The Best Story-Driven Survival Games

Compared to playing most other genres of games, survival games are a more focused experience. For the most part, they have one singular driving goal: to survive. Sure, they might have secondary goals or a bit of a storyline, but the thing that drives the player’s experience forward is the need to survive.

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Some survival games are different, though. They give the player a reason to survive through their narratives. While the survival mechanics are just as integral to the experience, the story drives the player’s experience forward. We’ve already talked about the survival games with the best stories. Here, we’re talking about survival games driven by their stories. All the games here are “true” survival games, rather than games that have a light focus on survival or include one or two survival mechanics.

Updated January 22, 2025, by Robbie Mitchell: When first discussing survival games with the best stories, this ranking focused on more narrative-driven entries. But, games don’t have to be narrative-driven to feature good stories, just look at Dark Souls’ and Elden Ring’s lore-obsessed fan bases. With this in mind, this list has been updated with a couple of entries that focus more on survival but still have good stories for players willing to do the legwork and uncover them through exploration.

10

Conan Exiles

Piece Together The Story Through Scattered Lore Fragments

Survival

Action-Adventure

Systems

Released

May 8, 2018

OpenCritic Rating

Fair

Conan the Barbarian has been around since the first pulp stories were written about him by Robert E. Howard in the early 1930s. He’s appeared in magazines, books, films, and his fair share of video games and the lore surrounding him has gradually expanded, becoming more and more complicated. When Conan Exiles was first announced, fans were initially disappointed they wouldn’t be playing the titular character.

In fact, outside the game’s opening moments, Conan is barely in the game. Instead, players take on the role of an exiled character whom Conan rescues from being executed. Rather than centering around Conan’s exploits, the game’s story is mostly about fleshing the lore of the Exiles Lands and the conflict between the Giant-Kings and the Lemurians. This is done through environmental storytelling, scattered lore fragments, exploring ruins, and collecting artifacts, as well as the occasional chat with an NPC. While not as focused as other entries on this list, this approach encourages exploration and lets the player piece together the plot at their own pace. The best survival games focus on player freedom and that’s what Conan Exiles does, never rail-roading the player into simply following the story. But for those interested in it, there’s actually quite a lot of surprisingly well-written narrative to uncover.

9

Raft

If Someone Turned Waterworld Into A Video Game

Raft is a survival game with a fairly simple premise. The player, known as a “Forward Scout” has a raft and tries to survive on a map that has been almost completely flooded. As they explore, they discover this is a near-future world where climate change has led to the ice caps melting, leading to a massive global flood that ate up nearly all the dry land. As a Forward Scout, the player is searching for a rumored utopia where people still live on dry land.

A bit like Conan Exiles, Raft’s story is more of an optional extra. The player progresses the story by following radio signals that lead them to map locations like Caravan Town and Tangaroa which reveal more about the game’s story. The story is told through environmental storytelling, notes, and journal entries that reveal what happened to the world and its few remaining survivors. Players are free to ignore the story and focus on survival if they wish, but they’d be missing out. The story explores themes like the consequences of climate change and class division with surprising depth and many of the journal entries are quite touching.

8

Subnautica

Cleanse The Planet And Escape

Subnautica was fairly unique for a survival game when it was released, for several reasons. Not only was it a survival game with next to no combat, but the experience was driven by a surprisingly good narrative. Stranded on planet 4546B, the player is tasked with finding a way to escape.

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While that initially seems easy, they soon discover that 4546B was quarantined after being infected with strange alien bacteria. To escape, the protagonist must learn more about the planet’s history, find a cure, and shut down the quarantine. This narrative constantly drives the player’s experience forward, leading them to new equipment, schematics, and places to explore. The actual survival elements quickly become an afterthought as players are instead pushed to unravel the planet’s many mysteries.

7

The Forest

Looking For Little Timmy

Systems

Released

April 30, 2018

Developer(s)

Endnight Games

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

The Forest’s narrative starts out pretty simple. A passenger jet crashes on a mysterious island. The only survivors are Eric LeBlanc and his son, Timmy. As Eric wakes up in the wreckage of the crashed plane, he sees his little Jimmy being carried out by some strange mutated locals. Being a good dad, Eric decides he should probably try and find his son.

The opening hours of The Forest are a great example of a survival game that makes players feel vulnerable. Cannibals are everywhere, food and water are scarce, and Eric is always on the verge of death. As the player explores the island, however, their focus soon switches to the story. The hunt for Timmy drives them to explore increasingly dangerous caves, where they’ll learn more about the island via some excellent environmental storytelling, and they’ll find better gear as well. The ending has the player discovering a disturbing underground facility and tasks them with making a difficult moral decision.

6

Sons Of The Forest

Looking For A Billionaire

Sons of the Forest is a fairly recent sequel that still seems to be receiving updates, so we’re not going to enter into spoiler territory here. Its narrative is pretty similar to the first game and has the player and an AI companion landing on another strange island to hunt down a missing billionaire.

