f13.net forums - Survival (not horror) games?

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July 28, 2025, 09:00:54 AM

we're back, baby

Some time ago I stumbled on Lost in Blue for the DS. The idea, if you're not familiar with the game, is that you are stranded on an seemingly uninhabited island where you must gather food and water to survive. In the progress you build a hut for yourself, learn to make furniture for it and acquire new skills. You can get food by collecting fruits, fishing etc. The goal of the game is to survive and get off the island.

While not exactly great game (it gets a bit tedious after a while), it made me wonder why I haven't seen more of games with this idea. So I'll get you tell me about all the great (or crappy) survival games that I've somehow never heard of. They can be old and platform doesn't matter.

After a quick side glance of the subject, I thought it was a post about this gaming article I had read. Guess not though.

Well I've no clue what you've heard about, but are you looking for Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing type game (both on Wii). Neither of them are survive-or-die type games, but it's the same general stuff of raising a farm, I suppose. For the record, I think all games of that nature get boring and tedious after a (short) while.

You should try SOS The Final Escape on PS 2. Not sure the Eurogamer article gives a fair evaluation, but can't be bothered to find a better link...

Not a great game by any means, the engine is quite shitty, but it's pretty original. It's a survival horror game against the environment : after an earthquake, you try to leave a crumbling city without dying of thirst. I didn't finish it, but there are a lot of neat ideas, and some of the camera angles are spectacular.

It's quite easy to find I guess, and very cheap.

There is a sequel, which name I can't remember.

The best survival games outside of Lost in Blue, and of a different nature are:

Disaster Report
Raw Danger

Inactiviste just linked to one of them, but the less shitty American names are above.

Thanks, I'll check these out.

Yeah, I made a thread about this once too. Wish there more of the above.

There aren't enough things that make games out of realistic and mundane situations, period (survival, interpersonal skills, pimping, etc).

I know this isn't a videogame, but an interesting sort of distaster recovery board game is "Pandemic" by Z-Man games. It's a 1-4 player cooperative boardgame where you are trying to find the cures for 4 diseases before they destroy the world. Very cool game with some interesting mechanics.
BGG link: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/30549

While describing Lost in Blue, you neglected to mention the part where you have to care for a blind retard that attempts to sabotage every attempt at keeping her alive. The game should have been titled Lost in Blue with a Stupid Cunt.

There's also S.O.S. for the SNES, which is a pretty depressing and very difficult game to beat with the best endings.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/sos

Nethack (or any of its progenitors/offshoots) is a bit like a survival game in that you're about as likely to die of starvation as you are to be eaten by a monster.

Also, Oregon Trail? And maybe Dwarf Fortress?

I think the reason that not so many games have been made around that mechanic is that it tends to be boring and frustrating to most people.

The frustration associated with choosing death by starvation or death by eating a rotten hobbit... yeah, good old Nethack. awesome, for real

I picked up a Sims standalone thingy a while ago called "Sims Castaway Stories" which is kind of along these lines. You play as a sim washed ashore on some tropical isle, and you build your little hut and collect bananas and befriend monkeys and so on.

Two problems I had:

1-You have to play through the "story mode" to unlock items for the "free play" mode. Story mode is not horrible per se, but it is tedious. The game tells you exactly what to do ("click on the monotreme, and choose 'matriculate'"), you just have to do it, and since this is a Sims game, it's not like it's some kind of challenge.

2-There really isn't enough "survival" stuff in there. "Free play" is basically just a reskinned Sims 2. Your walls are bamboo and so on, but everything else is the same. There is no money, which I found interesting, but there are "supplies".... the problem is how you get them. You can get them by chopping wood, or collecting mangoes, or whatever, which is slow, and seems to be a fairly reasonable rate for simulating "trapped on a desert island" poverty. Or, you can choose to get a "job" (hunter, gatherer, or crafter), go to "work" every day, and bring home so many "supplies" that collecting them yourself is hilariously inefficient. You can't get running water until you set up a rainwater collector, but once you have a rainwater collector, you can just start plunking down showers and toilets and faucets all over, just like in the Sims.

Which is kind of too bad, because I like the underlying concept (going from Tom Hanks in Cast Away to monkey butlers and hot jungle girls), and it comes kind of close to that, but they just can't take that last little step.