Whether surviving in the jungle, in the mountains, in the open sea or everywhere at once, survival games have proven their popularity time and time again. Here is our top 5 best survival games in 2023.
Whether it’s the spirit of adventure, co-op with friends, or just battling the elements, survival games have always featured prominently in the most popular releases. Popularized by the very famous Minecraft, this category has made its way into the video game landscape, pushing many more or less modest studios to offer their own vision of the survival game through different little nuggets. These nuggets, we have brought them together for you in our top 10 of the best survival games in 2023, just below. Of course, each of the games offered here has the tools to appeal to different types of players, but we have tried to rank them as objectively as possible.
5 – Greenhell (PC, Xbox Series, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch)
Reserved for hardcore survival enthusiasts, Greenhell will push even the most seasoned of players to their limits. By immersing you without resources in the heart of the Amazonian forest, this production by Creepy Jar and Forever Entertainment has made a name for itself in the genre of survival games by its significant difficulty and its sense of detail. In Greenhell, absolutely everything around you can eventually become a problem. From tropical diseases to river parasites, natives more or less sympathetic to your protein intake… The dangers are multiple and the game rewards you well, offering the most motivated players a sense of accomplishment with each new sunrise. sun, not to mention its scenario which is far from being ridiculous. On the technical side, Greenhell is a feast for the eyes, despite its relatively venerable age (2018), benefits from numerous mods on PC and allows you to easily play with friends with up to four players. We will simply blame him for his lack of replayability.
4 – Sons of the Forest (PC)
Released just a few weeks ago, Sons of the Forest quickly made a strong impression on survival game enthusiasts. This sequel to the famous The Forest, which revolutionized the genre when it was released in 2014, has proven its relevance through its almost flawless technique and its extremely addictive gameplay. For lovers of extreme survival, it may sometimes seem a bit easy, especially because of the many collectible edible objects that make hunger incidental. But its complete construction system and its exhilarating combats make it a reference of the genre by default. Add to that a deliciously horrifying story and the fact that it can allow you to play up to 8 players and you have a game that deserves its place in this top 5.
3 – Project Zomboid (PC)
It’s hard to make a top 5 of the best survival games without mentioning the little nugget Project Zomboid. Developed by the independent studio The Indie Stone since 2011, this UFO of the genre has won over players and critics with its own personality and its organic sandbox side. By providing players with complex gameplay, where each survivor must manage parameters such as hunger, mental stability, fatigue and pain, all in servers of up to 126 players, Project Zomboid creates environments that are believable, even almost realistic. Enough to forget its slightly outdated 2D graphics to dive into adventures so captivating that they will almost make you enter an involuntary role play, which in my opinion is the very essence of excellent survival games. To try absolutely.
2 – Valheim (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series with crossplay, Linux)
Defining Valheim as a survival game is ambitious enough, but it’s hard not to repeat the excellence of this Iron Gate Studios creation under all roofs. Released in 2021, this independent game quickly made its mark in the genre to become in a few weeks one of the biggest commercial surprises in the history of video games. In less than a month, the dozen or so people behind the development of this modest survival game have seen no less than 8 million copies sold on Steam. Enough to catch the eye of Xbox, which quickly made it one of the foals of its Xbox Game Pass, later pushing for a release on Xbox One and Xbox Series. It must be said that Valheim has it all. An incredible soundtrack, simple and beautiful landscapes, a wide variety of animals and creatures to defeat, progression through biomes that is both arduous and refreshing, a realistic construction system, epic boss battles… attract even the most hardcore of Minecraft fans. Today, the game has benefited from admittedly late but extremely complete updates, and even players who have already finished it when it was released can be tempted to play a new game under the branches of Yggdrasil.
1 – DayZ (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
Granted, placing a 12-year-old game on the top spot of the Best Survival Games podium may seem odd, but any gamer who has dared to invest time in DayZ will be able to agree. Far from being the most accessible of the games on this list, DayZ is on the contrary a real way of the cross. Your apprenticeship will be long, your deaths painful, your frustration immeasurable, but none, and I mean no game provides the same sensations as this creation from Bohemia Interactive. It took ten years, developers and a dedicated community to turn this ex-Arma 2 mod into one of the best games of all time, featuring community-modified servers whose diversity will appeal to all types of players. . In DayZ, you are dropped on a beach shore, in t-shirts and shorts, without a map, without a compass, in the midst of zombies on steroids and hunted by players much more experienced and equipped than you. Does that already seem like too much? Wait, you will also have to manage your hunger, your thirst, avoid diseases, broken bones, sprained ankles (yes, yes), poison gas, jammed weapons, wild animals and of course, the cold. Except that what is so special is that this mess is for everyone, and that DayZ offers proximity chat, creating moments of unintentional role-playing amid all the mess.
Only DayZ will make you mourn the loss of a stranger you shared a box of spaghetti with hours earlier, only DayZ will have you trading for your life with unpredictable players, alone DayZ will have that much adrenaline pumping through your veins in firefights where the slightest misstep means your death or that of your friends. So yes, the game is dated, some animations seem outdated, and it’s hard, very hard to learn. But a strong risk implies a reward all the more beautiful, and at a time when players are beginning to be jaded to repeat the same actions in the same games year after year, DayZ brings a lot of freshness and difficulty to the most determined. Without forgetting an extremely realistic gunplay which does not have to blush in front of Tarkov and which moreover has managed to seduce many big names in the competitive FPS scene, Shroud and Summit to name a few. A game that is not for everyone, but to test at least once.