10 Best Survival Games With Unique Mechanics

Survival games tend to be pretty straightforward affairs. Many genres try to push the boat out, but you tend to know what you’re getting when you dive into a Survival title.

The main goal is staying alive, and you can usually achieve this goal by building bases, monitoring your hunger meter, and watching for raiders. However, some games go out of their way to galvanize this gameplay loop.

Some of these leave you naked with nothing to your name or even wipe your entire progress after death. Others let you save-scum your way through, in exchange for a steep learning curve.

Survival is great because it is tough. These games stand out from other survival titles by approaching the genre creatively, taking survival to heights unknown.

10 Pathologic 2

Unmatched psychological terror

Besides its predecessor in 2005, Pathologic 2 remains unmatched in how grim it can be.

Pathologic 2 sends you to a small town infected by the sand plague. Playing as surgeon Artemy Burakh, the game challenges you to make it through twelve days while keeping your patients alive.

This game is not exactly a sequel to Pathologicbut rather a do-over. Burakh requests a second chance after a failed attempt at the original questline, except this time, the mechanics are more refined. The pace is slow, and success comes only from taking everything in and thinking before acting.

Pathologic 2 is a videogame that doubles as theatre, with you as the main star. Failing quests does not block your progression, but rather unleashes different chains of events that can eventually bring your downfall at the end of 12 days.

Every turn in the town is filled with drama, misery, and difficult choices, but country doctors make do.

9 This War of Mine

War From The Civilian’s POV

Inspired by the gruesome Siege of Sarajevo that lasted between 1992 and 1996, This War of Mine shows wartime survival from the silent end.

While a violent conflict rages outside and society collapses, the city’s residents still need to eat, drink, and hopefully survive to see another day.

The gameplay is divided between day and night cycles. When the sun is up, your survivors stay inside and tend to their basic needs. This does not mean you are alone: traders and neighbors drop by looking to barter or beg for supplies, and how you react affects your life and theirs.

Nights let you sleep, guard your home, or venture outdoors where supplies, thieves, and soldiers await.

This War of Mine is bleak, real, and addictive. Make sure to take breaks with more cheerful media now and then, because this game will bring you to the horrors of war, and it does not let go.

8 Escape From Tarkov

Shoot First & Ask Questions Later

The premise of Escape From Tarkov has once been described as “Umbrella Corp triggers the Siege of Sarajevo with mercenaries.”

What sets Tarkov apart from other survival games is a pedantic love for guns and everything around them.

Readying up a rifle means picking from hundreds of attachment options, stacking up multiple magazines with the right type of ammunition, and then donning body armor that covers only specific areas of your body.

Every time you die, you lose all those items and with them the work you put into building a kit that feels yours.

Should you survive, your guns and armor probably need servicing, unless you want a jammed bolt or a cracked armor plate during your next outing.

Once you are done with the gunslinging, you still need to eat, build your shelter, take care of wounds, and do dirty jobs for slimy traders to make a living.

Is it fun? No. But it does not want to be, and that is why Escape From Tarkov works so well despite constant blunders from the creators.

7 Rimworld

A New Horror Every Day

Being stranded on a strange planet is bad, as it tends to be barren and lifeless, meaning boredom sets in fast. Rimworld gets around this by having a storytelling AI that feels like your Saturday night Dungeon Master.

The central question to every new Rimworld adventure is “how worse can it get?” The answer, typically, is “a lot.”

The simplistic cartoonish graphics mask how deep every mechanic goes. Survivors in Rimworld struggle with unfriendly locals and themselves alike, making it the perfect recipe for scrambling in panic.

Being overwhelmed is not so bad when Rimworld delivers this to you in such hilarious or endearing ways. Evil murderous robots rolling through your little garden will break your heart, but also make you laugh.

6 Oxygen Not Included

It’ll Leave You Breathless

Before Klei Entertainment launched Oxygen Not Included, the idea that a 2D game could be so relaxing and stressful was unfathomable.

The title sells the game well: a crew of three colonists ends up on an asteroid and oxygen, outside of isolated pockets, is not included.

The procedurally generated worlds make every playthrough unique, allowing you infinite attempts to struggle with the fantastic physics in the game.

