Best Survival Games on PC: 65+ Picks from Valheim to Subnautica

More than 65 of the best survival games on PC: zombie apocalypses, deep space, deserted islands, hardcore simulators, and co-op survival games with crafting and base-building. The genre is enormous and full of forgettable cash-grabs, so we picked only the survival games that pull you in for dozens — even hundreds — of hours.

This selection has something for every taste: harsh realistic simulators where death waits around every corner, cozy crafting sandboxes, tense horrors, and sprawling online worlds. For each game we tell you whether it's more fun solo or with friends. Pick your format and survive.

Survival games where the main threat comes from zombies, raiders, and dwindling resources. In zombie games it's not just about fending off the undead — you also have to stay alert because of other people, who are often far more dangerous than the monsters. And if you want even more of the walking dead across every genre, we have a separate top of the best zombie games.

Many people forget that DayZ started life as a mod for ArmA 2 — but it turned out so remarkable that it grew into a standalone project. Developer Dean Hall built a post-apocalyptic world brought to its knees by a zombie outbreak. Even so, the real danger to a survivor isn't the walking dead but other players, ready to kill you for a can of beans.

It's funny that the game is still full of problems to this day, and at launch their sheer number was shocking. Players complained about the technical state, the balance, and the unpolished mechanics — yet even behind the pile of flaws, enormous potential was clearly visible.

At its core this is a classic open-world survival game: you push forward, hunt for better gear, look after your character, and treat injuries you can pick up just from falling down a short ladder. But there are so many threats everywhere that players flinch at every rustle and try not to make noise. Die once and it all starts over — DayZ has no saves and no respawns. Few games make you this nervous or pull you so deeply into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere. That's exactly what players came to love it for, flaws and all. And if that's not enough for you, more hardcore options are waiting further down this list.

Co-op: yes.

In the world of Project Zomboid, a zombie apocalypse is about to break out. Humanity hasn't yet grasped what's happening, and the houses still have running water and electricity. But the walking dead have already overrun one town and are getting ready to wipe every last human off the map. Unfortunately for your hero, he's stuck at the very epicenter — he'll try to survive as long as he can, but a grim fate is unavoidable either way.

The developers don't call Project Zomboid "the story of your death" for nothing. The trick is that the game is packed with hardcore mechanics and the difficulty constantly ramps up. To open a tin can you need a special knife. Food spoils fast unless you store it in a fridge. Planning to rest? Don't forget to make curtains and cover the windows, or zombies will spot the sleeping fool and devour him. Every little detail matters.

Playing Project Zomboid in co-op is a special kind of fun. On some servers survivors split into factions, wage war on each other, and generally make their own entertainment.

Co-op: yes.

State of Decay might look like an ordinary zombie-apocalypse sandbox at first glance, but the real focus here isn't the walking dead — it's people. You play as the leader of a small group of survivors whose daily life you now have to improve, or at least keep at a tolerable level. The survivors themselves are people with a set of stats like melee skill, weapon handling, or survival. On top of that, each character has their own perks that grant bonuses, plus personality traits you have to account for. You can also "possess" any character's body, like a puppet, once you complete their personal mission.

Your group can grow if you respond to other survivors' calls for help. There's no avoiding supply runs either, and that means weighing who's best to bring along right now, who'll be more useful in a fight, and who's worth more back at base.

In 2015 the game got a remaster, State of Decay — Year One Survival Edition. Then in 2018 came State of Decay 2, which added a co-op mode. The sequel built on some of the original's mechanics and ironed out many of its bugs.

Co-op: yes.

Zombie-apocalypse games in one form or another have long since become stale and no longer spark the excitement they once did. Although Dying Light mines the same theme of an infected city teeming with hordes of the walking dead, it does so far better than its predecessors. The developer is Techland, the same studio that once gave the world the co-op zombie action game Dead Island, where killing zombies was more fun than ever. Dying Light inherited its melee system, letting you carve up the undead in just about any way you like. Its main hook, though, is parkour: you can race across rooftops and other surfaces like a seasoned assassin, and doing it in co-op with friends is twice as fun. The game also has a full-fledged story.

As you complete tasks and scavenge for supplies, you'll often head out into a city packed wall-to-wall with zombies. There's no need to fear them by day — on their own they're fairly slow and make easy targets.

At night everything changes. Not only do all the zombies become faster and more aggressive, but Volatiles also appear — true monsters you're better off staying well away from. From the supplies you find on the streets, you can craft and combine various weapons, or trade junk you don't need for more useful gear.

The game spawned several sequels that tried to develop the original's ideas. They didn't always succeed, but if you really want to feel like a nimble survivor in a world of zombies, the whole series is worth checking out — and you should start with the first game.

Co-op: yes.

7 Days to Die is a classic survival simulator set against a zombie apocalypse. The game only officially released in 2024, even though it had been in early access since all the way back in 2013 — you'd think players would have lost all interest and buried it for good long ago. Yet the project is still going strong. And 7 Days to Die really shines in co-op. By the way, we also have a separate selection of the best games for two players.

There's no real story, so your character spawns randomly in one of the biomes and gets straight to surviving. If you're unlucky, you might be dropped into, say, a snowy region, where early on it's entirely possible to freeze to death or run into a thick-skinned ice zombie that finishes you off in a couple of hits.

By day you might stumble onto small groups of zombies, but at night there are far more of them, so your first priority is building a home. You can even make a shelter underground, where you're free to dig out entire mining tunnels and extract resources. If the dead catch your scent, they'll launch an all-out attack on your home, slowly tearing it down. To keep them from breaking through, you have to constantly reinforce your shelter. But the real fun begins on the 7th night of your survival run, because it's not just zombies coming for you but other nasty creatures too — like dead girls, zombie spiders, and aggressive bees.

Every so often a supply crate will be dropped into some area, and you'll have to race to it within a set time. Once you've got the hang of crafting, you'll be able to put together not just weapons and gear but actual vehicles. It's worth stressing that the game is at its best when you play it in co-op.

Co-op: yes.

