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Thought we could use a thread for these since apparently everyone plays them now, and at the same time there's such a glut of them out there it's hard to know which ones were good.

In the beginning I had Unreal World and only Unreal World, unless you count things like Harvest Moon as falling into this genre. There were other games that had crafting or survival elements, but nothing with any kind of satisfying depth. I had to resort to managing resources in city builders much of the time for anything like a similar fix. I used to wish very hard that the genre would become more popular and we'd start seeing professionally developed game tackle the idea.

Then behold, we had Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft and Cataclysm and NeoScavenger and Rimworld and suddenly it was as if the floodgates were opened.

Only it turned out my wish was granted by an evil genie who got a kick out of twisting it because now there are crafting elements half-assedly crammed into everything and a zillion Minecraft clones and zombie survival games and even with games that seem to be aiming for exactly what I want, there are far too many to keep up with and they're mostly unbalanced, too pointlessly, autistically complicated or too shallow, and usually shoved out the door only half finished to begin with. Also, I just don't have time to really get deeply into a game anymore.

Maybe if you guys talk about a few specific favorites and why something will click for me, or at least you get to shill for a game you like to people who may not have heard of it.

I feel like Unreal World is still the deepest, most involved survival game there is. I don't see the simplistic graphics as a turn off and the only criticism I have is common to this genre, in that starting out with a new character is where most of the fun is, and the mid and end game is lacking. Trap fences are OP and once you get a little smokehouse built and take out an elk much of the challenge is gone, short of going on suicidal raids or taking other pointless risks.

The Long Dark had a lot of potential but I haven't played it since they added the story mode or whatever, and I've heard very mixed things about whether that was an improvement or not. (Another annoyance with the 'never quite finished' style of game development and automatic patching...you never know when an update may come along that fucks things up royally, and then the game you used to love is replaced with one that sucks.)

Rimworld is insanely addictive and good but it's more of a classic management game. Minecraft...I guess people still play Minecraft? I don't really keep up with it more. It was fun but ultimately got samey unless you were willing to spend more time modding than actually playing, and the entire modding scene was pain and drama. This War of Mine and Sheltered were fun at first but quickly became repetitive and formulaic. My preference is always for something more open though.

Two newish games that intrigue me are Balrum and ICY: Frostbite Edition.

Balrum came out February of last year after a successful Kickstarter. I hadn't heard of it until recently but the description at least seems designed from the ground up to make me want to play it. "Balrum is an old-school, hybrid turn-based, open world RPG with deep tactical combat. Explore a huge living fantasy world with dozens of side quests next to an epic main quest. Grow your own crops, build your home, and craft your own custom items."

Plus Ultima Online style graphics still give me the tingles. But I can't seem to find a scrap of actual info about the alleged "epic main quest" on the store page and I have no idea how balanced or engaging the farming bits are. Anyone heard anything about this one?

ICY seems more promising at a glance, people have said the plot is fantastic and the survival elements make it a real challenge. It's only been out since August however so there's only a few reviews. (Supposedly there's an original version that was pretty meh, but it's been massively improved on here.)

I mean this all looks great?

FEATURES

Experience an intense story of survival in a unique post-apocalyptic new ice age setting.
Influence the plot with your choices, with numerous shades of morality that lead to multiple endings.
Lead a group of survivors, each one with different needs, values and ideals.
Scavenge for items and hunt for food while facing the challenges of starvation, illness, harsh elements and other bands of survivors.
More than 400 pieces of detailed hand-drawn artwork that portray the bleak and dire landscape of the frozen world.
Customize your character by choosing how to distribute attribute points among 9 different skills that affect your abilities and experience through the entire game.
Enjoy the new combat system offering a mix between a classic turn based combat system and a trading card game.

It's $13 so I'll probably grab it. I just don't know when I'll get a chance to actually play.

There's Breath of the Wild which I haven't played but want real bad. I'll probably try and pick up a used Wii U at some point. Meanwhile I'm aware of mods for Skyrim etc. that turn it into more of a proper 'survive the cold North' type of game, so I'm sure there are other examples of that sort of thing out there.

