Survival Games With The Steepest Learning Curves, Ranked

After the massive success of Minecraft, the indie game world exploded with new survival games, dominating the majority of the 2010s until the Battle Royale genre emerged to take its place. However, in that time, the survival game genre matured and developed some great experiences for dedicated fans.

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8 Best Survival Games Where You Truly Start With Nothing

Survival games are all about overcoming harsh environments and figuring out how to stay alive. While some offer a helping hand at the start, others throw players in with nothing, forcing them to quickly gather resources just to make it through the first day. These games provide some of the most intense survival experiences, leaving players to fend for themselves from the moment they spawn. So today on GameRant, we’re ranking the 8 Best Survival Games Where You Truly Start With Nothing.

The only problem is that sometimes these games assume a player has experience with survival games, which means they can have steep learning curves for new players. Whether it’s exploring hostile oceans or the zombie apocalypse, there are a lot of survival games out there with steep learning curves. These aren’t ranked by how good the games are but by how hard they are to get to grips with as a new player, particularly if they require guidance from a veteran or reading online to figure out how to excel.

8

Subnautica

Under The Sea

Survival

Horror

Open-World

Science Fiction

Released

January 23, 2018

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Subnautica executed an idea so simple that it’s hard to believe no one had done it before. Take the ever-popular open-world survival game, and make most of the world an ocean instead of land. What results is one of the most unique survival games in the entire genre, and the most terrifying too.

However, as much as Subnautica is self-evidently brilliant, it doesn’t explain the different nature of its biomes well, or how to conquer the terrifying monsters of the deep, often requiring searching online instead. It’s not too bad once the player has to do the research, but there’s a definite learning curve to become the true master of the sea.

7

This War of Mine

War Is Hell

Released

November 14, 2014

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

While games with a political message have almost always been a part of the gaming landscape, things ramped up significantly in the 2010s when indie games free of big publisher interference or money, could do or say whatever they liked, resulting in games like This War Of Mine which put the player in a war-ridden hellscape and puts them in the impossible position to survive.

This War Of Mine necessitates difficult choices with very few resources available where mistakes are easy to make. If the player wants to succeed, they’ll need to try and circumnavigate a game that’s doing its damndest to ensure they don’t. Determining long-term survival in This War Of Mine requires time, patience, and emotional resiliency.

6

Sons of the Forest

Cannibal and Mutant Neighbors

Survival

Open-World

Survival Horror

Systems

Released

February 22, 2024

Developer(s)

Endnight Games

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

One of the most popular sub-genres of the survival game is the horror-survival game, where not only does the player have to survive against the natural elements, but usually some form of terrifying creature simultaneously. The Forest remixed this idea with cannibals and mutants, and Sons of the Forest iterated on those ideas into one of the finest horror-survival games ever made.

However, Sons of the Forest is very resistant to tutorials or holding the player’s hand, meaning they need to learn the hard way about mutant/cannibal behaviors, effective defenses, which items are worth seeking out, and which mutants might even be friendly. A lot of mistakes must be made before a new player can genuinely thrive on the hellish island.

5

The Long Dark

Hell Frozen Over

Released

August 1, 2017

Developer(s)

Hinterland Studio

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

For some survival games, they want to lean as hard as they can into the harshness of the survival elements, involving many meters following sleep, hunger, thirst, warmth, sanity, and more. The Long Dark is one such game, following a lone survivor in a frozen over wilderness, struggling to survive against the elements.

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Related

8 Best Survival Games Where You Truly Start With Nothing

Survival games are all about overcoming harsh environments and figuring out how to stay alive. While some offer a helping hand at the start, others throw players in with nothing, forcing them to quickly gather resources just to make it through the first day. These games provide some of the most intense survival experiences, leaving players to fend for themselves from the moment they spawn. So today on GameRant, we’re ranking the 8 Best Survival Games Where You Truly Start With Nothing.

It’s exceptionally rare for a new player to succeed their first few times through The Long Dark. The game tutorializes little, and players are forced to figure out for themselves the best strategy for survival.

4

Green Hell

Jungle Fever

Released

September 5, 2019

Developer(s)

Creepy Jar

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

Green Hell is a surprisingly simple premise, but harkens back to one of the greatest challenges humans have: how do we survive in areas of the planet tailor-made to kill us? The jungle is one such place where every minute requires constant vigilance if the survivor doesn’t want to end up caring for the local wildlife.

Green Hell takes an admirably detailed approach to simulate the jungle-survival process, where the player constantly needs to be on the lookout for traditional survival meters, as well as hostile animals, bug bites, and disease. Even starting a fire is a major problem. It’s incredibly stressful, and a hard time to survive, even for veteran players.

3

RimWorld

Survivalist Mentality

Released

October 17, 2018

Developer(s)

Ludeon Studios

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Though survival games may have first come to mainstream prominence in the 2010s, games like Dwarf Fortress are the original survival games, top-down simulators of entire colonies the player needs to look after, and RimWorld is the clear successor to that addictive legacy.

In RimWorld, players are tasked with building a base on an alien planet, making a shelter, and thriving under rival faction attacks. Players don’t have direct control, so they can only issue a queue of commands that the pops will execute when they can, resulting in a high-skill environment where mistakes are easy to make. The majority of player’s first bases are unlikely to see past a week.

2

Project Zomboid

The Undead Rise

Systems

Released

November 8, 2013

Developer(s)

The Indie Stone

Of course, while survival games love to put the player into hostile environments like the ocean, the jungle, or the icy Arctic, one of the most popular survival scenarios of the 2010s was the zombie apocalypse, and Project Zomboid remains the premier simulator of that particular scenario.

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In the game, players must scrap together resources, build a base, and somehow find a way to survive an increasingly dire zombie apocalypse where every bite is lethal. The game is brutally difficult, making it difficult for new players, but immensely rewarding for old hands.

1

Dwarf Fortress

The OG Survival Challenge

Roguelike

Strategy

Simulation

Systems

Platform(s)

Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows

Released

August 8, 2006

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Most survival games want the player to have their character or civilization survive, but not so with Dwarf Fortress. This ASCII classic, now treated to a graphical overhaul, doesn’t want the player to fail but to fail horribly and irreparably, giving Dwarf Fortress its reputation of brutal difficulty.

Not only does Dwarf Fortress intentionally let players make dire mistakes that can doom a newly minted Dwarven society, but it encourages it. Often, these doomed fortresses meet a farcical demise, with many veteran players having more failures than successes.

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