Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>Klei Entertainment, developers of indie hits Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included have announced today that they've agreed for Tencent, the media conglomerate that's been doing quite a lot of buying, to purchase a majority stake in the company. Klei founders say that they will keep "full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio".
]]>There's never been a better time to get into survival games on PC, as the recent revival of the genre means Steam is now awash in some truly great games, both in early access and in full release. There are more arriving every year, too, which is why we've done the hard work for you and ranked the very best survival games to dive into today. Fair warning - there are some early access games on this list, which mean they might be a little janky early on. Give them the time they deserve, though, and you'll find they often blossom into some truly great games over subsequent updates. We've only included the very best and most complete-feeling survival games on this list, though, so you can rest assured that every game here will leave you hungry for more. It's by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a nice selection of wolf-taming, base-building, carrot-picking action to choose from.
]]>What am I thinking? Of course you've played Don't Starve. Some days it feels like the ratio of "people who have played Don't Starve at least once" to "people on planet Earth" is somehow greater than one. So you can imagine my shock when I found out that no one has written a HYP on Don't Starve before now.
]]>From our first years we know what it means to build. As babies we're given clacky wooden blocks and colourful Duplo bricks. We are architects long before we are capable eaters of raw carrot. If you're anything like the staff of RPS, you've not outgrown the habit of child-like town planning. Yes, building games often take a managerial approach (at least many on this list do), but a sense of play is always present. It's there when you draw out a road in Cities Skylines, just to watch it populate with toy-like traffic. When you brick up another hole in your mighty Stronghold to fend off enemy swordsmen. When you painstakingly dig a trench for water to flow in Timberborn, just like you did all those years ago on the beach, in an effort to stop the tide washing away your sandcastles. You'll find all these games and more on our list. So here you go: the best building games on PC.
]]>There have been a great many games like Minecraft over the past decade. Which is to be expected, because who wouldn't want to capitalise on the runaway mainstream success of the geometric giant, one of the best-selling video games of all time? Minecraft has many interesting facets about it beyond the block bashing mechanics, so we've compiled our list of the best games like it out there right now so you can scratch that familiar mining and crafting itch.
]]>After years of surviving in the wilds and on islands, Don't Starve has returned to civilisation and... oh god, no one told me living in a city would be a struggle too. Klei Entertainment last night launched Hamlet, the third expansion for their survive 'em up, after six months in early access. It sees our motley crüe of survivors stumbling into a city of posh pigpeople in the heart of a tropical jungle, who live in actual proper houses and get their food from actual shops with actual fridges. Civilisation! Why is it, then, that we're drawn to explore and plunder the ancient ruins beyond the metrotterlis?
]]>Among a very strong stable of games, Don't Starve Together is easily Klei Entertainment's most popular. Turns out that adding friends was the secret spice the cartoon survival sandbox needed. Today, Klei announced their roadmap for supporting the game this year, and they've got a lot planned out. While they're going to be toning down the frequency of wild and wacky special events, they're going to be expanding its world and overhauling older characters, and those upgrades will be free for all. There will be new characters coming in 2019 as paid DLC too.
]]>Just when you thought you'd explored every nook and cranny of Don't Starve's nightmare otherworlds (plural), a new set of porcine problems present themselves. Hamlet, begining a quick spin through early access today, is another expansion for Klei's survival action RPG sandbox. This one takes Wilson and his sketchy pals to a new, far more civilised land. There's a town run by aristocratic pigfolk, trap-laden ruins, the usual bundle of massive new boss monsters to tussle with and the looming threat of a coming Aporkalypse. The launch trailer is hamming it up below.
]]>You summer holiday to a tropical city populated by aristocratic ambulant ham, I'm sorry to say, must become a winter vacation. Don't Starve developers Klei Entertainment this week announced that they have delayed the launch of its Hamlet expansion from June to December 2018, saying "we're not quite where we want Hamlet to be yet." Which is fair enough: better late than rubbo. In the meantime, you can see more of the possibilities and problems of posh pigpeople in Hamlet's new E3 trailer.
