Steam is packed with survival titles, but only a few stand out for the way they’ve defined, or redefined, the genre. Survival games come in all shapes and sizes, and though they all have their own unique settings, they all ask the same question. Do you have what it takes to survive in this world? So, from cult classics to AAA giants, here are the best survival games you need to try on Steam.

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Frostpunk

City-building on the brink of extinction

Frostpunk and Frostpunk II are survival strategy games that focus on city-building during the apocalypse. Set in an alternate 19th-century timeline where an apocalyptic winter has gripped the Earth, players must manage a crumbling city built around one of the last remaining coal generators on the planet. Rather than focusing on an individual character's survival, Frostpunk asks you to protect the masses, even if it means sacrificing the innocents.

Every decision you make carries weight: do you enforce child labor laws to keep the generator running, or risk losing power to maintain morale? Citizens will protest, fall into despair, or revolt if you push them too far, and every death will bring your civilization one step closer to collapse. You will need to build sawmills, mines, and hunting huts to gather basic resources, and upgrade the coal generator so that you can expand your heat radius.

Don't Starve

A survival sim with a Gothic art style

Don’t Starve is a top-down survival game with a dark art style and a twisted sense of humor, and it became an instant cult classic when it launched in 2013. Known for its eerie hand-drawn art style and quirky Gothic tone, it drops players into a dreary wilderness filled with bizarre creatures, unpredictable seasons, and paranormal anomalies. At first glance, Don’t Starve seems simple: chop trees, gather berries, and avoid monsters. But its depth reveals itself when you get too comfortable.

Hunger, sanity, and health must all be managed simultaneously, and each can cause your character to spiral out of control if neglected. Go too long without sleep and your sanity will drop, causing terrifying shadow creatures to attack. Mismanage food supplies, and winter will starve you out. Crafting tools, weapons, and shelters helps you to survive longer, but the game is designed to punish complacency. Don’t let its art style seduce you. Both Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together are brutal survival sims, where one wrong choice can end your game for good.

Project Zomboid

A classic that still holds up

Developed by The Indie Stone, Project Zomboid is not your typical zombie game. It's a hardcore, realistic survival simulator where a cut is just as likely to kill you as a zombie. The isometric perspective and low-poly graphics might seem old-school, but beneath it lies one of the richest zombie survival games on Steam.

Its open-ended sandbox design is its greatest strength. The sprawling map can be scavenged, fortified, and adapted to your play style. Build a fortress, scavenge on the move, or roleplay as the character you start with; it’s entirely up to you. The game has been in early access for over 10 years and has a plethora of mods available that let you customize the game any way you want.

Project Zomboid
Survival Horror
Systems
Released
November 8, 2013

WHERE TO PLAY

In the towns of Muldraugh and West Point, survivors must loot houses, build defences and do their utmost to delay their inevitable death day by day. No help is coming – their continued survival relies on their own cunning, luck and ability to evade a relentless horde.

Genre(s)
Survival Horror

State Of Decay

A modern take on the zombie survival sandbox

State of Decay YOSE and State of Decay 2 are a more AAA take on the zombie survival sandbox formula. You start as a single character dropped onto a map where you’ll need to scavenge for supplies in nearby buildings and hopefully find better weapons. From there, you’ll need to find a community to set up a base. You can build a wide variety of different facilities, which can help you: train survivors, craft ammo and medicine, grow food, or protect your base.

Every survivor you get will have a set of basic skills and 1-2 unique skills. Your basic skills are things like: cardio, wits, fighting, and shooting. You have to level these up for every survivor in your community by playing with them. Special skills are things like construction, botany, or medicine. These help you to produce more resources in your base facilities. The map only has a finite amount of resources, so once you clear an area, you’ll need to move or travel further to get all your necessities.

While State of Decay doesn't have hunger or thirst mechanics, your characters will need to eat and drink to get health and stamina. These will deplete over time, forcing you to swap between survivors in your community. The perma-death system is where the game really shines. Getting a player to max stats is incredibly satisfying, but losing them forever because of a small mistake is absolutely devastating.

