Survival Sandbox

9 Following

In the wake of the incredible success of Minecraft and DayZ, many games sprung up that incorporate some of their mechanics. The survival genre that emerged from these games is based around a few core principles:

• Usually, the player is dropped into a Wide-Open Sandbox with almost no resources. The sandbox can be either fixed or procedurally generated.
• Most, if not all, of the environment, can be broken and picked up, which the player is expected to do in order to craft all or almost all of their own equipment and shelter.
• There is a heavy emphasis on Resources Management Gameplay. The player will usually have some sort of hunger meter that constantly drains throughout the game and must be regularly replenished.
• Death is permanent, and the primary objective is simply to survive as long as possible. When death doesn't completely reset the world it will still be a massive setback.

There is considerable overlap here with the Roguelike and Survival Horror genres. It also shares its emphasis on Emergent Gameplay with the Immersive Sim, but those tend to be much more focused in terms of scope and narrative.

Examples:

• Minecraft, the Trope Maker and codifier.
• DayZ, the other Trope Codifier
• 7 Days to Die
• Abiotic Factor
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Astroneer
• Astro Terra
• Badiya
• The Blockheads
• Card Life
• Cataclysm
• Chernobylite
• Crea
• Colony Survival
• Conan Exiles, set in the world of Conan the Barbarian
• Core Keeper
• Darkwood
• Day One: Garry's Incident
• Day R Survival
• Deadburg
• Dead Rising (combined with Wide-Open Sandbox, Action-Adventure and Survival Horror elements with an RPG-styled level-up system)
• Death in the Water
• Dig Or Die
• Don't Starve
• Dune: Awakening
• Dysmantle
• Empyrion: Galactic Survival
• Enshrouded
• Expedition Zero
• The Eternal Cylinder
• Factorio (Though only in the very early game, and the only real "survival" elements are the hostile aliens and Item Crafting—the player doesn't need food, water, sleep, etc. Once the player crafts enough items to research automation, the gameplay shifts nearly entirely to being a Factory-Building Game, where the aliens are merely another logistics challenge to solve and "crashed on an alien planet" is more of an Excuse Plot than anything else. This often trips up new players expecting something closer to Minecraft)
• Fallout 76
• Far Sky
• Flotsam
• The Forest
• The Flame in the Flood
• Green Hell
• Grounded
• Grounded 2
• H1Z1
• Hobo Tough Life
• Holoearth (partially, the game is otherwise a metaverse-esque digital hangout spot)
• How to Survive
• Hunt: Showdown
• Hurtworld
• Icarus: First Cohort
• Kenshi (combined with Mount & Blade-like strategic RPG gameplay)
• The Last Caretaker
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (combined with conventional Action-Adventure gameplay).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• The Light Keeps Us Safe
• The Long Dark
• Lost in Blue
• Medieval Dynasty
• Meriwether: An American Epic
• Miasmata
• Miscreated
• Mist Survival
• Muck
• My Summer Car
  • My Winter Car
• Necesse (combines the genre with a colony builder)
• Neo Scavenger
• Nether
• No Man's Sky
• Notrium
• Once Human
• Osiris New Dawn
• Palworld
• P.A.M.E.L.A.
• Phoning Home
• Pine Harbor
• The Planet Crafter
• Planet Explorers
• Planet Nomads
• Project Zomboid
• Radiation Island
• Raft
• Reign Of Kings
• RimWorld (combined with "colony sim" construction and management mechanics)
• Road to Vostok
• Robinson's Requiem
• Romestead
• Rust
• Satisfactory
• Saurian
• Scrap Mechanic
• SCUM
• Serum
• Shadows of Kurgansk
• Sir, You Are Being Hunted
• The Solus Project
• Space Engineers
• Spoxel
• Stacklands (combined with Collectible Card Game)
• Starbound
• Star Forge
• StarRupture
• Stars One
• The Stomping Land
• Stranded
• Stranded Deep (unrelated to the above)
• Subnautica
  • Subnautica: Below Zero
  • Subnautica 2
• Sunless Sea
• Survival Kids
• Survive the Nights
• Tail of the Sun
• Temtem: Pioneers
• Terraria
• Tom Clancys The Division Heartland
• Undawn
• UnReal World
• Unturned
• Valheim
• Vigor
• Vintage Story
• Visions of Aftermath: The Boomtown
• VoidTrain
• V Rising
• Wayward (2016)
• Wilderness: A Survival Adventure: The Ur-Example, released in 1985 for MS-DOS.
• Winter Burrow
• Withstand
• Wizard with a Gun
• Y Lands