]]>If you've got the hang of not starving with your pals in multiplayer survival sandbox Don't Starve Together, it's time for a new challenge: not getting kicked to bits in a gladiatorial arena together. Don't Starve Together has launched the first of its new time-limited events, a trip into a fiery world to fight the Battlemaster's army. Still, maybe you'll get to drink your own spilt blood, eat your own smashed-off limbs, and die sated.
Klei Entertainment are holding a big sale this weekend too, including their own (Invisible Inc, Mark of the Ninja...) as well as those they've published (Darkest Dungeon, Crypt of the NecroDancer...). Good video games.
]]>Klei Entertainment have announced Don't Starve: Hamlet, a new expansion for their fiendish survival game. Don't get any silly ideas about Danish princes or William Shakespeare (though an immortal bard would be a fiendish foe), as the expansion will focus on the simple and sensible idea of a town of aristocratic pigmen. A hamlet. It's a pun. Wordplay, you know? Jokes. The singleplayer expansion will add a touch of civility to Don't Starve [official site] with houses, shops, and the most 'civilised' of activities: plundering ancient ruins for treasures to claim as your own.
New creatures and items are coming free to the Shipwrecked expansion, Klei also announced, and the cooperative Don't Starve Together is getting time-limited events.
]]>Judging by the survivalist Don’t Starve and subterranean piss manager Oxygen Not Included, Klei are very good at drawing cartoony things and then secretly planting loads of quite-good cogs and switches behind it all. It looks like they’re trying for another good ‘un. Griftlands [official site] has been announced at E3. It’s a sci-fi RPG “where everything is negotiable: money, loyalty—even morality”, says the developer. But you can see what it looks like down here.
]]>You are the only survivor of a plane crash. The only things you have with which to stay alive are the 98 different-but-similar survival games installed on your laptop. Which one will you play until hypothermia takes you?
The Wild Eight is the latest addition to those swollen tree-feeling, rabbit-hunting ranks, but while the setup is familiar - plane crash, cold, angry wildlife - there are a couple of enticing twists to the formula.
]]>After a journey spanning close to a year and a half, Klei's buddy-boasting survival 'em up Don't Starve Together [official site] has dragged itself from the icy grips of Early Access, and has now crawled into the barren plains of full release. As Klei's longest-dwelling Early Access-er, the co-op standalone ships with the Reign of Giants expansion in tow, as well as a handful of new features - not least the debut of a long-awaited character.
]]>*checks date*
It's all just bloody lies, isn't it? :(
Let's write about something that happened at the end of yesterday instead. Yesterday is safe. Don't Starve's [official site] single-player expansion Don't Starve: Shipwrecked came out of early access.
I feel like coming out of early access is a symbolic thing, mostly. Like, it's the games equivalent of a debutante ball. You get a launch trailer and people say your name on websites and you're a grown up game now. With that in mind, let us watch Don't Starve: Shipwrecked glide down the fancy staircase in its launch trailer and do whatever else you do at debutante balls. Probably try and choose between dancing with Nate or Dan or Chuck Bass? ANYWAY:
The aquatic latest expansion for Don't Starve [official site] launched into Early Access in December and has picked up a few patches along the way, but what's the grand plan for Shipwrecked? What's coming next? Another biome, new characters, balance tweaks, and extra bosses including the Tiger Shark, according to creators Klei. They've shared more of their plans for Shipwrecked and its path to a proper launch, see. Knowing them, I bet that Tiger Shark is a bit more feline and horrendous than actual tiger sharks.
]]>Exploring a tropical archipelago sounds ground, but it's never that easy in Don't Starve [official site]. Shipwrecked, the latest expansion for Klei's open-world crafty survival game, arrived last night with a boatload of new treats and threats in new lands. Also, boats! I don't know what drives you to place these sweet little computer people in such hazardous situations, you monsters.