A wild mix of Valheim, Conan Exiles, DayZ, and 7 Days to Die in a zombie-apocalypse setting. No One Survived doesn't invent anything new, but it works hard to gather the genre's strongest ideas: looting, building a shelter, climbing a tech tree, crafting workbenches, weapons, and armor. A big map, more than 400 items, water and electricity systems, NPC traders, hunting, and changing seasons — all of it can be fine-tuned before you set out to survive with up to five friends.

Co-op: yes.

An unusual survival game in which your base is built right inside the bed of a huge truck. On top of outfitting your mobile shelter, you have to explore the open world, rescue survivors, fight off zombies, and gradually upgrade your vehicle — there's no progressing through Survival Machine's story without those upgrades. Rolling across the post-apocalypse in an armored truck with three other players is quite the adventure.

Co-op: yes.

Games that lean into believable mechanics and complex survival systems. You have to account for illness, injuries, weather, fatigue, temperature, and a host of other factors that can turn even a small mistake fatal.

The Long Dark is a wonderful example of how to make an atmospheric survival game without resorting to zombies, mutants, cannibals, or other fantastical creatures. In the story you play as pilot Will Mackenzie, who crashes his plane over the snow-covered Canadian wilderness after a strange geomagnetic storm. Stranded in wintry Canada, with not a single other person for miles around, Will faces a brutal struggle against nature. He has to gather berries, warm himself by the fire, craft hunting weapons, butcher animal carcasses, sew clothing, and fend off predators.

The game makes you account for countless details: in wet clothes you can easily freeze and catch a cold, water has to be boiled or purified, you can't light a fire in the wind, torches eventually burn out, matches run low, and a heavy backpack or several layers of clothing seriously slow you down. All these nuances make The Long Dark one of the most realistic survival games out there.

There are several modes. For example, the story-driven Wintermute, a survival mode that serves as a full-blown sandbox, and challenge scenarios for those who want to put themselves to the test.

Co-op: no.

Green Hell is one of the most meticulous wilderness survival games around, made by Polish studio Creepy Jar. You end up in the Amazon rainforest, one on one with the tropics, where literally anything can kill you: a jaguar, a snake, contaminated water, larvae under your skin, and even your own mind. The game's signature feature is its frighteningly detailed health system: you have to inspect wounds, pull out leeches, apply leaves and bandages, while a separate gauge tracks your character's sanity — loneliness and stress trigger hallucinations.

At first you know nothing about the jungle and learn from your mistakes: what's safe to eat, how to start a fire, what brings down a fever. After that come hunting, building, and a story campaign — and surviving the Green Hell with friends in co-op is noticeably calmer.

Co-op: yes.

In SCUM you take control of hardened lowlifes trying to earn their freedom by competing in a brutal bloodsport. The premise: in the future, people have grown bored of football and TV shows, so a new program is born in which criminals are dropped onto an island and told to survive. Hiding in the bushes won't cut it, though — the audience hates a dull episode.

The key resource you fight for in SCUM is the viewers' love. The higher a character's rating, the more bonuses and sponsorship contracts they'll receive, which ultimately helps them dominate the other players.

To be fair, SCUM has plenty of downsides too. Bugs lurk around every corner, running across the island eats up far too much time, and the need to relieve yourself feels like overkill. Even so, the game found its audience — and it might be to your taste as well, especially if you enjoy a good, hard challenge.

Co-op: yes.

Icarus is another game from DayZ creator Dean Hall. The story is set in a distant future where humanity tried to terraform the planet Icarus and failed. There's water, trees, and animals there, but the air is poisoned and unfit for people. Even so, Icarus turned out to hold valuable resources, and corporations send all sorts of daredevils down to mine them. You're one of them.

By and large, Icarus is a standard survival game. You craft spears out of sticks and stones, warm yourself by the fire, feed your hero meat, take down wolves and bears, and put up structures where you can ride out a storm or rest until morning. Among its highlights are a progression system that gradually makes your character stronger and braver, plus a story campaign.

Icarus makes for a decent survival game, though it deserves some criticism for its shortage of fresh ideas, poor optimization, and underbaked setting where future humans run around the planet with bows and clubs. Genre fans probably won't mind, though.

Co-op: yes.

Outward is an unusual mix of RPG and survival game where you're not the chosen hero but an ordinary down-on-your-luck nobody with a backpack and a pile of debt. The game doesn't pause even in the inventory, you have to light your lantern by hand, and you can drop the pack off your back mid-fight to move more nimbly. You have to keep an eye on hunger, thirst, fatigue, infections, and the weather.

Death here isn't a Game Over screen but part of the story: you might be taken prisoner, nursed back to health by random passersby, or dragged off to a cave, and the adventure continues from a new spot. You can play through it with a partner, both online and locally in split-screen — a rarity for the genre.

Co-op: yes.

The Wild Eight is an isometric survival game about a group of plane-crash survivors stranded in the snows of Alaska. The cold is the main enemy here: without a fire and warm clothing, your character freezes faster than you can figure out what's going on. You have to hunt, gather resources, repair gear, and along the way uncover a mystery: what are those strange objects scattered through the forests, and who else is wandering around out there.

It's tough going solo, so the game really opens up in co-op, where it's easier to split roles: someone hunts while someone else holds the camp and makes sure the fire doesn't go out.

Co-op: yes.

Road to Vostok is a hardcore single-player survival FPS set in a post-apocalyptic border zone between Finland and Russia. It's all about unflinching realism: deliberate gunplay, scarcity of everything, careful inventory management, and a high price for mistakes — death here costs you dearly. The game entered early access in spring 2026 and has already drawn the attention of fans of uncompromising survival.

Co-op: no.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an experimental survival game from Patrice Désilets, one of the fathers of the Assassin's Creed series. You control a clan of apes in prehistoric Africa millions of years ago and literally walk the path of evolution: exploring a dangerous world, learning to make tools, mastering bipedalism, and passing skills down to your descendants as you leap across generations. The game explains almost nothing — you have to work everything out yourself, through trial and terror — and that's both its greatest strength and its biggest challenge. It won't be for everyone, but the experience it offers is truly one of a kind.

Co-op: no.

One of the genre's most popular flavors. You start these games with almost no resources and gradually build a shelter, craft tools, gather materials, and turn a small base into a full settlement or fortress.

