We've all been there: you're playing a game, and suddenly get overwhelmed by enemies. Your health plummets, and you realize you could die here and lose your progress, maybe even your loot, depending on the title. So you run away, and you find a safe zone and pull yourself back together. The more iconic examples of these are the Resident Evil safe rooms. Soothing music, impossible for monsters to sneak into, you have a moment of respite to gather yourself.
Another one is the Grace in Elden Ring. How many times have you hurried past enemies to reach the next Grace and touched it to rest on it, resetting all the enemies? Be honest, now. Then, you have games where no matter where you go, there's a constant feeling of danger that just won't let up. Sure, there might be locations where you're far less likely to get jumped by anything, but overall, you're in a continuous state of survival. Let's have a look at these hardcore experiences that deliver some quality challenges.
The Forest
The Locals Aren't Exactly Friendly
Putting aside the fact that you need to tend to your needs in The Forest by keeping hunger and thirst at bay, the cannibals are the true stressor in the game. These guys will keep you on your toes due to the rather interesting AI that partially adapts and reacts to your actions. There have been some pretty funny and cool videos of players showing how they've managed to "tame" cannibals in this game, which just goes to show that The Forest doesn't play around with immersion.
Not knowing exactly what each type does, when they attack, and so on, not to mention whether or not you've just happened to build your shelter directly into their patrol route, are just a few ways the game constantly makes you feel unsafe. The longer you survive, the more daring they become. At night, things get even more dicey, with some cannibals choosing to attack your safe zone. Oh, did I say safe zone? No, because your little shelter is not immortal, if you have the Allow Building Destruction setting on (which you should, for total immersion). This isn't Minecraft, where you can block yourself off in a hole in the ground every night. You're never completely immune, and you never entirely feel at ease, even inside your base.
Don't Starve Together
You Will Never Be Comfortable
Don't Starve Together is best described as a constant uphill battle against a world that wants you to go crazy and struggle to survive. Everything in this deceptively adorable world is out to get you, and if it's not the random hound attacks that spawn in to terrorize you, then it'll be something like Deerclops during winter. And even if you manage to defeat that boss, then maybe the cold winter will freeze you solid.
Waiting for summer to arrive? That's not safe, either, because of wildfires. If you manage to build yourself a semi-safe base through luck and hard work, then sanity might still get you if you don't tend to it, and spawn in shadow creatures when you become unstable enough. Survival is so grueling in this world that every moment feels nail-bitingly tense. Best (or worst) all things? Your friends are only a shallow comfort in co-op mode.
Green Hell
Oh, No—Did You Sleep On The Ground By Accident?
Green Hell is a game that's essentially a massive, vulgar gesture directed at the player's face. Don't get too comfortable in the tutorial phase when you're just chilling and hanging around with your girlfriend in camp, plenty of shelter and resources at your disposal, because things are about to get wild. Like with The Forest, there are definitely zones that are far less dangerous in Green Hell's world than others, but even so, managing your needs, making sure you have proper shelter from wildlife and the local tribe, and being aware of your surroundings is extremely stressful.
Touching a venomous frog can compromise your life. Drinking dirty water can give you parasites. Sleeping on the ground can also give you parasites. Having to eat uncooked food, or heaven forbid, human flesh, will make your sanity plummet and make you hallucinate. A simple but stressful thing is that you have to manage specific nutritional values instead of hunger in general, meaning you need to make sure you're not just taking protein, but also carbs and enough fats to keep going, on top of staying hydrated. These are threats that are always with you. It's not an enemy; it's a requirement for survival, and it follows you regardless of where you go in the game, making you constantly on edge and incredibly stressed. And can we talk about the fact that you have to check each quadrant of your body for injuries? The psychology of that simple task wears you out fast.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
The World Is In Motion, And It Doesn't Wait For You
If you're familiar with Project Zomboid, which we'll talk about next, then the systems of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead will be recognizable to you. In a post-apocalyptic world full of undead, you're among the few surviving characters. You need to build a shelter, find resources, all the while avoiding the zombie threat of turning one into yourself. But this isn't just any zombie game. The undead here are smart and cunning, and they'll give you a run for your money.
Even if you clear a specific area in the game, zombies are always on the move and can actually migrate back to that zone. So, each time you return to a place, you have to clear it again and be on your guard. All your actions, of course, make noise, so you have to prioritize stealth and avoid drawing attention by shooting guns all willy-nilly. A simple boarded window isn't a final solution at your base, either, despite all the hard work you put into fortifying it, because enemies can smash through it and negate all your efforts. It's truly a constant rush to stay alive.
Project Zomboid
As Time Goes On, Hope Diminishes If You're Not Smart
Project Zomboid sets the tone brilliantly when you start a new game: this is a story about the way you died, not about survival. One thing's for sure: everyone always dies. Always, in the end. It's just a matter of time. Like in CDDA above, zombies in the default difficulty of Zomboid have the ability to migrate. The population will also reach a peak at some point in the game, which means there are more and more of them in the early part of your survival. Months later, it's nature that starts to take over the world, and within a few weeks, the water and electricity are cut off, which complicates your prospects of survival.
Loot doesn't respawn in the world, so you have to come up with a long-term plan of finding a safehouse, but no house is truly ever safe. Having tall fences is a pretty solid way to provide some safety, but if you don't have that yet, be aware that any boarded-up building can still be accessed by zombies who have decided to break their way in. Even if you live underground for weeks, you risk running out of supplies, growing depressed, starving, or dying from thirst. So yes, it's not just the zombies that create a lack of safety, but your own needs and the limited resources as well.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
