Open world games often let you just roam around, mess with stuff, and enjoy the comfy life in a place you may rely on to keep you safe, but that’s a bit boring.
Personally, I love when games instead opt for the route of throwing you somewhere more desolate and hostile, expecting you to figure out how to live in it.
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Throw these characters into an open area without loading screens and you’ll have masterpieces.
Plenty of sandbox games and roguelikes do this, but nailing that aspect on top of letting you freely explore a huge, expansive location is a bit more difficult.
Thats why I thinkthese ten games master making you feel threatened by your surroundingswhile also inclining you to explore every inch of the hostile world you’re in.
10Satisfactory
Built to Scale
Satisfactory
While a game supremely focused on crafting and automation likely isn’t the first thing to come to mind,Satisfactory is one of the best at throwing you onto a desolate island and making you figure it out.
I drankly think it’s rather underrated as an exploration game, with the alien sights surrounding you looking gorgeous on top of feeding you more materials for the giant machine that lags the entire game.
It has the quality ofSlime Rancherwhere the dichotomy between exploration and base-building makes the game feel like a back and forth between comfortable designing and dangerous journeying.
If you’ve ever taken a look at it and just brushed it off as some game for nerds that build way too many automated farms and probably play modded Minecraft, it is that, but it’s also so much more.
9Death Stranding
Chug It Down
Death Stranding
While Kojima’s first game away from the stealth madness wasn’t exactly what Metal Gear fans were down for,Death Strandingdoes offera massive open world that feels horrifying to traverse.
After chugging copious amounts of Monster Energy, you get to walk from one destination to another as the local delivery boy, trying to avoid as many horrific and awful things as possible on your way.
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It’s about the journey, not the destination.
While horror and survival are pretty interchangable genres most of the time, this game leans far more heavily on the survival aspect, letting scary and unsettling aspects mostly sit on the sidelines.
It’s pretty great at building atmosphere and making you dread the open world exploration a little, which is a nice inverse of what you’d typically expect from most games boasting about their world size.
8Minecraft
Open As Can Be
This choice is either the most obvious or most odd, butMinecraftis a randomly generated open world where the main game mode is survival, so it feels pretty natural for this list.
It should be higher, however I find the survival experience isn’t anywhere near as engaging as it could be, with recent updatesdragging that down even further.
That said,journeying through different biomes, fighting through hordes of enemies at night, and returning home safelywith the new items you found is always going to be a fun loop.
I especially love delving into the new trial chambers, and while some bits of it can be lackluster, the worlds always offer something new to see, and I love that.
7No Man’s Sky
Cruisin' For a Bruisin'
No Man’s Sky
If you’re like me, you often gaze among the stars and wonder which video game might capture some of the terrifying, surreal beauty of outer space, and to me,No Man’s Skyis pretty good at that.
Soaring through the skies has gone from bland to an incredible show of unique planets and environments over thelast few years of its development, and I love delving into new alien worlds.
The aspect of survival usually feels pretty terrifying in the early game, with most resources not coming easy whenever there’s some hostile alien life around, and with plenty of mildly overwhelming menus.
Once you get through that, have a base built, and can easily upgrade your ship for the millionth time, surviving is rather trivial, but the exploration and building around infinite worlds is still awesome.
6Subnautica
Subnautica
To me,Subnauticaisthe absolute best survival game at selling you the idea of a massive, expansive world, but the world isn’t as interesting to exploreas most open world games out there.
It’s moreso about the horror part of surviving on an alien planet that consists almost entirely of ocean, and that part is incredibly well done and effective, leading to it placing here.
Having to scavenge the ocean floor, hearing about your limited remaining oxygen, and frantically swimming back up as you barely break the surface before passing out is one of the most tense feelings a game has given me.
It’s also just fun to explore the expansive ocean once you can do so at a rather brisk pace, until you come across massive terrifying behemoths in the depths that can rip you to shreds.
5Fallout: New Vegas
Deal ‘Em Out
Fallout: New Vegas
While traveling a war-torn nuclear wasteland as a lone individual choosing who becomes your friend or foe is something everyFalloutgame does,New Vegasdid it best.
Whether you’re surviving the annoying-as-hell Cazadors or themonumental amount of bugs, it always feels far more enticing than anything this series has done since.
The world feels completely desolate and destroyed, yet every landmark gives off enough intrigue to make you want to tread through hell and back just to see what’s up with it.
Despite being made with no time and barely any budget, New Vegas manages to compete with most indie games nowadays on being innovative and interesting, and it’s great for that.
4Hyper Light Breaker
Hyper Light Breaker
While I had quite the admirationfor Hyper Light Breaker on launch, I did eventually find the game a bit boring to explore after many hours, but they’ve since improved the game tenfold.
It feels like a genuine struggle to survive now that you only have one shot at the entire world, and it makes every interaction that much more intense.
I love going through these hostile new worlds, scavenging stuff, and returning back once I feel like I’ve maximized my time there, getting geared up, then going back in.
As a survival game mixed into a roguelite open world, I can heavily recommend it. It’s essentially a new experience every time, and I can’t wait to see it get even better later on.
Fits The Bill
I love when randomly generated environments provide interesting places to go, things to see, and a reason to explore throughout the entire game, andTerrariadoes exactly that.
It may not be what you think of when the term Open World is brought up, but you’re allowed to go anywhere on the map the moment you start the game up, if you’re skilled enough.
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If you trust your players, the game might just end up better for it.
On top of that, there’s about a million things that can shred your health, anda million confusing avenues to tread down if you’re a new playerwaiting to hit the thousand hour mark.
As someone who’s played this game far too much, I’ve genuinely never been bored exploring a Terraria world. On top of getting stuff for bossfights, it’s just interesting to see what else I’ll find in any given world.
2Core Keeper
Cool And Based
Core Keeper
Just like the games that rather obviously inspired it,Core Keeperconstantly keeps my interest despite taking place in a randomly generated sandbox world, as it just throws you in and lets you explore.
There’s a bit of a wall at the start, but once you get past it,the world is left open for you to roam freely, as long as you’re able to dodge enemies slinging bombs and arrowsyour way.
I particularly love the base building aspect. you may frequently find warp points along your journey, allowing you to return home and get back to where you were in an instant, which is a godsend here.
It’s pretty fun to just mine caves out, plow through a few enemies, then return home and see all the new junk you may create. Everything about it is great, especially surviving in an unfamiliar underground.
1Rain World
Objective: Survive
Rain World
I think if there was a definition for a 2D open world survival game, Rain World would fit it to an exact degree. It’s exclusively about surviving in a massive world as a prey animal, and it’s awesome.
This game receives a ton of flack from people who hate the fact it reflects the unfairness of real life, butif you’re here to watch an incredibly natural world unfold, it’s genuinely incredible.
You have to navigate throughlong sequences of platforming bits, using your species’ natural sick flip tricks to avoid giant creatures that think you’re on the lunch menu.
Beasts will come out of nowhere and snap at you, and you’ll be taking a few hundred hours of time to see the entire world, mainly because it’s really hard to avoid dying wherever you are.