I would suggest Fallout 4. The crafting and survival mechanics are greatly expanded once you get some mods working and you get the added benefit of a really densely packed world with great combat. Also, the DLCs are all survival/craftibg focused so thts a plus.

You can also not go wrong with STALKER Call of Pripyat with the Complete and Misery mods. No much in terms of building but the survival elements are unparalleled.

Didn’t know they came out with a new edition of Icy. I remember when I first linked to it here a few years back it looked cool, never played it though. Hadn’t heard of Balrum.

I’ve played some of the Long Dark’s story mode (Version I played came with it), where I was sort of finishing up one of the major quest line in the first big town you find and then suddenly the game kept getting bombarded with updates and additions. So I haven’t gone back to it since I figure I’ll just wait until they finally get their shit completely together before starting again.

Never got into Minecraft and found it boring after about ten minutes, I like Terraria a lot better.

Played some of Neoscavenger which I enjoyed even if I never got very far. I found it more amusing that Detroit was considered the largest civilized zone in the area. That's how you know the the world is really fucked when that's the case.

I got to day 100 and something with Sheltered and I sort of stopped playing since survival got much easier with the self-refilling water containers I’ve built. I know there is supposed to be a little more to the game though. (Still haven’t fixed the RV or found a new and bigger shelter for instance) Maybe one day I’ll go back to it.

This War of Mine is okay. The problem is there is an anti-war agenda tied to the game which limits it a bit. Granted it probably does it better than most games pushing some sort of agenda (Bioware lol) but there should have been a little more variety with the citizens trying to survive.

Sure it’s realistic that a lot of people just aren’t going to be able to handle too much horrors of war and break down into a blubbering mess which the game is supposed to represent, but there is also that percent that gets all too comfortable with it.

Should have had a randomizer for all the characters so they weren’t as predictable. Maybe even had some special epilogues for those that got too comfortable with being axe crazy and they soon found themselves in a whole mess of trouble after the war was over since they couldn’t go back to their normal life.

I dunno if you’ve looked at The Forest. I think they finally finished working on the major bits with it. (Story mode at least) Probably still tinkering with it though.

And in keeping with the whole grim cold up north genre, here’s one to look out for in the future: Frostpunk. It’s done by the same people who did This War of Mine, but it’s set in an ice age apocalypse and you’re managing a whole city.

So start eating your dead and put your children to work in the factories because everyone has to chip in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeIPD_81P00

Frostspunk reminds me a wee bit of a free flash game called Village of Nightmares. Simlar concept in where you're in snowy zombie infested Russia and you have to manage a small village.

I never did reply to this but Frostpunk looks pretty interesting. Not that I ever even freaking play games anymore but I will try and keep track of that one for the purposes of filing it neatly away in my library.

The Forest I've been interested in for awhile but everyone said it was half finished and then in seemed like it stayed in that state for a very long while. Also it sounded like it pretty quickly became more about fighting an endless wave of cannibals than the survival aspects, but if they've gotten around to a major update then I'll probably grab it. (Although at this point in the year I should probably just wait for a sale...)

I found a guide for a pacifist run that never aggros the cannibals, but it seems to amount to tiptoeing around them and never building up your base, and base building is half the fun for me with this kind of game.

My heart always had a soft spot for building/management sort of games. Mainly because they were the best kind of flash games that really had a lot of effort put into them while playing as a kid.

It all started with Penguin Diner ;(.

The only surival sort of games that I'm still invested in would be Kenshi, Project Zomboid and Rimworld.


If more developes followed in what Kenshi did but actually gave your squad soliders personalities instead of making it like Wasteland where you had to come up with everything yourself then I would find it insanely more fun. It's just the prospect of having relations with other insanely big factions and being able to make your own faction to rival the biggest one's in the area is what intrigues me more tjan anything.

That's why I had hoped that they made a spinoff Metal Gear. Where it was more of a management game, and you could have relations with world powers while building up mother base.

