A List of Games For People Who Thirst for Action and Adventure
Main image courtesy of Unsplash.
Survival games are some of the most fun games to play as they challenge you to battle your way to victory. While you are immersed in the world of make believe, you get to experience events that you wouldn’t normally experience in your day-to-day life. This includes, but is not limited, to fighting for your life.
Obviously, you are less likely to experience or be involved in these sorts of situations in the real world, or not as often as your fictional counterpart in whatever game you’re playing. This is just one of the many ways that make survival games all the more fun. How often do you get the chance to pretend like you’re the main character in an action movie or the hero in a trivial, yet deadly exhibition through dangerous territory?
Making it through one round and to the next is a hard task, especially as you’re fighting against online players in multi-player games or even deadly battles against power-hungry enemies. No matter the circumstance that you and your fictional player battle in, you’re taken out of the real world and placed in a fictional one where it’s solely up to you to fight and win your own battles. Rising to the challenge can be exhilarating, especially in the face of danger.
Survival-based games are challenging in more ways than one, but finding the perfect game that suits you can be even harder. With the amount of games that are at your fingertips, it can be hard to find one that interests you.
Here is a list of survival games on Steam that will challenge how well you do under pressure as you fight your way to victory:
If you’re looking for a challenge, try to fight for survival while playing as Isaac in the game involving sacrifice and just the right amount of courage. The Battle of Isaac is a “randomly generated action RPG shooter with heavy Rogue-like elements. Following Isaac on his journey players will find bizarre treasures that change Isaac’s form giving him superhuman abilities and enabling him to fight off droves of mysterious creatures, discover secrets, and fight his way to safety.”
Battling your way to safety has never been more challenging than doing it alone. While playing this single-player game, you must work your way through the daunting task of staying alive. Nowhere is safe, not even the dungeons that appear when you need them most.
Note that nothing is guaranteed in this randomly generated game where there are challenges at every corner to challenge your survival skills. With a vast amount of endings waiting for you based on your performance, you’ll have to trust that you’ll escape yet another fate with your newfound fighting skills. Will you make it out alive and to the other side, escaping the enemies and saving your lost family members along the way?
Don't Starve is an “uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic. Enter a strange and unexplored world full of strange creatures, dangers, and surprises. Gather resources to craft items and structures that match your survival style.”
As you embark on your journey through the unexplored depths of the wilderness, use your acquired skills and knowledge of William, the scientist that you play, to aid you through each day and into the night. Learn about the unknown world you’ve been transported to and escape anything that resembles a monster as you can never be too careful, especially when there seem to be surprises that keep you on your A-game. Will you unravel the mysteries of this deadly world made to exploit you and your weaknesses? Or will you die at the fate of the demon’s treacherous world made to trick you into an early death?
7 Ways to Die is an interactive game that puts your survival skills to the test against your enemies with rotting flesh. The goal is to stay alive in this “open-world game that is a unique combination of first-person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games. Play the definitive zombie survival sandbox RPG that came first. Navezgane awaits!”
In this post-apocalyptic world, you’re immersed in a brutal battle of the living versus the undead. With the freedom to choose your own journey, the landscape, the weapons you use, and the road you take in order to win the battle against the flesh-eating monsters, is unique to you.
Once you’ve customized your character, your deadly journey begins. After you have chosen your quest, you must do a multitude of things such as create buildings and items necessary for your survival, handcraft weapons, loot vacant buildings, and engage in combat with up to 60 unique zombie archetypes. You’ll have no choice but to rise up to the challenge and kill any undead in sight, including those whose unique behaviors require more than one way to kill them for good. Do you have what it takes to survive in a post-apocalyptic world?
Rust is a game where survival is the only mission. When entering the game, you must note that “the only aim in Rust is to survive. Everything wants you to die - the island’s wildlife and other inhabitants, the environment, and other survivors. Do whatever it takes to last another night.”
Once you wake up completely naked on a mystifying island, it’s up to you to build up your life. Finding clothes is the least of your worries when you come face-to-face with other players whose only goal is to ensure their own safety, killing anyone who crosses their path and risks their own life. In order to protect yourself, you must choose between building relationships and fighting to the death, or teaming up with others to ensure maximum safety. To team up or not to team up, either way, you risk your own fate, never truly knowing if you are the predator or the prey. Do you have what it takes to survive in a game where your only mission is to survive?
While playing Subnautica, “descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril. Craft equipment, pilot submarines, and out-smart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more - all while trying to survive.”
After you’ve established your life on the new planet, built yourself a safe house, and found food sources, you’ll be set with the task of traveling further into the depths of the ocean, where finding your next source of oxygen is the least of your worries. On top of ensuring your safety while traveling through uncharted territory, you’ll need to keep your eye out for anything out of the ordinary, especially at night when you’re surrounded by darkness and the unknown. What was once safe during the day is now in danger of what’s lurking behind in the darkness of the unforgiving ocean.
Your job is to unravel the mystery behind the destruction of the underwater planet. Can you figure out who is responsible for leaving this planet uninhabitable? How hard can it be to survive long enough through each night when the predators emerge from their hiding places and have a strong thirst for blood?
Survival games are the perfect escape, encouraging you to work towards a greater and more pivotal goal than most games: escaping death. Whether you’re playing a single-player game or with others online, there is a lot that goes into playing a survival game. Besides the immense amount of courage you need in order to battle what some would call their worst nightmares or the experience you’ve built by interacting and battling with populations of foe and teammates alike, the risks you’re willing to take makes a world of difference between surviving and beating a game on Steam.
