There are a ton of great free games that you can play on Steam, but good survival games are extremely hard to find. Yes, there are a ton of survival games on Steam, but finding the games that are actually good is another whole story.
A few of these games on this list don’t have the best reviews, but I mean it is a free game and we did enjoy our time with them. With free games, you really need to lower your expectations for the game because the developers don’t have a large budget to work with and that could make the experience not as satisfying as a triple
A title, although there are a lot of free games that are an exception to that. We did a free survival game video and article about a year ago, but there have been a bunch of new games that have come to Steam.
Here are our Best Free Survival Games that you can get right now on Steam.
BREATHE
Breathe is one of those small games that you want more to play. It is a very short game and you could argue that it isn’t survival, but we wanted to put it on the list anyway. You start on a small island, and your goal is to find all the chests around the area.
It is simple, but the graphics and reflections are actually better than we expected. It is worth just downloading to just explore the small island area. You can find chests on the island and in the water, and you need to also be careful because there are sharks in the water.
What is cool about this game is that it was made in such a short amount of time. Yes, there isn’t much to it, but we can appreciate how talented the developers of this game are. We are excited to see everything that this developer can make in the future.
We would highly recommend going and trying this game out for yourself because it is a pretty cool experience, and it is free so why not.
Arid
As a little bit of an outlier in this list, Arid comes in and gives players a unique survival game set in the Atacama Desert. Also, as with some other small games you’ll find on Steam, this game was actually developed by the students over at Breda University, which props to them for making this game.
In terms of survival elements, a lot of the game focuses around surviving the natural harsh desert and you end up kind of exploring this, honestly, really impressive world that the developers have built.
The story takes place in the 1930’s and you play as a cargo pilot that unfortunately had an engine failure and now is stranded in the Atacama Desert.
I will say that the game does not hold your hand when you start out. You basically are on your own and it’s your job to survive the harsh climate. You’ll need to focus on water and gathering resources and staying out of the sun to not experience severe sun exposure.
The map itself is actually surprisingly good and you have a lot of interesting locations like caves, old abandoned mines, small towns and the large landscape of the desert. Also in terms of graphics, this game has me really impressed. The world feels real and when you get past the harsh sandstorms and threats during the day, the night time is relaxing.
I don’t wanna say too much about the game but there is a lot to this game and there are a lot of hidden elements that all I can say is try it out yourself because I really recommend it.
BEACHED
One thing that’s incredibly obvious is that BEACHED is a very low budget recreation of the game Rust. To be honest, I really like the minimalist graphics style of the game, and for a free game it’s a pretty good Rust replacement. But, it has a lot of small issues you should be aware of. One thing to consider is that this is a brand new early access game, so it’ll most likely get more polished as development goes on.
The first thing I ran into was the inability to get into official servers. I’m not sure if there just aren’t any official servers or if it was glitched, but there were a few community servers to play in.
When I loaded in, I immediately saw the Rust inspiration, which is bordering on actually copying the Rust. This isn’t a bad thing though, because a lot of people either can’t afford Rust or can’t run it on their PC. BEACHED is a lot easier to run, and still looks pretty decent when on max settings.
Another thing that’s great about it is that it’s nowhere near as toxic as Rust. People on voice chat are quite annoying, but you won’t get as many try-hards as you will with Rust.
The most annoying issue I found with this game is that the game barely registers when you hit resources. Half of the swings you make with axes or pickaxes completely miss, even if you’re right on top of it. This got very frustrating, but I was still able to gather items after a bit.
There are also zombies around the world that you need to take out, or run from if you don’t have any weapons.
Overall, I think BEACHED has a lot of potential as a free game, and I’ll be keeping my eye on it throughout its development phase.
Wasteland Survival
Wasteland Survival reminds us of a mobile game called Last Day on Earth, where you are in a zombie apocalypse and you need to survive. It is a very basic premise that a lot of other survival games have and this game is just more of the same.
This game does not really do anything to stand out and it is certainly not the best looking game, but it is pretty fun to play. I mean if you are expecting a ton of polish, optimization, and a ton of great gameplay from a free game, then you don’t really understand how development teams work.
Yes, there are a ton of free games with a ton of content, but there are also a ton of free games that are just the same as everything else, and wasteland survival is more of the same, but it is just different enough to want to play. If you do like top-down survival games, then go ahead and give this game a try.
Nomad
Imagine if Unturned and Rust were combined into one game, well, that’s Nomad in a nut shell. The game is heavily inspired by the graphical style and playstyle of Unturned, while kind of leaning towards the gameplay elements and overall theme of Rust.