Battle brothers also filled that niche, but on a smaller scale. Rimworld has been the best gem to hit this genre in like forever. It gives you the basics of a story and just lets you go crazy. Now if their were civilization IV types of diplomacy implemented then It would be perfect.

For crafting and stuff, Terraria is pretty cool and has quite a lengthy goal to beat the game blockaded with several boss fights and lot of interesting monsters and event. It's sometimes challenging but usually it's a chill game that you can create interesting things in though it does focus more on fighting than minecraft. I enjoyed it be it was a little bit faster paced than minecraft. Oh right. Almost forgot to mention it's a 2D platform style game  

There's also the Dont Starve series. Interesting plot and unique art and very challenging survival game. I've played Don't Starve Together which is the second sorta and it's multiplayer. It will kick your ass though. It's also an old timey rpg style game.(Like Pokémon. 

If I remember right both of them were free??? I think. 

I still can’t even get past the initial world you start on in Story mode on Don’t Starve despite how many times I’ve played it. I probably tend to go overboard with wanting to explore and it ends up getting me killed in some way.

Along with other stuff, the exploration factor is probably what drew me in with Terraria. First time I was playing it, I was constantly wondering just how damn deep I could go (And later finding out there were sky islands as well) and what other biomes existed.

Plus the setting has always felt a little post apocalyptic which is probably another reason why I ended up liking it. The world in general just feels pretty isolated like there was something that wiped out civilization and most of the NPCs you come across are the last remnants of humanity.

Or at least "civilized" remnants, since the only other humans I know of in the game are the pirates and they're presumably living a "survival of the fittest" life in the oceans. (Maybe the cultists too, but even if they're still human, they're obviously insane)

(I'm not why finding out endmaster plays terraria is surprising but it is)

I think the change of the world when you reach hard mode is also something I really found fun. It's like restarting the game in some ways but all of your work is still there and you are the same character. It feels really fantasy like after that but it still has evil magic feeling HP Lovecraft's apocalyptic horror. In fact I believe some of the bosses are directly drawn from and even named after some of the monsters. It looks fairly colorful and innocent but even in the first mode when just start and find corruption or crimson you kind of have a wtf moment. 

Also first time blood moon happens is always fun for new players haha

Oh, so you talk about survival mods for Skyrim, but no mention of Hardcore Mode for Fallout: New Vegas?

If you want to feel like the entire world's out to get you, Hardcore mode is the real deal. Food, water, and sleep needs, less effective medicine, actual companion death, et cetera.

Not to mention the nigh-endless supply of medicine and ammo you carried around now have actual weight.

Nothing like trying to live out in the scorching heat of the Mojave.

Tenouttaten.

From what I've heard, if you really want to play hardcore survival mode with Fallout New Vegas, you install the mod called Dust which is sort of like an unofficial darker follow up to the storyline.

Frost I guess is similar for Fallout 4.

It's alright. It's just that if you want to play it at it's best, you gotta install a bunch of stuff not included in the mod. Like STUN. And Ultimatum.

Rimworld and Minecraft are my favorites. Minecraft being more calm and building based, which I sometimes play modded, with lots of technology and spaceships and crap, and sometimes unmodded. Rimworld is a lot of fun, but I don't have it, and I really want it, because it's like my favorite type of game (Even though it's management based, I feel that you can consider it survival based).

The ones I've played lately are;

Don't Starve. DS is very good, and if the normal version isn't hard enough, try the Shipwrecked version. There's a plot somewhere, but you might get so busy surviving, you forget about it.

Darkwood; a very interesting survival game, and one of the *best* horror games I've played in awhile. Also, mushrooms are good. The story is very good, it's creepy, and the other "people"..*shudders*. The Musician is one of the most normal looking. Piotrek is absolutely bat shit insane. And look at The Three. I love this game.

Lone Survivor is pretty interesting and best of all, it's free. 