Enshrouded is survival with action-RPG leanings, where building has been refined almost into a tool of its own. You explore a vast open world shrouded in a poisonous Mist, gather resources on dangerous expeditions, and raise a base — from a modest hut to a cyclopean stone castle. A flexible terrain system lets you dig, sculpt, and reshape the landscape almost however you like, so there's enormous room for architectural projects.

Beyond building, there's full-fledged combat, progression, classes, and dungeons with bosses. You can play solo, but servers allow up to 16 people, and big builds go up far faster with company.

Co-op: yes.

Valheim was made by a modest five-person team. Astonishingly, their effort was enough to create one of the biggest hits of 2021. The game topped the Steam charts for months, drew 500,000 players at its peak, and earned 95% positive reviews.

The world of Valheim is a pleasure to be in. Technically the environment is fairly plain, but the artists did a brilliant job with the design and biomes, making the visuals one of the game's main strengths. It's a similar story with the rest of the mechanics. There aren't all that many combat moves, but hacking through skeletons and other foul creatures is engaging — and doing it with a group of up to ten people is even more fun. No wonder the game made it into our roundup of the best co-op games.

Valheim also has a story, in which a brave warrior must help Odin defeat mighty beings. It's a simple tale, but it gives the gameplay a sense of purpose. Another of the hit's strengths is its co-op: you can play Valheim with up to ten people, and carrying out Odin's will is even more fun in that format.

Co-op: yes.

If you've ever dreamed of the pirate life without the over-the-top bravado, Windrose offers exactly that. You start as a penniless castaway: a stick, a stone, a campfire. You finish as a captain with your own frigate, one you designed and armed yourself. The game is in no hurry. The standard survival loop of "resource → craft → build" feels justified here: every new tool genuinely brings you closer to the sea rather than just unlocking the next line on a tech tree. The bosses are tough — not set dressing but real obstacles you have to prepare for. Combat is closer to a Souls game than to a typical survival title, which adds tactical weight to every clash.

The world is generated when you create a session, so a party of two to four players gets its own archipelago every time. There's no PvP — only a shared enemy in the surrounding world and its inhabitants. Naval battles are built around positioning and cannon volleys, and boarding turns every encounter into a little story of its own.

You'll find more pirate games in our top, "Best Pirate and Ship Games on PC and Consoles."

Co-op: yes.

In Stranded Deep, your hero survives a plane crash and washes up on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. Don't count on rescue — better not to waste time and get to setting up your daily life. Dawdle, and hunger, thirst, or heatstroke will catch up with you.

The poor castaway has plenty to do. Build a farm that can keep you fed. Take control of other islands where valuable resources are scattered. Craft a sturdy raft for comfortably exploring the ocean. Get weapons for fighting off sharks, snakes, and the rest of the wildlife. In short, the list of chores stretches toward infinity. Survival with crafting and building is a whole separate world of video games.

It's easy to sink a lot of time into Beam Team Games' creation. There are mighty bosses, a map editor, an endless number of islands, a co-op mode, and much more. If you've been looking for a worthy survival game with a wealth of mechanics, give Stranded Deep a look.

Co-op: yes.

Raft is another survival game about islands and an endless ocean. That said, where Stranded Deep at least tries to be realistic, in Raft you can find an island with a butler robot — one who keeps zapping your hero and ordering him to calm down.

Of course, the heroes have their share of traditional problems too. A man-eating shark circles your shore, there's never enough crafting material, and your food stores keep running dry — though you can replenish them with underwater hunting, for one.

There's plenty to do in Raft, and the developers put in a lot of effort to add even more. The official release landed in 2022, and the project is still able to draw you in. If open-world survival is your passion, you'll find plenty more options in this top.

Co-op: yes.

Rust traveled a tough road from the alpha of yet another DayZ clone in 2013 to a survival simulator all its own. Its fundamentals are standard for the genre. You come to on a scenic island with no clothes (the game lets you play a fully naked character), and your entire kit is a rock and a torch. To avoid dying to the claws of predators or the hands of other players, you'll need to get yourself food, clothing, and weapons. For comfortable survival you have to constantly develop your home. The game lets you build anything from a modest little house to an absurd 506-story skyscraper.

That said, your actions aren't restricted in any way. You can become a peaceful hunter or the head of your own settlement, or join a clan of crazed cutthroats who won't let the whole server live in peace. Before you start, you should know that Rust has an incredibly toxic community, so brace yourself for a thousand and one unpleasant moments involving other players. But if you play with friends or manage to find reliable allies, you're guaranteed to come away impressed.

Co-op: yes.

Funcom made its first attempt at a successful MMORPG set in Robert E. Howard's world back in 2008, at the dawn of World of Warcraft, with Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Despite an initial surge of interest, the developers couldn't keep players in Conan's world for long. The game was later renamed Age of Conan: Unchained and made free-to-play, but by then few people cared. The next attempt to cash in on the barbarian's good name didn't come until 2017, when Conan Exiles — a multiplayer survival simulator — entered early access. To Funcom's credit, the game made it to a full release fairly quickly.

The setup is traditionally simple. You begin your journey as a nameless ragamuffin nailed to a cross and doomed to certain death — until none other than Conan himself happens to ride past, nobly saves your character, delivers a grandiose speech, and walks off, leaving you to learn the basics of survival on your own. As in most games like this, your hero has hunger and thirst meters to watch, you periodically have to hunt and gather water, adapt to weather conditions, fend off enemies, and not forget about building and crafting. The game does have its own unique touches, though. You can sacrifice an enemy to the gods or turn them into a slave. You can also summon the avatar of a chosen deity to your side and control it for a minute. And if you want to play solo without ever bumping into other players, there's an offline mode.

Co-op: yes.

A hybrid of a classic survival game and a role-playing action title in the spirit of the early Gothic games. In Bellwright you develop a settlement, complete quests, level up skills, and raise your standing among the locals, all while keeping up hunting and fishing to feed yourself and your comrades. The key resource here is time, which is always in short supply, so four-player co-op moves things along noticeably faster: you can split up the settlement chores and the supply runs.

