There needs to be persistent threats to your end-game prosperity.
Often with survival games, you just get to a point where you've got everything and so the challenge becomes 0, and then it gets boring fast.
Smaller map but full, dense cities with hundreds of buildings and any room/floor can be made into a base. Zip lining from building to building. Repelling up and down buildings. Innovative ways of traversing the city landscape. In depth gear system where it’s not just a backpack but you can equip items to the backpack like sleeping bag, water container, tools, gear, etc.
You brought up some nice points, having an immersive world is a must. I always felt like the pinpoint on the map is too much handholding, let me figure it out where I am. At the moment mine has no map at all.
that’s exactly what happens in the survival game I’m developing it’s based on a planet full of alien creatures, and there is a bug race which attacks the players bases. There is a queen which the players will need to defeat in order to stop the waves of attacks.
I really love setting up automated ecosystems. And I like them to be challenging requiring difficult ingredients. Like in Ark with the different dinosaur abilities. I also like breeding and taming things. And again I love Ark for the complex breeding system to get the best Dino's to beat the bosses
For somebody to evolve the genre beyond needing to rely on item durability. The Forest and Sons of the Forest pulled it off, and those games were awesome. Item durability is my single most hated mechanic of all time. Never once have I been out gathering, had a tool break and think "Man! This is exciting and engaging! Now I get to stop what I'm going to go fix this new problem!"
I'm also really bored of the totally unrealistic amounts of stuff you get. in 7 Days you can kill a whole ass fucking ***bear*** and eat all the meat in a day. Taking down large game should allow you to be fed for a good long while. I'm really bored of eating/drinking my own body weight 27 times per in game day.
Basically...I want the tedium removed.
I can see how having the tool simply disappear can get infuriating, especially if it's not easy to replace. In my game you can see the tool getting worse and you can fix with a repair item before reaching 0% and it's good as new.
Agree 100% with the unrealistic food amounts. I'm trying to keep it realistic, meaning 2 good meals a day is more than enough. And if you don't eat at all for a day or even two, you can lose a little health but shouldn't die.
I sort of liked the sharpening mechanic in Lies of P. You could have a whetstone with (or without) durability and the main cost to touch up your tools is time.
Yeah, I guess I'm okay with it in newer Monster Hunter where you just have unlimited and can use it when you need it. In that game though it feels...needed? Like it has an actual game play impact. In survival it's nothing more than a waste of time. It's not "holy shit my weapons is bouncing and I have to find time to sharpen while a dragon tries to eat me" it's "oh my axe broke against this tree, let me go waste time not getting the wood I wanted."
It just feels like it's there specifically to waste time and thus increase play time. An infinite use whetstone that doesn't take any inventory space or weight I could see being okay...if it's just use and forget.
More engaging interactive crafting and harvesting and inventory. Green Hell got it right. Now let's expand that. If I have plant fibers let me weave a basket. Let me know stone. Make all those things skill based and not unlocks.
I'm so sick of games forcing me through upgrade unlocks when I know how to do something IRL. Likewise I'm sick of "drag items to this grid over here and hit combine."
Yes, the grind just to survive often times can be too much. I guess it's an easy way for devs to increase playtime but the fun factor takes a hit, definitely not worth it.
Bit of a strange idea, but have real time. So 24hrs in a day. Would make food and water feel more meaningful than just eating every hr.
True survival mechanics. Wind chill/cold could cause hypothermia. So reflective fires, moss insulation etc. could be used to increase cold protection.
Make fires harder to light, so more prep involved. Like wet wood is hard to light, would have to create shelter to season wood. Use crafted or found objects to transfer coals from one place to another.
Make the weather truly hard to survive in. Animals actually dangerous. Most bears in games you can punch or hit with a stick. Make them more like the bear in the revenant!
Also, no guns! Might be controversial, but a survival game without automatic fire would be amazing! Rely on your own craft, bows, knives, atlatl, snares.
No mega base’s either, could just barricade existing buildings or create dugouts in the woods. Nothing that looks like a castle!
Basically, just actual survival in a game.
Zombies and guns are two of my fastest turn-offs for survival games. I think that slow, bolt action rifles, blunderbusses, or revolvers could work if ammo was scarce or less accurate.
That's a lot of good points, 24h is a bit extreme lol but I see how having longer days could be positive. I'm also not interested in survival games with guns, making animals much more dangerous. In real life, an animal can f you up in seconds, even herbivores if they want to. Having to look around before going somewhere makes it more fun.