The Forest is *still* a bit buggy, but it's not a bad game. And there's nothing more terrifying than looking out your treehouse and seeing at least 27 cannibals right outside your house. Seriously, someone needs to find a flamethrower and set this entire place on fire...x'D

Subnautica! It has a very beautiful story, beautiful graphics, beautiful...everything....I'm going to go ahead and say that it's the best survival game I've ever played. And full of plenty of scary shit. 
Surprisingly lots for a non-horror game.
A lot. 
Seriously. Just imagine swimming around, minding your own business and then you see this hellish abomination and it's late at night and you haven't turned on the lights. 
I-I don't ever need to be near the ocean, right?

The Long Dark; don't play story mode. Never play story mode. Sandbox on the other hand...if you want a brutal, very mistake-punishing game, The Long Dark is pretty good. AGAIN, I MUST STATE; NEVER PLAY STORY MODE.

This War of Mine...I honestly don't have enough words to describe it. War is terrible, and a glimpse of what it's like to be a survivor... The game is a masterpiece. 10/10, would steal from the elderly again.

Saurian! Also known as the "Orphan thrown out into a cold, cold world" simulator. Your parents either shun you, or were killed within the first 10 minutes, and then if the second option happened, feast upon the dead bodies of your mom/dad untilt all the food is gone, then fumble around and eventually dying of hunger.
No, but seriously it's pretty good.

These are the only ones I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure there are some awesome ones I've missed out there x'D

"The Long Dark; don't play story mode. Never play story mode. Sandbox on the other hand...if you want a brutal, very mistake-punishing game, The Long Dark is pretty good. AGAIN, I MUST STATE; NEVER PLAY STORY MODE."

But I already did!

Does it get really sucky or something? I played up to the first major town in storymode and I thought it was okay. As I said, I would have continued, but the game started having ongoing updates, fixes and changes so I figured I wait until those were over with and just start over again anyway since I guess they rebalanced some things.

Well, I'm not sure if any changes have been made to the story mode, so it could have changed. I got The Long Dark around my birthday, and at the time story mode was already out, so I played that first.

The tutorial at the start is pretty good, and I liked it and then the collection missions came. Just collection quest after collection quest, and while the whole "survival" element did make it a bit fun at the beginning, it started getting boring. And I never felt connected to any of the characters at all.

And there was the whole way the story was done! I liked the flashbacks, but the voice acting left much to be desired (still not as bad as that one clock tower game and Downfall's voice acting but it was still bad), and the talking...well, the sentences were so awkward.

The whole "suddenly switch from voice narration to text" was kind of odd too.

And oooh all the boring backtracking I did. Not much fun.

It was just meh.

Spoiler:

And ooooh just saying. After doing all those chores for the old lady, all the firewood grabbing and food collecting, you gotta do the same for Jeremiah. 

And oh don't even get me started on the plot. Please, you don't want that.

Lol, well fuck that then. It was annoying enough when I did it the first time. Seems like that process is just to deprive you of needed survival supplies. If they're constantly making you do that, it feels more like a "fake" difficulty.

I guess whenever I go back to the game again I'll just do the sandbox mode.

Exactly. Lol. Sandbox mode only.

And jeez, when the dude asks for 20lbs of deer meat, then the next quest is to bring more food..I'm just like wtf. 

Maybe the real plot is that those two are working together to kill the main character by giving him these quests so he can waste alll his resources.

I finally remembered the game I was trying to remember.

Sunless Sea.

It's the game to play if you have no more hope and you need a reason to hate everyone and everything.
Honestly, the core concept of it is pretty cool, but oooooh I remember how hard I raged in this game.

Seriously, I'm good at survival games and I must have died a couple million times.

There's so many good ideas in the game, and it's rather fun to explore the lore. It's got the right amount of darkness, insanity, and a dash of Lovecraftian. Isn't he a darling?

But ugh the gameplay x'D It's like what a CYS story would be like if we couldn't save, we couldn't go back and there are a lot of random sharks that can kill you.

It's rougelike, and all those 10 hours spent exploring the world and finishing those quests? Yeah, no. Expect to die a lot and be reset to the start. 

But I have to zay, my comrades are quite delicious, though they'd be better with a little more zalt...

