Survival games are a staple of PC gaming. That’s not to say that consoles don’t have survival great games, but it’s hard to argue that the genre’s popularity is probably thanks to the PC market. The main elements that capture the genre are easy to get into from a beginner’s standpoint; they promote playing with other people (either together or against each other) and reward exploration and ingenuity.
Survival games usually have a few things in common: an open world to explore and find other players in, the ability to scavenge resources and craft items, and most importantly, the main objective is to survive.
And while it is easy to find fantastic survival games on the market, such as Minecraft, Rust, and Ark: Survival, it is way more challenging to find high-quality survival games that are free. Which is why I’ve taken the task to gather some of the best free survival games available on Steam.
The Devil Haunts Me
A top-down pixelated survival with horror elements, The Devil Haunts Me has you start out in a cabin, managing resources, and energy to survive in the wilderness. The tools available to you in the beginning are just enough to get you going.
This free survival game from Steam throws you into its creepy world without much explanation, only a gun, an ax, and a bucket.
Here, the more you explore, hunt, chop down trees and collect water, the more you start realizing that not everything is as it seems. A decaying animal corpse here, a creepy note there, and you begin to fear that someone, or some thing, is stalking you.
The story unravels as you let your curiosity get the best of you, making the mystery all the more engaging. Very few survival games go this far. Many opt to simply have you survive for as long as you can with little to no regard for the actual world you inhabit. But here, the setting is everything. The Devil Haunts Me is a neat little game that’s worth checking out.
Infestation: The New Z
Infestation: The New Z is a free survival game on Steam heavily inspired by others in the exact same genre, namely DayZ, but with the added bonus of being available at no cost. While the two games are not exactly on equal ground in terms of quality, Infestation: The New Z definitively does have a lot going on in its favor.
It has a large multiplayer world to explore and survive in and several game modes where you can fight off hordes of zombies on your own or with a group of friends and even face against other players.
While the movement might feel a bit awkward and the animations clunky as hell, this game makes up for it in the amount of content it offers; not only for the several game modes available (which include a Battle Royale mode of all things) but also for the monthly events and for the wide variety of weapons and items at your disposal.
Stay Out
Stay Out is an MMORPG shooter that advertises itself as a Stalker Online. Does it live up to that statement? Yes, but no.
Stay Out is a bit of a buggy mess, not exactly optimized and riddled with microtransactions that are only there to tempt players to advance faster. Now, you may wonder why it’s on this list and why would I recommend it? Well, somehow, this game has managed to capture most people who have tried it, including me.
Stay Out walks a fine line between a bad game and a diamond in the rough, balancing the best and worst of what gaming has to offer. I’m not sure if I’d say that it’s an example of ‘so bad it’s good’ but rather many properly executed mechanics and brilliants ideas mixed with not so properly executed ones.
The servers are like the Wild West, it’s every man for himself. And the microtransactions get hard to ignore, especially in the endgame. Having said all of that, I would highly encourage anyone who likes survival games to give it a try.
Is it a good game? No, but it’s definitively a good time.
Will To Live
While not exactly a survivor game in terms of crafting and living in the wilderness, Will To Live makes up for it in terms of actual survival, allowing you to face mutants roaming the world, and having thirst and hunger actually matter to the point where it’ll keep you moving.
Will To Live earns a spot on this list since not only is it free but also inviting to anyone with the guts to survive as long as they can.
This MMORPG shooter takes place in a post-apocalyptic world full of mutants, other survivors, and macabre scenery. Explore the open world that unfolds in front of you as you complete quests and gather resources. Hunting is part of your day-to-day now; it is a hunt or be hunter world.
While this game is still in early access at the time of this writing, it shows a lot of promise, which is more than we can say about most early access games out there.
Codename CURE
Another sort of bonus game in the sense that it’s not exactly a survival game like the rest, but with enough merit to deserve a spot on the list, Codename CURE is a first-person co-op zombie shooter that throws you into an impossible-to-escape scenario where you and your team will have to survive through hordes of zombies. And these are not the lame, slow kind of zombies; these are the ones that will sprint at you from all sides, having you rely on senses to survive as long as you can. Once the music starts, you know you’re getting hammered.
The classes are balanced, the gameplay is great and satisfying, especially after everything is over and you’re the last one left standing, which signifies a truly epic experience.
While the graphics might be outdated by today’s standards, it’s one of those things that you turn a blind eye to since the gameplay makes up for it. You can tell there’s passion behind this game, and while it’s not groundbreaking or anything like that, it’s still free and incredibly fun to play.
Creativerse
Creativerse, a block-building survival game reminiscent of Minecraft but with several added twists that set it apart, made with the idea of giving creative freedom to the player, and it does not disappoint.
This free survival game provides an easy-to-understand menu, instinctive controls, and a pretty simple tutorial quest to get things going. In it, you have control over a power glove that allows you to pick up and use any block you want, allowing you to make your own creations and eventually upgrade it.
One cool feature it has is the ability to use blueprints of pre-built structures that will help you get an idea and even add to them with the blocks you collect from the world. There’s a lot to unravel the more you discover and the deeper you dive into the mechanics of the game. It’s games like this that make you appreciate the freedom the player can have over the world, and it’s definitively a must for all creative minds out there.
Fallout Shelter
What started out as a mobile experience turned to Steam and managed to gather a very faithful player base. It is to be expected that Fallout fans would need something more to hang unto, considering how long Bethesda takes to release new titles. After all, the last Elder Scrolls game came out in 2011, and, well, let’s pretend Fallout 76 never happened, shall we?
Fallout Shelter is a sort of community simulator where you oversee your very own fallout shelter (That’s the name of the game, get it?). Your job is to ensure the community you create can survive the nuclear apocalypse.
Your community will need food, water, and power, all of which you’ll need to manage for them to survive. The currency is made up of the well-known caps, which you’ll get the more achievements and items you unlock.
The more you play, the more your base will grow, and you’ll eventually be able to send scouts to explore the world and bring more items that will improve your community’s quality of life and defenses. This will attract both survivors to join you and raiders that will attack you. This free game also allows you to level up characters as well as the rooms you create in your shelter. Suffice to say that, while simple on the surface, Fallout Shelter offers a lot of things to do that will keep you playing for hours at a time.
Unturned
Unturned is a free to play game available on Steam that started as a Roblox level, and before you judge it based solely on that, let me tell you that this game has been surprising in many ways. Unturned is, besides the aesthetics, everything that’s good with DayZ and more. Let me explain what I mean by that.
The way the interface works, how you interact with the items around you, the zombies, scavenging for resources and equipment, thirst and hunger, and the possibility of breaking your legs. Everything you can think of that you enjoyed about DayZ as a realistic zombie survival game, Unturned has it. It’s not just a carbon copy, though, since there are a few features Unturned has that make it unique, one of them being free, of course.
One of such features is the amount of customization at your disposal for your character, from clothing that you can buy through currency earned in-game to classes to start as. Not only that, but the servers themselves allow you to play with them as much as you like, down to how many enemies spawn or the rarity of the items in your server. And while the graphics might not be the most realistic in the world, the Roblox-like style gives it a charm of its own that entices a lot of gamers.
Another novelty that Unturned brings to the table is that it lets you have your personal server and allows it to exist independent from you, letting other players visit your server with everything you put on it. This is something of a novelty considering that, in other online games, the moment you leave a server, that server ceases to exist. And of course, you can also make it private and play it by yourself if you’re the single-player kind of gamer.
While it may not seem like anything extraordinary on the surface, I would say that Unturned is one of those gems that deserves a try from every kind of gamer.
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