The game is actually great to play with friends considering you all can gear up and raid other people and with games like this, it’s always best to play with other people.
I also wanna mention that the game also has zombies in it so that was obviously inspired by unturned. There are vehicles, landmark locations, PVP, building, farming and essentially everything you would want in a survival game.
There are some issues with loading screens and the servers aren’t nearly as populated as I would like but you could still play the game solo or with friends, just I wouldn’t have your hopes up on getting that experience you would in something like a rust server where there are clans nearly everywhere.
I think it is important however to mention that the game is still being updated and this game came out in 2015, so that’s a huge plus for me. The developers still care and are still actively adding more and patching more things in the game.
I think the game is actually pretty great, regardless of the flaws it may have and if all else fails with finding a server, you can host your own private server and either play with friends or survive against the zombie ridden world.
Mr. Prepper: Prologue (Jay)
Mr. Prepper: Prologue is the demo version of a full game about a man creating a survival bunker under his house. Now, this is different from most survival games, as the game is focusing on preparing for survival, rather than actually surviving.
The setting is a highly satirized version of the United States, with the town you live in being called Murricaville. Every character acts extremely over the top in everything they do, which is humor some people might enjoy.
Every once in a while, the secret police will come to inspect your house to make sure you don’t have any contraband. When that happens, you need to cover up anything suspicious in your house so they can’t find it.
You get supplies for you bunker by collecting resources in the woods or trading with your neighbors. As the bunker grows larger, you’ll have more things to build and more problems to solve.
It’s a game that you shouldn’t take too seriously, but it’s a lot of fun when you get the hang of it. Keep in mind that since this is just a prologue, it’s not the full game, but you’ll get to try it out for a little while. If you do end up liking the game, you can always wait for a big Steam sale and get it for cheap.
Either way, the prologue is free and definitely worth checking out.
INFLUXIS
Influxis is straight up a Subnautica clone. If you don’t know what Subnautica is then I don’t know where you have been in the past 10 years. Basically, you start out in a small crashed aircraft, and you need to explore the ocean to find a way to get off the strange alien planet. You and your robot pal Tyler will go out on an adventure and find some crazy places.
You need to go out and find materials and you also need to keep your health and thirst up to stay alive. You also need to watch your oxygen because you only have a certain amount while exploring the ocean depths.
It seems the developers copied almost everything from Subnautica, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you don’t have money for Subnautica, go ahead and play this game instead.
Muck
I’m pretty sure most everyone watching right now knows what game this is and where it originated from but regardless I’ll explain it anyway.
So Muck is a free survival game that was released during the summer of 2021 and was made by a YouTuber by the name Dani. He actually made the game because someone in his comments questioned whether he could make a multiplayer survival game or not. So he made the game and published it on Steam.
I know a lot of the hype has died down from this game since its release but regardless of that the game is still a ton of fun and really worth playing with friends.
The game has all the survival elements you would expect from this type of game but you can also gain currency when you kill things, which leads to the ability to unlock chests that are around the map.
There are actually a surprising number of things to fight in the game and you can even fight various bosses like a giant rock creature named Big Chunk and even a dragon.
I mean I won’t go ahead and say this game is a full blown survival game because it lacks a bit of content and it’s described as being a roguelike and there isn’t any saving the game. So if you beat the game or you have a point at which you want to get off, all of your progress won’t be saved.
I mean it isn’t a bad thing because that is the nature of the game but it’s something to note.
Aside from all of that the game also has building and a good bit of exploration aspects to it and honestly overall the game is a lot of fun and worth giving a try.
Stay Out
Stay Out is a free open world survival MMO game. Being an MMO, you can expect this game to also be a running simulator. The goal of the game is to go around the world completing quests and defeating enemies, while also watching out for other players.
While Stay Out is a PvP game, taking out other players isn’t really encouraged, as towns will ban you from entering if you’re too aggressive. When inside towns, you can trade with the NPCs for more ammo and supplies, which allows you to go off and do more quests. You can also trade with other players as well, though I didn’t have enough resources to do at first.
There doesn’t seem to be a huge variety of enemies, as most of them are wild dogs or little swamp creatures, but maybe that was just the first area I was in.
When you talk to NPCs, it’s all text dialog, but I don’t think that most players will even care about the story. This is the type of game you play for the gameplay alone, and the story really is secondary.
There aren’t a lot of free games out there like this, so it’s definitely worth trying this one out.