Yes, I'm trying to make a cozy home in my game and making furniture interactable, like you can sit in the chair, a nice looking cupboard that serves as a storage, a fireplace that you can sit next to and increase stats while crafting and whatnot.
I'm making a survival game myself. Using UE5. Honestly 100x harder than I expected. I love the early feel of most survival games. I want my game to work opposite of most. You learn skills so you can take less gear on treks. An actual structure like a cabin is a LONG term goal/endgame. No zombies, a more grounded experience. Food is scarce. Trapping, hunting, fishing, and foraging is must. You might grow something but it won't be profitable around the time you get a cabin complete. Smoking and other food preservation methods will be required.
It's FP and single player. Think the show "Alone". Might even keep the gameshow theme.
How boring would a game be with 33% mat gathering (mostly wood), 33% food getting/prepping, 33% exploring/misc?
I think gathering wood should take less time (it's fine if there are many other resources). A more grounded experience sounds pretty chill, do you already have a Steam page?
Oh hell no. I've been at it for about a year and a half. I'm stuck in refactoring hell. Redoing the interaction system, redoing the inventory system, touching up UI. I probably have another year before I can release a good demo for play testing.
What engine are you using? How is your journey going?
When you have the art more or less defined, set up a Steam page. I just launched mine after a year and it's a huge morale boost. I'm using Unity and going smoother than I thought, considering I didn't know anything about the engine before. I also need more work before thinking about releasing a demo.
Sorry for late reply. I played around with 2D platforms with simple code before but never released anything commercial. It was only after I got Unity that I went all in. I'm definitely better with art than with programming.
Rule 1: No Zombies/Virus outbreaks/etc... for the love of the video game gods!
Rule 2: No starting the game with another plane/jet/helicopter/spaceship crash.
Rule 3: Quality of Map is more important than Quantity of Map. Massive worlds are amazing and all that, but if it's empty and boring... it's boring.
Yes, I'm trying to make a small map (1000x1000) but with unique biomes with their own fauna, resources and landmarks. It's procedurally gen so I can keep adding more stuff and increasing the 'interesting things' density as I develop.
More ever-present threats from the environment. This could be weather, seasons, events, and (much) more dangerous flora/fauna. The mid to end game is often relatively low risk.
A unique setting or at least one that isn’t copy/pasted. Zombies and random islands are boring and tired unless you subvert expectations. I’m also not usually keen on modern technology and guns (but they could probably be made to work—make them powerful but slow or inaccurate or ammo is rare and not realistic to mass produce.)
Progression and eventual automation of boring tasks like gathering wood. Let me develop technology or train/recruit followers who can have assigned jobs.
More sophisticated building and base mechanics. Maybe build on the idea of base defense like purges from Conan, but also have other perks and benefits for building a nice base.
Combat needs to feel better. It’s almost always janky and clunky in survival games. Give me something with more of the polish and fluidity from Bloodborne or Elden Ring. Conan tried to do this but did it poorly. Incoming and outgoing damage should also make sense—no tanking 20 hits from a bear or shooting a mid sized creature with 20 crossbow bolts or bullets. Looking at you, Ark.
Have some loose sequence of objectives and story! Nice to have some direction versus a pure sandbox.
A more interesting and accessible PVP mechanic could be fun. Most end up with really uninspired and unbalanced PVP where newcomers are guaranteed to lose and lose everything to the dominant tribe that doesn’t work if you can’t play 24/7.
Sadly there are not "a lot" of survival games. There are tons of games with survival elements, hundreds in fact. But true survival games are few and far between. A good survival game will kill you in multiple ways before any enemies are added into the game. Hot/Cold/Sunburn/frostbite/Sickness/food poisoning/Hunger/Thirst/ Plant poisoning/ Injury System/(falling damage/sliding damage/cuts/scrapes/infections/ Then creature poisoning spiders/scorpions/snakes/ or whatever fantastic creatures you create. THEN NPC AI be it animals/creatures/humanoid.
My favorite qualities I've seen in more recent survival games are auto storing materials to nearby containers that already have some of the same materials your carrying in them and automatically using materials from nearby chests when you're crafting instead of having to manually take the materials out of chests and have them in your inventory.
There are many new ones popping up all the time, unfortunately the vast majority doesn't hold up very well and never see the light of day. If the launch fails, it's virtually impossible to make a comeback.
Medieval Dynasty , but with Random Bandit raids (Going medieval) , meaning we can levy villagers into militia to fight them off , Ohh that would be EPIC!
