PPG Game Of The Year 2024 - 25 - Craft. Build. Survive.

Often large, often procgen, often self directed and often utterly absorbing. These games throw you into the world with very little, with learning to stand on your own, exploring a huge world, growing in power, engaging in complex survival and crafting systems and spending anywhere from a handful to thousands of hours just existing in them being the overarching goal. It is what you make of it.

Nightingale
Magical Survival Craft
While the original release rubbed many hopeful fans the wrong way, the Realms Reborn update that released on 12th September really turned this RPG into a whole other beast. A survival crafting adventure now with a dedicated bespoke campaign and increased build limits provide a fresh, engrossing experience.

Omega Crafter (EA)
Programmable Sidekicks
Cartoony open world survival craft + townbuilding, with a Scratch style programming function for controlling the little bots that inhabit the space and assist with everything from resource gathering to building to combat.

The Planet Crafter
Terraform A Planet
A juggernaut survival game that has certainly captured the imagination of many. Turn a single desolate planet into a living breathing ecosystem fit for life. It's you against the elements.

Bellwright (EA)
Medieval Survival Craft
A third person game with a mish-mash of everything you get with these games, from town building to building out your own character to a mix of other survival and combat systems interplaying with one another. Following in Mount and Blade's footsteps.

Abiotic Factor (EA)
SCP Survival Shenanigans
A first person survival / base building game with Control vibes with a fascinating world to explore and learn about. The perfect example of the split between games hundreds of thousands of people sink hundreds of hours into that most mainstream press outlets just don't even know about.

Survival: Fountain of Youth
16th Century Caribbean Islands
Classic first person survival set in 1500s Caribbean. Castaway but for people that actually want to be left alone on a deserted island to eat, sleep, sale the sea on their own ships, explore ancient ruins and the like.

Soulmask (EA)
Expansive Everything Survival
Expansive survival systems in line with Ark or Conan Exiles, with tribe management, rewarding exploration, base building, satisfying combat, survival systems and more.

First Dwarf
Fantasy Dwarven Engineering
Use your mech to search for resources, build your colonies and defend against invasion forces in third person across a "crumbled" fantasy world.

ASKA (EA)
Viking Survival Exploration
Third person adventure with a viking setting, where you build up your own little village, pray to the gods for assistance, and collect your own little family of NPCs to call your own.

Dawn of Defiance (EA)
Greek Myth Survival Craft
Build yourself up from plain warrior to god like anti-hero in your quest to face the trials of the Gods. A unique setting with buildings and gear inspired by the time period.

Core Keeper
Top Down Pixel Sandbox
Very much stands shoulder to shoulder with its peers Terraria, Valheim and Minecraft. Extremely moreish loop of exploration, crafting and boss battling.

City 20 (EA)
Top Down Quarantine Survival
A survival game set within a nuclear containment zone with a bunch of interplaying systems such as factions, limited resources and choices to make or break. Got a few bugs that come with the EA territory, but if you like prodding at this type of interactivity , this is a full goer.

Enshrouded (EA)
Massive Polished Survival
A survival game with all the trappings you can think of. Start in the typical fashion - with nothing at all - and engage in comprehensive and deep systems to become the hero of the land. The defining feature is the Shroud - a dangerous pestilence that ravages the land, where the horrors loom. This makes for a cool loop of diving into it, taking the fight to the monsters, and coming out stronger to build back a better world.

And The Best Survival Crafting Game Of 2024 Is…

The Last Plague: Blight (EA)
Isometric Survival Done Differently
A survival game "rooted in realism and immersion" that does things a little differently to your usual survival game. Already earning high praise for it's polish and gameplay that feels realistic without getting bogged down on creating improper friction for the sake of that realism. Too many survival games have gone down the same paths and end up feeling too similar - this is a breath of fresh air, evolving the form just enough to make it feel fresh.