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For many players, survival games are the bread and butter of the whole hobby. Whether you're in the market for hardcore, super-realistic experiences that pit your avatar against the very forces of nature, or if you'd like to try your hand at facing off against supernatural threats, the survival game genre has got much to offer. Your only prerequisite is that you need to be able to persist against a whole sandbox's worth of dangers - all out to get you.
The best PC survival games are, of course, free-form and - preferably - open-world. Designed specifically to allow their disparate gameplay systems to interact with one another and correlate in a way that constantly challenges the player. Sometimes, these challenges are simple and easy, while other times they may well be insurmountable. Ideally, though, the player is the progenitor of all of these challenges, as the rest of the game world pivots and adapts according to what they are doing and how they are progressing.
These are the qualities we look for in this list of the very best PC survival games we sell here at 2Game. That, indeed, is what you'll find in our shortlist of must-have titles featured below: some of them are available as Steam, Epic, and/or UConnect purchases, while others may only be accessible via Game Pass. Whatever the case may be, you can rest assured knowing for a fact that you'll have lots of fun playing them!
READ MORE: The Best Racing Games to Play on PC
2Game's Best PC Survival Games
Pacific Drive
A delightfully inventive and immersive survival experience, Pacific Drive places the ultimate emphasis not on your character, but on their vehicle. This vehicle being, of course, an anomalous entity in and of itself: one you can keep upgrading ad infinitum with new gadgets, armor setups, customization options, and remarkably out-of-the-box gameplay options. It's a great game, is what we're getting at!
The trick with Pacific Drive, though, is that it's not a classic survival experience. Instead of being able to build a base wherever, whenever, you've got a basic garage that you keep coming back to, with the levels that you travel through being procedurally generated, instead. The system works great, though, and we think most players will be quite happy with it.
Don't Starve Together
A uniquely strange isometric multiplayer survival experience, Don't Starve Together is an online off-shoot of the original Don't Starve: it's the same game, really, but with other folks joining you in your plight. Aside from Don't Starve's emblematic visual style and the subject matter itself, DST isn't necessarily a novelty in and of itself. You get a classic survival experience with resource collection, vicious monsters, and a meticulously designed progression system.
Of course, this isn't a problem. When you're into survival games, these features most often come part and parcel, and Don't Starve Together does not disappoint in this regard. A perfect match for low-end PCs, too, as well as gaming handhelds!
Grounded
Grounded asks you: what if you were a kid who got shrunken down to be smaller than a humble ant? How would you survive? How would you even navigate the intricacies of your own backyard? Well, here's your chance to answer all of those questions and way more.
More generally, Grounded is a highly polished and satisfying survival game that tackles all the usual genre tropes in the best possible way. Fair warning, though: Grounded is not all that recommended if you're afraid of bugs, spiders, and other assorted creepy crawlies. You get to face those a lot, and it gets dire in some situations.
V Rising
Look, it's no Legacy of Kain, but we were absolutely thrilled with V Rising from day one, regardless. Here, you step into the shoes of a custom-made vampiric overlord ordained to build up their fort and take control over a world that's all but forgotten them. V Rising is still a pretty challenging survival game, mind, it's just that your tools also include magical abilities, thralls, and an assortment of other vampiric delights.
With that in mind, V Rising is an excellent choice for those who'd like something a tad different, but still in touch with its survival experience roots. We cannot recommend it enough, that's for sure!
Valheim
A Nordic open-world survival game, Valheim places maximum emphasis on letting the player do anything and everything they wish. The flip side of that is that the survival sandbox is extremely challenging and granular here. For example, you can't build a roof if your wooden beams aren't actually supported in a way that makes sense. You'll need to learn the basics over and over again before you can reliably stay alive for long periods of time, and that's before getting into the boss fight reeds, to begin with.
This isn't a critique, mind: Valheim is one of the most immersive survival games on the market, bar none. Playing it is a delight no matter where you are at a given point in time, and there's much to love and enjoy here, for sure.
State of Decay 2
Another zombie-themed survival experience, State of Decay 2 is Microsoft's premiere take on this admittedly tired old trope. What makes State of Decay 2 special is its focus on multiple survivors, rather than just the one you begin with. Your goal here is to build up a whole community's worth of apocalypse survivors, each with their own abilities, quirks, and preferences.
A ridiculous amount of customization, loot, vehicles, and gameplay options spices things up in the moment-to-moment gameplay, too, helping make State of Decay 2 that much more interesting than most other niche examples.
Ark: Survival Evolved
Depending on who you ask, Ark: Survival Evolved may well be the best survival game of all time. Its main draw - of course - is the truly incredible roster of prehistoric creatures you get to fight, tame, ride, and battle against one another. True to its title, though, Ark is also a bit of a science-fiction horror experience that ends up focusing more and more on its sci-fi elements the further you progress. For some this is a pro, while others may consider it a con.
In our book, Ark is made as good as it is thanks to its unique blend of prehistoric and science-fiction elements: it's the sort of game you can play for hundreds of hours on end and still not see everything it's got to offer. With that in mind, it's a bit of a must-play for genre fans.
Fallout 4 (Survival Mode)
Fallout 4's dedicated Survival Mode difficulty is a thing to behold. We know, we know - the base game is barely even a full-featured RPG, but slap Survival Mode on top of it and you've got something truly monumental indeed. With Survival turned on, Fallout 4 becomes a remarkably challenging survival RPG that pulls absolutely no punches. It gets really close to STALKER, in fact, and if you mod it further according to your preferences, the game will keep you busy for dozens of hours on end.
Fallout 4's modding community is the biggest draw here, of course. While the Survival Mode itself is a Bethesda default option (one that we eagerly anticipate for Starfield, too), you'll want to upgrade and tune it further still, for sure.
No Man's Sky
A slightly more casual survival sandbox than most others on this list, No Man's Sky is still a hugely relevant experience that only gets better with each new update. Heck, mere weeks ago we finally received the ship customization functionality we had been waiting for from day one. The developer Hello Games is, indeed, still actively improving and iterating upon No Man's Sky's survival features. While the game isn't nearly as in-depth of a survival experience as, say, Valheim, it's got lots of other things going for it.
The ability to seamlessly explore a whole galaxy, for one, is a big draw in our book!
Minecraft
Finally, Minecraft. Renowned for its Creative Mode hijinks, it's easy to forget that Minecraft began its life as a voxel-based survival game. In that respect, too, the game's only gotten better over time, and it's hard to beat even if we disregard the game's ridiculous modding community.
You shouldn't do that, though: Minecraft mods are the bread and butter of its thriving survival sandbox. You can make the game as easy or challenging as you want, and the experience will remain fun and rewarding no matter what. An easy recommendation!
What's Your Next Survival Sandbox?
And that about does it for our list of the finest PC survival games we have available here at 2Game! We believe we've covered just about every survival game niche under the sun, so it should be a safe bet that you, too, discovered something new and exciting to engage with.
Here's the thing, though: we're not done yet! As with all of our other evergreen game recommendation articles, this one too will change and evolve as time goes on and new games come out. So, to stay on top of the genre, make sure that you drop back in as often as possible, as the odds are good we'll always have something new and exciting to share with you.
Get in the Game ! 