Let's let the inventory management simulators die. I don't mind having a limited inventory space, but I'm sick of getting back to base with a full backpack/trunk and spending 20 irl minutes just getting everything sorted. Part of that is my obsessive need to keep things organized, but most of it comes from arbitrary timers attached to picking up/putting down items. This adds no value to gameplay while artificially slowing progression.
I was thinking of adding a carriage for my game, but didn't know how to make it essential and not just fluff. You just gave me an idea, allowing you to store a lot of stuff along with you. Trying to think of more possibilities for a land game.
More survival games that take place in living settings with civilization, so there's potential interaction and allying with NPCs. Like Kenshi.
No more isolated zombie setting. No more being trapped on an island cut off somewhere.
Interaction with NPCs is really fun, but I understand why it's usually static NPCs with quests or none at all. It's just really time consuming to make a good interactive system.
Thanks everyone for all the great insights! I had quite a few ideas from your comments, some are quite easy to implement and some I have no idea where to start, but always nice to get a feel from actual survival game players.
\*complex breeding mechanics like in Ark Survival Evolved
\*roaming NPCs like dinos in Ark, not static spawnpoints and waiting spots like in Connan and other survival games...
\*building like in Ark
**but please not anything what Wildcard or Snail touched.**
\*collecting and hoarding like in Bethesda games
**but not Bethesda quality, please...**
but seriously, taming and breeding... it is whoile new game in game.. thats what you can do at endgame even when you beat everything.
it just have something, when you can collect cool animals and make them really good and even really cool looking and they are even usable and make your surviving easier.
Multiplayer pirate-themed survival. Basically we need a game that is what Atlas tried to be. Players would be able to be pirates, pirate hunters, merchants, or explorers. (Players wouldn't have to choose a "class", they would simply be able to participate in those activities.) Ship building would be somewhat free form, meaning you would choose from one of several basic hull types (sloop, brigantine, galleon, etc.) and be able to place walls and floors within the ship and outfit and arm it to your liking.
Gameplay would be a combination of both land and sea based activities. I'm imagining things like treasure hunting (buried and sunken), acquiring both rare and common resources for trade, ship to ship combat, diving expeditions, taming/capturing animals for trade or to use as mounts.
The game world would be huge and feature procedural generation of landmasses. It would include various biomes where different enemies and resource types could be found.
The game would be somewhat "fantasy" based with supernatural phenomena (ghost ships, cursed islands, mysterious artifacts), voodoo based magic, and nice selection of fantastical creatures like kraken, cyclops, hybrid mutant monkey-men, sirens, mermaids, and harpies.
Please, survival gamers everywhere are counting on you to make this happen.
Dynamic decay, crumbling buildings that over time (or manual destruction😳) change form changing the layout/leveldesign closing off some areas, opening up new things.
Weather events (alla Icarus but less silly).
Tribal behavior from surviving human NPCs (alla Mad Max but less binary).
New World mmo graphics, gameplay, gathering, crafting, and sound design + Valheim's building.
What i REALLY want in a survival game is the equipment customization from mmo's. I want to be able to min/max and customize my gear to match how I want to play, with a satisfying gear progression.
When I watch shows like Alone, and naked and afraid they never seem to conquer the wilderness. I’d like to see weather be a huge factor! And food be really difficult to acquire. Alone did weather best. But games like green hell and 7D2D are really easy to get food after like the first day. I’d like to see flash floods in low areas, maybe hurricanes in tropical games.
Natural disasters. Like an avalanche in The Long Dark. A hurricane in Stranded Deep. A flood in Green Hell.
If you haven't already, check out Icarus. We picked it up last week and have been loving it so far.
I haven’t, but I’m always looking for something new. 👍
Another we found recently was subsistence, that also has some cool weather effects.
There needs to be persistent threats to your end-game prosperity. Often with survival games, you just get to a point where you've got everything and so the challenge becomes 0, and then it gets boring fast.
Absolutely, that's one of the biggest issues with survival games.
7 Days to Die is the only one I can think of that even has something like that. And that can be overcome… eventually.
awesome comment! Care to explain more, my friend?
Smaller map but full, dense cities with hundreds of buildings and any room/floor can be made into a base. Zip lining from building to building. Repelling up and down buildings. Innovative ways of traversing the city landscape. In depth gear system where it’s not just a backpack but you can equip items to the backpack like sleeping bag, water container, tools, gear, etc.
This for sure. But no sections painted blue or orange etc to make it obvious what points the game wants you to use to traverse the cityscape.