Co-op: yes.

A Viking survival game in a procedurally generated world. As in most games of the genre, you'll gather resources, craft, and fight monsters, but ASKA's main emphasis is on building a large settlement with dozens of inhabitants who have their own needs and occupations. In spirit it's something between Valheim and a city-builder, and developing your village is noticeably more fun with company.

Co-op: yes.

A game for those who've already finished Valheim and want something similar. Here you'll build a house, grow plants, forge metals, and fight numerous monsters. Dawnlands isn't free of technical rough edges, but it can give fans of hardcore survival games plenty of enjoyment, especially in company.

Co-op: yes.

If you once enjoyed Valheim, take a look at RuneScape: Dragonwilds. It also has a medieval setting, the need to craft gear and build dwellings, and battles against mighty dragons using sword and magic. In theory you can play solo, but the game is at its fullest in co-op.

Co-op: yes.

A giant first-person co-op factory-building simulator that has left early access. In Satisfactory you colonize an alien planet, mine resources, and erect colossal automated factories with conveyors, trains, and pipelines. Survival here isn't hardcore — the focus is on engineering and logistics — but the planet's wildlife bites, and exploring the huge open world solo takes a while. Co-op here is pure pleasure: one player designs the logistics while another scouts the map and gathers rare materials.

Co-op: yes.

A sandbox MMO with one key feature — the ability to change the game world however you like. Beyond building your own city, you can level mountains, carve riverbeds, drill tunnels, and much more. Terramorphing in BitCraft Online requires resources, which you gather by exploring locations, mining minerals, and crafting. It's an option for those drawn to projects with unusual mechanics and the cooperative development of settlements.

Co-op: yes.

A hybrid of a survival game and a first-person shooter set in an underground laboratory. Monsters crawl out of portals, equipment malfunctions, and special agents try to cover up the disaster. In its story and setting, Abiotic Factor is reminiscent of the first Half-Life, only built as a co-op survival game: alongside the shooting, there's skill progression and an advanced crafting system. Figuring out what happened — and scrounging up dinner for six — alongside your scientist teammates is a special kind of fun.

Co-op: yes.

Survival games that stand out for their unconventional worlds: instead of the usual forests and islands, the action might unfold on other planets, in the depths of the ocean, or in strange fantastical realms. The best open-world games will delight anyone who loves to travel and feels the spirit of a pioneer exploring uncharted lands.

ARK: Survival Ascended is a reimagining of the cult dinosaur survival game, rebuilt on Unreal Engine 5. The premise is the same: you wash up naked on an island teeming with dinosaurs of every kind, and from your first campfire night you gradually work your way up to a tamed Tyrannosaurus and a futuristic clan base. Different reptiles come in handy for gathering resources, hauling cargo, and waging war, and forgetting about hunger, thirst, and weather is still deadly dangerous — in ARK it's all too easy to die from any little thing.

The main difference from the original is the markedly prettier picture and the reworked mechanics, which brought even veterans back to the game. If you'd been wanting to return to the dinosaur island but the old graphics put you off, this is the best reason yet.

Co-op: yes.

Obsidian is known for great RPGs like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and so on. With Grounded, though, the studio proved it can handle survival games just fine too.

The story follows kids who have been shrunk down to the size of insects. Now the grass looms over them like a three-story house, and ants come up to their waist. Will the youngsters manage to set up a life and learn to survive in a world of creepy-crawlies? While you can make friends with insects like ants, vicious spiders will tear the whole group apart without a second thought.

The setting became the standout strength of Obsidian's creation. Players are used to having their character drink from bottles and rivers, but collecting dew off blades of grass is an original idea. On top of that, Grounded has beautiful environments, quality textures, and varied biomes. Sadly, the game can be criticized for an abundance of bugs, but that doesn't change the bottom line: the project turned out great. If you're tired of surviving in forests and deserts, give Grounded a look.

Co-op: yes.

Dune: Awakening from Funcom moves survival to Arrakis, where water is worth more than gold and stepping out onto open sand in daytime is all but a death sentence. This is a big MMO survival game: you harvest spice, build shelters, craft gear, and learn to read the desert — because the vibration of your footsteps draws a sandworm up from beneath the dunes, and there's no outrunning it. The factions are locked in a constant struggle for resources and territory, so surviving alone is hardly an option. The developers clearly love the source material: the atmosphere of Frank Herbert's novels and Denis Villeneuve's films comes through in every storm.

Co-op: yes.

Atomfall is a survival-action game from Britain's Rebellion (the studio behind the Sniper Elite series), set in post-nuclear England. The action takes place in the Lake District several years after an accident at the real-world Windscale nuclear plant, and this "British Fallout" is populated by mutants, cultists, marauders, and robots. Beyond health, you have to watch your heart rate: it spikes when you run, shoot, and fight in melee, and as it climbs your accuracy and hearing drop. You can explore the open world along different routes and unravel the mystery of what happened in any order. It'll click with anyone who's finished the modern Fallout games and is waiting for something new in the same vein.

Co-op: no.

A sequel to the beloved survival game about insect-sized teenagers. In Grounded 2 you'll explore a dangerous park crawling with aggressive bugs, craft, gather water, and build a base. Among the new features is the ability to tame ants and use them as mounts. Surviving on the "huge" backyard with three friends and fending off oversized spiders is especially fun.

Co-op: yes.

Another survival game in a micro-world, but with a more fairy-tale slant than Grounded. In Smalland you survive among blade-of-grass trees and puddle-lakes, tame insects, and meet fairies and magical creatures. There are changing seasons and shifting weather that affect gameplay, plus base-building and co-op for up to 10 people. The atmosphere is more magical, and the graphics more realistic.

Co-op: yes.

Aloft's main hook is flying between islands floating in the sky. You can turn one of them into a base and later into a flying "vessel" to explore the open world. As a survival game, Aloft is gentle: there's no hunger or thirst, and food grants temporary bonuses. The result is meditative gameplay — you travel through biomes, gather resources, and battle a fungus poisoning the islands. Like Sea of Thieves, the game is at its fullest in co-op.

Co-op: yes.