Sunless Sea was fucking brutally hard. Great game with great lore

Yes! And also yes I loved the lore x'D

I have Subnautica. I can't play it. >.> Subnautica was the game that confirmed I am thalassophobic and the ocean can get fucked okay. :[

Saurian looks fun, kind of like a fancier version of the Spore creature phase. I'll wait for a sale on that one though.

Don't worry! Playing it would only make your fears worst :D

Listening to the hellish sounds of a predator close to you but you have no idea where it is, and then seeing it come after you :D

I will never go near any ocean/large body of water ever again!

Saurian is fun! Keep in mind, when you first play it. Try to get one where your parents die or where they kill something else. You'll have a good source of food, which is really hard to find when you're a baby (hunting is hard >.> I swear, the prey can teleport the moment they find a bush or tall grass to hide in). After you've exhausted that food source, scavenge along the riverside because I've found that's usually where a lot of corpses end up and big fights where something dies happen there a lot for some reason.

Another thing I've done, did you know plant eaters are not hostile towards you when you're a baby? I've literally slipped into a big herd of them as a child, and then they can kill everything that threatens them (including t-rexes, crocodiles, other adult predators, etc.) which means food! Keep in mind, you'd better get away from them when it seems you're about to become a subadult!

You probably haven’t heard of this one, but I might as well bring it up since it’s a survival/crafting game. It’s old though (90s) so you’d probably have to play it through an emulator or an obsolete computer.

Robinson’s Requiem

This game was probably the first real survival/crafting game I ever played.

I had it for my Amiga though apparently there was a later version which had some shitty FMV whenever you spoke with someone. Thankfully I didn’t have that version.

Anyway, the game was basically you crashed on an alien planet and you had to get off of it. Naturally you could find some real supplies from wreckage of the ship, but ultimately you were going to have to live off the land if you were going to survive for longer than a couple days.

The initial supplies you start with (or rather that you can find nearby) are pretty much the only easy ones you’re going to get. Fortunately a lot of those are medical supplies and a few extra things like a knife.

From there, you’re on your own to explore. The game sort of has five areas broken up by caves tunnels that lead to each other. One is a temperate zone where you start, one is similar to that except with a larger lake that has a small island in the center of it, another is swampy, another is desert and another one is barren wasteland. There isn’t really a “cold” area, except going into the cave tunnels or when it becomes night in the desert, jumping into the water without waterproof clothing or something similar.

You can of course make stuff out of things from the planet or if you’re lucky find more supplies from the ship. You weren’t the only one aboard the ship though and you can find other survivors.

Of course not all these other survivors are going to be friendly. In fact some will just attack you on sight. It hardly matters anyway, because you need to kill ALL of the other survivors because you need parts of their computer ID (Everyone has one) to build a device to help you get off the planet.

Yep, you can’t just ask them for help or anything like that. Your only option is to just murder the shit out of them. “Morally” this usually isn’t a problem since a lot of them are assholes to you anyway and trying to kill you first, but a few are just minding their own business until you decide to shank them in the neck and take their shit.

There is ONE exception. There is one female survivor and she helps you, so you don’t kill her and you escape together.

In any case, the game is hard as hell to survive when you're first playing it. You can seriously die 1001 ways. Ranging from catching the flu by standing in the rain, dying of heat stroke, starvation, drowning, to getting mauled by a alien tiger. Hell you can even take a cyanide capsule that you can find in your medical supplies if you’re feeling suicidal.

By far the most amusing feature is probably cutting off your limbs. It’s a last resort to start chopping off your limbs, but if you let infection spread in your wounds and something goes gangrene, then amputation might be the only way you can survive. (It usually kills you anyway if you don’t prepare yourself right though with tourniquets and medicine)

Lose an arm, no more bows for you. Lose a leg, then you aren’t running anymore. Lose both arms, you’re pretty much fucked. Lose both legs, your character’s view point will actually drop lower since you’re crawling around like that dude in Freaks.