Digging through a new pocket without oxygen equalizes the atmosphere with the previous one. One too many careless strokes and your little friends will learn about hypoxia the hard way.

The key gameplay element of Oxygen Not Included is the interaction between factors. Even a bit of urine left alone in a corner can unleash a chain reaction that wipes out the colony.

The learning curve is steep, but the pleasant presentation and the sense of accomplishment you get from every day are unmatched.

5 STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl

Roadside Picnic, Anyone?

What is worse than a radioactive accident?STALKER postulates the answer is two radioactive accidents.

Shadow of Chernobyl shows its age in gameplay, but the atmosphere and worldbuilding make you look right past that.

What makes STALKER so unique is the A-Life system. In simple terms, time does not freeze when you are not around.

Mutants roam and hunt lesser ones, factions send out patrols, buildings are occupied then abandoned, and most importantly, stalkers gather around the campfire for warmth, songs, and jokes.

Most survival shooters released since 2007 draw inspiration from the bleak Zone introduced by GSC Game World, and the sequel is right around the corner (unless they miss the release window again).

4 Fallout 4

A Fortress Made Of Junk

Where STALKER offers a bleak Eastern European nuclear autumn, Fallout 4 makes the end of the world feel like the 4th of July.

Fallout 4 had a decent enough start, but its modding community has taken the game to levels Bethesda probably never imagined. Harder, easier, more realistic, goofier, you name it: Fallout 4 can do it with one quick trip to your favorite modding workshop.

Besides the modding community, this game stands up well on its own. Fallout 4 lacks the aura or story of Fallout: New Vegas, but it makes you feel like you matter.

The core mechanic of this game is building settlements, and that is where it excels. The pleasure of making a little semblance of society in the barren wasteland makes up for the simplistic plot.

Best yet, Fallout 4 combat mechanics are all new, so players do not need to suffer the horrors of Fallout 3 gunnery that also plague Fallout: New Vegas.

If this is your first time, consider watching the Fallout TV series to get in the mood before starting.

3 Frostpunk

A volcanic winter is a most unpleasant event, but if one does happen, The Captain will have to work around it.

Frostpunk conveys cold in ways few games can. The horrors of a deep winter hurt more than just the fingertips of your citizens.

Staying alive in Frostpunk requires a lot of work, but that work will only be done if your residents have enough mental strength to get through the day.

Shoddy construction at critical facilities typically ends with its workers succumbing to frostbite. You can draft kids to do the job or double the shifts of other workers to compensate. Inhumane, but so is dying.

Frostpunk lets you take noble routes too, but it is a game of making tough choices with a cool head, pun very much intended.

These decisions push your city towards different paths, with “fun” outcomes like fanaticism that relies on brutally executing dissidents. Doing so is essential for the city’s Feng Shui.

2 Subnautica

Not Better Down Where It’s Wetter

Subnautica takes an Earthly approach to an alien world by reminding players that the real horrors lurk beneath the surface.

After getting shipwrecked in an alien world, you need to scramble to survive. Subnautica shines by giving you urgency and joy in one go.

Using your Life Pod as a home, you need to work out how to eat, craft, and even breathe. This is the closest a game has gotten to replicating the vibes of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Sealab 2020 (or its Adult Swim parody, Sealab 2021).

The unique bit about surviving in Subnautica is how you slowly come to terms with the situation. The first few hours will have you putting out fires left and right, but after a while, it feels like home… until the next fire or gruesome wildlife encounter.

1 Kenshi

Adapt, Or Die Trying

Kenshi is a game that makes you feel hopelessly small. This insignificance is the key to freedom, as a character with no destiny also has no limits.

The starting phase of Kenshi is the closest a grown-up can get to how a baby feels… if that baby had been thrust into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Although it has combat, Kenshi is not a game about winning fights, but rather surviving these encounters.

If you make it through the early game, preferably with most limbs still attached, Kenshi lets you go wild. You can be a freedom fighter, a thief, a leader, a trader, or even a measly farmer trying to stay out of trouble.

Even if you avoid becoming a messiah or a legendary warrior, other people in the world may not have the same ideas.

Their lives and deaths affect the power balance in Kenshi and can bring trouble to those who are not looking for it.