November 18 turned ten years old Minecraft – one of the most popular and influential games of our time. On the occasion of the anniversary, we decided to pay attention to her heritage – games that she inspired in one way or another.
Survival simulators abandoning the player to their own fate in a huge and by no means a friendly world, originated in the early 90s. It is believed that one of the first swallows of the genre was Unreal World, But with all her cultural and originality, she never became something truly mainstream, like most similar projects. The situation was fundamentally changed only after Marcus Person successfully integrated the elements of survival in his Minecraft, which subsequently produced the effect of an exploding bomb. And it is Minecraft along with Dayz (modification to the military joker Arma 2, dedicated to survival in the conditions of a zombie apocalypse) drew the attention of developers and gamers to the genre, previously considered an outsider. About the five best survival simulators today will be discussed.
Don’t Starve
Surrealistic survival from Klei Entertainment Ideally came to the court for a number of reasons. There were not so many games in the genre at the time of its appearance, so the audience willingly showed interest in everything new. And here is also a visual series that is completely atypical for the genre, which largely refers to the works of Tim Burton, plus a schizoid plot about the scientist who has fallen into the parallel world – to match the graphic design. This is a prolonged nightmare? Purgatory, an allusion to which many players saw? Or something else?
It is no wonder that such a metaphysical story is filed atypical for past representatives of the genre of mechanics. IN Don’t Starve It is necessary to monitor not only health, but also the mental state of your ward: the fall of reason leads to hallucinations that can cause damage. In addition, if everything proceeds calmly during the day, and you can start researching the world and collecting objects, then at night you begin to be afraid of every rustle, counting a second before dawn. Darkness is already on its own imprint on the sanity of the character, and here also surrounded the monsters from all sides.
Change of season also greatly transforms the gameplay. For example, it becomes more difficult to extract vegetation in winter, and it will simply not be possible to survive frosts without warm clothes. In the spring, you have to put up with constant rains and more aggressive animals, and in the summer fires may begin to begin to incinerate the player’s base due to the heat. And if this is not enough, then you can always try additions – the game has several. Don’t Starve Together added a multi -user regime, and Don’t Starve ShipwreCked changed the setting and abandoned the characters surviving a shipwreck to a uninhabited island.
Rust
The popularity of Minecraft and Dayz naturally led to imitators, and the most famous of them became Rust From the author of the legendary physical sandbox Garry’s Mod. Harry Newman decided not to trifle and dragged all the best of the two worlds into his project, but so that the written house did not beat so much in the eyes, he preferred the zombie apocalypse survival in wildlife conditions. Therefore, mutating animals replaced the revived dead people, and you usually have to start the game not with a rifle or even a pistol, but with cobblestone in their hands.
Since Rust is sharpened for multiplayer, other players who willingly send each other to the other world for valuable resources are dangerous. Construction and craft “spied” with Minecraft, introduced a tactical component: to defend from enemies and wild animals is much easier when you have a large fortress behind your shoulders. Therefore, RUST regularly also take place in team raids on other people's shelters in order to gain as much valuable loot as possible, and sometimes just for fun. And if at first many coolly reacted to the creation of Newman, seeing only plagiarism in it, then the subsequent growth of the popularity of the genre and regular updates did their job-Rust began to rapidly gain a fan base.
However, the game became truly famous only at the end of 2020, when the streamers from the Offline TV association launched the server where their comrades were called with a multimillion-dollar audience. This was already a good PR, but further drama caused even more hype: the server contingent split into those who simply liked to play the roles, and those who advocated the hard PVP “in the spirit of the game”.
The Forest
Despite the oppressive atmosphere of hopelessness inherent in the Don’t Starve, the drawn visual series nevertheless reminded the gamer that he only watches all this horror from the side. Authors The Forest We went the other way, making a bet on a realistic graphics, the first -person view with a minimum interface and, suddenly, quite a working plot with a good intrigue. The aircraft in which the main character flew with his son, crashes on a uninhabited island, so survival in the jungle inhabited by embittered natives is not an end in itself – you also need to find the missing child.
Formally, the gameplay in The Forest follows a proven formula with the inherent genre of the provision of the provisions and the creation of equipment, but the developers perfectly create a sappress, equalizing the protagonist and the player himself: on the huge island no one leads you by the handle and does not indicate what to do next. The constant feeling of anxiety is also due to the fact that mutants who learned about the appearance of a mysterious stranger will not sit in the way in the places prescribed by the script. They will send patrols in search of a hero, and some can simply watch him, and the latter will try to attack. They can bypass the impromptu camp, and they can take it storm if the player inadvertently angry them. The presence of islanders does not allow you to breathe out calmly, and this despite the fact that there is no procedural generation characteristic of many representatives of the genre.
The important feature of The Forest was also the support of virtual reality helmets in 2018: in VR mode, it is sometimes able to terrify any worse than any Amnesia. And then the developers also introduced a multiplayer into the game, focused on cooperative passage. Exploring the world, securing the support of a comrade, is already much easier and calmer.
This War of Mine
Although according to developers from Polish 11 Bit Studios Source of inspiration for This War of Mine The notorious events in the besieged Sarajevo served, her ideas can be safely projected onto any war. After all, it will be not an experienced soldier to manage here, but by ordinary townspeople who are trying to survive under a hail of bullets and do not fall as a victim of looters. The heads of morality are posed in the conditions of total chaos and a lack of resources. Kill the mother of two children for the sake of food or go in search of food for distant lands, risking to die along the road?
Like Unreal World or Don’t Starve, the season has greatly affects the gameplay. It is more difficult to get water in winter, and in order not to freeze, you need to constantly look for materials for kindling. Any sortie out of the home can be the last, and the player’s actions also affect the attitude to him from NPC. And if in one situation he is easily allowed for the night, then in another cynically shut the door in front of the nose.
The Long Dark
As in the case of this War of Mine, the creators The Long Dark They did not flirt with either surrealism or science fiction, and turned to something more mundane. The game immediately falls in love with a setting-a village, introduced by snow, as if about to break into thousands of ice floes from hellish cold. It will no longer be necessary to fight here with the looters, but by distraught animals, but Mr Slots Club Casino the main enemy still remain hunger, thirst and extreme weather conditions. Especially the latter – unlike many similar games, the eternal winter reigns in The Long Dark, so the risk of dying from hypothermia will pursue the player constantly.
And although exploring the world full of dangers was interesting in survival mode, over time the authors added a full -fledged plot campaign to the game. The story about the pilot and his former wife-Dodor, who crashed in the middle of the lost town, is served most of the time on behalf of two heroes in the form of notes and hints. In the light of circumstances, in which the steam is stuck, the desire to restore the chronology of events suggests itself: it is only a pity that only three of the planned five episodes have seen only three. Therefore, the players will only have to set the records for survival in the conditions of the driving mode for a short-lived plot.
Have you happened to play any of our top today? Or maybe we undeservedly bypassed one of the worthy representatives of the Survye genre? Share in the comments.
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