With its cubic locations, Cubic Odyssey is reminiscent of Minecraft. You explore an open world, gather resources, craft weapons, and fight local enemies, with aircraft to help you get around the huge areas. Exploring the procedural world and building a base is more fun in four-player co-op.

Co-op: yes.

Once Human is a free-to-play MMO survival game set in a post-apocalypse where the world is infected by an anomalous substance and people are hunted by terrifying creatures called Deviations. You explore a huge open world, build a base, craft gear, and level up your character, and the servers offer plenty of both cooperative PvE and PvP. The unusual horror setting is a draw, as is the fact that you can try it for free.

Co-op: yes.

Pacific Drive is an unusual survival game behind the wheel of a station wagon in the anomalous Olympic Exclusion Zone. Your car is both your shelter and your main tool: you have to repair it, upgrade it, and look after it as you push through anomaly-filled areas on expeditions you don't always return from. The car remembers its damage, develops a "personality," and you grow attached to it as if it were alive. A fresh take on the genre.

Co-op: no.

V Rising is a top-down survival game in which you play a vampire awakening from a long slumber. You wake up weak and hungry, and by the end you're building a Gothic castle and terrorizing the whole region. Blood is the key resource here: it restores health and unlocks powerful abilities, and since each enemy has their own blood type and quality, you have to track down worthwhile victims. The sun is deadly by day, so you have to plan your outings. Bosses are individual, named adversaries, and beating them grants your hero new abilities. Sweden's Stunlock Studios added both co-op with clans and PvP with sieges on other players' castles, so you can play peacefully or go to all-out war.

Co-op: yes.

A separate branch of the genre is survival beyond Earth: on lifeless planets, in open space, or at the bottom of an alien ocean. Oxygen, pressure, and unknown flora and fauna add a whole new layer of threats to the familiar mechanics. Fans of space sci-fi will also find our top of the best story-driven space games for PC useful.

Astroneer is a colorful space sandbox with survival-sim elements that stands out for its presentation and gameplay mechanics. One of its main features is the space theme. This time you won't start your adventures in tired locations like an island, a forest, or a city. According to the story, you crash on an unknown planet. To survive, you'll have to gradually turn a life-support module into a full base with a power source, vehicles, and laboratories.

Of course, for all this you'll inevitably need materials, which can be found on the planet. Your arsenal includes a resource-gathering device that lets you freely terraform the planet and reach its most inaccessible spots. And when that gets old, you can head off to a neighboring star, with its own quirks and unique materials. Unlike other projects where survival is the main goal in itself, Astroneer plays out far more calmly. The key thing is to keep an eye on your oxygen level, which lets you sink into the game's meditative atmosphere alone or with friends.

Co-op: yes.

Starbound is a sandbox game set in space. The protagonist, fleeing a great evil, leaves home only to suffer a disaster on an alien planet. As usual, you've got no supplies. And to repair your ship — and simply not starve to death — you're going to need them badly.

You'll have to take up the survivor-explorer's routine: scavenging for food and materials, crafting the things you need, and exploring the planet from end to end. Or you can follow the story alone (it's nothing special, but it's there). Or gather enough fuel, fix your ship, and set off to explore the galaxy, where every planet is accessible and unique in some way. The game offers a wealth of possibilities and activities.

Co-op: yes.

Many survival games are steeped in a grim, tense atmosphere where the sense of constant danger never eases but only grows. Subnautica is one of those rare genre entries whose creators weren't afraid to swap dark tones for bright, vivid colors, building a world you want not just to survive in but simply to live in, exploring the ocean depths. The action takes place in the 22nd century. Your employer sends you off to build phase gates. But your spacecraft crashes on an alien planet, and you barely make it into an escape pod in time. It's worth noting that the story doesn't end with that simple setup — it's actually rather good. And thanks to the unusual setting, the familiar elements of survival games feel fresh and interesting.

Beyond hunger and thirst, your oxygen supply matters a great deal here, and you'll have to account for it when diving into the underwater world. The crafting system is very deep. If your character can't withstand prolonged pressure in the ocean depths, you can build anything from scuba gear to a full submersible or a separate base. But be careful — the water is home to plenty of predators eager to eat you.

To avoid starving, you'll have to constantly catch and cook fish, or eat plants you can gather both on land and underwater. The main thing is not to forget to scan everything around you. That unlocks new item properties and access to blueprints.

Co-op: no.

Subnautica 2 doesn't break the original's formula but builds on it: a new alien ocean, unfamiliar creatures, fresh technology, and — for the first time in the series — co-op, so you can explore the depths with a partner. But even as a duo, it's still the same Subnautica: you cautiously descend ever lower, build underwater bases, count the seconds of oxygen, and flinch every time the silhouette of another giant emerges from the darkness at the edge of your floodlight. For anyone who spent hundreds of hours in the first game, the sequel delivers exactly what they wanted — more ocean and more dread of the abyss.

Co-op: yes.

No Man's Sky is one of the most notorious flops of recent years. A game that promised to be the perfect space adventure burst like a soap bubble, turning out beautiful but staggeringly empty. The amount of hate that poured onto the developers at Hello Games, and onto Sean Murray personally, would have broken anyone. But the creators did something remarkable. Instead of endless excuses, they simply got to work. Every new patch and update, distributed free to owners of the game, completely transformed the project. As things stand, No Man's Sky has just about everything you can imagine.

You appear on a randomly generated planet with your equipment broken and your starship out of action too. Now you have to repair the whole system, from your visor and multitool to the spacecraft itself. After that, you can set off to explore the universe.

Depending on the temperature on a planet's surface, you'll have to spend resources on running a cooling or heating system. Touch down on the next star and you might be caught in an acid or sand storm capable of significantly draining your ship's integrity. And if you tire of constantly gathering resources, you can go off to do the main mission, or something else entirely. There's an activity for everyone.

No Man's Sky is no longer the game it was at launch. The developers keep working hard to improve the world, rolling out major new updates. There may well be no better — or even comparably large-scale — space survival game today. No wonder No Man's Sky regularly features on lists of the best open-world games.

Co-op: yes.

