violently shoved away by the difficulty of the game in question anyway. The genre is like that and Unreal World is no exception.

Hell, Unreal World has WAY more of an interface than similar games I'm used to.

I think the genre has been attempted several times to the glee of many fans, however few games have ever turned out to be all that great.

I like survival games.

Unreal World looks interesting.