Best Survival Games 2025

Think you can stand up to Mother Nature and survive in the wild? Check out this list of the best survival games on Steam in 2023!

The list of the best survival games is continually growing as developers dream up new challenges and settings for players to explore.

This includes remote islands, jungles, forests, or even entire oceans strewn with enigmas, resources, and danger.

If any of that sounds thrilling, then keep reading on to discover the best survival games on Steam in 2025.

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

Related:Best Open-World Games 2025Best Sandbox PC Games 2025Best Base Building Games 2025

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To kick things off, we’re suggesting Sons of The Forest, the follow-up to Endnight Games’ hit survival co-op game.

The sequel drops you into yet another human-devouring hellscape while on a mission to rescue a missing billionaire.

It’s not long before chaos breaks out, prompting you and your crew to find shelter and arm yourself for what’s to come.

Much like its predecessor, Sons of the Forest offers comprehensive survival and crafting mechanics that allow you to forge your own path in the face of danger.

Next up on our list of the best survival games is the recent remake of the highly-praised survival horror classic Dead Space.

Built from the ground up with new visual, audio, and gameplay improvements that stay faithful to the original, this game is an absolute marvel.

Centered on everyman engineer Isaac Clarke, it sees you fighting for your life aboard a colossal mining ship overrun with undead nightmares called Necromorphs.

Using an assortment of recycled engineering tools, you’ll start examining the peril while dealing with Isaac’s mental stability.

Reminiscent of indie Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight, Rain World is a superb action-platformer with a survival game element.

In it, you explore a deteriorating mega-structure in search of food and secrets while keeping an eye out for predators that outrank them on the food chain.

The game revels in its intense difficulty and unforgiving environments while boasting open-ended exploration and vast in-game lore.

While a plethora of arcane objectives, single-hit kills, and catastrophic rainstorms can feel merciless, with enough practice and patience, you’ll learn to adapt.

Our next suggestion for the best survival games is Valheim, which sees you exploring a vast primordial pool with untapped resources and unquantified threats.

To survive, you’ll need to keep your Viking fed, well-rested, and secure from hostile raids by constructing tools, weapons, and fortified camps across each region.

The game features RPG-style progression as well as unique building mechanics that allow you to construct your own Viking longhouses, furniture, and defenses.

While it has a relatively steep difficulty curve, you can lessen the challenge by playing with friends on the same server.

ARK is arguably one of the best survival games on the market and, depending on who you ask, either plays great or terribly.

Regardless of where you fall, the game’s ambitious design cannot be overstated; from crafting materials and tools to online co-op and creature taming, ARK has it all.

In it, you explore a vast map dominated by futuristic technology and dinosaurs that can be hunted or used for transportation, storage, and defense.

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

Len’s Island is an open-world survival game that sees you carving out a new life for yourself on a scenic island teeming with mystery.

Explore the island’s enigmas by dungeon crawling through caves, hiking through forests, and constructing homes and farms.

The game uses a streamlined, modular building system that will make even the most novice designers feel like proficient constructors.

When you’re not tending to crops or expanding your humble abode, you’ll set out to meet different characters and battle enemies.

Subnautica: Below Zero is a sequel to the celebrated first-person survival game in which you crashland on an extraterrestrial planet covered almost entirely in water.

After returning to the planet from the first game, your character discovers a new frozen region on its surface and sets out to uncover all of its mysteries.

To make it out alive, you’ll have to depend on the environment to craft bases, submersibles, and weapons as well as keep your character fed and hydrated.

Below Zero has an open-ended format that lets you set your own objectives, whether exploring the ocean, constructing bases or simply advancing the story.

Grounded offers a challenging survival sandbox experience set within a suburban backyard’s confines.

The only catch is, you’ve been shrunk down to the size of an ant, and virtually everything wants to eliminate you.

One of your primary objectives in the game is to construct a base to rest your head at night, though finding security in Grounded’s world isn’t that simple.

The game offers a plethora of options for constructing structures out of various materials, and you can set up shop just about anywhere.

Based on the mythology of Conan the Barbarian, Conan Exiles is an expansive open-world survival game that incorporates many proven and true survival mechanics.

This includes managing your character’s health, food, and water consumption in addition to crafting and equipping apparel, tools, and weapons.

The game’s fantasy-inspired setting sees you facing off against dinosaurs, dragons, and otherworldly monsters that require much preparation to bring down.