The Planet Crafter is a survival game about turning a dead planet into a habitable one, solo or with friends. At first you cling to existence: watching your oxygen, water, and food, and gathering resources among lifeless cliffs. Then you set up your first machines, which raise the temperature and pressure and saturate the air, and slowly, step by step, the planet comes alive before your eyes. Clouds appear, then rain, lakes, grass, and finally animals. The moment you can take off your oxygen mask for the first time is the best thing in the game. France's Miju Games put together a surprisingly addictive loop where you want to see the terraforming through to the end just to witness the result.

Co-op: yes.

The Solus Project is a single-player survival game on an alien planet after a shipwreck, where you turn out to be the last hope for the remnants of humanity. Beyond the familiar hunger, thirst, and temperature (and the weather here hits hard, from scorching heat to deadly storms and tornadoes), the game emphasizes exploration: you descend into caves, wander ancient ruins, and gradually realize that the planet isn't nearly as uninhabited as it seemed. The atmosphere of solitude and mounting mystery holds you just as well as the survival mechanics.

Co-op: no.

Breathedge is survival in space, developed by RedRuins Softworks. The story follows a regular guy hauling his late grandfather's mortal remains to the funeral, until an accident wrecks his plans. Now he has to survive amid a shortage of oxygen and other resources. Breathedge's main hook is its humor. Helping the hero along are an immortal chicken, deceased hamsters, and Russian folk songs about beards and a glitchy AI. Not all the jokes land, of course, but now and then they hit the mark and make you laugh out loud. The developers packed the game with a huge number of references. On an abandoned station you might run into a Xenomorph, you can travel through space aboard the "Normandy," and amid the junk you'll find a Tomb Raider cartridge where the charming Lara has been replaced by a bearded man.

Otherwise, you'll be doing the standard genre activities: watching resources and stats like your hunger and oxygen gauges; gathering materials to set up a base; crafting equipment that helps you explore space more efficiently.

Sadly, the developers didn't quite have the strength to make the whole game great. Toward the finale the humor grows pale, the gameplay wears thin, and the spirit of exploration and survival fades away. Even so, none of that stops Breathedge from leaving a pleasant impression.

Co-op: no.

Games where a tense atmosphere and a sense of constant danger play the key role. In this section we've gathered the best horror games.

What could be worse than being in a plane crash? Only landing in a forest inhabited by cannibals who look like distant relatives of the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes! The Forest skillfully blends a survival simulator with horror-game elements.

In the story, you and your son are in a plane crash. Coming to in the middle of a forest, you discover that a strange man has taken your son off in an unknown direction. Worse still, a tribe of cannibal-mutants lurks nearby, thirsting for blood. Before you can save your son, you'll have to learn to survive.

The day-night cycle plays an important role in The Forest. By day you explore the forest, hunt, gather food, and build a shelter. Now and then you'll notice cannibals studying you. They're not very active during the day. But at night the cannibals turn bold and begin a bloody hunt. Nighttime is best waited out at home, after reinforcing it and setting traps. And your enemies are no mindless dummies — killing them isn't all that easy. The story setup is here for more than show. It's a full campaign with two endings, and if playing alone gets boring, there's a co-op mode.

Co-op: yes.

Sons of the Forest is the sequel to the cult hit The Forest from Endnight Games, and in almost every way it's bigger and meaner than the original. You're once again on an island crawling with cannibals and horrifying mutants, only now the world is larger, the enemies smarter, and the building more flexible: houses can now be put up almost however you like. The change of seasons feels much more impactful, since in winter there's less food and the cannibals are more aggressive. The main new addition is a companion named Kelvin, who carries out your written orders and is a huge help in single-player. And with real friends in co-op, the island turns from a nightmare into an adventure.

Co-op: yes.

Darkwood is another example of how to combine survival with horror — and it does it brilliantly. Some people may be put off by the overly dark scenes, the not-so-modern graphics, and the top-down view, but all of it works wonderfully for the atmosphere.

You play as a doctor who wakes up in Darkwood — a rural region of Poland struck by a strange epidemic. The rest of the story you'll have to piece together as you go. Darkwood takes the classic elements of survival simulators. For instance, a day-night cycle, where by day you need to explore the area, scavenge for supplies, and repair and upgrade your shelter and items at a workbench, while at night you barricade the doors and pray that no monster or ghost gets into the house. Your character can also unlock new skills, for which you'll have to prepare special injections from the right ingredients.

The creators put effort into both the atmosphere and the environment, so calling the game a "horror" is no empty label — and it's not just about the monsters. You might, for example, stumble onto a little church where whispering ghosts surround you, or find a location piled with human bodies. And the deeper into the woods you go, the more often such episodes occur, immersing you in a true atmosphere of madness.

Co-op: no.

Pathologic 2 is a remake of the cult game Pathologic from studio Ice-Pick Lodge. The developers call it a "survival simulator in conditions of an epidemic." The situation in the infected Town-on-Gorkhon is so dire that surviving — or even just holding on to your humanity — will be extremely difficult.

That last part, in fact, became the game's central theme. Your hero will constantly have to choose between saving the townsfolk and looking out for his own skin. Sometimes theft, or even murder, will be the only way to make it through another day. Dying isn't an option, though — if you do, the plague will surely consume the town. And the hero has plenty of other problems too. His father and another prominent citizen died mysteriously, and the residents suspect you're to blame. On top of that, something uncanny is going on in town, and the key characters are clearly hiding terrible secrets. Untangling the mysteries won't be easy.

Pathologic 2 is hard to recommend to everyone. The atmosphere is highly specific, the survival mechanics are very hardcore, and a substantial part of the gameplay is running around the town. But if you let yourself sink into the game's spirit, it'll give you emotions like nothing else.

Co-op: no.

A game with an atmosphere in the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Sunless Sea is a peculiar blend of survival game and interactive book. There's a fair amount of text, but it's written so well that it'll captivate even those who don't like to read. The backstory is unusual too. In the nineteenth century, the English queen gave London over to an underground world, where it now resides along with all its inhabitants.

