Survival Sandbox

The atmosphere's poisonous and the water's likely acidic. Have fun!

"This is like a fucking sandbox with landmines."

— Anonymous on Rust

In the wake of the incredible success of Minecraft and DayZ, many games sprung up that incorporate some of their mechanics. The survival genre that emerged from these games is based around a few core principles:

• Usually, the player is dropped into a Wide-Open Sandbox with almost no resources. The sandbox can be either fixed or procedurally generated.
• Most, if not all, of the environment, can be broken and picked up, which the player is expected to do in order to craft all or almost all of their own equipment and shelter.
• There is a heavy emphasis on Resources Management Gameplay. The player will usually have some sort of hunger meter that constantly drains throughout the game and must be regularly replenished.
• Death is permanent, and the primary objective is simply to survive as long as possible. When death doesn't completely reset the world it will still be a massive setback.

There is considerable overlap here with the Roguelike and Survival Horror genres. It also shares its emphasis on Emergent Gameplay with the Immersive Sim, but those tend to be much more focused in terms of scope and narrative.

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Examples

• Minecraft, the Trope Maker and codifier.
• DayZ, the other Trope Codifier
• 7 Days to Die
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Astroneer
• Astro Terra
• Badiya
• Card Life
• Cataclysm
• Crea
• Colony Survival
• Conan Exiles, set in the world of Conan the Barbarian
• Core Keeper
• Darkwood
• Day One: Garry's Incident
• Day R Survival
• Deadburg
• Dead Rising (combined with Wide-Open Sandbox, Action-Adventure and Survival Horror elements with an RPG-styled level-up system)
• Death in the Water
• Dig Or Die
• Don't Starve
• Empyrion: Galactic Survival
• Enshrouded
• Expedition Zero
• The Eternal Cylinder
• Factorio
• Far Sky
• Flotsam
• The Forest
• The Flame in the Flood
• Green Hell
• Grounded
• H1Z1
• HoloEarth
• How to Survive
• Hurtworld
• Kenshi (combined with Mount & Blade-like strategic RPG gameplay)
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (combined with conventional Action-Adventure and Action RPG).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• The Light Keeps Us Safe
• The Long Dark
• Lost in Blue
• Medieval Dynasty
• Meriwether: An American Epic
• Miasmata
• Miscreated
• Mist Survival
• My Summer Car
• Necesse (combines the genre with a colony builder)
• Neo Scavenger
• Nether
• No Man's Sky
• Notrium
• Osiris New Dawn
• Palworld
• P.A.M.E.L.A.
• Phoning Home
• The Planet Crafter
• Planet Explorers
• Planet Nomads
• Project Zomboid
• Radiation Island
• Raft
• Reign Of Kings
• Rimworld (combined with "colony sim" construction and management mechanics)
• Rust
• Saurian
• Scrap Mechanic
• SCUM
• Shadows Of Kurgansk
• Sir, You Are Being Hunted
• The Solus Project
• Space Engineers
• Spoxel
• Stacklands (combined with Collectible Card Game)
• Star Forge
• Starbound
• Stars One
• Stranded
• Stranded Deep (unrelated to the above)
• The Stomping Land
• Subnautica
• Sunless Sea
• Survive The Nights
• Terraria
• UnReal World
• Unturned
• Valheim
• Vigor
• Vintage Story
• Visions of Aftermath: The Boomtown
• VoidTrain
• Wayward
• Wilderness: A Survival Adventure: The Ur-Example, released in 1985 for MS-DOS.
• Wizard with a Gun
• Withstand
• Y Lands

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