PC’s top survival games to test your survival skills

It’s easy to see why survival games have such a strong allure. Since the struggle to survive is ingrained in our DNA, it makes sense that we would find enjoyment in simulating it in video games. The top PC survival games test players to their limits by posing complex issues and demanding that they come up with innovative solutions.

In survival games, players must manage their health in relation to factors like hunger, thirst, high temperatures, disease, and other risks. These factors go beyond just a simple health bar. Other typical elements in survival games include exploring, obtaining supplies, making tools and equipment, constructing shelters, and engaging in activities like farming, fishing, hunting, and cooking. Additionally, several survival games challenge players to manage resources, enact laws, and resolve social issues in order to safely lead a colony or town through dangerous situations.

Which games offer the best survival experiences in such a popular genre? Below are some of our favourite PC simulations of survival, including those in space, underground, and other hazardous locations full of dinosaurs, mutants, zombies, and other deadly enemies like other players. The top PC survival games are listed here. 

• V Rising

In the video game V Rising, your ancient bloodsucker will have their hands full with resource management, base construction, and avoiding sunlight. Vampires may not seem like creatures that need to worry about survival because they are immortal, but they will have their hands full in the real world. Although it might seem strange for a vampire to run a sawmill and cut down trees, everything is in great working order, allowing you to transform your base into a formidable gothic fortress and charm NPCs to act as your subservient minions. Naturally, you can also unlock and employ a range of entertaining vampire skills. V Rising expertly combines action and survival RPG elements.

• Valheim

Initial Access Viking-themed survival games immediately became popular, and it is easy to see why. The game’s expansive dynamically generated world, dangerous monster encounters, and amazing base-building mechanisms flawlessly integrate with survival tools like cooking and crafting. The game is fantastic for single play, but co-op is where it really shines, allowing players to construct bases or set off on perilous sea expeditions to discover unsettling new realms.

• Subnautica

While controlling your hand-crafted submarine over enigmatic underwater landscapes, explore an exotic underwater universe. You will gather supplies and food, construct shelters and a fleet of submarines, and create new technology to help you survive the depths. Your search will take you from stunning coral reefs to deep-sea caves and trenches. It’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons to Minecraft, but creator Unknown Worlds has given the survival genre its own distinctive spin.

• Grounded

You were shrunk down by Obsidian and dumped in a typical garden, but given how big you were, it might as well have been a jungle. You can forage for food and drink by roasting aphids and gathering drips of dew while surrounded by lethal spiders, hungry birds, and bothersome ants. You can also build a base by cutting down grass blades. From the viewpoint of a person the size of a bug, it is a lovely and even fascinating environment.

• Frostpunk

Frostpunk combines city-building, social simulation, and surviving in a desolate and icy environment. You’ll need to build a functioning city inside a snow-filled crater that is only heated by a big coal furnace with a small group of freezing, hungry, miserable people. Hunt for food, gather resources, and control your population by inspiring optimism in them. A tough and gorgeous survival game that forces you to make challenging decisions at every stage.

• Project Zomboid

There is just one game that genuinely meets the bill if you’re searching for rich and intricate survival mechanisms in a large-scale sandbox simulation. This zombie survival game has a steep learning curve, but once you understand how the various systems operate, you’ll discover an endless and captivating challenge in the harsh post-apocalyptic world. You can loot buildings, make gear, fish, farm, fight zombies (or better yet, avoid them), and struggle with various issues like getting hurt, getting sick, getting bored, and making too much noise while moving around. There is nothing else like this innovative zombie survival simulation.

• Escape from Tarkov

With a tiny dash of battle royale for good measure, Escape from Tarkov is a brutal development of survival games. You start out playing on a map with a small group of other players and a large number of hostile NPCs rather than in a persistent universe. You must make it to an exfiltration zone at the other end of the map to survive, but you also get to retain any loot you find to use in later rounds or to sell on a player-run market. It’s similar to poker but much scarier. But what really sells Tarkov is its crazily intricate gun customisation and hyper-realistic gunplay.

• Outward

In Outward, you must contend with the world itself, where you must eat, drink, and stay healthy as well as mysterious monsters. Each journey is an exercise in preparation, perseverance, and survival because there are no fast-travel or quest markers, or even your own position, on the maps of the dry deserts or the wet swampland.

• RimWorld

After being in Early Access for five years, RimWorld has now reached version 1.0. You control a colony of randomly created people who are stuck on a procedurally produced extraterrestrial planet in this management and survival simulation. Expand the base, maintain the well-being of your colonists, and cope with any disasters that RimWorld’s AI director throws your way, which might be anything from disease breakouts to alien attacks to meteorological phenomena. Making your colonists get along with one another may be the most difficult task because each one has a unique personality, desire, and mood.

• Raft 

The idea of peacefully floating through the world on a raft while developing and enlarging it while catching flotsam with a grappling hook from the water nearly seems heavenly. Sharks do exist, though. Those who are hungry will settle for devouring your floating house if they can’t eat you. While keeping your raft afloat and expanding, you’ll need to find food and clean water. Fortunately, you can play cooperatively with a friend to increase your chances of survival.