As the captain of a vessel, you can haul goods, collect valuable information, complete quests, or simply explore the gloomy expanses of the underworld, discovering new islands and stumbling into unusual situations. The main thing is not to neglect logistics, because without food your crew will turn to cannibalism — and if you drive them to madness, they may well mutiny.

Co-op: no.

A survival game set in H.P. Lovecraft's universe. You control a monstrous train and travel through worlds populated by the servants of Cthulhu and other ghastly creatures. RailGods of Hysterra is in early access and receives updates tied directly to the writer's famous works — "The Shadow over Innsmouth," for example. Turning your train into a mobile base and fighting off Lovecraftian horrors is best done as a team of up to five.

Co-op: yes.

In these titles you're responsible not for a single hero but for a whole group of people or a settlement. You have to distribute resources, develop your base, account for characters' personalities, and make decisions that can affect the fate of the entire community.

This War of Mine is one of those rare games about war where all the attention goes not to events on the front line but to the daily life of ordinary people unlucky enough to live in a city ravaged by fighting. This story is less about survival than about the moral choices you'll have to make every day. There's no real setup as such, but there is a half-abandoned house and three characters forced to live in it. Now their fates are in your hands.

Each character has their own personality, which shapes their strengths, fears, and desires. You can't ignore the heroes' needs, because the less inner satisfaction and calm they have, the deeper they sink into depression. That directly affects their effectiveness. The game is split into day and night. By day you're busy fixing up the house and making the things and tools you need. Sometimes new people will want to join you, which means you'll need more supplies, and getting them isn't always easy.

The resources needed for a normal life have to be found at night. For that, your characters set out to neighboring houses, where people just like yours live, or stage raids on a hospital or warehouse, which are most often crawling with enemies. And a hero (you're only allowed to send one on a mission) may not come back from a given outing. In that case the mood of the remaining group sours. Be careless and you can easily lose everyone. But if your characters do survive a certain number of days, you'll get an ending that reveals their fates after the war.

The game is full of nuances.

Co-op: no.

An incredibly thought-out science-fiction game about survival in space. In the story, you have to lead a small group of colonists whose liner has crashed on an unknown planet. The main "hook" is that the narrator here is an artificial intelligence that generates various events within the world. There are three AI options. One focuses on building and the calm development of your colony, another is utterly unpredictable, and a third is a golden mean, ideal for newcomers.

In RimWorld you'll have to think not only about gathering supplies, improving your base, fighting off pirate raids, and surviving a harsh winter, but also about carefully watching over your wards. Colonists can die not only at an enemy's hands but also simply fall ill, get poisoned, or injure themselves. And each of them has their own backstory and personality traits that can make a character useful or quite the opposite. An idle pyromaniac in a fit of sadness, for instance, can easily snap and set the base on fire. If you can keep track of all these little things, over time you'll build a powerful civilization, conquering the planet and all its riches.

Co-op: no.

Frostpunk is a harsh steampunk strategy game about survival in conditions of eternal winter from the creators of This War of Mine, who once again have plenty of moral dilemmas in store for the player. The game features several scenarios that affect the story, plus a survival mode for the bravest and most hardcore players.

In the story, in the 19th century, people in Britain discover the power of steam, which sparks a boom of inventions that were impossible before, like functional prosthetics and robots. It's during this period that a cataclysm strikes, glaciating the planet. The survivors from around the world mount expeditions to the Arctic, where vast amounts of minerals and generators can be found. Here, in conditions of eternal winter, you'll have to build a shelter for your people.

The settlement has a generator that produces life-saving heat. It is, in essence, the heart of your city, its main asset. To keep the shelter running you need coal and a host of other supplies. One of the game's features is that the temperature around you gradually drops. If on the first day your settlers calmly gathered the resources scattered around, with their only need being to warm up by the generator, then by day 10-15, when the temperature shatters every record for abnormality, resources are already running short and people are on the verge of grumbling. You can't play Frostpunk purely as a city-builder. The game regularly poses tough questions. Is it worth using child labor? Can you resort to experimental treatment for sick workers?

Co-op: no.

Frostpunk 2 is the sequel to the harsh strategy game about survival in the permafrost from 11 bit studios. Thirty years have passed since the Great Frost: coal no longer saves anyone and is being replaced by oil, while the city — now grown into a metropolis — has become a hotbed of political squabbling. If the first game was about surviving the cold, the sequel is about managing a fractured society where factions are ready to go for each other's throats, and any decision you make is bound to enrage someone. The scale has grown from individual buildings to entire districts, and the moral dilemmas have become even more uncomfortable. It scores around 85 on Metacritic, and after a run of patches its Steam rating climbed from 81% to 89%.

Co-op: no.

Kenshi is a huge, merciless sandbox that British studio Lo-Fi Games built almost single-handedly over many years. There's no story, no chosen hero, and no levels: your skills grow from what you actually do, and you can start as an unarmed pauper who gets sold into slavery in the very first scuffle. You control not a single character but a whole squad: you hire people, build a base, trade, fend off bandits and slavers, or become the terror of the wastelands yourself. Lose an arm or a leg in battle? Fit a prosthetic and carry on. Kenshi's main value lies in its absolute freedom and its living world, which couldn't care less about you.

Co-op: no.

Classic sandboxes where survival is combined with nearly limitless crafting and creativity: you gather resources, build whatever you want, and decide for yourself what to do in a huge open world.

Palworld was the biggest surprise of 2024 and one of the loudest launches in Steam history: "Pokémon with guns" pulled in 25 million players in its first month. The formula boldly mixes several genres at once: you explore an open world, catch creatures called Pals, and then use them both in combat and as a workforce — Pals chop wood, mine ore, cook, and forge at your base while you handle surviving, crafting, and clearing dungeons with bosses. At the same time, you have to look after the hero too: hunger, stamina, and temperature haven't gone anywhere.

At first the project was taken as a joke, but behind the cheeky wrapper was a surprisingly deep and addictive survival game. On July 10, 2026, Palworld leaves early access for a full 1.0 release — a great reason to jump in.

Co-op: yes.

Despite its venerable age, Don't Starve compares favorably to the early survival games, most of which were faceless sandboxes you'd tire of after 3-5 hours. This project is far more interesting. For one, it has a story: Wilson is a hapless scientist languishing in his cabin in the middle of the forest. Everything changes when a voice from the radio prompts him to build a contraption that transports Will to another world. That's where the exploration begins.