For a fun “mini-game” if you’re bored, you can see if you can manage to chop off ALL your limbs and still survive. (Yeah, I dunno how it’s physically possible to chop off all your limbs with just a bowie knife either, but you can…and then promptly die soon after most likely)

If potentially losing your limbs to infection isn’t enough, you can also lose your sight as well. As far as I know there is only one place where it’s a real danger and that’s when you’re climbing a mountain to get some alien hawk feathers (To help make your arrows). Naturally the hawk attacks you and can easily pluck your eyes out if you aren’t careful in battle.

You can lose one eye (Half your screen goes dark) and still get around, but if you lose both, well you COULD attempt to complete the game as a blindy but given that your screen is completely black and you’re most likely on a mountain ledge at the time of losing your sight, you’re probably going to fall over a cliff anyway.

Self mutilation and millions of gruesome deaths aside, I played the hell out of the game. Never did beat it (Couldn’t get past the alien dinosaur) and it got blasted by critics who bitched about it being too hard, but I always found it fascinating since it doesn’t even tell you what the hell you’re supposed to be doing or where to go. It just throws you on the planet and fuck you if you can’t keep up.

There was a sequel called Deus, but I didn’t play that one as much. Just didn’t capture my interest like the first. They did add an insanity meter I believe in that one. So if you started mentally breaking down, your character would start laughing uncontrollably at times.

Wow, I remember this game. I played it ages ago when I was searching for more games like Unreal World.

I think I died pretty much immediately, several times in a row. I don't think I was old enough to appreciate a game quite that brutal back then, but reading this makes me want to give it another shot.

Abandonia doesn't have the free download anymore (I will forever regret not backing up the hundreds of free DOSBox games I had on my old computer, now they've gone and figured out they can monetize that shit...) But the GOG version is packaged together with the sequel and just $6 so whatever.

I just bought KINGDOMS, winner of the Most Generic Title Award for 2015. I installed it and poked around a few minutes but I'm having to put it aside until I finish a couple of stories. It's got mixed reviews and still a bit rough but I've heard good things on another forum and $10 seems like a good investment if they keep working on it.

Maybe not a survival game exactly, but I think it would appeal to the same kind of players. Seems to be more about taking on roles in a big simulated world and doing whatever the hell you want, and it's been compared to Mount and Blade just with more of a focus on kingdom building than combat. Farming, hunting, building or joining a village, etc. They talk up the AI of the villagers but I'll have to test that more.

I mentioned this one in the Villain Lair, but this is probably something all of you will want to at least take a look at since being a homeless bum just might be in your future and this is probably more likely to prepare you than those wilderness survival games.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/632300/Hobo_Tough_Life/

However, if you can't get enough cold grim north type survival games (mixed with eldritch horror shit) here's another one that looks promising.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/706020/Fade_to_Silence/

Fade to Silence is indeed very cool. Plus, it's still being actively worked on by the devs!

Skyrim with mods (playing permadeath) is an exhilarating experience. Get iNeed (food, drink, sleep) and Frostfall (frozen nipples)  and you are certified surviving the harsh Skyrim landscape.

As for building games, as of lately I've sunk a little bit to much time into Fortnite Battle Royale, which is basically a third-person PUBG with a destructible environment and building mechanics. Hella fun. If you are looking for more survival than arena based multiplayer combat, buy the original and you build a base, traps, and survive waves of zombals.

Just a reminder that Frostpunk is coming out on the 24th and it will own.



I'm loving everything I've read about the Book of Laws mechanic, it really sounds like you're going to be able to do all kinds of customization for your city as long as you keep the Generator fed, happy, and not exploding, at any cost.

I'm looking forward to this for the roleplaying, considering their previous title (the fantastically titled This War of Mine) was a unique experience. That said, I expect it to be buggy as hell on launch so I'll wait for some time to get it.

I watched Aspec on Youtube play through the demo, and it looks absolutely brilliant, it's on my list of "Games I wan to play that I'm probably going to suck at". So fat that includes "They are Billions" and a couple other crafty/survival games.

holy shit, I'm so hyped for the full version of this game.

Kenshi's been visited a few times before on this site, but it's just usually the general gist that gets covered.

As it stands today, it's grown from the sand dunes it started out as to become a fully fledged world of 1 big continent, and the general things like base-building, crafting (which is a massive pain in the ass), and questlines have had some ground-laying done.