The Forest

A realistic survival sim with horror elements

The Forest stands as one of the most chilling survival experiences available on Steam. After a plane crash, you wake up in a dense forest. But you are not alone. While you try to survive the bleak environment, you will also be hunted down by cannibalistic savages. This is a survival game that is sure to get the heart pumping and, in co-op mode, it gets even more terrifying.

During the day, you’ll need to gather supplies, build a shelter, craft weapons, and traps to survive the coming onslaught. As you explore the forest, you’ll find new resources, unlock new crafting recipes, and learn more about the mysterious forest and the mutated locals who inhabit it. Sons of the Forest, the sequel, continues the franchise’s story and brings you back to the forest with better graphics and more refined gameplay. If you like your survival games with a kick, then these two games are perfect for you.

  • The Forest
    Survival Horror
    Systems
    👁 Placeholder Image
    OpenCritic Reviews
    Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 69%
    Released
    April 30, 2018
    ESRB
    M For Mature 17+ Due To Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity
    Developer(s)
    Endnight Games
    Publisher(s)
    Endnight Games
    Engine
    Unity
    Multiplayer
    Online Co-Op

    As the lone survivor of a passenger jet crash, you find yourself in a mysterious forest battling to stay alive against a society of cannibalistic mutants.Build, explore, survive in this terrifying first person survival horror simulator. Enter a living, breathing world, where every tree and plant can be chopped down. Below ground explore a vast network of caves and underground lakes.

    Genre(s)
    Survival Horror
  • Sons of the Forest
    Survival
    Open-World
    Survival Horror
    Systems
    👁 Placeholder Image
    OpenCritic Reviews
    Top Critic Avg: 78/100 Critics Rec: 86%
    Released
    February 22, 2024
    ESRB
    e
    Developer(s)
    Endnight Games
    Publisher(s)
    Newnight
    Engine
    Unity
    Multiplayer
    Online Co-Op

    WHERE TO PLAY

    The sequel to 2014's The Forest, Sons of the Forest sends players to find a missing billionaire on a remote island where they find themselves in a cannibal-infested hellscape. Craft, build, and struggle to survive, alone or with friends, in this terrifying new open-world survival horror simulator.Experience complete freedom to tackle the world how you want. You decide what you do, where to go, and how best to survive. There are no NPCs barking orders at you or giving you missions you don't want to do. You give the orders, you choose what happens next.

    Genre(s)
    Survival, Open-World, Survival Horror

Minecraft

The GOAT

No list of survival games would be complete without Minecraft. Though it has since evolved into a game with multiple genres, at its heart, it remains one of the most influential survival sandboxes ever made. Starting with nothing but your fists, you punch trees, gather resources, and survive the night. From there, the game expands almost infinitely. Crafting tools, building shelters, exploring caves, and eventually conquering dimensions like the Nether and the End.

Its strength lies in simplicity. The blocky world is a blank canvas with which you can do absolutely anything. And after 16 years, it has been continually updated with new biomes, blocks, and mobs. Hardcore mode raises the stakes of the survival setting with perma-death, while mods and servers add player-made content and interesting game modes to the game. While Minecraft is one of the most popular games of all time, and definitely deserves a place on this list, it is more a jack of all trades rather than the best survival game.

Minecraft is one of the most influential sandbox crafting games of all time, where gamers can build and create to their heart's content. Minecraft is a game made up of blocks, creatures, and community. You can survive the night or build a work of art; The choice is all yours.

Genre(s)
Sandbox, Survival

Subnautica

Dive to the depths of alien planets

Subnautica takes survival to the ocean depths. Stranded on an alien planet covered almost entirely by water, you begin with little more than a life pod and a few tools. Survival means balancing oxygen, hunger, thirst, and health while navigating dangerous but beautiful biomes. You'll need to gather resources so that you can craft oxygen tanks, reinforced suits, and submersibles so that you can explore deeper zones. Base-building allows you to create underwater habitats, letting you have a base while you explore the deepest crevices of the ocean.

The sequel, Below Zero, added frozen environments, more land areas to explore, and a new story. Although the game is not as well-praised as the original, it still holds true to the Subnautica legacy. With Subnautica 2 on its way to early access, fans are diving back into the series. If you haven't played it yet, Subnautica is a great game to get your feet wet in the survival genre.

