Survival Games Online: Resources, Waves and Crafting Tips
Updated
Survival games online ask one question: how long can you last? Some answer it with resources and crafting, where you keep food, water and shelter in order. Others send waves of enemies that grow stronger, and some are pure dodging against a timer. Below are the kinds, what each asks of you and games from the survival games collection.
Kinds of survival games
| Kind | What you do | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| Crafting survival | Gather, craft, eat, drink and build shelter | Everwild Survival |
| Wave survival | Hold out as waves grow and pick upgrades between them | Ashen Watch |
| Base defense | Place and upgrade weapons on your base | Defense Base 2 |
| Dodge survival | Stay alive against a timer or random hazards | Arrow Survival: 15 Seconds |
| Animal survival | Grow from a small creature while avoiding predators | Forest Survival Simulator: Animal Evolution |
Crafting survival: resources first
Crafting survival games run on one loop: gather resources, craft tools, build shelter, and keep your needs topped up.
- Everwild Survival strands you in the wilderness. Chop trees, mine, fish and hunt, but animals fight back and drain your health. You manage hunger, thirst, health and happiness, and at night predators roam, so shelter is your only safe place. Move with WASD, rotate the camera with Q and E, pick up items with Space and open the menu with C.
- Raft Evolution starts on a raft in open water. Fish and cook, pull in chests and boards with the grappling hook on the right mouse button, and craft a workbench, a bed and more. T opens the inventory and Y the crafting menu, and a day and night cycle splits your time.
- Verdant Wilds is an isometric voxel world: gather wood, stone and ores, craft tools, build campfires and shelters, and mine deep caves. C opens crafting, I the inventory, M the map, and Q eats.
- Zaruvane The Amber Oasis puts you in a desert where you build an oasis, run taverns for travelers and look after animal companions through sandstorms. Food and water need managing: F drinks and G eats.
- Forest Survivor Challenge begins with a plane crash in the Amazon. Cut trees, gather resources, craft tools and shelters, and reach the marked points while wild animals and weather get in the way. K attacks.
- Radiation Zone mixes a first-person shooter with survival. You need water and food, loot goes into the inventory on Tab, and a tent takes four clothes and four branches.
Two gentler ones: Survival War has you chop trees, sell materials, open chests, buy tools and build workbenches while managing your energy, with Space to work. Wild Island Quest turns deposited wood and stone into tools that reach new materials, and missions ask for crafted items such as berry jam.
Crafting habits:
- Food and water before anything else. Everwild Survival tracks hunger and thirst, and Zaruvane gives drinking and eating their own keys.
- Build shelter before dark. In Everwild Survival predators roam at night.
- Make the first tool early. In Wild Island Quest tools are what open up new materials.
- Check the recipe before you gather. Radiation Zone's tent needs exactly four clothes and four branches.
Wave survival: last one more round
Wave survival games send enemies in rounds, and each round is harder. Between rounds you get stronger, so the choices you make there decide the run.
- Ashen Watch defends a castle keep over 20 waves, with a boss and a new story chapter every five. The guardian attacks nearby enemies on his own while you move him. After each wave you pick a perk such as arrow volleys, chain lightning, a flaming blade or a dodge roll, and coins buy permanent upgrades.
- Abyssborn fires arrows at the nearest enemy for you, so your only job is to keep moving. Every level-up offers a choice: homing arrows, 360° barrages, explosive shots, piercing, knockback or critical hits, stacked into a different build each run.
- Project VOID throws waves of drones at you on an alien world. Collect Void Skulls and upgrade between waves, while enemies grow stronger and spawn more often. The right mouse button attacks.
- Mech Core: Survivor puts you in an armored mech against alien swarms. Aim with the mouse while it fires on its own, and collect Nanites to level up into rapid lasers, homing missiles or EMP shockwaves.
- Shinobi Swarm levels your abilities with XP, puts a boss at the end of each level, and spends coins on new characters and permanent upgrades. It also lists gamepad controls and a multiplayer mode.
- Defense Base 2 has you place weapons on a base: cannons, gunners, lasers, freezers, poison towers, rocket launchers and melee blades. Top slots reach farther, melee hits hard up close, and special weapons pierce armor or deal damage over time.
Wave habits:
- Keep moving when the game aims for you, as in Abyssborn and Ashen Watch.
- Stack upgrades that work together instead of taking a bit of everything.
- Put each weapon where it works. In Defense Base 2 long-range weapons belong in the top slots and melee blades up close.
- Expect the boss. Ashen Watch brings one every five waves.
Waves of the undead are in zombie games online, and Stellar Bastion, a wave shooter on a star fortress, is in shooting games tips. More base defense is in strategy games.
Dodge survival: beat the clock
- Arrow Survival: 15 Seconds asks you to survive 15 seconds per level across 40 levels, dodging hazards and firing arrows. Move with A and D, jump with W, the up arrow or Space, shoot with J or X, and restart with R.
- No One Survives 1 minute is an endless runner: dodge barriers, keep away from the dragon, and collect stars and chests to raise your score, level up your core and strengthen your shield regeneration. Every 60 seconds brings a victory pulse, and after 3 defeats a Practice mode opens up.
- Laser Dodge Arena fires red lasers at random, faster the longer you last. Blue Shield Orbs protect you, and your survival time pays coins for skins.
Animal survival
In Forest Survival Simulator: Animal Evolution you start as a small, vulnerable creature and survive hunger and predators. Experience and coins add new animals and raise speed, strength and defense, so you can choose to evade predators or become one. Move with WASD, attack with the left mouse button and eat with F or E. Survival among dinosaurs is in dinosaur games.
Survival games FAQ
What should you do first in a survival game?
Gather the basic resources and make your first tool, then sort out food, water and shelter before night. Everwild Survival and Raft Evolution both follow that order.
Can I play survival games with friends?
Some of them. Survival On Raft Multiplayer has you gather food, stones and ocean resources such as wood and leaves, and Shinobi Swarm lists a multiplayer mode. Co-op zombie survival is in the zombie guide.
Do survival games work on a phone?
Several list touch controls. Ashen Watch moves when you drag on the screen, Shinobi Swarm has a virtual joystick, Zaruvane plays in landscape with a joystick and an action wheel, and Laser Dodge Arena and No One Survives 1 minute are touch and drag.
The survival games collection has many more ways to last one more night.
