Kenshi is an open-world survival RPG that sees you exploring a harsh wasteland filled with countless challenges and opportunities.
While it’s steep learning curve can be brutal for new players, those who persevere usually end up getting hooked on Kenshi’s unique and unpredictable systems.
In this list, we’re highlight the best games like Kenshi to play in 2025, including the best PC games like Kenshi.
We’ll be updating this list in the future with fresh titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your beloved games similar to Kenshi!
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Valheim
Platforms: Windows, Linux
Billed as a PvE-focused open-world survival crafting co-op game, Valheim sees you and your friends exploring a huge primordial pool in the tenth Norse world.
Environments are teeming with untapped resources that must be utilized to keep your Viking hero nourished, well-rested, and safe 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 countless workbenches for all your Viking necessities.
SCUM
Platform: Windows
If you’re craving more PvP survival games like Kenshi, then SCUM‘s brutal reality show setup where the world’s fiercest criminals throw down on a distant island will likely hold your attention.
In it, you and other players compete to be the last man standing while overcoming daunting obstacles such as mutated wildlife, malevolent 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.
DayZ
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One
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 revered for its unforgiving gameplay, high skill ceiling, and controversial playerbase.
While its numbers aren’t as high these days due to the increased competition in its genre, DayZ is one of the original PvP sandboxes.
Conan: Exiles
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Conan: Exiles is another survival game that features a hellish 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 enjoy.
For you, this may involve exploring all available knowledge, decorating your base with nice furniture, or capturing and controlling NPCs.
Medieval Dynasty
Platform: Windows
Medieval Dynasty is an extensive survival game that leans into the squad management aspect of Kenshi’s gameplay.
Set in Europe during the Early Middle Ages, the game sees you establishing your own colony in the hopes of turning it into a prosperous dynasty that will endure for generations.
You’ll be defending your people from ferocious animals, providing food and shelter, and turning your small settlement into a bustling village.
Factorio
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
The further you get in Kenshi, the more significant 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 refine resources for your very own manufacturing paradise.
Factorio’s progression system offers an assortment of upgrades to boost efficiency, harness alternative power sources, and program AI for your machines.
Frostpunk
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Mac, iOS, Android
Frostpunk is another game like Kenshi that offers base-building in addition to colony management simulation.
The game takes place in an alternate world where a new 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 situated in the center of the village.
RimWorld
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Taking things even further, RimWorld features a near-flawless blend of base-building, survival, and tactical game mechanics that may appeal to fans of Kenshi.
The game allows you to choose from diverse habitats before crash-landing with a group of space settlers with both physical and psychological requirements that must be fulfilled to thrive.
The gameplay loop is immensely satisfying, and it is enhanced by an AI storyteller that is renowned for its amusingly dark situations.
Mount u0026amp; Blade II: Bannerlord
Platform: Windows
Similar to Kenshi, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a systems-driven sandbox game that lets you role-play as various character classes based on its medieval setting.
Whether you’re interested in becoming a famous jouster, wealthy tradesman, sword-for-hire, thief, or more, there are innumerable paths to explore.
The game also features a party system and management component reminiscent of Kenshi, in which you lead armies of hundreds or more into battle.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
If your favorite aspect of Kenshi is how merciless the game’s open-world can be, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Kingdom Come: Deliverance‘s equally brutal setup.
In it, you play as the son of a blacksmith who joins a group of rebels to protect others after his parents and village are slaughtered 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.
Ark: Survival Evolved
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android
Like Kenshi, Ark is one of those games you either genuinely love or really despise depending on your personal tolerance for grinding, griefing, and game-breaking bugs.
With that said, it incorporates some amusing new ideas into the survival genre, namely the ability to tame wild animals to have them carry items and protect your base.
While PvP combat can be challenging, especially for new players, the single-player mode allows you to craft intricate fortresses without worrying about another person blowing it up.
The Forest
Platforms: Windows, PS4
The Forest is a terrifying open-world survival game that sees you playing as a father searching for his son after the pair crash-land on a remote 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 unusual to find yourself getting swarmed by the not-so-agreeable local inhabitants.
Rust
Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Mac
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, aggressive NPCs, and the worst of them all, other players who will try and plunder your base.
The best part is that most of what you do in Rust is unscripted, allowing for some truly strange and thrilling moments, especially your interactions with other players.
State of Decay 2
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
State of Decay 2 sees you managing a community of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world brimming with undead creatures.
Like Kenshi, it has you starting with a single character and recruiting additional ones as you progress by scavenging for supplies and fortifying your base.
Resources in each map are limited, forcing you to carefully decide what goals you want to achieve and which skills you’d like to invest in.
Space Engineers
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One
Space Engineers is another open-world game that includes explorable planets, moons, and asteroid belts.
However, getting to them is no small feat since most of the game revolves around trying to survive life on an alien planet through resource-gathering and crafting.
It features a broad selection of space ships and vehicles that allow you to travel vast distances to establish stations and set up outposts.