There’s close attention to detail regarding your character’s identity, including a robust character creator, religious belief system, and level-based progression.

Raft is one of the best survival games that drops players in a never-ending ocean where they’ll have to deal with powerful currents and a deadly shark.

Your vessel starts out minuscule, consisting of just a few planks of wood that can be expanded using a metal hook tool to reel in junk and other flotsam.

The game provides you the liberty to set your own goals and combine different materials to create furniture, tools, weapons, and power sources.

This results in a satisfying loop where players go back and forth between expanding bases, collecting resources, and striking the shark before it causes trouble.

Set during a new Ice Age, Frostpunk puts you in charge of a colony that relies on steam-powered machines to stay alive.

To ensure your people survive, you’ll manage dwindling resources while earning your citizens’ loyalty and harnessing a myriad of retro-futuristic tech.

There are also arbitrary in-game events that require you to make challenging decisions that will impact your villagers’ quality of life and overall morale.

If you end up savoring time with the game, make sure to keep an eye out for the upcoming sequel Frostpunk 2, currently in development by 11-bit studios.

They Are Billions is a steampunk-themed colony survival sim set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by voracious zombies.

In it, players are tasked with guiding the last surviving humans as they fight to reclaim civilization from enormous swarms of the living dead.

This plays out across two modes: Campaign and Survival, in which you’re tasked with protecting your colonies from the undead while researching innovative tech.

One of the game’s most notable features is the ability to pause the action and give yourself time to construct new structures, issue commands to troops, or just catch your breath.

Another game that delivers on the zombie survival front is State of Decay 2, which builds upon its predecessor in nearly every aspect.

In it, you’re charged with expanding and managing a team of survivors while venturing into the world to gather resources for your community.

The game is centered on foraging for supplies and fortifying your base to deal with in-game events such as zombie infestations.

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

RimWorld features an nearly-perfect blend of base-building, survival, and strategy game mechanics with abundant room for customization.

In it, you pick from several ecosystems before crash-landing with a group of settlers on a randomly generated extraterrestrial planet.

Your colonists have physical and mental needs that must be met for your community to thrive, including expanded housing when necessary.

Its deeply-rewarding gameplay loop is further complemented by an AI-driven storyteller known for its hilariously morbid and ridiculous scenarios.

Rust­­­­ is a hardcore survival game in which players spawn into an unforgiving open world as vulnerable “nakeds,” with nothing but a rock to their name.

Armed with this basic tool and your wits, you’ll have to scavenge for supplies, kill wild animals for food and clothing, and construct shelter away from prying eyes.

Surviving in Rust is a never-ending battle that will have you managing hunger, thirst, and body temperature levels while keeping an eye out for threats.

Some players will try to rob you, others will offer assistance, and many more will kill you on sight, so be wary and try to use each death as an educational experience.

If you’re looking for a single-player survival game with a narrative and demanding gameplay, then The Long Dark is worth checking out.

Set during a harsh Canadian winter, it casts you as a bush pilot whose plane crashes on a huge yet remote island.

To survive, you’ll have to venture out and find the rest of your party while braving a frozen wilderness designed to destroy you.

Like many other games on this roster, it focuses on managing systems such as exhaustion, appetite, and thirst along with combating hostile wildlife, namely wolves.

Next up is Darkwood, a nerve-wracking indie survival horror game played from a top-down perspective.

In it, players take on the role of a silent protagonist stranded in a forbidding wilderness teeming with threats both natural and otherworldly.

The gameplay loop is structured around a perpetual day/night cycle in which players explore and gather resources before hunkering down once it’s dark.

Your character’s ability to deal with external threats is rather limited, forcing you to get creative and sometimes rely on chance to survive through the night.

Oxygen Not Included is a challenging colony survival sim that sees you commanding a space crew living beneath an alien planet’s surface.

Your duties are split up between assigning crew to different stations, gathering resources to keep colonists alive, and researching tech to expand your base.

With oxygen extremely scarce, the stakes are remarkably high, and one lousy decision can cause your crew to get wiped out entirely.

Temperatures can also swiftly rise or fall, pollution will start to build up quickly, and the mental states of your colonists are constantly in flux.

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Justin Fernandez

As a fan of both indie and triple-A games, Justin finds joy in discovering and sharing hidden gems with other passionate gamers. In addition to reporting on the latest and greatest titles, he manages GamingScan’s social media channels.

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