  • Subnautica
    Survival
    Horror
    Systems
    👁 Placeholder Image
    OpenCritic Reviews
    Top Critic Avg: 84/100 Critics Rec: 91%
    Released
    January 23, 2018
    ESRB
    E10+ for Everyone 10+: Fantasy Violence, Mild Language
    Developer(s)
    Unknown Worlds Entertainment
    Publisher(s)
    Gearbox Publishing
    Engine
    Unity
    Franchise
    Subnautica

    You have crash-landed on an alien ocean world, and the only way to go is down. Subnautica's oceans range from sun drenched shallow coral reefs to treacherous deep-sea trenches, lava fields, and bio-luminescent underwater rivers. Manage your oxygen supply as you explore kelp forests, plateaus, reefs, and winding cave systems. The water teems with life: Some of it helpful, much of it harmful.

    Genre(s)
    Survival, Horror
  • Subnautica: Below Zero
    Survival
    Open-World
    Systems
    👁 Placeholder Image
    OpenCritic Reviews
    Top Critic Avg: 83/100 Critics Rec: 90%
    Released
    January 30, 2019
    ESRB
    e
    Developer(s)
    Unknown Worlds Entertainment
    Publisher(s)
    Unknown Worlds Entertainment
    Engine
    Unity

    WHERE TO PLAY

    Return to planet 4546B. Submerge yourself in an all-new, sub-zero expedition in an arctic region of Planet 4546B. Arriving with little more than your wits and some survival equipment, you set out to investigate what happened to your sister...

    Genre(s)
    Survival, Open-World

Grounded

Micro-size survival simulator

Grounded takes a Honey I Shrunk the Kids approach to the survival genre, and it just works. Suddenly, a backyard becomes a dense jungle filled with towering blades of grass, spiders the size of cars, and a wacky story about a scientist hiding from an ominous company that's after his research. Survival requires carefully managing hunger, thirst, and stamina while scavenging dew drops, mushrooms, and bug parts to craft weapons, armor, and shelter.

The newly released, Grounded 2, builds on this foundation, adding a new icy area, insect mounts called buggies, and an Omni-Tool that streamlines how you use tools. Between its quirky premise and arachnophobia-inducing combat, the franchise stands out as one of the most inventive takes on the genre.

Ark: Survival Evolved

Survival sim meets Jurassic Park

ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascend are massive online multiplayer survival games that take you back to the Cretaceous era. The game combines the traditional survival mechanics of hunting, gathering, crafting, and base-building, with a unique twist: taming prehistoric beasts. From raptors to T. rexes, nearly every dinosaur can be hunted, captured, and even ridden. With expansions and DLC adding new maps, dinosaurs, and some sci-fi elements. Ark Survival Evolved was so expansive that a lot of players refused to move to the sequel, simply because of how good the original was and how much time they had spent base-building.

No Man's Sky

Survival at a galactic level

No Man’s Sky promised a sandbox galaxy for players and was woefully under-delivered on launch. The wave of backlash that followed led to entire countries suing the game over false advertising. But Hello Games made good on their promise, and after years of free updates, they have finally delivered the game that they originally promised.

Set in a procedurally generated universe with billions of planets, No Man’s Sky blends exploration, crafting, and base-building seamlessly at both an individual and galactic level. The universe is quite literally infinite. The game now includes multiplayer, deep crafting systems, underwater bases, space combat, and even VR support. Every update has pushed it closer to what the game promised in that first cinematic trailer.

In No Man's Sky you will explore a universe with over 18 quintillion planets. You get to pick between first- and third-party gameplay perspectives, allowing you to customize how you experience the game. Some of the common activities you will perform in this game include exploring, building a base, fighting, trading, and more.

Genre(s)
Adventure, Action, Survival

Conclusion

The survival genre is as vast as it is varied, and there are too many unique titles to fit them all into one list. Unfortunately, that means that some great games like Green Hell, Raft, 7 Days To Die, Oxygen Not Included, Rust, or Valheim didn't make the list, but they are just as pivotal to the genre as the rest of these titles. No matter your play style, the genre always has something to offer, but these are the titles that raised the bar for what survival games can be. So if you haven't already, make sure to add these great titles to your library as soon as possible.