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Now that the 1.0 version is out, Sons of the Forest can be safely described as one of the best FPS survival games. The game is even more narrative-driven than the original and encourages the player to start unraveling the island’s secrets as quickly as possible. Doing so rewards the player with new gear and weapons that quickly make the survival mechanics feel trivial. The game’s story eventually ties into the first game in surprising ways, and things get very weird. Whether Sons of the Forest is better than its big brother is up for debate, but it’s certainly even more narrative-driven.

5

The Long Dark

Split Between Two Modes

The Long Dark is split between two modes. There’s a Survival Mode, which is full of the usual survival game features and tasks the player with surviving as long as possible; then there’s a Story Mode. The Story Mode, split over five chapters, is a much more structured experience.

Fans are still waiting for the final chapter to release in late 2024, so we’ll avoid spoilers again. In general terms, the player controls protagonist Will Mackenzie, who crash lands while helping Dr. Astrid Greenwood on a mysterious mission. Each mission focuses on Will helping to complete it while uncovering the truth about what happened to the world before the game’s events. This mode is very story-driven and holds the player’s hand by telling them where to go and which areas to explore. The survival elements are still there, but they’re dialed down in favor of focusing on the narrative.

4

Green Hell

Has Anyone Seen My Wife?

Green Hell is mostly known for its hard-as-nails survival mechanics. As one of the most realistic survival games ever made, playing Green Hell feels a lot like trying to spin plates during a hurricane. While these in-depth survival mechanics might be the game’s biggest draw for many survival fans, Green Hell is a surprisingly narrative-driven affair.

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Much like other entries on this list, the vast majority of the exploration in Green Hell is driven by the story. The protagonist, Jake Higgins, is looking for his wife, Mia, and will stop at nothing to find her. That means scouring every inch of Green Hell’s map to look for traces of her in abandoned camps and Indigenous villages. While the player is free to ignore the narrative after completing the tutorial, doing so is a huge mistake and means they’ll miss out on much of what makes the game so special.

3

Pathologic 2

4 Acts Over 12 Days

Survival Horror

RPG

Adventure

Systems

Released

May 23, 2019

Developer(s)

Ice-Pick Lodge

OpenCritic Rating

Fair

Playing Pathologic 2 is a unique experience. While technically a survival horror game, it puts much more emphasis on traditional survival mechanics than other games in the genre. At the same time, it’s much more structured than most survival games, featuring a story made up of 4 acts spread over 12 in-game days.

Each day furthers the game’s narrative and is full of unique events and interactions with the game’s villagers. The survival mechanics can be grueling, but they’re there to make the game more difficult. The focus is almost 100% on its excellent story. Every day, the player is forced to make tough moral decisions that tie into the multiple potential endings, and making the “right” decision can come at the cost of making survival harder.

2

We Happy Few

Finding The Truth About Joy

Systems

Released

August 10, 2018

Developer(s)

Compulsion Games

OpenCritic Rating

Weak

We Happy Few has one of the most interesting settings for a survival game. It’s set in an alternate history-1960s authoritarian England, where the general populace is constantly medicated with a narcotic called Joy, and anyone who refuses to take it is hunted down and imprisoned. The game features three protagonists, each of whom has their own narrative that eventually links up with the others.

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Arthur Hasting is a government clerk who stops taking Joy and decides to find out the truth about his past. Sally Boyle is a new mother whose upmarket life begins to fall apart as she tries to protect her newborn. Ollie Starkey is a grumpy old soldier turned rebel who has decided to take the fight to England’s regime. Interestingly, each character’s narrative affects their survival mechanics. For example, Arthur isn’t taking Joy, which means he’s always at risk of discovery, while Ollie is diabetic, which makes managing his food intake more difficult. This blend of survival elements and narrative focus makes We Happy Few a survival game where the player must use unconventional tactics to survive and discover the truth about Joy.

1

Grounded

Honey, I Shrunk The Player

Now that Grounded is out of alpha, it’s a much more narrative-driven experience than it was at first. The game follows four teenagers who have been accidentally shrunk and are now trapped in a backyard garden, surrounded by oversized dangers. They must survive from day to day while searching for a way to return to normal size.

Players are free to ignore the narrative and just focus on survival if they wish, but the game does its best to nudge them forward using the story. Sometimes this is subtle; for example, to gain better gear, players will need to explore the garden. Doing so will naturally progress elements of the story. Other times, it’s less subtle, and players are actively given narrative-driven objectives and quests that will literally tell the player where to go and what to do. This narrative-driven approach means ignoring the story altogether, which can lead to player progression quickly grinding to a halt. The story is pretty good, so there’s really no reason not to let the game take the reins once in a while.

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