]]>The latest Don't Starve [official site] expansion, Shipwrecked, will crash headlong into Steam Early Access in December. If you are perhaps fond of not starving and are looking forward to not starving again—maybe while drinking fruity cocktails on a desert island—then you'd better mark your calendar for December 1st.
]]>If you haven't been paying attention to Klei Entertainment's creations for the past few years, you're missing out on some of the best games in the world. This year's Invisible, Inc. [official site], recently expanded in fine style, might be the best turn-based game I've discovered since I joined the Chess Club all those years ago, and Mark of the Ninja is a completely different but almost equally brilliant rewrite of the stealth genre. All of the studio's games are free to play on Steam this weekend, starting right now, with discounts should you wish to buy them after having a taste.
]]>Isn't it nice when two great developers come together to brutally murder you? Two groups whose work you admire and appreciate sit down with a bottle of brosé and a notepad and ask themselves "How can we really screw you?" Boats, is the answer.
Don't Starve [official site] developers Klei Entertainment have teamed up with Capy, the gang behind Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and Super Time Force, for the next expansion to their sandbox survive 'em up. It's named Shipwrecked, and you can guess how that works out.
]]>If you had survive 'em up Don't Starve [official site] before yesterday, congratulations! You now have the multiplayer expandalone Don't Starve Together too.
Developers Klei Entertainment had planned to give it free to existing Don't Starve owners once it left Steam Early Access to properly launch, but it seems they've got a little excited as they've now shunted it out to two million people (!) early.
]]>Don't Starve Together [official site] takes the elements of 2D survival game Don't Starve and rebuilds them for co-operative purposes. The game has been in Early Access since late last year, and its most recent free update has just added all the extra monsters, items and features from the game's original expansion, Reign of Giants.
]]>In early 2012, a mod for Arma II called DayZ was released. Two-and-a-half years later, its odd mixture of multiplayer, horror, and a need for players to keep themselves fed and watered, has given rise to the survival genre.
Let's celebrate that genre.
]]>FUN FACT: it's quite difficult for two or more people to starve in close proximity, because inevitably one will begin to eat the other. With that cheeriness in mind, I'm here to tell you that sign-ups are now open for the closed beta of top-down survive-'em-up Don't Starve's to-be-free multiplayer component. You don't even need to own Don't Starve to apply, as those accepted will be given a limited version of the client that only allows for multiplayer. All you need to do is fill in this form and hope fate smiles upon you.
]]>Invisible Inc is a turn-based, grid-based, cyberpunkish stealth strategy game from Klei, creators of Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja. It's about secret agents breaking into sinister corporations to steal cash and data. It's about risking everything and losing everything, but then trying it all again because you're damn sure you can do better. It's out now on Steam Early Access, and I've spent the last couple of days sheltered within its billowing trenchcoat.
]]>Don't Starve Together is the sort of stern instruction that was once delivered by frowning parents to their newly married offspring as they set out to find a partner for life. The ruddy-faced matron wouldn't tell her son to make sure he wooed a girl who always washed behind the ears, and the cracked lips of an aged farmer would not part to instruct his daughters in the ways of romance and wedlock - instead, mother and father both would have one piece of advice. "When you settle down with a spouse and begin a life of your own, eternal bliss can be yours if you follow this advice - Don't Starve Together." Then they'd slip a withered turnip out of their breeches, pass it across and shut the door of the family home for good.
Don't Starve's upcoming multiplayer mode will allow you to relive the good old days with your own friends and it'll be entering closed beta before September 23rd.
