By Morgan P
Survival games force the player to confront an environment that has been specifically designed to make survival difficult. There is a difference between the common definition of environment and the game design definition of the environment. A video game environment can be defined as the game space, everything the player sees, from the background to the creatures that emerge from it. This is in comparison to the environment as defined in popular discourse relating to nature and ecologies.
The video game environment includes everything from the level design to the visual aesthetics to the figures that populate the world. Some survival games have a difficulty curve, which means that once the player gets to a certain point, they are competent and empowered, having established the creature comforts that will keep them alive. But sometimes games lull players into a false sense of security, gradually escalating to reveal exactly how difficult the game can be.
Project Zomboid
The Last Days Of Civilization
- Human threats: Do zombies count?
- Animal threats: No.
- Supernatural threats: … zombies
- Hostile biome: As hostile as everyday rural Kentucky can be.
Don’t let appearances deceive you. Project Zomboid is one of the most unforgiving zombie-survival games available. Part of that difficulty comes from your inevitable slow demise. The world becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, and it’s not a matter of if you will die, but when. If the zombies don’t get you, infection and starvation might.
The player is dropped into a post-apocalyptic world as a lone survivor of a recent zombie outbreak. The task is simply to survive. As players’ supplies dwindle, water gets shut off, and zombies zero in on their location, it becomes increasingly important to stay moving or build up a fortification. But there are significant issues with every approach, and being adaptable to changing conditions is essential.
Subsistence
Challenging PVE With Co-Op
- Developer: ColdGames
- Release date: 2016
- Human threats: Hunters
- Animal threats: Yes
- Supernatural threats: No
- Hostile biome: Yes
Subsistence is an interesting survival game, which is a little rough around the edges but has some really great ideas and mechanics that are less common in the genre. Not only does the player have to contend with the usual animals, status effects, and inhospitable conditions of a classic wilderness survival game, but the threats continue to increase as the game goes on.
This spike in difficulty comes as the NPC hunters who are competing with players for resources evolve and improve their own camps, skills, and abilities. They behave as though they were a player with the same survival goals. Additionally, the non-human predators of the environment grow stronger every time they kill a human. This means that while a player is quietly trying to survive, the world around them is getting much stronger and more dangerous.
Green Hell
What Doesn’t Kill You Only Makes You Weaker
- Human threats: The locals
- Animal threats: So many.
- Supernatural threats: No
- Hostile biome: Extremely
Green Hell lands the player protagonist, Jake, in the Amazon jungle. He is not an experienced survivalist, but an anthropologist, and definitely not used to the situation he finds himself in. His wife is missing, and everything seems to want to kill him. While the environmental threats to Jake don’t take long to make themselves known, they gradually get worse as more time passes, and he ventures further from his base into the wilderness.
One of the main threats in Green Hell is the sheer frailty and fragility of the human body. Disease, poisoning, and injuries are extremely dangerous without the benefits of modern medicine or specialized knowledge to care for wounds and ailments. These status effects can mount quickly, and before you know it, you’re dying of dehydration and riddled with parasites. And that’s when the neighbors decide to pay a visit.
Subnautica
It’s So Peaceful Down Here
- Human threats: Man-made hazards
- Animal threats: Oh, you sweet summer child.
- Supernatural threats: Yes
- Hostile biome: Extremely
Subnautica is widely regarded as one of, if not the best, survival games ever. The player crashes into the alien ocean of Planet 4546B, alone as the sole survivor of the accident. As with most survival games, the true hostility of the environment is not revealed right away. As the player begins to craft, explore, and develop an escape plan, the local wildlife begins to take notice and turn on the player.
Subnautica loves to disrupt any safety or comfort that the player establishes. The relatively cozy nature of the gameplay loop lulls the player into a false sense of security. This builds player confidence and hubris until the temptation of exploring the depths for resources becomes too great.
Pacific Drive
Interdimensional Survival
- Human threats: No
- Animal threats: Only if you count anomalies
- Supernatural threats: Yes
- Hostile biome: Yes
Humans are quite vulnerable and more than a little bit squishy. This makes them not best suited to survival in a dangerous cosmic horror sci-fi landscape. But what about a mid-sized family car? Pacific Drive is touted as a driving survival game in which the player has to maintain their car as they travel through the paranormal activity of the Olympic Exclusion Zone.
It's harder than it sounds, as navigating anomalies and cosmic wormholes takes a toll on the car, which will need constant upgrades and repairs to deal with the building environmental danger of the area. Hurricanes, explosive dummies, and physics-defying geographic phenomena pose significant threats to the seemingly sentient car and, consequently, its driver.
Read the full article on GameRant
This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
