Survival games aren’t necessarily known for being story-driven, as the focus of these titles is typically to, well, survive. Game mechanics like crafting and base-building take precedence, as well as ensuring you don’t die from hunger or even worse means. Still, there are plenty of games within the genre that do craft (pun intended) a great story along the way.
We asked the editors at TheGamer to recommend their favorite survival games with great narratives, so if that’s the kind of game you’re looking for right now, you’ll definitely find something worth playing here. Whether it’s through environmental storytelling, psychological horror, or how you yourself play the game, these survival games tell excellent stories.
Subnauticaisn’t just my favourite survival game, but also one of my favourite games of all time. The raw sense of thalassophobia you feel as you descend into the depths, the terror of encountering your first leviathan, and the sense of accomplishment you feel as you tame your aquatic surroundings is like nothing else the genre offers.
Uncommonly for the genre, it also has a proper, fully-fleshed out story, set in the same universe as Unknown Worlds’ other game, Natural Selection. Planet 456B has tons of lore to discover, and as you uncover the secrets of the planet and encounter more of its native inhabitants, you slowly come to realise Alterra isn’t the space-faring good guys you start out assuming they are.
Survival games aren’t usually known for their gripping stories. Instead, we soak in good survival games for the compulsively engaging gameplay loop they give us. Gathering food, crafting weapons, building bases, fighting enemies, creating farms, growing a community, and basically just thriving on surviving. So a good story when it comes to a survival game is rooted in the environment and the overall premise, i.e. why you need to spend time trying to survive. To date, no other title’s story has hooked me the way Obsidian Entertainment’sGroundeddid. Just the premise alone is enough to make you raise your eyebrows in interest.
A survival game that’s basically a Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids backyard experience? Comeon, that’s just brilliant! And while you don’t get cinematic moments or intense dialogue the way you would in something likeThe Last of Us, every aspect of Grounded’s gameplay loop is immersed in its premise. Whether it’s theacorn bits and ladybug shells you use as materials for armoror the fact that the distance markers in your UI are in centimeters, all of it contributes to laying out the world of the game. And uncovering why your characters have been shink-rayed into tininess is the perfect light story for this exemplary survival game.
Despite horrors often being noted for generic storytelling, I’ve always found that survival horrors connect more deeply than straight-up survival games. The fear of something tangible often provides a stronger goal than just conserving your hunger and radiation meters as we see in other games manages to grip at my throat and stick in the memory, and no game does that more thanAlien: Isolation.
One of the few Alien games to understand the power of the Xenomorph, Isolationadds to the canon of the original moviewhile respecting its legacy, and provides fear around every corner. With an intelligent enemy that learns how you play intimately and several moments that plunge you deep into the Alien mythos, Alien: Isolation is not just a great survival game, it is perhaps the game most in tune with the adrenaline rush that the very word ‘survive’ conjures in our minds.
There are few games out there that are as pure of a love letter to classic sci-fi retrofuturism likeNo Man’s Sky. This applies to more than just the polygonal ships and surreal alien planets. The story beats scattered throughout the cosmos nail that artistic vision even more. From the randomly encountered buildings full of some disease to NPCs asking for help, dialog boxes play out micro stories, told with the perfect tone and descriptive prose to match the game’s entire vibe.
There are more than those one-time beats, too. Multi-stage plotlines, like that of Artemis, tell somber, complex stories through a very personal perspective, blending the fear and grandeur of an endless space together. It made me think about existence in a way no other game has. It’s all of the mystery and philosophy of Robert E. Heinlein but without the self-aggrandizing. To accomplish all that while still retaining its optional, hand-off approach to storytelling is incredible and something any sci-fi fan should stop and appreciate.
Silent Hill 2
WHERE TO PLAY
THE SILENCE IS BROKEN…James Sutherland’s life is shattered when his young wife Mary suffers a tragic death. Three years later, a mysterious letter arrives from Mary, beckoning him to return to their sanctuary of memories, the dark realm of Silent Hill.Now James must go back to that special place to uncover the truth, unaware that the answers he seeks require the ultimate sacrifice.• Return to Silent Hill in an entirely new adventure with all-new characters and monsters.• Battle horrifying creatures with a new arsenal of weapons and items.• Riveting storyline, stunning graphics and true-to-life CG movies leave you on the edge of your seat.• Atmospheric lighting and ambient 3D surround sound shift and change at each terrifying turn.• Dynamic camera angles, beautifully rendered environments, and real-time weather effects deliver a cinematic horror experience.
I was incredibly late toSilent Hill 2, only getting around to it last year. But it’s a story that resonates across generations. It distorts familiar surroundings to represent the suffocation and isolation of grief, capturing the rawness of loss and how it can all at once make us feel overwhelmingly alone.
It’s all dependent on what ending you get, but the story that sticks with me most is how James Sunderland pulls himself out of his despair and puts the past behind him, overcoming his grief not by ignoring his trauma, but by confronting it. It’s a story that bleeds into the world itself, weaving this powerful message through everything from monster designs to the thick fog obscuring the path forward.
You wake up in the summer of 1994, somewhere in Knox County, Kentucky. The world has ended, and the streets are full of the undead. You are the only survivor left, and the story of your next few days is entirely up to you. Will you perish after a few hours, ripped to shreds on a quest for a cooking pot, or will you survive long into the winter, with a working power supply and a storage room full of Canned Carrots?
There is no set story in Project Zomboid — instead, the game provides you with an intricate sandbox where everything is realistically simulated, down to metal exploding in the microwave.
Ultimately, the experience is one of loneliness and horror. It’s not easy to carve a life for yourself in the ruined wastes of rural Kentucky, and even once you do so, you’re faced with the most challenging question of all — what is your purpose in a world where you’re the only one left? In my case, I usually collect every mannequin and set them up around my base, so I can pretend I have some friends. The best stories are the ones that write themselves.
Much like a few other entries on this list,The Long Darkdoesn’t have a traditional narrative. It has characters, locations, and context to unearth through its many winter environments, but it also asks you to piece all of these disparate elements together yourself.
It is a game about vibes first and foremost, and the tales you’re able to piece together after stumbling into cabins in search of warmth, trying in vain to figure out who left these resources behind and where they might be now. Even your own identity, which is seldom indulged in, fuels the narrative fire.
Yomawari: Night Alone (dupe)
Yomawari: Night Aloneis a survival horror game with a heavy focus on scares rather than typical survival mechanics like crafting and base building, but boy do you feel like you’re just trying to survive the night. You play as a young girl looking for her older sister, who left home earlier that evening to find their missing dog. You’re completely defenseless (being able to throw rocks and paper planes doesn’t really count) against thedeadly and gruesome yokaithat roam the town at night.
On the surface, the story is fairly simple, but the depth comes when you consider that you’re viewing these events from the perspective of a little girl who’s barely ten years old. Some of the yokai you come across have fascinating backstories to uncover as well. On the whole, Yomawari: Night Alone has a lot to say about mortality, and coming to grips with it as a young person.
Looking for a new and exciting survival game to try?Nightingale is available on Steamin Early Access starting July 25, 2025!
Survival Week
Welcome to the home of TheGamer’s Survival Week, a celebration of all things, well, survival. Here you’ll find features, interviews, and more dedicated to this popular genre, brought to you by Inflexion Games' upcoming open-world survival crafter, Nightingale.