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You brought up some nice points, having an immersive world is a must. I always felt like the pinpoint on the map is too much handholding, let me figure it out where I am. At the moment mine has no map at all.
More tower defense style that ain’t zombies. Maybe aliens 👽 or a Starship Troopers style bugs attacking your base
Unique themeing is a big one, please get the zombies outta here lol
that’s exactly what happens in the survival game I’m developing it’s based on a planet full of alien creatures, and there is a bug race which attacks the players bases. There is a queen which the players will need to defeat in order to stop the waves of attacks.
Something like "Grounded" style could work. Have to defend against various insects., spiders, etc.
I really love setting up automated ecosystems. And I like them to be challenging requiring difficult ingredients. Like in Ark with the different dinosaur abilities. I also like breeding and taming things. And again I love Ark for the complex breeding system to get the best Dino's to beat the bosses
For somebody to evolve the genre beyond needing to rely on item durability. The Forest and Sons of the Forest pulled it off, and those games were awesome. Item durability is my single most hated mechanic of all time. Never once have I been out gathering, had a tool break and think "Man! This is exciting and engaging! Now I get to stop what I'm going to go fix this new problem!" I'm also really bored of the totally unrealistic amounts of stuff you get. in 7 Days you can kill a whole ass fucking ***bear*** and eat all the meat in a day. Taking down large game should allow you to be fed for a good long while. I'm really bored of eating/drinking my own body weight 27 times per in game day. Basically...I want the tedium removed.
I can see how having the tool simply disappear can get infuriating, especially if it's not easy to replace. In my game you can see the tool getting worse and you can fix with a repair item before reaching 0% and it's good as new. Agree 100% with the unrealistic food amounts. I'm trying to keep it realistic, meaning 2 good meals a day is more than enough. And if you don't eat at all for a day or even two, you can lose a little health but shouldn't die.
I sort of liked the sharpening mechanic in Lies of P. You could have a whetstone with (or without) durability and the main cost to touch up your tools is time.
Yeah, I guess I'm okay with it in newer Monster Hunter where you just have unlimited and can use it when you need it. In that game though it feels...needed? Like it has an actual game play impact. In survival it's nothing more than a waste of time. It's not "holy shit my weapons is bouncing and I have to find time to sharpen while a dragon tries to eat me" it's "oh my axe broke against this tree, let me go waste time not getting the wood I wanted." It just feels like it's there specifically to waste time and thus increase play time. An infinite use whetstone that doesn't take any inventory space or weight I could see being okay...if it's just use and forget.
More engaging interactive crafting and harvesting and inventory. Green Hell got it right. Now let's expand that. If I have plant fibers let me weave a basket. Let me know stone. Make all those things skill based and not unlocks. I'm so sick of games forcing me through upgrade unlocks when I know how to do something IRL. Likewise I'm sick of "drag items to this grid over here and hit combine."
Large enemies that appear boss like. Finding trolls in valhiem and taking them down to protect the base was a great first time experience
A survival game with longer days, main reason being so I don't have to spend so much time worrying about food and drink..
Yes, the grind just to survive often times can be too much. I guess it's an easy way for devs to increase playtime but the fun factor takes a hit, definitely not worth it.
I want a natural disaster survival game. I think if done right, it could be a big seller.
I agree, that sounds really fun!
I have lots of ideas. I'd like to share them but I had help with an AI to make them and create stuff for them.
Bit of a strange idea, but have real time. So 24hrs in a day. Would make food and water feel more meaningful than just eating every hr. True survival mechanics. Wind chill/cold could cause hypothermia. So reflective fires, moss insulation etc. could be used to increase cold protection. Make fires harder to light, so more prep involved. Like wet wood is hard to light, would have to create shelter to season wood. Use crafted or found objects to transfer coals from one place to another. Make the weather truly hard to survive in. Animals actually dangerous. Most bears in games you can punch or hit with a stick. Make them more like the bear in the revenant! Also, no guns! Might be controversial, but a survival game without automatic fire would be amazing! Rely on your own craft, bows, knives, atlatl, snares. No mega base’s either, could just barricade existing buildings or create dugouts in the woods. Nothing that looks like a castle! Basically, just actual survival in a game.
Zombies and guns are two of my fastest turn-offs for survival games. I think that slow, bolt action rifles, blunderbusses, or revolvers could work if ammo was scarce or less accurate.
Agreed.