Base-building is a long an arduous effort by default (even if you crank up base-building to 4x the normal speed), and the game sends a pretty strong message that settling down at all is a group effort.  You've got separate trade skills which your characters could specialize in (or not; the game'll allow your characters to eventually max out every stat possible), which includes resource-collection labelled as labouring, building as engineering, farming for farming, and a few others.  Having multiple characters work on the same collective task makes life incredibly easier.  Only issue with it is that hunger ticks down slowly, but tends to silently kill off characters if you aren't micromanaging shit constantly.

Base-building also leans heavily in politics; building in a faction territory means that you have to pay taxes (a steep price of 3k cats, of which you'll have to haul ass if you play as a solo character). If not, be prepared to be chased out or face an onslaught of enemies.

Crafting is fucking cancer.  Resource collection is difficult without a large, operational base with at least half a dozen of workers, and you'll need a lot of a certain kind of any one resource to even consider training.  Wanna sell weapons?  Hope you got hundreds of iron bars and hundreds more measures of cotton / hemp to weave into fabric.  Narcotics?  Hope you built close enough to a town so your regulars don't die on the commute.  You get the point.

The game doesn't support nomadic lifestyles at all, unless you're in the mood to outright steal shit from towns and people.  When considering what kind of products you want to produce, you actually have to prospect the fucking region to make sure you've got enough resources / the right climate to support your venture.  Go figure.

Also, some items can't be crafted until you buy / steal blueprints and consume them.  Higher-grade variants of the same weapons you've always been crafting can't be made until you upgrade your tech level, which you can't do unless you search ruins for Research Artifacts.  It takes a painfully long time to do if you don't crank up the research and building speeds to max.

Questlines are mostly left unfinished.  You're not railed onto serving any one faction and there's no clear path to gaining their trust.  Yes, there's a bit of dialogue to get you to shop or have a small conversation, but you won't see much until you delve into experimental versions of the game (it's an opt-in program) or looking at the mods available.

Unfortunately, the game's developer doesn't support players being that amoral, so enslaving others can only be done via modding the game.  Buying slaves counts as recruitment into your faction, and they behave no differently from your normal dudes.  You can't even cannibalize people, even though cannibals exist in the game.

So yeah, it's a pretty hard game from the get-go, but once you start picking up momentum, you can end up doing pretty weird things with the freedom you're given. Like building obnoxiously large cities obnoxiously close to a faction's town.

 

Fallout is killer. Goodwill Humping was a smash hit. Other than that...Survival Kids for GBC. I know it's old and I guess I don't recommend it or anything, as it is old and kinda clunky, but holy hotdogs! This game is unexpectedly big, especially for something on such a console. There is a bunch of endings and a bajillion ways to get there. You can play the game several times and still not know half the island.

Oh, and Oregon Trail is the most hardcore survival game of all time.

Not quite survival, but if anyone has a thing for 4X games in particular, you want to get the Humble Bundle that's up now at the $12 tier.

Endless Space plus expansions, Endless Space 2, Endless Legend and the Tempest expansion plus some other stuff. I had the base games for Legend and Space already and still very worth it. I've been dabbling with EL on and off lately and just barely restraining myself from letting it consume my life, I'd have caved on the expansion sooner or later so this was perfect timing.

I didn't even completely look over everything that's there right now but there a lot too good to pass up for strategy fans. I think Stellaris is in the mix too. (Space 4X by the CKII guys that just had a huge free update)

For those too lazy to type URLs: For real this bundle is insanely good.

Just noticed it has a 66% off coupon on Total War: Warhammer as well, although I'm not too familiar with the fantasy version of the setting, how does it holds up in the grim and edgy department?

E: please note, I do not in any way approve of donating money to save a bunch of faggot dolphins, and I have no idea why PCGamer is other last as last time I checked they are not a charity, but be sure to always tip the Humble site itself a buck or two to cover professing fees for delivering your criminally cheap games or worse you are trash.

It's Warhammer, fantasy or scifi, it's ALL grim dark. You'd hate it.