Best Games Like Kenshi

Kenshi is an extensive survival RPG that sees you exploring a brutal wasteland filled with countless challenges and possibilities.

While its steep learning curve can be unforgiving for new players, those who persevere usually end up getting hooked on Kenshi’s distinctive and unpredictable systems.

In this list, we’re highlight the best games like Kenshi to play in 2025, including the top PC games like Kenshi.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your cherished games similar to Kenshi!

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Billed as a PvE-focused open-world survival crafting co-op game, Valheim sees you and your companions exploring a vast ancient purgatory in the tenth Norse world.

Environments are teeming with untapped resources that must be harnessed to keep your Viking hero fed, well-rested, and shielded from enemy attacks.

To this point, the game features a base-building system that sees you constructing longhouses and filling them with furniture, fortifications, and innumerable workbenches for all your Viking essentials.

If you’re longing for more PvP survival games like Kenshi, then SCUM’s savage reality show setup where the world’s toughest criminals throw down on a remote island will likely hold your interest.

In it, you and other players compete to be the last man standing while overcoming daunting obstacles such as mutated wildlife, malicious machines, and rogue military operatives.

SCUM also likes to get hyper-technical with its survival mechanics and features a unique metabolism system where health and other stats rely on consuming nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

Initially conceived as an ARMA 2 mod, DayZ has gone on to become one of the foremost sandbox survival games in the market.

Much like Kenshi, the game is known and respected for its merciless gameplay, high skill ceiling, and controversial playerbase.

While its numbers aren’t as significant these days due to the increased rivalry in its genre, DayZ is one of the original PvP sandboxes.

Conan: Exiles is another survival game that features a harsh open-world sandbox filled with monsters and resources you’ll need to build bases and weapons.

Similar to Kenshi, you’re free to forge your own path and focus on the aspects of the game you savor.

For you, this may involve exploring all accessible knowledge, decorating your base with appealing furniture, or capturing and controlling NPCs.

Medieval Dynasty is an expansive survival game that leans into the team management aspect of Kenshi’s gameplay.

Set in Europe during the Early Middle Ages, the game sees you establishing your own settlement in the hopes of turning it into a prosperous dynasty that will persist for generations.

You’ll be defending your people from ferocious animals, providing food and shelter, and turning your small settlement into a flourishing village.

The further you get in Kenshi, the more crucial base-building becomes as dozens of characters join your squad.

Another game that emphasizes base-building is Factorio, which focuses on automating machines to gather and process resources for your very own industrial utopia.

Factorio’s progression system offers an array of upgrades to boost efficiency, harness alternative power sources, and program AI for your machines.

Frostpunk is another title like Kenshi that offers base-building in addition to colony management simulation.

The game takes place in an alternate world where a unique ice age has come about during the 19th century.

You play as the leader of a settlement that maintains its existence through a steam-powered thermal generator located in the center of the village.

Taking things even further, RimWorld features a nearly impeccable blend of base-building, survival, and tactical game mechanics that may appeal to fans of Kenshi.

The game allows you to choose from varied habitats before crash-landing with a group of space settlers with both physical and mental requirements that must be fulfilled to thrive.

The gameplay loop is immensely gratifying, and it is enhanced by an AI storyteller that is renowned for its amusingly grim situations.

Similar to Kenshi, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a systems-driven open-world game that lets you role-play as various character classes based on its feudal setting.

Whether you’re interested in becoming a famous jouster, wealthy tradesman, sword-for-hire, thief, or more, there are numerous paths to explore.

The game also features a party system and management component reminiscent of Kenshi, in which you lead armies of countless or more into massive battle.

If your favorite aspect of Kenshi is how unforgiving the game’s open-world can be, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Kingdom Come: Deliverance‘s equally merciless setup.

In it, you play as the son of a blacksmith who joins a band of rebels to protect others after his parents and village are massacred by raiders.

You’re not some mystical or magnetic hero but instead a bumbling oaf facing the same obstacles as everyone else, including finding food, water, and a place to lay your head at night.

Like Kenshi, Ark is one of those games you either truly love or really loathe depending on your personal tolerance for grinding, griefing, and game-breaking bugs.

With that said, it incorporates some intriguing new ideas into the survival genre, namely the ability to tame wild animals to have them carry items and safeguard your base.

While PvP combat can be intimidating, especially for new players, the single-player mode allows you to craft intricate fortresses without worrying about another person blowing it up.

The Forest is a frightening open-world survival game that sees you playing as a father searching for his son after the pair crash-land on a secluded island occupied by cannibalistic mutants.

It offers base-building, crafting, and first-person combat coupled with a reactive enemy AI that behaves differently depending on the time of day.

After dark, it’s not uncommon to find yourself getting swarmed by the not-so-pleasant local inhabitants.

Like Kenshi, Rust simulates real life through mechanics like hunger and thirst in addition to bodily conditions ranging from hypothermia to radiation poisoning.

There are also wild animals to watch out for, hostile NPCs, and the worst of them all, other players who will try and loot your base.

The best part is that most of what you do in Rust is unscripted, allowing for some genuinely bizarre and thrilling moments, especially your interactions with other players.

State of Decay 2 sees you managing a community of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world teeming with undead creatures.

Like Kenshi, it has you starting with a lone character and recruiting additional ones as you progress by scavenging for supplies and fortifying your base.

Resources in each map are finite, forcing you to carefully decide what goals you want to achieve and which skills you’d like to invest in.

Space Engineers is another vast open-world game that includes explorable planets, moons, and asteroid belts.

However, getting to them is no small task since most of the game revolves around trying to survive life on an alien planet through resource-gathering and crafting.

It features a wide selection of space ships and vehicles that allow you to travel vast distances to establish stations and set up outposts.