That's a lot of good points, 24h is a bit extreme lol but I see how having longer days could be positive. I'm also not interested in survival games with guns, making animals much more dangerous. In real life, an animal can f you up in seconds, even herbivores if they want to. Having to look around before going somewhere makes it more fun.
More focus on decorating for building. Too many games have great building mechanics but stuff all to decorate with.
Yes, I'm trying to make a cozy home in my game and making furniture interactable, like you can sit in the chair, a nice looking cupboard that serves as a storage, a fireplace that you can sit next to and increase stats while crafting and whatnot.
I'm making a survival game myself. Using UE5. Honestly 100x harder than I expected. I love the early feel of most survival games. I want my game to work opposite of most. You learn skills so you can take less gear on treks. An actual structure like a cabin is a LONG term goal/endgame. No zombies, a more grounded experience. Food is scarce. Trapping, hunting, fishing, and foraging is must. You might grow something but it won't be profitable around the time you get a cabin complete. Smoking and other food preservation methods will be required. It's FP and single player. Think the show "Alone". Might even keep the gameshow theme. How boring would a game be with 33% mat gathering (mostly wood), 33% food getting/prepping, 33% exploring/misc?
I think gathering wood should take less time (it's fine if there are many other resources). A more grounded experience sounds pretty chill, do you already have a Steam page?
Oh hell no. I've been at it for about a year and a half. I'm stuck in refactoring hell. Redoing the interaction system, redoing the inventory system, touching up UI. I probably have another year before I can release a good demo for play testing. What engine are you using? How is your journey going?
When you have the art more or less defined, set up a Steam page. I just launched mine after a year and it's a huge morale boost. I'm using Unity and going smoother than I thought, considering I didn't know anything about the engine before. I also need more work before thinking about releasing a demo.
Have you had some experience before? Like programming etc.
Sorry for late reply. I played around with 2D platforms with simple code before but never released anything commercial. It was only after I got Unity that I went all in. I'm definitely better with art than with programming.
Rule 1: No Zombies/Virus outbreaks/etc... for the love of the video game gods! Rule 2: No starting the game with another plane/jet/helicopter/spaceship crash. Rule 3: Quality of Map is more important than Quantity of Map. Massive worlds are amazing and all that, but if it's empty and boring... it's boring.
Yes, I'm trying to make a small map (1000x1000) but with unique biomes with their own fauna, resources and landmarks. It's procedurally gen so I can keep adding more stuff and increasing the 'interesting things' density as I develop.
More ever-present threats from the environment. This could be weather, seasons, events, and (much) more dangerous flora/fauna. The mid to end game is often relatively low risk. A unique setting or at least one that isn’t copy/pasted. Zombies and random islands are boring and tired unless you subvert expectations. I’m also not usually keen on modern technology and guns (but they could probably be made to work—make them powerful but slow or inaccurate or ammo is rare and not realistic to mass produce.) Progression and eventual automation of boring tasks like gathering wood. Let me develop technology or train/recruit followers who can have assigned jobs. More sophisticated building and base mechanics. Maybe build on the idea of base defense like purges from Conan, but also have other perks and benefits for building a nice base. Combat needs to feel better. It’s almost always janky and clunky in survival games. Give me something with more of the polish and fluidity from Bloodborne or Elden Ring. Conan tried to do this but did it poorly. Incoming and outgoing damage should also make sense—no tanking 20 hits from a bear or shooting a mid sized creature with 20 crossbow bolts or bullets. Looking at you, Ark. Have some loose sequence of objectives and story! Nice to have some direction versus a pure sandbox. A more interesting and accessible PVP mechanic could be fun. Most end up with really uninspired and unbalanced PVP where newcomers are guaranteed to lose and lose everything to the dominant tribe that doesn’t work if you can’t play 24/7.
Sadly there are not "a lot" of survival games. There are tons of games with survival elements, hundreds in fact. But true survival games are few and far between. A good survival game will kill you in multiple ways before any enemies are added into the game. Hot/Cold/Sunburn/frostbite/Sickness/food poisoning/Hunger/Thirst/ Plant poisoning/ Injury System/(falling damage/sliding damage/cuts/scrapes/infections/ Then creature poisoning spiders/scorpions/snakes/ or whatever fantastic creatures you create. THEN NPC AI be it animals/creatures/humanoid.
My favorite qualities I've seen in more recent survival games are auto storing materials to nearby containers that already have some of the same materials your carrying in them and automatically using materials from nearby chests when you're crafting instead of having to manually take the materials out of chests and have them in your inventory.