In the game you'll encounter plenty of strange things, like killer bees, one-eyed birds, or aggressive pig-men who jealously guard their settlements from outsiders. All of them (and not only them) will gladly send you to the next world. Danger comes not only from the strange creatures around you but also from your fragile sanity, which can abandon Wilson at the worst possible moment. If that happens, you won't come back to life — you'll have to start all over. To survive at all in this unfriendly world, you'll have to gather various twigs, plants, and pebbles, then craft the tools you need from them and set up your daily life.

Night is an especially dangerous time of day. In the darkness new monsters appear, and the only way to escape them is with a campfire or torch.

The game received three DLCs: Reign of Giants, Shipwrecked, and Hamlet, which add new elements, as well as a full co-op game, Don't Starve Together.

Co-op: no.

A game that came out many years ago and still needs no special introduction. Its popularity is so enormous that, as of now, more than 300 million copies of Minecraft have been sold worldwide. Hollywood is happy to cash in on the famous name too, and has already released a film based on it.

First and foremost, Minecraft is known as the perfect construction game, where you can create incredible builds. For those who don't feel like a creator but love a thrill, there's the "Survival" mode. You'll take up the familiar survivor's chores: gathering materials, searching for food, and crafting a shelter and the items you need. At night, the local zombies and creepers will drop by with the very best of intentions.

At moments like that, don't forget the options Minecraft gives you. Nothing stops you from building a real fortress to pick off enemies from above, or rigging up an actual minefield where a horde of monsters will find eternal rest.

Once your character has leveled up and grown strong enough, you'll be able to explore the world's farthest corners without fear, and even take on especially dangerous foes like the Ancient Guardian. And if you start to feel bored — go ahead and build a portal and set off to conquer the Nether. Minecraft supports a huge number of fan-made mods, with which you can stage anything from an attack of killer tomatoes to flying off to play out "The Martian." It all depends on your imagination.

Co-op: yes.

On first seeing screenshots of Terraria, many will call it a Minecraft clone with 2D graphics — and they'll be completely wrong. This is exactly the case where you mustn't judge a book by its cover. The gameplay begins with your character appearing in a randomly generated world, carrying just a few items to help survive the very start of the journey.

To avoid spending nights on end fending off monsters, you'll need a more or less reliable shelter, and for that you have to find materials and craft. Beyond setting up your home, it makes sense to build houses specifically for NPCs, who appear once certain conditions are met and will sell you various goods. Crafting is simplified compared to Minecraft, and that makes sense: Terraria leans less on building and crafting and more on combat and survival.

The most interesting part of the game begins when you open up the cave systems deep underground. There you can both find treasure and meet new, interesting enemies. Thanks to the randomly generated world, every new cave is unique in its own way, so you can spend hours exploring the depths in search of adventure and materials that'll come in handy for crafting new gear.

Co-op: yes.

The co-op version of the cult Don't Starve with its signature grim, cartoonish style. Players explore a procedural world, battle bizarre creatures, gather resources, craft gear, and keep their heroes fed. The longer the team survives in the unfriendly world, the harder it tries to finish them off. Don't Starve Together has around 170,000 reviews on Steam, 96% of them positive — a true gem among co-op survival games.

Co-op: yes.

Valheim and Subnautica are the best places to start: both have clear progression, a beautiful open world, and death penalties that aren't too harsh. Valheim also plays great in co-op.

Yes, quite a few. The best options for playing with friends are Valheim, 7 Days to Die, Project Zomboid, Raft, and No Man's Sky. Each has its own mechanics for cooperative survival and base-building.

The toughest by mechanics are The Long Dark, Project Zomboid, and Pathologic 2. In them, every mistake can cost your character their life, and restarting is par for the course.

That's a whole sub-genre: Rust, Valheim, Conan Exiles, 7 Days to Die, Stranded Deep, and Raft offer a deep system of crafting and base-building, from a small shelter to a fortified stronghold.

The Long Dark, Subnautica, The Forest, Green Hell, Darkwood, and No Man's Sky all work equally well solo. Each has a full story or enough content for many hours of single-player.

Among the recent releases worth trying are Palworld (full 1.0 release on July 10, 2026), Enshrouded, Frostpunk 2, Atomfall, Grounded 2, Aloft, and RuneScape: Dragonwilds. The genre keeps growing, so we update this list regularly.

For survival in space and on alien worlds, check out Subnautica and Subnautica 2 (underwater), No Man's Sky, Astroneer, The Planet Crafter, Breathedge, and Starbound. Each has its own approach, from terraforming a dead planet to exploring a boundless galaxy.

The most painstaking when it comes to realism are The Long Dark, Green Hell, SCUM, and Project Zomboid. In them you have to monitor temperature, illness, injuries, food freshness, and a dozen other little things, where any mistake can cost you your life.

And one last thing — let's discuss together which other games are worth adding to the top. Write in the comments!

The survival genre is enormous, and plenty of worthy titles were left beyond this top — especially among indie games that just barely missed the top spots but are absolutely good for dozens of hours. Here are a few of them:

Vintage Story is a deep, hardcore survival game in the spirit of Minecraft, only far harsher and more realistic: honest geology, ore processing, changing seasons, recipe-based cooking, and a gloomy early-medieval atmosphere. A pick for anyone who finds even Minecraft too simple.

Sunkenland is a post-apocalypse in the style of Waterworld: the ocean has flooded the planet, and you build a base on stilts, dive for resources to sunken buildings, and fend off pirate raids. Something like Raft, but with a slant toward combat and territory control.

Soulmask is survival in the jungle with an unusual mask mechanic that grants special abilities, plus the ability to recruit NPCs into your tribe who then work at the base on their own. An unexpectedly large-scale indie with taming, crafting, and building.

And if you prefer to survive in company, be sure to check out our separate top of the best co-op games on PC — it's especially rich in survival games for two or more. And of course, write in the comments which survival game we wrongly overlooked: the best reader suggestions make it into the top in the next update.