A popular trend would appear to be so called “Survival Simulation”. There are a lot of WIP that are aiming to become survival simulators. The problem I have is that I cannot for the life of me think of a “proper” (I’ll define what I think that is in a bit) existing survival simulator.
If there are no fully released survival simulators then how can there be a survival simulation genre (yet, at least)?
So when I read comments like “Man, I’m looking forward to this, I’m a big fan of the survival simulation genre”, that doesn’t make much sense to me. How could anyone be a fan of a genre that doesn’t exist?
Now you get games like DayZ and some zombies games and so on where you have to survive so they are survival in that sense, but then again you have to survive in most games. So I think a survival simulator is something a little more detailed, involving crafting, environmental factors, physiological, hunting, medical etc.
It seems to me that survival simulation has reached meme-like status and also remains just as elusive, I cannot find any completed survival games.
To a degree, I consider Minecraft a survival simulator. You start with nothing and you’ve got to secure your turf, build shelter and grow / raise food.
I don’t know of a game that actually explores bushcraft and survival knowledge. It might be interesting to look for animal trails, build traps, use different means to make fire and to protect yourself from cold and predators. It imagine it might also quickly become tedious and boring, though
Has elements of survival like some other games but amongst other aspects the supernatural elements disqualifies it as a simulator IMO. Seems more action-adventure to me.
That looks pretty hardcore and its definitely survival simulation however I wonder if this is what most people think of when you say “survival simulation”.
You could say supernatural stuff in Don’t Starve is physiological. I mean the game is very much about managing sanity of your mental case character. Don’t Starve is an excellent example of what people expect from this type of game, though. You build, hunter and gather. And then you die. Because it’s winter. And you haven’t stocked enough food.
I think this is a prime example of what is meant by “survival simulation”, however it has not been released yet (if it ever will be who knows?), and I cannot find anything similar that has been released. I think what people are expecting from survival simulation is a combination of experiences you get in other games, similar to the games you mentioned. However I don’t see how the genre exists yet as no game has really has defined it yet.
The Long Dark looks like a survival simulator, but not released yet. Oregon Trail is certainly a survival game of its time but I think perhaps due to its age its too stylised as a text adventure game rather than immersive simulation.
On an unrelated note I found it bizarre that “Garry’s Incident” was described by its developer as a survival simulator.
This is something I noticed as well. I love survival games, but there just aren’t that many out there… And in most that do exist, you are very limited to your freedom. Minecraft, dayZ and wurm online are the only games I could really place in the “survival genre” that comes to my mind (and that I’ve played, some games mentioned before here I haven’t played yet).
Adventure game is a helluva ambiguous and kinda meaningless term. But these games aren’t really about having big adventures. Rather you try to stick around.
An Adventure Game to me implies that the game is a big open world map, ready to be explored. There are little or no certain places that you have to go to and realistically, no levels.