]]>Don't Starve is an ingenious videogame title, if you think about it. It's catchy, a quick summation of your goal in the game, and utterly indispensable life advice. Don't Starve Together, then, is exactly what I'm going to tell my future children when I'm teaching them about the buddy system. I will follow that by handing them a copy of Lord of the Flies and saying, "Don't reenact this," before stranding them on an island for a couple days to find out which one is fit enough to be my favorite. Coincidentally, that's more or less how I expect Don't Starve Together to unfold, albeit with slightly less confusing advice given out upfront.
]]>Are you starving for more Don't Starve? Do you long to sink your teeth into more juicy, wholesome content and suck the marrow from its bones like the thirstiest of draculas? Then you're in luck. After a brief Steam Early Access testing period, the brilliantly quirky survival adventure's Reign of Giants DLC expansion is now available on Steam proper. Venture below for a new trailer, but beware: unspeakable terrors lurk in RPS' whispering woods. We've got evil trees, deerclops, notorious human hunter Adam Smith - all of it. Proceed at your own risk.
]]>Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the beta of an expansion! Honking great giant beasts are now stomping merrily around Don't Starve as its expansion Reign of the Giants is out in beta on Steam Early Access. No, I hadn't realised DLC could be released that way either.
As one would expect and fear from an endless nightmare where the only release is sweet merciful death, Reign of the Giants adds a few more survival tools but mostly new ways to die horribly.
]]>The 2014 IGF Awards have finished and the winners have been announced, but we still have insights to share. Before reading on, you should relive John's liveblogging of the IGF Awards ceremony so that you can see if Klei's Jamie Cheng left the event happy. Don't Starve received a nomination for the Grand Prize but Cheng was backing a different game - a game that he describes as 'a masterpiece.
]]>It's been nearly a week since Klei ROCKED THE HEADLINES by changing its turn-based strategy stealth game's name from Incognita to Invisible, Inc. "What could it possibly mean?" nearly every human on Earth pondered simultaneously. Then they all caught the hidden pun, embedded with a deadly precision, and chuckled in perfect harmony. With that blanket of sound covering their actions, Klei quickly slipped all sorts of new features into the rechristened game before anybody even knew what hit them. They thought they got away with it, but I knew what was up. I tracked designers James Lantz and Jason Dreger back to Klei's secret cyber-noir rooftop lair and forced them to divulge secrets about the new name, the game's (some would say) too-high difficulty, plans for upping replayability, how much content will be in the final game, and when Klei's hoping to release it for real. All that and more is below.
]]>To those who haven't invested tens of hours in Don't Starve and uncovered every last one of its randomized secrets, it may seem like an endless onslaught of hungry, hungry horrors. Some people, however, have ventured deep into its howling forests and emerged with their stomach linings largely intact. They want more. They need more. One might say they are starving for more Don't Starve. I wouldn't, because I'm better than such an easy joke. You, though? Well, I won't judge. At any rate, those people will get their wish soonishly when Klei unleashes Don't Starve's first major DLC expansion: Reign of Giants.
]]>It's dangerous being an international master of espionage. In between all the hideously interesting intrigue, early exposure to crazy cool tech, and bottomless piles of hot, filthy sex that just happen wherever you are, there's all sorts of horrible stuff. You could, for instance, get captured and have your memories wiped, your entire identity brainwashed away as though merely gum on an old tennis shoe. I assume that's exactly what happened to Klei's espionage XCOM Incognita, which is now going by new alias Invisible, Inc for mysteeeeeeeeeerious reasons. I have inquired for further information, but for now we'll just have to make do with a new trailer and information on the Early Access alpha's latest major update.
]]>Did anyone do anything for Halloween? I was left alone in an empty house, so I watched Ghost Watch and strutted fearlessly about the house, bravely turning all the lights on (to better see the ghosts and murderers). Klei Entertainment's halloween celebration was a bit different than that. They held a Halloween modding game jam to [things that go] bump [in the night] up Don't Starve's mod count. But more importantly they released their own mod for Don't Starve, one that turned the game of survival into a Slender Man-esque forest romp.