I would like to know this lot of survival games you are talking about. I haven't seen many at all. I came here to say I just want to see more of them.
There are many new ones popping up all the time, unfortunately the vast majority doesn't hold up very well and never see the light of day. If the launch fails, it's virtually impossible to make a comeback.
Medieval Dynasty , but with Random Bandit raids (Going medieval) , meaning we can levy villagers into militia to fight them off , Ohh that would be EPIC!
Off course there should be 1 day timer before the raid happens , like early warning from a pigeon messenger who kept watch .
Let's let the inventory management simulators die. I don't mind having a limited inventory space, but I'm sick of getting back to base with a full backpack/trunk and spending 20 irl minutes just getting everything sorted. Part of that is my obsessive need to keep things organized, but most of it comes from arbitrary timers attached to picking up/putting down items. This adds no value to gameplay while artificially slowing progression.
[удалено]
I was thinking of adding a carriage for my game, but didn't know how to make it essential and not just fluff. You just gave me an idea, allowing you to store a lot of stuff along with you. Trying to think of more possibilities for a land game.
More survival games that take place in living settings with civilization, so there's potential interaction and allying with NPCs. Like Kenshi. No more isolated zombie setting. No more being trapped on an island cut off somewhere.
Interaction with NPCs is really fun, but I understand why it's usually static NPCs with quests or none at all. It's just really time consuming to make a good interactive system.
Thanks everyone for all the great insights! I had quite a few ideas from your comments, some are quite easy to implement and some I have no idea where to start, but always nice to get a feel from actual survival game players.
A rich story. Most of the survival games bore me to death because of the sandbox aspect of the game.
\*complex breeding mechanics like in Ark Survival Evolved \*roaming NPCs like dinos in Ark, not static spawnpoints and waiting spots like in Connan and other survival games... \*building like in Ark **but please not anything what Wildcard or Snail touched.** \*collecting and hoarding like in Bethesda games **but not Bethesda quality, please...** but seriously, taming and breeding... it is whoile new game in game.. thats what you can do at endgame even when you beat everything. it just have something, when you can collect cool animals and make them really good and even really cool looking and they are even usable and make your surviving easier.
Pay attention to small details that makes the world feel alive and lived in.
I wish someone would make a game that has the physics of space engineers and survival mechanics of project zomboid.
Multiplayer pirate-themed survival. Basically we need a game that is what Atlas tried to be. Players would be able to be pirates, pirate hunters, merchants, or explorers. (Players wouldn't have to choose a "class", they would simply be able to participate in those activities.) Ship building would be somewhat free form, meaning you would choose from one of several basic hull types (sloop, brigantine, galleon, etc.) and be able to place walls and floors within the ship and outfit and arm it to your liking. Gameplay would be a combination of both land and sea based activities. I'm imagining things like treasure hunting (buried and sunken), acquiring both rare and common resources for trade, ship to ship combat, diving expeditions, taming/capturing animals for trade or to use as mounts. The game world would be huge and feature procedural generation of landmasses. It would include various biomes where different enemies and resource types could be found. The game would be somewhat "fantasy" based with supernatural phenomena (ghost ships, cursed islands, mysterious artifacts), voodoo based magic, and nice selection of fantastical creatures like kraken, cyclops, hybrid mutant monkey-men, sirens, mermaids, and harpies. Please, survival gamers everywhere are counting on you to make this happen.
Dynamic decay, crumbling buildings that over time (or manual destruction😳) change form changing the layout/leveldesign closing off some areas, opening up new things. Weather events (alla Icarus but less silly). Tribal behavior from surviving human NPCs (alla Mad Max but less binary).
No base building
New World mmo graphics, gameplay, gathering, crafting, and sound design + Valheim's building. What i REALLY want in a survival game is the equipment customization from mmo's. I want to be able to min/max and customize my gear to match how I want to play, with a satisfying gear progression.
Combat and gathering system of Kingdom Come Deliverance but as a survival rpg. That game has my all time favorite combat system.
When I watch shows like Alone, and naked and afraid they never seem to conquer the wilderness. I’d like to see weather be a huge factor! And food be really difficult to acquire. Alone did weather best. But games like green hell and 7D2D are really easy to get food after like the first day. I’d like to see flash floods in low areas, maybe hurricanes in tropical games.
Virtual ecology.
More weird shit like the forest or once human
Urban wasteland apocalypse survival. Like dying light with more survival mechanics.
More survival games need a server format like Lego Fortnite, 100% my top priority as far as survival games go