]]>Klei only removed the cloak of shadows (but thankfully not the trench coat; that would be weird) from espionage XCOM-ish strategy Incognita a couple months ago, but you can already play it. As in, right this very second. Following in the footsteps of endlessly bizarre survivalist megahit Don't Starve, a paid alpha was in the cards from the get-go, but it's still a pleasant surprise to see it on these rainslick, cybertronic streets so soon. What is Incognita's alpha hiding? Tread lightly and you might just be able to sneak up behind a trailer and some impressions after the break.
]]>The Steam Workshop is an interesting barometer of a game's post-release success. Strike Suit Zero's Steam Workshop has been live for a few months, but it only has eight lonely items populating its server space, and pointing it out is making me feel quite awkward. Erm, moving on. Don't Starve's new Workshop is a lot healthier. The cutest survival game you ever did see recently updated, adding a new level, more creatures, new items, and more importantly mod tools for players to do whatever they want to the game. And while I'm espousing indie modding, the lovely Gateways has also just added Workshop support, too.
]]>Don't Starve is an isometric 2D survival-roleplaying game, set in a randomly-generated fantasy world of threats and food shortages, and from the studio behind Mark of the Ninja. You have to not starve.
]]>As far as near-universally applicable life advice goes, Don't Starve is up there with "do breathe" and "do not play in high-speed traffic unless you are an RPS spambot programmer or a car." Klei's survival sim designed around that concept, however, is anything but simple. Instead, it's a methodical, almost insanely hostile thing, requiring brains to triumph over a sickly lack of brawn, the ever-ticking clock of mortality, and that most universal specter of them all: steroid-infused pig men. Wisely, then, Klei opted to put its delicate ramshackle shelter of cards through various phases of testing for quite some time, but now it's finally and fully out in the wild. There's a new trailer outlining the launch update after the break.
]]>Klei have been teasing the next Don't Starve update, and you can see that below. What's happening? Insanity, that's what. Creeping, shadowy monsters are coming for you, tomorrow.
And in the game!
]]>The continuing adventures of hungry gent, Jeremy J Happenstance. For part one of this Don't Starve beta diary, point your browser in this direction.
How many days had Happenstance been trapped in this nightmare? As he picked the husks of roasted seeds from between his teeth, shivering by the dwindling fire that was greedily consuming the last of his charcoal, he pondered the bizarre, violent and grotesque events that had led him to this terrible ending. It started, as so many unfortunate events do, with a distinctly un-neighbourly dispute with a distinctly noisome neighbour.
]]>Being the first part of a journal of adventures in the Don't Starve beta.
Good day to you and allow me to introduce myself. I am Jeremy J. Happenstance, a gentleman scientist trapped in a barren and sometimes monstrous land. Regrettably, there is insufficient time to set up an embassy/laboratory from whither to study the inhabitants because, when night falls, the dark has teeth. And, besides, my stomach is rumbling. How much simpler could the instructions be? Don’t Starve. Better find some food then.
]]>Macabre survival nightmare, Don't Starve, is available to play in beta form via Steam, in addition to the Chrome variant. Updates appear to be scheduled regularly, with the next due in a week, and I've been dabbling in preparation for a closer look at some point in the near future. There are no instructions provided, which is fitting because when lost in a weird world, a gentleman scientist does not receive an instruction manual. Instead, he must craft tools to exploit his environment and build fires to ward off the inky sea of night, and the horrors that scratch and squeal within the darkness.
]]>From Eets and Shank developers Klei Entertainment, Don't Starve is the survival sim that Edward Gorey never quite managed to make. He was always plugging away at it, coding well into the night, but instead he sold out and made millions by selling macabre, morally-correcting pictures of dismembered children. I suppose whatever keeps the Dollars flowing was top priority for a man like Gorey, but Klei are following the path of art by releasing a demo and providing early access to the beta of their game for those who preorder. You can see why that might be a thing you'd like to do below.
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